And this change--this conversion, if you will--comes sometimes, it may be, despite ourselves, but comes--remember this--comes most often in answer to some act of obedience, to some surrender of self-will on our part. We may complain; we may demur; we may distrust. We have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing; but we recognise the authority of the Divine voice, and we force ourselves into compliance--"nevertheless, at Thy word." The command is general: it has come to all alike,--"Let ye down your nets." But, like Peter, we specialise it, we adopt it, we appropriate it to ourselves: "I will let down the net." And so we do what seems hard and unreasonable; we do what we have never done before. And the response--the response to this obedience--is a light flashed in upon our soul, a double revelation, a revelation of mixed pleasure and pain, for it is a revelation at once of the sin within and of God without. The marvellous bounty of God's grace dazzles and astounds our vision, and, in our perplexity of heart, the despairing, craving, forbidding, yearning cry is wrung from our lips, "Depart from me! Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man!" "Depart from me, O Lord." I know it all now. I see my sin, because I see Thy goodness. Yes, I have beheld Thy holiness, Thy purity, Thy truth, Thy grace, Thy love, and I have been stunned with the contrast to self. The brightness of the light has intensified the blackness of the shade. Depart from me, O Lord! what can I have in common with Thee?--I, so selfish, so vile, so sin-laden, with Thee, so merciful, so righteous, so holy. In very deed, Thy ways are not as my ways, and Thy thoughts are not as my thoughts. Depart from me, O Lord! This "fear of the Lord" is, indeed, the "beginning of wisdom." This consciousness of sin is the true pathway to heaven. The saintliest of men have ever felt and spoken most strongly of their own sinfulness. The intensity of their language has provoked the sneer of the worldling--has been an evidence here of their own conviction that, despite their pretensions to holiness, they are no better than he, perhaps somewhat worse. But they know, and he doth not know, what sin means and what God means, and so the despairing cry is wrung from their agony, "Depart from me, O Lord."