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mmgan
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1 8'7
ARTES SCIENTIA VERITAS
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<p t|)e Aame 9lttt|)or
THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY,
s vols. 8vo. New Yoilc: Henry Holt & Co. Londoo :
Macmillan & Co. 1890.
PSYCHOLOGY: BRIEFER COURSE,
lamo. New York: Henry Holt & Co. Londoo: Mac-
miJUn & Co. 189s.
THE WILL TO BELIEVE, AND OTHER ESSAYS IN
POPULAR PHILOSOPHY.
lamo. London, New York, and Bombay : Longmans, Green
& Co. 1897.
HUMAN IMMORTALITY: TWO SUPPOSED OBJEC-
TIONS TO THE DOCTRINE.
i6mo. Boston : Houghton, MifBin A Co. 189S.
TALKS TO TEACHERS ON PSYCHOLOGY: AND TO
STUDENTS ON SOME OF LIFE'S IDEALS.
ismo. New York : Henry Holt & Co. London and Bom-
bay : Longmans, Green & Co. 1899.
THE LITERARY REMAINS OF HENRY JAMES.
Kdited, with an Introduction, by Wiluam Jambs. With
Portrait. Crown 8vo. Boston : Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
1885.
THE
VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS
EXPERIENCE
A STUDY IN HUMAN NATURE
BEING
THE GIFFOED LECTURES ON
NATURAL RELIGION DELIVERED AT
EDINBURGH IN 1901-1902
BY
WILLIAM JAMES, LL.D., Etc.
COSBESPONDINO MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE AND
OF THE ROTAL PRUSSIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES,
PROFESSOR OF PIIILOSOPHT AT
HARVARD UNIVERSTTT
X
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
91 An> 98 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW TORK
LONDON AND BOMBAT
1902
! I
J
I i 0
Bt WILUAM JAME8.
AU righU reserved.
BIBUOORAPHIGAL HOTB.
FIrrt Bditlon, June, 1002.
Raprintad, with reriaiont, Angiut, 1902.
^
To
€* ^* (5*
m FILIAL 6RATITUD£ AND LOVE
36G187
t I
I
PREFACE
riltllS book would never have been written had I not
-^ been honored with an appointment as Gifford Lec-
turer on Natural Religion at the University of Edinburgh.
In casting about me for subjects of the two courses of
ten lectures each for which I thus became responsible,
it seemed to me that the first course might well be a
descriptive one on ^ Man's Religious Appetites/ and the
second a metaphysical one on ^ Their Satisfaction through
Philosophy/ But the unexpected growth of the psycho-
logical matter as I came to write it out has resulted in
the second subject being postponed entirely, and the
description of man's religious constitution now fills the
twenty lectures. In Lecture XX I have suggested
rather than stated my own philosophic conclusions, and
the reader who desires immediately to know them should
turn to pages 511--519, and to the ^ Postscript ' of the
book. I hope to be able at some later day to express
them in more expUcit form.
In my belief that a large acquaintance with particulars
often makes us wiser than the possession of abstract for-
mulas, however deep, I have loaded the lectures with
concrete examples, and I have chosen these among the
extremer expressions of the religious temperament. To
some readers I may consequently seem, before they get
beyond the middle of the book, to offer a caricature of
vi PREFACE
the subject. Such conyulsions of piety, they will say,
are not sane. If, however, they will have the patience
to read to the end, I believe that this unfavorable impres-
sion will disappear; for I there combine the rehgious
impulses with other principles of common sense which
serve as correctives of exaggeration, and allow the indi*
vidual reader to draw as moderate conclusions as he will.
My thanks for help in writing these lectures are due
to Edwin D. Starbuck, of Stanford University, who made
over to me his large collection of manuscript material ;
to Henry W. Rankin, of East Northfield, a friend unseen
but proved, to whom I owe precious information ; to
Theodore Floumoy, of Geneva, to Canning Schiller, of
Oxford, and to my colleague Benjamin Rand, for docu-
ments ; to my colleague Dickinson S. Miller, and to my
friends, Thomas Wren Ward, of New York, and Win-
centy Lutoslawski, late of Cracow, for important sugges-
tions and advice. Finally, to conversations with the
lamented Thomas Davidson and to the use of his books,
at Glenmore, above Keene Valley, I owe more obliga-
tions than I can well express.
Harvard Univebsitt,
Maroh9l902.
I
CONTENTS
LECTUBE I
Bbligion and Nsubologt 1
Introdnctioii : the coarse is not anthropological, but deals
with personal docaments, 1. Qoestions of fact and qoestions of
▼aloe, 4. In point of fact, the religions are often nearotic, 6.
CriticiBm of medical materialism, which condemns reli^n on
that aecoont, 10. Theory that religion has a sezoal origin
refuted, 11. All states of mind are nenrally conditioned, 14.
Their significance mast be tested not by their origin bat by
the value of their froits, 15. Three criteria of valne; ori-
gin nseless as a criterion, 18. Advantages of the psychopathie
temperament when a saperior intellect goes with it, 22 ;
especially for the religious life, 24.
LECTURE II
ClBCXTMSCRIPTION OF THE TOPIO 26
Futility of simple definitions of religion, 26. No one specific
^ religions sentiment,' 27. Institutional and personal religion,
28. We confine ourselves to the personal branch, 29. Definition
of religion for tiie purpose of these lectures, 31. Meaning of
the term ' divine,' 31. The divine is what prompts aolemn re-
actions, 38. Impossible to make 6tir definitions sharp, 39. We
must study the more extreme cases, 40. Two ways of accepting
the universe, 41. Religion is more enthusiastic than philosophy,
46. Its characteristic is enthusiasm in solemn emotion, 48. Its
ability to overcome unhappiness, 50. Need of such a faculty
from the biological point of view, 51.
LECTURE ni
The Rbality of the Unseen 53
Percepts versus abstract concepts, 53. Influence of the latter
on belief, 54. Ejmt's theological Ideas, 55. We have a sense of
reality other than that given by the special senses, 58. Examples
of ' sense of presence,* 59. The feeling of onreality, 63. Sense
Tui CONTENTS
of a divine presence : examples, 65. Mystical experiences :
examples, 69. Other cases of sense of Grod's presence, 70.
Convincingness of anreasoned experience, 72. Inferiority of
rationalism in establishing belief, 73. Either enthusiasm or
solemnity may preponderate in the religious attitude of indi-
viduals, 75.
LECTURES IV AND V
The Religion of Hbalthy-mindedness . . . .78
Happiness is man's chief concern, 78. 'Once-born' and
' twice-born ' characters, 80. Walt Whitman, 84. Mixed nature
of Greek feeling, 86. Systematic healthy-mindedness, 87. Its
reasonableness, 88. Liberal Christianity shows it, 91. Opti-
mism as encouraged by Popular Science, 92. The ' Mind-cure '
movement, 94. Its creed, 97. Cases, 102. Its doctrine of evil,
106. Its analogy to Lutheran theology, 108. Salvation by relax-
ation, 109. Its methods : suggestion, 112 ; meditation, 115 ;
' recollection,' 116 ; verification, 118. Diversity of possible
schemes of adaptation to the universe, 122. Appendix : Two
mind-cure cases, 123.
LECTURES VI AND VII
The Sick Soul 127
Healthy-mindedness and repentance, 127. Essential plural-
ism of the healthy-minded philosophy, 131. Morbid-minded-
ness — its two degrees, 134. The pain-threshold varies in indi-
viduals, 135. Insecurity of natural goods, 136. Failure, or vain
success of every life, 138. Pessimism of all pure naturalism,
140. Hopelessness of Greek and Roman view, 142. Pathological
unhappiness, 144. 'Anhedonia,' 145. Querulous melancholy,
148. Vital zest is a pure gift, 150. Loss of it makes physical
world look different, 151. Tolstoy, 152. Bunyan, 157. AUine,
159. Morbid fear, 160. Such cases need a supernatural religion
for relief, 162. Antagonism of healthy-mindedness and morbid-
ness, 163. The problem of evil cannot be escaped, 164.
