Conversion needs to be defined; even Christians are not agreed as to what is meant by it. The significance attached to the term varies in the different schools of religious thought. With some, conversion is a comprehensive term which stands for the whole process of the soul's return to God. To be converted with them means to be saved; an experience that includes Repentance, Forgiveness, Regeneration, Assurance, and all the blessings of the state of grace. To others, conversion is the process of recovering from a condition of life in which the regenerating grace of Baptism has been neglected or lost. In this case conversion is the recognition of all that is implied in baptism, and a yielding to its operating power. In the one case, man needs to be converted that he may enter the kingdom; in the other, he is in the kingdom, but needs to be converted if he has been a wanderer from the flock. To the Christian who seeks to bring his religion into harmony with the peculiarities of modern thought, and to state it in the terms of modern science, conversion is somewhat of a difficulty.
Samuel Chadwick was born in the industrialized north of England in 1840 into a devout Methodist family. His father worked in a cotton mill; at the age of 8, Samuel joined him, working 12-hour shifts. At the age of 21, he became a lay pastor at Stacksteads in Lancashire.
After a major awakening and deepening of his faith in his late twenties via a personal epiphany in which he burned all his early sermons, he moved on to larger congregations and greater popularity, ending his career as Principal of Cliff College, a Methodist lay training centre.
Chadwick began lecturing weekly at Cliff College in 1904, commuting from Leeds. In 1907, he was appointed to a faculty position as a biblical and theological tutor. Although he was doing mission work in the South Yorkshire coal fields when the principal of Cliff died in 1912, he immediately returned to the school and was formally appointed principal himself in 1913. Famed outdoor evangelist Leonard Ravenhill was educated at Cliff College during Chadwick's tenure.
At Cliff, Chadwick wrote The Way to Pentecost, which went to print as he was dying in 1932. He also wrote The Call to Christian Perfection. Chadwick's works have been reprinted often since his death, and continue to be reprinted in new editions under various titles for modern study.
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