J.C. Ryle's conversion

(You will find it helpful to Listen to the Audio, as you read the text below.)

Writing of his conversion, J.C. Ryle states:

Nothing I can remember to this day, appeared to me so clear and distinct as . . .
  my own sinfulness,
  Christ's preciousness,
  the value of Scripture,
  the need of being born again, and
  the absolute necessity of coming out of the world!

All these things seemed to flash upon me like a sunbeam in the winter of 1837, and have stuck in my mind from that time to the present moment. Others may account for such a change as they like. My own belief, is that it was what the Bible calls "Regeneration" or the "New Birth".

Before that time, I was dead in sins and on the high road to Hell!

From that time, I am spiritually alive, converted from a slave of sin and Satan—to a willing slave of the adorable Savior, with an assured hope of Heaven! Nothing to my mind can account for this, but the free and sovereign grace of God, to a Hell-deserving sinner!

"By the grace of God, I am what I am!" 1 Corinthians 15:9-10