LECTURE Vni
The Divided Self, and the Process of its Unification . 166
Heterogeneous personality, 167. Character gradually attains
unity, 170. Examples of divided self, 171. The unity attained
need not be religious, 175. ' Counter conversion ' cases, 177.
r
CONTENTS iz
Other cases, 178. Gradual and sadden unification, 183. Tol-
stoy's recoyeiy, 184. Bunyan's, 186.
LECTURE IX
Conversion 189
Case of Stephen Bradley, 189. The psychology of character-
changes, 193. Emotional excitements make new centres of per-
sonal energy, 196. Schematic ways of representing this, 197.
tltarbuck likens conversion to normal moral ripening, 198.
Lkuba's ideas, 201. Seemingly unconvertible persons, 204.
T«o types of conversion, 205. Subconscious incubation of mo-
tive& 206. Self-surrender, 208. Its importance in religious
history, 211. Cases, 212.
LECTURE X
Conversion — concluded 217
Cases of sudden conversion, 217. Is suddenness essential ?
227. No, it depends on psychological idiosyncrasy, 230. Proved
existence of transmarginal, or subliminal, consciousness, 233.
^Automatisms,' 234. Instantaneous conversions seem due to
the possession of an active subconscious self by the subject, 236.
The value of conversion depends not on the process, but on the
fruits, 237. These are not superior in sudden conversion, 238.
Professor Coe's views, 240. Sanctification as a result, 241.
Our psychological account does not exclude direct presence
of the Deity, 242. Sense of higher control, 243. Relations of
the emotional ' faith-state ' to intellectual beliefs, 246. Leuba
quoted, 247. Characteristics of the faith-state : sense of truth ;
the world appears new, 248. Sensory and motor automatisms,
250. Permanency of conversions, 256.
LECTURES XI, XII, AND XIII
Saintliness 269
Sainte-Beuve on the State of Grace, 260. Types of charac-
ter as due to the balance of impulses and inhibitions, 261. Sov-
ereign excitements, 262. Irascibility, 264. Effects of higher
excitement in general, 266. The saintly life is ruled by spir-
itual excitement, 267. This may annul sensual impulses perma-
nently, 268. Probable subconscious influences involved, 270.
Mechanical scheme for representing permanent alteration in
character, 270. Characteristics of saintliness, 271. Sense of
X CONTENTS
realit} of a higher power, 274. Peaoe of mind, charity, 278.
Eqaan. tnity, fortitade, etc., 284. Connection of this with relax-
ation, 289. Parity of life, 290. Asceticism, 296. Obedience,
310. Poverty, 315. The sentiments of democracy and of hu-
manity, 324. Greneral effects of higher excitements, 326.
LECTURES XIV AND XV
The Value of Sajdxtljkebb ..»...• S26
It must be tested by the hnman Taloe of its fmits, 327. The
reality of the God most, however, also be jadged, 328. ' Unfi("
religions get eliminated by * experience,' 331. Empiricism is
not skepticism, 332. Individual and tribal religion, 334. Lone-
liness of religious originators, 335. Corruption fdlows sucf^ess,
337. Extravagances, 339. Excessive devoutness, as fanaticism,
340; as theopathic absorption, 343. Excessive puritj, 348.
Excessive charity, 355. The perfect man is adapted only to the
perfect environment, 356. Saints are leavens, 357. Excesses
of asceticism, 360. Ascetidsm symbolically stands for the
heroic life, 363. Militarism and voluntary poverty as possible
equivalents, 365. Pros and eons of the saintly character, 369.
Saints versus ^ strong ' men, 371. Their social function must
be considered, 374. Abstractly the saint is the highest type,
but in the present environment it may fail, so we make our-
selves saints at our peril, 375. The question of theological
truth, 377.
LECTURES XVI AND XVII
MTgnoiSM 379
Mysticism defined, 379. Four marks of mystic states, 380.
They form a distinct region of consciousness, 382. Examples
of their lower grrades, 382. Mysticism and alcohol, 386. * The
aniesthetic revelation/ 387. Religious mysticism, 393. Aspects
of Nature, 394. Consciousness of God, 396. ' Cosmic conscious-
ness,'398. Toga, 400. Buddhistic mysticism, 401. Sufism,402.
Christian mystics, 406. Their sense of revelation, 408. Tonic
effects of mystic states, 414. They describe by negatives, 416.
Sense of union with the Absolute, 419. Mysticism and music,
420. Three conclusions, 422. (1) Mystical states carry au-
thority for him who has them, 423. (2) But for no one else,
424. (3) Nevertheless, they break down the exclusive author-
ity of rationalistic states, 427^ They strengthen monistic and
optimistic hypotheses, 428.
CONTENTS a
LEcmjEE xvm
PhuiObofht 430
Primacy of feeling in religion, philosophy heing a secondary
function, 430. Intellectualism professes to escape subjective
standards in her theological constructions, 433. ' Dogmatic
theology,' 436. Criticism of its account of Grod's attributes,
442. < Pragmatism ' as a test of the value of conceptions, 444.
Grod's metaphysical attributes have no practical significance,
445. His moral attributes are proved by bad arguments ; col-
lapse of systematic theology, 448. Does transcendental ideal-
ism fare better? Its principles, 449. Quotations from John
Caird, 450. They are good aa restatements of religious experi-
ence, but uncoercive as reasoned proof, 463. What philosophy
can do for religion by transforming herself into 'science of
religions,' 455.
LECTURE ITTT
Other Chakactebistics 468
.Esthetic elements in religion, 458. Contrast of Catholicism
and Protestantism, 461. Sacrifice and Confession, 462. Prayer,
463. Religion holds that spiritual work is really effected in
prayer, 465. Three degrees of opinion as to what is effected,
467. First degree, 468. Second degree, 472. Third degree,
474. Automatisms, their frequency among religious leaders,
478. Jewish cases, 479. Mohammed, 481. Joseph Smith, 482.
Religion and the subconscious region in general, 483.
LECTURE XX
Conclusions 486
Summary of religious characteristics, 485. Men's religions
need not be identical, 487. ' The science of religions ' can only
suggest, not proclaim, a religious creed, 489. Is religion a ' sur-
vival ' of primitive thought ? 490. Modem science rules out the
concept of personality, 491. Anthropomorphism and belief in
the personal characterized pro-scientific thought, 493. Personal
forces are real, in spite of this, 498. Scientific objects are ab-
stractions, only individualized experiences are concrete, 498.
Religion holds by the concrete, 500. Primarily religion is a
biological reaction, 504. Its simplest terms are an uneasiness
and a deliverance ; description of the deliverance, 508. Ques-
xii CONTENTS
tion of the reality of the higher power, 510. The aathor's
hypotheses : 1. The sabconscious self as intermediatiDg be-
tween nature and the higher region, 511; 2. The higher
region, or * God,' 515 ; 3. He produces real effects in nature,
518.
Postscript 520
Philosophic position of the present work defined aa piece-
meal supernatnralism, 520. Criticism of universalistic super-
naturalism, 521. Different principles must occasion differences
in fact, 522. What differences in fact can God's existence oc-
casion ? 523. The question of immortality, 524. Question of
God's uniqueness and infinity: religious experience does not
settle this question in the affirmative, 525. The pluralistic hypo-
thesis is more conformed to common sense, 526.
Iin>EZ 529
i
y THE KEALITT OF THE UNSEEN 61
after it went, the memory persisted as the one perception of
reality. Everything else might be a dream, but not that."
My friend, as it oddly happens, does not interpret
these latter experiences theistically, as signifying the pre-
sence of God. But it would clearly not have been
unnatural to interpret them as a revelation of the deity's
existence. When we reach the subject of mysticism, we
shall have much more to say upon this head.
