In 1901 he published a well-known volume entitled Varieties of Religious Experience . In this volume he collected evidence from a very wide range of cultural backgrounds to show that a large number of individuals have experienced a remarkable transformation of personality in response to a sense of defeat, sinfulness, hopelessness, or some other inner conviction of great need. It is clear from one or two of the instances he gives that such conversions can go either way. For example, it appears that Ingersoll was quite suddenly converted from theism to atheism, and in some ways, became a much better man for it in so far as his own personal well-being was concerned. We come now to specifically Christian conversion, the kind of experience which unites a man with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, and which is in no sense the work of the individual, but is a creative work of the Holy Spirit.
Christian conversion is unique.
It is fundamentally different from any of the transformations of personality which we have been reviewing. And yet, many of these previous considerations are found to throw light upon it. Though the form of the actual experience of regeneration differs in a marked way for different people, the actual transaction which has taken place between God and the soul is the same in every case. This does not make all those who have been born again little images of one another, although superficially it may sometimes appear to outsiders that this is so. There is a part of the personality which is left untouched and part which is completely displaced.