I do no think that this entry requires any introduction for it already speaks much for itself. If there’s anything I can say it is this, “Remember.”

Remember, dear reader, the day when the light of God’s glorious grace shown forth into your soul and resurrected you in newness of life in Christ Jesus (Romans 6:4)! Remember how the Sovereign love of God trampled and conquered sin and death on your behalf to the praise of His glorious grace (Ephesians 1:6)! Remember the heights, the depths and the extents of the love of God lavished upon a monster of iniquity as you are! Remember! Remember!

Remember! and if that doesn’t compel you to give and sacrifice everything for Him, and devote the whole of your person for Him in true godliness and mortification of sin and in the advancement of the Gospel of free grace, I don’t know what will.

I do confess from my soul that I was never satisfied until I came to Christ. When I was still a child, I had far more wretchedness than I ever have now. I will even add, more weariness, more care, more heartache than I know at this day. I may be alone in this confession, but I make it and know it to be the truth.

Since that dear hour when my soul cast itself on Jesus, I have found solid joy and peace. Before that, all those supposed joys of early youth, all the imagined ease and happiness of boyhood, were only vanity and vexation of spirit to me. That happy day when I found the Savior and learned to cling to His dear feet was a day I will never forget.

An obscure child, unknown, unheard of, I listened to the Word of God, and that precious text led me to the cross of Christ. I can testify that the joy of that day was utterly indescribable. I could have leaped; I could have danced. There was no expression, however fanatical, that would have been out of keeping with the joy of my spirit at that hour.

Many days of Christian experience have passed since then, but there has never been one that has had the full exhilaration, the sparkling delight which that first day had. I thought I could have sprung from the seat on which I sat. I could have called out with the wildest of those Methodist brothers who were present,

“I am forgiven! I am forgiven! A monument of grace! A sinner saved by blood!”

My spirit saw its chains broken to pieces.

I felt that I was an emancipated soul, an heir of heaven, a forgiven one, accepted in Christ Jesus.

“He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings” (Ps. 40:2). I thought I could dance all the way home.

I could understand what John Bunyan meant when he declared he wanted to tell the crows on the plowed land all about his conversion. He was too full to hold it in; he felt he must tell somebody. Not everyone can remember the very day and hour of his deliverance. However, it was the same way with me as it was with Richard Knill. He said,

“At such and such a time of the day, clang went every harp in heaven, for Richard Knill was born again.”

The clock of mercy struck in heaven the hour and moment of my emancipation, for the time had come. Between half-past ten o’clock, when I entered that chapel, and half-past twelve o’clock, when I was back again at home, what a change had taken place in me! I had passed from darkness into marvelous light, from death to life.

Simply by looking to Jesus, I had been delivered from despair. I was brought into such a joyous state of mind that when they saw me at home, they said to me, “Something wonderful has happened to you.” I was eager to tell them all about it. Oh, there was joy in the household that day when all heard that the eldest son had found the Savior and knew himself to be forgiven—bliss compared with which all earth’s joys are less than nothing and vanity.

Yes, I had looked to Jesus as I was, and I had found in Him my Savior. The eternal purpose of Jehovah had decreed it thus.

As, the moment before, there was none more wretched than I was, so, within that second, there was none more joyous.

It did not take any longer than a flash of lightning. It was done, and never has it been undone.

I looked and lived and leaped in joyful liberty as I beheld my sin punished upon the great Substitute and put away for ever.

I looked unto Him as He bled upon that tree.

His eyes darted a glance of love unutterable into my spirit, and in a moment I was saved.

Looking unto Him, the bruises that my soul had suffered were healed;

the gaping wounds were cured;

the broken bones rejoiced;

the rags that had covered me were all removed;

my spirit was white as the spotless snows of the far-off North.

I had melody in my spirit, for I was saved, washed, cleansed, forgiven through Him who hung on the tree.

—C. H. Spurgeon, My Conversion

This is Part 7 of a series of posts on Spurgeon’s recollection of his conversion. Read the other parts here: My Conversion