Lest the oddity of these phenomena should disconcert
you, I will venture to read you a couple of similar narra-
tives, much shorter, merely to show that we are dealing
with a well-marked natural kind of fact. In the first
case, which I take from the Journal of the Society for
Psychical Research, the sense of presence developed in
a few moments into a distinctly visualized hallucinatio:> *
— but I leave that part of the story out.'
^^I had read," the narrator says, *^some twenty minutes ii*
so, was thoroughly absorbed in the book, my mind was ^.
fectly quiet, and for the time being my friends were quite for-
- gotten, when suddenly without a moment's warning my whole
being seemed roused to the highest state of tension or alive-
ness, and I was aware, with an intenseness not easily imagined
by those who had never experienced it, that another being
or presence was not only in the room, but quite close to me.
I put my book down, and although my excitement was great,
I felt quite collected, and not conscious of any sense of fear.
Without changing my position, and looking straight at the fire,
I knew somehow that my friend A. H. was standing at my left
elbow, but so far behind me as to be hidden by the armchair in
which I was leaning back. Moving my eyes round slightly
withou.t otherwise changing my position, the lower portion of
one log became visible, and I instantly recognized the gray-
blue material of trousers he often wore, but the stuff appeared
semi-^ ansparent, reminding me of tobacco smoke in consist-
ene'r ," i — and hereupon the visual hallucination came.
^ 1 Journal of the S. P. B., Febmarj, 1895, p. 26.
I
t
X
62 THE VARIETIES OF BELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
Another informant writes : —
^^ Quite early in the night I was awakened. ... I felt as if
I had been aroused intentionally, and at first thought some on3
was breaking into the house. ... I then turned on my side to
go to sleep again, and immediately felt a consciousness of a
presence in the room, and singular to state, it was not the con-
sciousness of a live person, but of a spiritual presence. This
may provoke a smile, but I can only tell you the facts as they
occurred to me. I do not know how to better describe my
sensations than by 'simply stating that I felt a consciousness of
a spiritual presence. ... I felt also at the same time a strong
feeling of superstitious dread, as if something strange and fear-
ful were about to happen.*' ^
Professor Floumoy of Geneva gives me the following
testimony of a friend of his, a lady, who has the gift of
utomatic or involuntary writing : —
"Whenever I practice automatic writing, what makes me feel
hat It is not due to a subconscious self is the feeling I always
have of a foreign presence, external to my body. It is some-
times so definitely characterized that I could point to its exact
position. This impression of presence is impossible to describe.
It varies in intensity and clearness according to the personality
from whom the writing professes to come. If it is some one
whom I love, I feel it immediately, before any writing has come.
My heart seems to recognize it."
In an earlier book of mine I have cited at full length
a curious case of presence felt by a blind man. The
presence was that of the figure of a gray-bearded man
dressed in a pepper and salt suit, squeezing himself
under the crack of the door and moving across the floor
of the room towards a sofa. The blind subject ^f this
quasi-hallucination is an exceptionally intelligent reporter.
He is entirely without internal visual imagery and ;pannot
represent light or colors to himself, and is positive .that
^ E. Gurxet: FhaDtasms of the Living, i. 384. ^
1
THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS
EXPERIENCE
LECTURE I
RELIGION AND NEUROLOGY
IT is with no small amount of trepidation that I take my
place behind this desk, and face this learned audience.
To us Americans, the experience of receiving instruction
from the living voice, as well as from the books, of Euro-
pean scholars, is very familiar. At my own University
of Harvard, not a winter passes without its harvest, large
or small, of lectures from Scottish, English, French, or
German representatives of the science or literature of
their respective countries whom we have either induced
to cross the ocean to address us, or captured on the wing
as they were visiting our land. It seems the natural
thing for us to listen whilst the Europeans talk. The
contrary habit, of talking whilst the Europeans listen, we
have not yet acquired ; and in him who first makes the
adventure it begets a certain sense of apology being due
for so presumptuous an act. Particularly must this be the
case on a soil as sacred to the American imagination as
that of Edinburgh. The glories of the philosophic chair
of this university were deeply impressed on my imagina-
tion in boyhood. Professor Eraser's Essays in Philo-
sophy, then just published, was the first philosophic
book I ever looked into, and I well remember the awe-
struck feeling I received from the account of Sir Wil-
2 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
Earn Hamilton's class-room therein contained. Hamiltor
own lectures were the first philosophic writings I ev
forced myself to study, and after that I was immers<
in Dugald Stewart and Thomas Brown. Such juveni
emotions of reverence never get outgrown ; and I conf €
that to find my humhle self promoted from my nati
wilderness to he actually for the time an official here, ai
transmuted into a colleague of these illustrious name
carries with it a sense of dreamland quite as much as
reality.
But since I have received the honor of this appoir
ment I have felt that it would never do to decline. T]
academic career also has its heroic obligations, so I stai
here without further deprecatory words. Let me si
only this, that now that the current, here and at Abe
deen, has begun to run from west to east, I hope it mi
continue to do so. As the years go by, I hope that mai
of my countrymen may be asked to lecture in the Sec
tish universities, changing places with Scotsmen lectu
ing in the United States ; I hope that our people mi
become in all these higher matters even as one peopL
and that the peculiar philosophic temperament, as w(
as the peculiar poUtical temperament, that goes with oi
English speech may more and more pervade and infl
ence the world.
As regards the manner in which I shall have to admi
ister tiiis lectureship, I am neither a theologian, nor
scholar learned in the history of religions, nor an anthr
pologist. Pyschology is the only branch of learning ;
which I am particularly versed. To the psychologist tl
religious propensities of man must be at least as interes
ing as any other of the facts pertaining to his ment
constitution. It would seem, therefore, that, as a psych
S THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
liam Hamilton's class-room therein contained. Hamilton's
own lectures vrere the first philosophic writings I ever
forced myseU to study^ and after tiiat I was immersed
in Dngald Stewart and Thoitias Brown. Such juvenile
emotions of reverence never get outgrown ; and I confess
that to find my humble self promoted from my native
wilderness to be actually for the time an of&cial here^ and
transmuted into a colleague of these illustrious names^
carries with it a sense of dreamland quite as much as of
reality.
But since I have received the honor of this appoint-
ment I have felt that it would never do to decline. The
academic career also has its heroic obligations^ so I stand
here without further deprecatory words. Let me say
only ihis^ that now that the current^ here and at Aber-
deen^ has begun to run from west to east, I hope it may
continue to do so. As the years go by, I hope that many
of my counttymen may be asked to lecture in the Scot*
tish universities, changing places with Scotsmen lectur-
ing in the United States ; I hope that our people may
become in all these higher matters even as one people ;
and that the peculiar philosophic temperament, as well
as the peculiar political temperament, that goes with our
English speech may more and more pervade and influ-
ence the world.
As regards the manner in which I shall have to admin*
ister this lectureship, I am neither a theologian, nor a
scholar learned in the history of religions, nor an anthro-
pologist. Psychology is the only branch of learning in
which I am particularly versed. To the psychologist the
reUgious propensities of man must be at least as interest-
ing as any other of the facts pertaining to his mental
constitution. It would seem, therefore, that, as a psycho-
RELIGION AND NEUEOLOGY 8
logisti the natural thing for me would be to invite you
to a dcscriptiye survey of those religious propensities.
(If the inquiry be psychological^ not religious institn*
tionSi but ratlier religious feelings and religious impulses ^
must be its subjecti and I must confine myself to those
more developed subjective phenomena recorded in literar
ture produced by articulate and fully self-conscious men,
in works of piety and autobiography I) Interesting as the
origins and early stages of a subject always are, yet when
one seeks earnestly for its full significance, one must
always look to its more completely evolved and perfect
forms. It follows from this that^e documents that will
most concern us will be those of the men who wore most
accomplished in the religious life and best able to give
an intelligible account of their ideas and motives^^ These
men, of course, are either comparatively modem writers^
or else such earlier ones as have become religious classics.
