Luther." They sought to poison you, to assassinate you, to lure you to Rome. And when at length you died, they would not even let your poor body rest in peace in your beloved Venice. Was being true to conviction worth the price? I think I can catch a smile of victory at the thought of what your spirit hath wrought.

Père Hyacynth Loyson, in Paris made brilliant by the court of the last Napoleon, you were the most spiritual, the most elegant, the most cultured, the most eloquent. Oft from Notre Dame and San Sulpice you addressed the multitude. Your name was on every tongue. At the Vatican Council in 1871 you refused to accept the dogma of papal infallibility there enunciated for the first time. You were excommunicated, anathematized, denied the right of continuing your life work in the church that you loved. Through these years you have sought to minister as best you could at Geneva. You were the forerunner of the great modernist movement in the Roman Church, you set an example that will yet gain greater liberty for your brethren. Every springtime you have gone out into the country and standing among the flowers and the fruits in the cart have preached to the common people. Père Hyacynth, the flowers are blooming above your resting-place this springtime, and each whispers of the joy that is yours because you were true to your convictions even unto the uttermost.

If men die and women suffer for their convictions, it's no wonder that convictions are the

invincible source of conquest, for what can stop the way before a being for whom Death itself has no terrors if he oppose the accomplishment of a mighty passion.

I. Conviction is the fountain source of all development, achievement, and progress. It is the matrix whence are born endeavours and enterprises which seek to put ideals into actual life. It is the motherlode where lie concealed the rich veins of precious metals which shall be mined and turned into manifold blessing. Invention, discovery, business proj. ects, scientific endeavour, search for truth, each and all are but expression of the unseen conviction that these things can be, ought to be, or must be attained. Because an old ferryman on the Hudson River in New York, named Cornelius Vanderbilt, had a conviction that the development of the country demanded and justified more rapid transit facilities he died at the head of the first great railroad system of the country. The conviction that there is untold wealth beyond the unknown western sea has sent a Columbus into every realm of industrial and material development. The conviction that the process of nature could be bent to the service of man's desire enabled Burbank at Santa Rosa to produce the gigantic daisy with its fringe of white petals like unto the eternal snow of the lofty Mount Shasta, it enabled him to take a cactus covered with spines like a porcupine and make it produce a fruit as smooth as an apple, albeit as pithy as sugar-cane, but without sweetness. Conviction is a very power

house in political action. Because John's nobles had a conviction they wrested back their ancient freedom, so of the hosts of Cromwell and those of America. Expediency may slay her thousands but the man with a mighty passion of conviction who is the incarnation of his belief will slay his tens of thousands. Conviction is the very lifeblood of moral action. There is no reform today that is being accomplished without men of conviction. God pity the nation whose men have ceased to be men of conviction, whose women hold principle lightly. Except the Lord of Moral Conviction build the city they labour in vain that build it.

So splendid a thing is conviction. It has power to convince the reason, to determine the will, to fire the heart. There is no dynamo generating such voltage as comes from the power of a princely passion.

2. Will you notice that conversion is the birthday of conviction?

The birthdays and anniversaries of great occasions are kept with reverence and with happy devotion because they are full of significant inspiration. There is no day more worthy of observance than the day on which a princely passion gained the allegiance of your soul.

You long within your heart to know the power of that kind of a conviction. That cannot occur until you give your reason, your will, your heart into its keeping. The moment that you do turn

to such a conviction and it masters you, you are converted; you are turned about. The fact that conversion is the birthday of conviction is equally true of a business proposition, of a scientific theory, or of a moral cause. You do not invest in a business enterprise until you are converted to the inherent worth of it; when you are converted you act on your conviction. You can never have a conviction ruling your life as a master passion until you have first of all been converted to it.

This holds in the realm of religion. There have been false conceptions of conversion. exhibited itself in two directions.

This has

Many have kept themselves aside from connection with the church because they have thought that conversion meant some strange, mysterious, emotional experience which they have never had. There may be such accompanying phenomena. This was so with Paul, but not with Matthew or James or John. It is an accompaniment and not the thing itself.

On the other hand, many have thought they were converted when they have really never seen the birthday of a mighty conviction that rules the will and fires the heart as well as convincing the reason.

Christ must have had this in mind that night when in the upper room He sat and talked with His friends for the last time. The shadow of the cross was even now sending a shiver amongst the gentle silver foliage of Gethsemane, soon death would be knocking at the door for Him. But He

was unconcerned for Himself. He knew whence He came and whither He went; but He was much concerned for His friends. He knew how human and frail and blind they were. And yet He was having to trust all His mission to them. He told them to be comforted, to trust in God and in Him. He told them to be full of love and humility, to be servants of one another and humanity. Especially was He concerned about one of their number whom He saw had the stuff of gold but the uncertainty of quicksilver. Turning to Peter He said notwithstanding his protestations of loyalty, "Tonight thou shalt deny me thrice, but I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not. When thou art converted strengthen thy brethren." "When thou art converted?" But surely Peter had been converted long ago. That day by the seashore when the fascinating Personality and compelling Voice said, "Follow Me," had he not left his net and followed? By the waters that gushed from the cavern at Cæsarea Phillipi, had he not made the first Christian confession, "Thou art the Christ, the son of the living God." That ecstatic day on the mount when they dwelt so close to the spiritual frontier, had he not exclaimed, "It is good to be here, let us live here forever." Surely, Peter had been converted long ago if anybody ever was! But the discerning eye of the Master saw that real conviction had never yet gripped his reason, nor made his will adamant and his heart molten fire. But the day of Christ conviction was coming to Peter, when he