Repentance cannot take place without a knowledge of sin’s condemning and destroying power.  When this is felt man desires to be rid of sin, and asks what he must do to be saved.  This is the first step in repentance.  Conversion and repentance, complete, are expressions meaning one and the same thing.  Our Lord’s illustration is instructive:  “When a woman is in travail, she hath anguish; but when she is delivered she straightway forgetteth her anguish for joy that a man is born into the world.”  These words from the lips of Jesus tell us more about conviction and conversion than all else that has ever been written.

We must notice the kindness in which Ananias approached Saul to complete the manward side of his conversion and usher in the new birth.  He put his hands on him, not roughly, but gently, and said:  “BROTHER SAUL,”—­“and immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales:  and he received sight forthwith, and arose, and was baptized.”  His spiritual eyes were now open; his sins washed away; and out of the baptismal stream he was visibly born into the church a new creature in Christ Jesus, with a new name.  I hold the belief that Saul changed his name himself.  His old life was now so abhorrent to him that he could no longer bear to hear the name by which he was called when pursuing that course of life.  It was his desire to cast all recollection of it out of mind, and the old name with it.  But he never did forget entirely.  He calls himself the chief of sinners, and almost gets wild with exultation over the mercies of God.  Hear some of his joyful exclamations:  “Who shall condemn us!  Who shall separate us from the love of Christ!  O, the length, and the breadth, and the depth and the height of the love of Christ!” Paul never doubted his conversion.  He became as enthusiastic in building up the church as he had been in tearing it down.  He tried to repair the evil he had done by adding new recruits to the church to fill the places of those whom he had either driven out or caused to be martyred.

Brethren and sisters, here is a lesson for us all.  Let us follow Paul’s example in self-denial, in love for the Brethren, in love for the unconverted, in the love of doing good at all times and in all ways.

THURSDAY, April 7.  Council meeting at the Flat Rock.  David Kline is advanced in the ministry, and John Long is elected to the deaconship.

SUNDAY, April 10.  Meeting at the Lost River meetinghouse.  George Halterman is baptized.

SUNDAY, May 1.  Meeting at Turner’s schoolhouse, in the Gap.  Samuel Smith is baptized.

SUNDAY, May 8.  Meeting at Joseph Glick’s.  Samuel Good and wife baptized.

MONDAY, May 9.  Meeting in our meetinghouse.  John Bowman and Daniel Crouse are with us, on their way to the Annual Meeting.

THURSDAY, May 12.  This day Brother Kline and Benjamin Bowman started together, on horseback, to the Yearly Meeting, which, according to the Diary, was appointed to meet near William Deahl’s.  They went down the Valley of Virginia, and arrived at Brother William Deahl’s Saturday evening following.