The documents humains which we shall find most in-
structive need not then be sought for in the haunts of
special erudition *-<- they lie along the beaten highway ;
and this circumstance, which flows so naturally from tiie
character of our problem, suits admirably also your lec-
turer's lack of special theological learning. I may take
my citations, my sentences and paragraphs of personal
confession, from books that most of you at some time
will have had already in your hands, and yet this will
be no detriment to the value of my conclusions. It is
true that some more adventurous reader and investigator,
lecturing here in future, may unearth from the shelves
of libraries documents that will make a more delectable
and curious entertainment to listen to than mine. Yet I
doubt whether he will necessarily, by his control of so
much more out-of-the-way material, get much closer to
the essence of the matter in hand.
4 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
VChe question^ What are the religioas propensities ? and
the question, What is their philosophic significance ? are
two entirely different orders of question from the logical
point of view; and, as a failure to recognize this fact
distinctly may breed confuision^ I wish to insist upon
the point a little before we enter into the documents
and materials to which I have referred.
In recent books on logic, distinction is made between
two orders of inquiry concerning anything. First, what
is the nature of it? how did it come about? what is its
I constitution, origin, and history? And second. What is
"^ its importance, meaning, or significance, now that it is
once here? The answer to the one question is given
in an eocistential judgment or proposition. The answer
to the other is a proposition of vcUue, what the Germans
call a Werthurtheil, or what we may, if we like, denom-
inate a spiritual judgment* Neither judgment can be
deduced immediately from the other. They proceed
from diverse intellectual preoccupations, and the mind
combines them only by making them first separately, and
then adding them together.
In the matter of religions it is particularly ea^ to dis-
tinguish the two orders of question. |Every religious
phenomenon has its history and its derivation from natu-
ral antecedents.'> What is nowadays called the higher
criticism of the Bible is only a study of the Bible from
[/ this existential point of view, neglected too much by the
earlier church. Under just what biographic conditions
did the sacred writers bring forth their various contribu-
tions to the holy volume ? And what had they exactly
in their several individual minds, when they delivered
their utterances ? These are manifestly questions of his-
torical fact, and one does not see how tibe answer to them
can decide offhand the still further question : (oi what use
BEUGION AND NEUB0L06T 6
lould such a volume, ^th its manner of coming into
ustence so defined^ be to us as a guide to life and a
ivelation ? To answer this other question we must have
[ready in our mind some sort of a general theory as to
hat tibe peculiarities in a thing should be which give it
iluo for purposes of revelation ; and this theory itself
ould be what I just called a spiritual judgment. S^ ^om-
ining it with our existential judgment, we might indeed
oduco another spiritual judgment as to the Bible's
otth^ Thus if our theory of revelation-value were to
[Brm that any book, to possess it, must have been com*
Dsed automatically or not by the free caprice of the
riter, or that it must exhibit no scientific and historic
rrors and express no local or personal passions, the Bible
ould probably fare ill at our hands. But if, on the
ther hand, our theory should allow that a book may
ell be a revelation in spite of errors and passions and
oliberate human composition, if only it be a true record
E the inner experiences of g^eat-souled persons vrrestling
ith the crises of their fate, then the verdict would be
luch more favorable. LTou see that the existential facts
y themselves are insufficient for determiuing the value ;
ad the best adepts of the higher criticism accordingly
ever confound the existential with the spiritual problemrf
Vith the same conclusions of fact before them, some
ike..one view, and some another, of the Bible's value as
revelation, according as their spiritual judgment as to
tie foundation of values differs.
I make these general remarks about the two sorts of
iidgment, because there are many reUgious persons —
omo of you now present, possibly, are among them— -
rho do not yet make a working use of the distinction,
nd who may therefore feel at first a little startled at
6 THE VARIETIES OF BELIOIOUS EXPERIENCE
' ■ ■
the vpurely existential, pomt of _yiew. from jyhich^ in^e
follo^ng lectures the phenomena of religious expe.rience
must be considered. (When I handle them biologically
and psychologically as if they were mere curious facts
of individual history^^ome of you may think it a degra-
dation of so sublime a subject, and may even suspect
me, until my purpose gets more fully expressed, of delib-
erately seelang to discredit the religious side of life.
Such a result is of course absolutely alien to my inten-
tion ; and since such a prejudice on your part would seri-
ously obstruct the due effect of much of what I have to
relate, I will devote a few more words to the point.
There can be no doubt that as a matter of fact a reli«
giotLB life, exclusively pursued, does tend to make the per-
son exceptional and eccentric.^ I speak not now of your
ordin2uy_reUgious_b^ who follows the conventional
observances of his country, whether it be Buddhist, Chris-
• tian, or Mohammedan. His religion has been made for
him by others, communicated to him by tradition, deter*
mined to fixed forms by imitation, and retained by habit.
It would profit us litue to study this second-hand reli-
^ gious life. We must make search rather for the original
I experiences which were the( pattem-setterfl) to all this mass
i of suggested feeling and imitated conduct. These experi-
ences we can only find in individuals for whom religion
exists not as a dull habit, but as an acute fever rather.
But sucjb individuals are ^geniuses^ in the religious line;
and like many other graiuses who have brought forth
fruits effective enough for commemoration in the pages
oF^biography, such religious geniuses have often shown
7 symptoms of nervous instobili^. (Even more perhaps
than other kinds of genius, re%ious leaders have been
subject to abnormal psychical visitations.) Invariably
they have been creatures of exalted emotional sensibility.
BELIGION AND NEUBOLOOT 7
Often thoy have led a discordant inner life^ and had
melancholy during a part of their career. They^^ve
known no measure^ heen liable to obsessions and fixed
ideas; and frequently they have fallen into tranceSi
hoard voices^ seen visions^ and presented all sorts of
peculiarities which are ordinarily classed as pathologicaL
Often^ moreover, these pathological features in their
cafeeir liave Helped to give them their religious authority
and influence.
If you ask for a concrete example^ there can be no
better one than is furnished by the person of George
Fox. The Quaker religion which he founded is some-
thing which it is impossible to overpraise. In a day of
Bhams, it was a religion of veracity rooted in spiritual
inwardness, and a return to something more like the
original gospel truth than men had ever known in Eng-
land. So far as our Christian sects to-day are evolving
into liberality, they are simply reverting in essence to the
position which Fox and the early Quakers so long ago
assumed. No one can pretend for a moment that in
point of spiritual sagacity and capacity, Fox's mind was
unsound. Every one who confronted him personally,
from Oliver Cromwell down to county magistrates and
jailers, seems to have acknowledged his superior power.
Yet from the point of view of his nervous constitution,
B^ox was a psychopath or ditraqiti of the deepest dye.
His Journal abounds in entries of this sort : —
" As I was walking with sovoral f riends^ I lifted up my head,
ind saw three steeple-honse spires^ and they struck at my
life. I asked them what place tiiat was? They said^ Lichfield,
fmmediately the word of the Lord came to me, that I must go
thither. Being come to the House we were going to, I wished
the friends to walk into the house, saying nothing to them of
B^hither I was to go. As soon as they were gone I stept away.
8 THE VABIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
and went by mj eye over hedge and ditch till I came within
a mile of Lichfield ; where, in a great field, shepherds were
keeping their sheep. Then was I commanded by the Lord to
poll off my shoes. I stood still, for it was winter : but the
word of the Lord was like a fire in me. So I put off my shoes^
and left them with the shepherds; and the poor shepherds
trembled, and were astonished. Then I walked on about a
mile, and as soon as I was got within the city, the word of the
Lord came to me again, saying : Cry,' ^ Wo to the bloody city
of Lichfield 1 ' So I went up and down the streets, crying
with a loud voice. Wo to the bloody city of Lichfield 1 It be-
ing market day, I went into the market-place, and to and fro in
the several parts of it, and made stands, crying as before. Wo
to the bloody city of Lichfield I And no one laid hands on me.
