Illustrate by the unconscious crossing of the line which separates one State of the Federal Union from another. From this doctrine of instantaneous regeneration, we may infer the duty of reaping as well as of sowing: _John 4:38_—“_I sent you to reap._” “It is a mistaken notion that it takes God a long time to give increase to the seed planted in a sinner’s heart. This grows out of the idea that regeneration is a matter of _training_; that a soul must be _educated_ from a lost state into a state of salvation. Let us remember that three thousand, whom in the morning Peter called murderers of Christ, were before night regenerated and baptized members of his church.” Drummond, in his Nat. Law in the Spir. World, remarks upon the humaneness of sudden conversion. As self‐ limitation, self‐mortification, suicide of the old nature, it is well to have it at once done and over with, and not to die by degrees. (_b_) This change takes place in the region of the soul below consciousness.—It is by no means true that God’s work in regeneration is always recognized by the subject of it. On the other hand, it is never directly perceived at all. The working of God in the human soul, since it contravenes no law of man’s being, but rather puts him in the full and normal possession of his own powers, is secret and inscrutable. Although man is conscious, he is not conscious of God’s regenerating agency. We know our own natural existence only through the phenomena of thought and sense. So we know our own spiritual existence, as new creatures in Christ, only through the new feelings and experiences of the soul. “The will does not need to act solitarily, in order to act freely.” God acts on the will, and the resulting holiness is true freedom. _John 8:36_—“_If therefore the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed._” We have the consciousness of freedom; but the act of God in giving us this freedom is beyond or beneath our consciousness.