As I went thus crying through the streets, there seemed to me
to bo a channel of blood running down the streets, and the
market-place appeared like a pool of blood. When I had de-
clared what was upon me, and felt myself clear, I went out of
the town in peace ; and returning to the shepherds gave them
some money, and took my shoes of them again. But the fire
of the Lord was so on my feet, and all over me, that I did not
matter to put on my shoes again, and was at a stand whether I
should or no, till I felt freedom from the Lord so to do : then,
after I had washed my feet, I put on my shoes again. After
this a deep consideration came upon me, for what reason I
should be sent to cry against that city, and call it The bloody
city 1 For though tiie parliament had the minister one while,
and the king another, and much blood had been shed in the
town during the wars between them, yet there was no more
than had befallen many other places. But afterwards I came
to understand, that in the Emperor Diocletian's time a thousand
Christians were martyred in Lichfield. So I was to go, with-
out n^y shoes, through the channel of their blood, and into the
pool of their blood in the market-place, that I might raise np
the memorial of the blood of those martyrs, which had been
shed above a thousand years before, and lay cold in their streets.
So the sense of this blood was upon me, and I obeyed the word
of the Lord."
.^^
BEUGION AND NEUROLOGY 9
0
Bent as we are on studying religion's existential condi-
ohsj we cannot possibly ignore these pathological aspects
\ the subject:) We must describe and name them just ji
\ if they occurred in non*religious men. It is true that
e instinctively recoil from seeing an object to which
ir emotions and affections are committed handled by
16 intellect as any other object is handled. The first
ling the intellect does with an object is to class it along
ith something else. But any object that is infinitely
tiportant to us and awakens our devotion feels to us
so as if it must be mi generis and unique. Probably a
*ab would be filled with a sense of personal outrage if
could hear us class it without ado or apology as a
-ustacean^ and thus dispose of it. '^I am no such
ling/' it would say ; '^ I am myself^ myself alone."
The next thing the intellect does is to lay bare the
iuscs in which the thing originates. Spinoza says : '^ I
ill analyze the actions and appetites of men as if it
ere a question of lines, of planes, and of solids.'' And
sewhere he remarks that he will consider our passions
id their properties with the same eye with which he
oks on all other natural things, since the consequences
I our affections flow from their nature with the same
Bcessity as it results from the nature of a triangle that
s three angles should be equal to two right angles,
imilarly M. Taine, in the introduction to his history of
nglish literature, has written :[.!' Whether facte be moral
r physical, it makes no matter. They always have^their
tuses. { There are causes for ambition, courage, veracity,
ist as there are for digestion, muscular movement, ani-
al heat. Vice and virtue are producte like vitriol and
igar." When we read such proclamations of the intel-
ct bent on showing the existential conditions of abso-
to THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCli
lately eveiythmgi ve feel*— quite apart from our leg^ti«
mate impatience at the somewhat ridiculous swagger of
the program^ in view of what the authors are actually
ahle to perform — menaced and negated in the springs
of our innermost life. Such cold*bIooded assimilations
threaten^ we think^ to undo our soul's vital secrets^ as
if the same breath which should succeed in explaining
their origin would simultaneously explain away their sig*
nificance^ and make them appear of no more precious*
ness, either^ than the useful groceries of which M. Taine
speaks.
Perhaps the conmionest expression of this assumption
that spiritual value is undone if lowly origin be asserted
is seen in those comments which unsentimental people
so often pass on their more sentimental acquaintances.
Alfred believes in immortality so strongly because his
temperament is so emotional. Fanny's extraordinary
conscientiousness ib merely a matter of over-instigated
nerves. William's melancholy about the universe is due
to bad digestion — probably his liver is torpid. Eliza's
delight in her church is a symptom of her hysterical
constitution. Peter would be less troubled about his soul
if he would take more exercise in the open air^ etc. ^
A more fully developed example of the same kind of
reasoning is tlie fashion, quite common nowadays among
certain writers^ of criticising the religious emotions by
showing a connection between them and the sexual life.
Conversion is a crisis of puberty and adolescence. The
macerations of saints, and the devotion of missionaries,
are only instances of the parental instinct o£ self-sacrifice
gone astray. For the hysterical nun, starving for natural
life, Christ is but an imaginary substitute for a more
earthly object of afEection. And the like.^
^ As with Quuij ideaa that float in the air of one'f timei thi« notioo
BELI6I0N AXD NEUBOLOOT U
We are surely all familiar in a general way with thia
method of discrediting states of mind for which ve have
•brinks from dogmaiie gsnetal ttaiemest and iprgtm itaelf onlj pftttiallj
aad bj innoondo. It Memi to tne that lew oonoepUoiu an leia inttraotiTa
than this re4iiterpretatioii of religion as perrerted seznalitjr. It reminds
onO| 80 crudelj is it often emplojedi of the famous Catboiio taunt, that the
Keforroation maj bo best understood by remembering that its/ons ei origo
was Luther's wish to marrj a nun :— the effects are infinitelj wider than
the alleged causes, and for the most part opposite in nature. It is true
that in the Tast collection of religious phenomena, some are undisguisodlj
amatory — e. g., sex-deities and obscene rites in polytheism, and ecstatic
feelings of union with the Saviour in a few Christian mystics. But then
why not equally call religion an aberration of the digestive function, and
prove one's point by the worship of Bacchus and Ceres, or by the ecstatic
feelings of some other saints about the Eucharist ? Religious language
clothes itself in such poor symbols as our life affords, and the whole orgau«
ism gives overtones of comment whenever the mind is strongly stirred to
expression. Language drawn from eating and drinking is probably as com*
men in religious literature as is language drawn from the sexual life. We
* hunger and thirst ' after righteousness ; we ' find the Lord a sweet savor ;'
we * taste and see that he is good.* * Spiritual milk for American babes,
drawn from the breasts of both testaments,' is a sub-title of the once famous
New England Primer, and Christian devotional literature indeed quite floats
in milk, thought of from the point of view, not of the mother, but of the
greedy babe.
Saint Francis de Sales, for instance, thus describes the 'orison of
quietude ' : ** In this state the aoul is like a little child still at the breast,
whose mother, to caress him whilst he is still in her arms, makes her milk
distill into his mouth without his even moving his lips. So it is here. • . •
Our Lord desires that our will should be satisfied with sucking the milk
which His Majesty pours into our mouth, and that we should rolbh the
Sfreetness without even knowing that it cometh from the Lord.'* And
again : '* Consider the little infants, united and joined to the breasts of
their nursing mothers, you will see that from time to time they press them«
selves closer by little sterts to which the pleasure of sucking prompts them.
Even so, during its orison, the heart united to its God oftentimes makes
attempts at closer union by movements during which it presses cWser upon
the divine sweetness.*' Chemin de la Perfection, oh. xxxi. ; Amour de Dien,
tU. eh. i.
In fact, one might almost as well interpret religion as a perversion of
the respiratory function. The Bible is full of the language of respiratory
oppression ; " Hide not thine ear at my breathing ; my groaning is not hid
from thee ; my heart panteth, my strength faileth me ; my bones are hot
with my roaring aU the night long ; as the hart panteth after the water*
1
#
12
THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
an antipathy. We all use it to some degree in criticising
persons whose states of mind we regard as overstrained.
But when other people criticise our own more exalted
soul-flights by calling them 'nothing but' es^ressions
of our organic disposition^ we feel outraged and hurt^ for
we know that^ whatever be our organism's peculiarities^
our mental states have their substantive value as revelar
brooks, so my soul panidth after theo, O mj God." God^i Breath in
Man is the title of the chief work of our beat known American mjstio
(Thomas Lake Harris) ; and in certain noo-Christian oonntries the founda*
tion of aJl religious discipline consists in regulation of the inspiration and
expiration.
These arguments are as good as much of the reasoning one hears in faror
of the sexual theory. But the champions of the latter will then say that
their chief argument has no analogue elsewhere. The two main phenomena
of religion, namely, melancholy and oonyersion, they will say, are essentially
phenomena of adolescence, and therefore synchronous with the develop-
ment of sexual life. To which the retort again is easy. Even were the
asserted synchrony unrestrictedly true as a fact (which it is not), it is not
only the sexual life, but the entire higher mental life which \wakens during
adolescence. One might then as weU set up the thesis th^t the interest
in mechanics, physics, chemistry, logic, philosophy, and sociology, which
springs up during adolescent years along with that in poetry and religion,
is also a perversion of the sexual instinct : — but that would be too absurd.
Moreover, if the argument from synchrony is to decide, what is to be done
with the fact that the religious age par excellence would seem to be old agey
when the uproar of the sexual life is past 7
'f'^The plain truth is that to interpret religion one must in the end look at
Ithe immediate content of the religions consciousness. The moment one
noes this, one sees how wholly disconnected it is in the main from the con*
Aent of the sexual consciousness. Everything about the two things differs,
objects, moods, faculties concerned, and acts impelled to. Any general
assimilation is simply impossible : what we find most often is complete hos»
tility and contrast If now the defenders of the sex-theory say that this
makes no difference to their thesis ; that without the chemical contributiont
whieh the sex-organs make to the blood, the brain would not be nourished
so as to carry on religious aettvities, this final proposition may be true or
not true ; but at any rate it has become profoundly uninstructive : we can
deduce no consequences from it which help ns to interpret religion's mean-
ing or value. In this sense the religious life depends just as much npoa
the spleen, the pancreas, and the kidneys as on the sexual apparatus, and
the whole theory has lost its point in evaporating into a vague general
aaiertion of the dependence, fome&mo, of the mind upon the body.
■..'».
KELIGION AND NEUROLOGY '^ 13
Hods of tlio living truth ; and v^e wish that all this medi*
cal materialism could be made to hold its tongue.
Mcdicai.materialism seems indeed a good appellation
for The too simpl^munded system of .thought which we
are considering. Medical materialism finishes up Saint
Paul by calling his vision on the road to Damascus a
discharging lesion of the occipital cortex^ he being an
epileptic. It snuffs out Saint Teresa as an hysteric, Saint
Francis of Assidi as an hereditary degenerate. George
Fox's discontent with the shams of his age, and his pining
for spiritual veracity, it treats as a symptom of a disor-
dered colon. Carlyle's org^-tones of misery it accounts
for by a gastro-duodenal catarrh. All such mental over-
tensions, it says, are, when you come to the bottom of
the matter, mere affairs of diathesis (auto-intoxications
most probably), due to the perverted action of various
glands which physiology will yet discover.
And medical materialism then thinks that the spiritual
authority of all such personages is successfully under-
mined.^
Let us ourselves look at the matter in the largest
possible way. Modem psychology, finding definite psy-
cho*physical connections to hold good, assumes as a oon«
venient hypothesis that the dependence of mental states
upon I«4 condition. mu.t u\or.^).-^.g .nd com-
plete. If we adopt the assumption, then of course what
medical materialism insists on must be true in a general
way, if not in every detail: Saint Paul certainly had
once an epileptoid, if not an epileptic seizure ; George Fox
was an hereditary degenerate; Carlyle was undoubtedly
auto*intoxicated by some organ or o^er, no matter which,
^ For a flrti-rate example of medioal-maieriaUst reasoiungi see an article
on < Io8 Yaritftdt dn Type d^ToV bj Dr. Binei-Sang^ in the Beroe de
rHTpnotUmOi xit. 161.
, Vk THE VABIETIES OF BEU6I0US EXPERIENCE
p— and the rest. But nov^ I ask you, hov can such ;
^ lexistential account of facts of mental history decide
ipne way or another upon their spiritual significance
jAccotding to the general postulate of psychology jc
\ referred to, there is not a single one of our states
mind, high or low, healthy or morbid, that has not soi
organic process as its condition. Scientific theories a
organically conditioned just as much as religious emotio
are ; and if we only knew the facts intimately enoug
. we should doubtless see ' the liver ' determining the die
of the sturdy atheist as decisively as it does those of tl
Methodist under conviction anxious about his soi
When it alters in one way the blood that percolates
we get the methodist, when in another way, we get t
atheist form of mind. (So of all our raptures and o
drynesses, our longings and pantings, our questions ai
beliefs. They are equally organically founded, be th
of religious or of non-religious content^)
. r To plead the organic causation of a religious state
mind, then, in refutation of its claim to possess superi
spiritual value, is quite illogical and arbitrary, unless o
have already worked out in advance some psycho-physie
theory connecting spiritual values in genend with deti
minate sorts of physiological change^ (Otherwise none
our thoughts and feelings, not even our scientific d<
trines, not even our disbeliefs, could retain any value
revelations of the truth, for every one of them witho
exception flows from the state of their possessor's bo
i at the time/)
It is needless to say that medical materialism draws
point of fact no such sweeping skeptical conclusion. ]
is sure, just as every simple man is sure, that some stai
of mind are inwardly superior to others, and reveal to
more truth, and in this it simply makes use of an ordina
.-• .
RELIGION AND N£UR0L06T 15
uritttol judgment. It has no physiological theory of the
rodaction of these its favorite states, hy which it may
^credit them ^ and its attempt to discredit the stat^
hich it dislikes, hy vaguely associating theni with nerves
id liver, and connecting them with names connoting
}dily affliction, is altogether illogical and inconsistent.
Let us play fair in this whole matter, and he quite
mdid with ourselves and with the facts. When we
link certain states of mind superior to others, is it ever
3cause of what we know concerning their organic ante-
^dents ? No I it is always for two entirely different rea*
ms. It is either hecause we take an immediate delight
L them ; or else it is hecause we helieve them to hiing
9 good consequential fruits for life. When we speak
isparagingly of ' feverish fancies,' sutely the fever-pro-
»s as such is not the ground of our disesteem — for
ight we know to the contrary, 103^ or 104:^ Fahrenheit
light he a much more favorahle temperature for truths
} germinate and sprout in, than the more ordinary
lood-heat of 97 or 98 degrees. It is either the disagree-
bleness itself of the fancies, or their inability to bear the
riticisms of the convalescent hour. /When we praise the
loughts which health brings, healtVs peculiar chemical
letabolisms have nothing to do with determining our
idgment. We know in fact almost nothing about these
letabolisms. It is the character of inner happiness ini
le thoughts which stamps them as good, or else their
insistency with our other opinions and their serviceability
)r lOur needs, which make them pass for true in our
ateem.J)
Now the more intrinsic and the more remote of these
riteria do not always hang together. Inner^ happiness
nd serviceability, do not always^agree. /What immedi-
tely feels most ' good ' is not always moW ^ true/ when
/
16 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
measured by the verdict of the rest of experience J The
difference between Philip drunk and Philip sOoer is
the classic instance in corroboration. If merely ^ feeling
good * could decide^ drunkenness would bo the supremely
valid human experience. But its revelations^ however
acutely satisfying at the moment^ are inserted into an
environment which refuses to bear them out for any
length of time. The consequence of this discrepancy of
the two criteria is the uncertainty which still prevails
over so many of our spiritual judgments. There are
moments of sentimental and mystical experience — we
shall hereafter hear much of them — that carry an enor*
mous sense of inner authority and illumination with them
when they come. But they come p.dldom, and they do
not come to every one ; and the rest of life makes either
no connection with them^ or tends to contradict them
more than it confirms them. Some persons follow more
the voice of the moment in these cases^ some prefer to
be guided by the average results. (Hence the sad dis-
cordancy of so many of the spiritual judgpnents of human
beings ; a discordancy which will be brought home to us
acutely enough before these lectures end; ^
I It is^ however^ a discordancy that can never be resolved
jby any merely medical test. A good example of the im-
possibility of holding strictly to the medical tests is seen
in the theory of the patholo^cal causation of genius pro-
mulgated by recent authors. '^ Genius/' said Dr. MoreaU|
<<is but one of the many branches of the neuropathic
tree." '^ Genius/' says Dr. Lombroso^ '^ is a symptom of
hereditary degeneration of the epileptoid variety, and is
allied to moral insanity." '^ Whenever a man's life/'
writes Mr. Nisbet, '' is at once sufficiently illustrious and
recorded with sufficient fullness to be a subject of profit*
RELIGION AND NEUROLOGl 17
able Btttdy^ he inevitably &ll8 into the morbid categoiy.
« . • And it is worthy of remark that, as a rale^ the
greater the genius^ the greater the nnsoundness.'' ^
/Now do these authors^ after having succeeded in estab*
lishing to their own satis&ction that the works of genius
are fruits of disease^ consistently proceed thereupon to
impugn the vcUue of the fruits ? Do they deduce a new
spiritual judgment from their new doctrine of existential
conditions ? Do they frankly forbid us to admire the pro*
that no neuropath can ever be a revealer of new truth?
No I their immediate spiritual instincts are too strong
for them here^ and hold their own against inferences
which^ in mere love of logical consistency^ medical mate*
rialism ought to be only too glad to draw. One discipla
of the school^ indeed, has striven to impugn the value of
works of genius in a wholesale way (such works of con^
temporary art, namely, as he himself is unable to enjoy,
and they are many) by using medical argumento.^ But
for the most part tiie masterpieces are left imchallenged ;
and the medical line of attack either confines itself to
such secular productions as every one admits to be intrin*
sically eccentric, or else addresses itself exclusively to
religious manifestations. And then it is because the
religious manifestations have been already condemned
because the critic dislikes them on internal or spiritual
grounds.
In the natural sciences and industrial arts it never
occurs to any one to try to refute opinions by show-
ing up their author's neurotic constitution. Opinions
here are invariably tested by logic and by experiment, no
^ J. F. Nubxt: The Insanitj of Genins, 3d ed., London, 189S, pp. xri,^
i?.
' Max NobdaUi in hii Iralkj book entitled Degeneratiofu
18 THE VARIETIES OF BEU6I0US EXPERIENCE
matter what may be their author's neurological type. It
should be no otherwise with religious opinions. /JTheir
value can only be ascertained by spiritual judgments
.directly passed upon them, judcnnents based on our own
■mnJl Mi^tnm^;l «5«.o,^ly .. ^ we
can ascertain of their exponential relations to our moral
/needs and to the rest of what we hold as true.^
/ Immediate luminousnesSf ia Bhovt, ph^lo8ophkaLrear
j sonableness, and m^ral helpfulness are the only avail-
I able criteria* Saint Teresa might have had the nervous
system of the placidest cow^ and it would not now save
her theology^ if the trial of the theology by these other
tests should show it to be contemptible. And conversely
if her theology can stand these other tests, it will make
no difference how hysterical or nervously off her balance
Saint Teresa may have been when she was with us here
below.
r You see that at bottom we are thrown back upon the
general principles by which the empirical philosophy has
always contended that we must be guided in our search
for truth, j Dogpnatic philosophies have sought for tests
for truth^which might dispense us from appealing to the
future. Some direct mark, by noting which we can be
protected immediately and absolutely, now and forever,
against all mistake — such has been the darling dream
of philosophic dogmatists. ^It is clear that the origin of
the truth would be an admirable criterion of this sort, if
only the various origins could be discriminated from one
another from this point of view, and the history of dog-
matic opinion shows that ongin. has always been a favorite
test^ Origin in immediate intuition ; origin in pontifical
authority ; origin in supernatural revelation, as by vision^
hearing, or imaccountable impression; origin in direct
*
V ttELIGION AND NEUBOLOGT 19
388e88ion by a higher spirit^ expressing itself in pro-
liecy and warning; origm in automatic utterance gen-
rally^ — r these origins have been stock \rarrants for the
uth of one opinion after another which we find repre-
mted in religious histoiy.) The me£cal^ materialists are
lerefore only so many belated dogmatistSj^jQeatly {urning
le tables on their predecessors by using the criterion of
rigin in a destructive instead of an accreditive way.
jThey are effective with their talk of pathological
rigin only so long as supernatural origin is pleaded by
le other side^ and nothing but the argument from
rigin is under discussion^ /But the argument from ori-
in has seldom been used alone^ for it is tOo obviously
isufi&cient. Dr. Maudsley is perhaps the cleverest of
le rebutters of supernatural religion on grounds of ori-
in. Yet he finds himself forced to write : —
''What right have we to believe Nature under any
bligation to do her work by means of complete minds
tily ? She may find an incomplete mind a more suit-
ble instrument for a particular purpose. (It is the work
lat is done^ and the quality in the worker'' by which it
as done, that is alone of moment i] and it may be no
reat matter from a cosmical standpoint, if in other
ualities of character he was singularly defective — if
ideed he were hypocrite, adulterer, eccentric, or lunatic.
. ( Home we come again, then, to the old and last resort
E^rtitude, — namely the common ass^ of Inankind,
r*^ thlEPcompetent by instruction and training among
lankind.'^O
In other words, not its origin, but the way in which it
^orka'^bh the whoUy is Dr. Maudsley's final test of- a
sliefr This is our ownjinpiricist^criterionV^ this cri-
^ H. Maudsixt : Natural CauBes aod Snpematoral Seemingti 1886^
). 267,266.
20 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
tenon the stoutest insisters on supernatural origin have also
been forced to use in the end. Among the visions and
messages some have always been too patently silly^ among
the trances and convulsive seizures some have been too
fruitless for conduct and character^ to pass themselves
off as significant^ still less as divine. In the history
of Christian mysticism the problem how to discriminate
between such messages and experiences as were really
divine miracles^ and such others as the demon in his
malice was able to counterfeit, thus making the religious
person twofold more the child of hell he was bef ore, has
always been a difficult one to solve, needing all the saga-
city and experience of the best directors of conscience.
Cln the end it had to come to our empiricist criterion : By
f \tiieir fruits ye shall know them, not by their roota.
Jonathan Edwards's Treatise on Religious Affections is
an elaborate working out of this thesis. The roots of
a man's virtue are inaccessible to us. No appearances
whatever are infallible proofs of grace. Our practice is
the only sure evidence, even to ourselves, that we are
genuinely Christians.
*^ In forming a judgment of ourselves now/' Edwards writes,
** we should certainly adopt that evidence which our supreme
Judge will chiefly make use of when we come to stand before
him at the last day. . . . There is not one grace of the Spirit
of God, of the existence of which, in any professor of religion,
Christian practice is not the most decisive evidence. • • . The
degree in which our experience is productive of practice shows
the degree in which our experience is spiritual and divine.''
Catholic writers are equally emphatic. The good dis-
positions which a vision, or voice, or other apparent
heavenly favor leave behind them are the only marks by
which we may be sure they are not possible deceptions oi
the tempter. Says Saint Teresa : —
I
BELIGION AND NEUBOLOGY 21
*^ Like imperfect sleep which, instead of giving more strength
> the head, doth but leare it the more exhausted, the result of
lere operations of the imagination is but to weaken the souL .
QStead of nourishment and energy she reaps only lassitude and
isgust : whereas a genuine heayenly vision yields to her a har-
98t of ineffable spiritual richeSi and an admirable renewal of
odily strength. I alleged these reasons to those who so often
Kmsed my visions of being the work of the enemy of mankind
ad the sport of my imagination. ... I showed them the jew-
is which the divine hand had left with me : — they were my
3tual dispositions. All those who knew me saw that I was
lianged ; my confessor bore witness to the fact ; this improve-
Lent, palpable in all respects, far from being hidden, was bril*
antly evident to all men. As for myself, it was impossible to
elieve that if the demon were its author, he could have used,
I order to lose me and lead me to hell, an expedient so oon-
*ary to his own interests as that of uprooting my vices, and
Uing me with masculine courage and other virtues instead, for
saw clearly that a single one of these visions was enough to
arioh me with all that wealth." ^
I fear I may have made a longer excursus than was
ecessary, and that fewer words would have dispelled the
neasiness which may have arisen among some of you as
announced my patibological progranmie. At any rate
ou must all be ready now to judgoJiieLj^Ugious^feJby i
a residtsexclusivelys^nd I. shjall assume that the^buga- I
ooof morWd^Qrigin.will. scandalize jtfur.pie^^nq more. I
StUl^ you may ask me^ if its results are to be the ground
f our final spiritual estimate of a religious phenomenon^
rhy threaten us at all with so much existential study of
\s conditions ? Why not simply leave pathological ques-
ions out ?
To this I reply in two vrays : First, I say, irrepressible
iiriosity imperiously leads one on ; and I say, secondlyi
^ Autobiography, cL zxriii.
22 THE VARIETIES OF BELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
that it always leads to a better understanding of a tlimg\
significance to consider its exaggerations and perversionSi
^ its equivalents and substitutes and nearest relatives else*
where. Not that we may thereby swamp the thing in
the wholesale condemnation which we pass on its inferior
congeners^ but rather that we may by contrast ascertain
the more precisely in what its merits consist, by learning
at the same time to what particular dangers of corruption
it may also be exposed.
Insane conditions have this advantage, that they isolate
special factors of the mental life, and enable us to inspect
them unmasked by their more usual surroundings. They
play the part in mental anatomy which the scalpel and
the microscope play in the anatomy of^the body. £0
imderstand a thing rightly we need to see it both out of
its environment and in it, and to have acquaintance with
the whole range of its variations.^ The study of halluci*
nations has in this way been for psychologists the key
. to their comprehension of normal sensation, that of illu*
sions has been the key to the right comprehension of per-
ception. Morbid impulses and imperative conceptions,
^ fixed ideas,' so called, have thrown a flood of light on
the psychology of the normal will ; and obsessions and
delusions have performed the same service for that of
the noi^mal faculty of belief.
^r Similarly, the nature of genius has been illuminated
Dy the attempts, of which I already made mention, to
class it with psychopathical phenomena. Borderland
insanity, crankiness, insane temperament, loss of mental
balance, psyc);iopathic degeneration (to use a few of the
many synonyms by which it has been called), has certain
peculiarities and liabilities which, when combined with a
superior qualify of intellect in an individual, make it
more probable that he will make his mark and affect his
BELIGION AND NEUROLOGT 28
age> than if his temperament were less neurotic. There
is of course no special affinity between crankiness as such
and superior intellect/ for most psychopaths have feeble
intellects^ and superior intellects more commOnlj have
normal nervous systems, ^ut the psychopathic temperar
ment/ whatever be the intellect with which it finds itself
paired^ often brings with it ardor and excitability of
character. The cranky person has extraordinary emo-
tional susceptibility. He is liable to fixed ideas and
obsessions. His conceptions tend to pass immediately
into belief and action ; and when he gets a new idea^ he
has no rest till he proclaims it^ or in some way ^ works it
oti/\ ^^ What shall I think of it ? '^ a common person
Bays to himself about a vexed question; but in a
* cranky * mind '^ What must I do about it ? '' is the form
the question tends to take. Injdiejau^ that
high-souled woman^ Mrs. Annie Besant^ I read the follow-
ing^assage: " Plenty of people wish well to any good
canse^ but very few care to exert themselves to help it,
and still fewer will risk anything in its support. ' Some
one ought to do it, but why should I?' is the ever
reechoed phrase of weak-kneed amiability. 'Some one
ought to do it, so why not I ? Ms the cry of some ear-
nest servant of man, eagerly forward springing to face
Rome perilous duty. Between these two. sentences lie
whole centuries of moral evolution." ^ue enough!
and between these two sentences lie also the different
destinies of the ordinary sluggard and the psychopathic
man. ^hus, when a superior intellect and a psychopathic
temperament coalesce — as in the endless permutations
and combinations of human faculty, they are bound to
coalesce often enough — in the same individual, we have
^ Snperior inteUeoti as Professor fiain has admirabljTsliownj seems to
eoniist in nothing so mnoh as in a large deyelopment of the faculty of asso*
siation bj similantj.
124 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
the best possible conditipn ,for the kind oi^effective
geoius^that gets into the biograpliical dictionanesV (^uch
men do not remain mere critics and understanders with
their intellect. Their ideas possess them^ they inflict
them^ for better or worse^ upon their companions or
their age.^t is they who get counted when Messrs Lorn-
brosO) Nisbet^ and others invoke statistics to defend their
paradox.
.To pass now to religious phenomena^ take the mel-
ancholy which^ as we shall see, constitutes an essential
moment in every complete religious evolution. Take the
happiness which achieved religious belief confers. (Take
the trance-like states of insight into truth which all reli-
gious mystics report.^ CThese are each and all of them
Especial cases of kinds of human experience oiiKiuch wider
' scope.) Religious melancholy, whatever peculiarities it
may have qu& religious, is at any rate melancholy. Reli-
gious happiness is happiness. [Religious trance is trance.
: And the moment we renounce the absurd notion that a
' thing is exploded away as soon as it is classed with
others, or its origin is shown ; the moment we agree to
stand by^experimental results and inner quality, in judg^
ing of values,^ — who does not see that we are likely to
ascertain the distinctive significance of religious melan-
choly and^happiness, or of religious trances, far better
by comparing them as conscientiously as we can with
other varieties of melancholy, happiness, and trance, than
by refusing to consider their place in any more genera]
series, and treating them as if they were outside of
nature's order altogether^
I hope that the course of these lectures will confirm
us in this supposition. As regards the psychopathic ori-
gin of so many religious phenomena, that would not be
^ I niajrefer to a oriticisin of iha insanity ihaotj of gonins in the Fqrcho-
logical RoTiew, ii. 2S7 (189C>.
RELIGION AND NEUROLOGY 25
in the least surprising or disconcerting, even were such
phenomena certified from on high to be the most pre«
cious of human experiences. No one organi&m can
possibly yield to its owner the whole body "of truth.
Q^ew of us are not in some way infirm, or even diseased ;
and our very infirmities help us unexpectedlyTl ]^_ the
psychopathic - temperament-^we -have_the.. emotionality
I which is the sine quctnon of moral perception ;^e have
the intensity and tendency to ^phasis* which are the
essence of practical moral vigor ; vand we have the love
of metaphysics and mysticism which carry one's interests
beyond the surface of the sensible world./^What, then,
is more natural than that this temperament should intro-
duce one to regions of religious truth, to comers of the
universe, which your robust Philistine type of nervous
system, forever offering its biceps to be felt, thumping
its breast, and thanking Heaven that it has n't a single
morbid fibre in its composition, would be sure to hide
forever from its self-satisfied possessors?
(Q there were such a thi^g as inspiration from a higher
realm, it might well be that the neurotic temperament
would furnish the chief condition of .the requisite „recep-
tivityT) And having said thus much, I think that I may
let die matter of religion and neuroticism drop.
The mass of collateral phenomena, morbid or healthy,
with which the various religious phenomena must be
compared in order to imderstand them better, forms
what in the slang of pedagogics is termed Uhe apper-
ceiving mass' by which we comprehend them. The
only novelty that I can imagine this course of lectures
to possess lies in the breadth of the apperceiving mass.
I may succeed in discussing religious experiences in a
wider context than has been usual in university courses.
LECTURE n
CIRCUMSCBIFIION OF THE TOFTO
MOST books on the philosophy of religion try tc
begin with a precise definition of whatitB. essence
consists of. Some of these would-be definitions may pos-
sibly come before us in later portions of this course, and
[ shall not be pedantic enough to enumerate any of them
to you now. Meanwhile the very fact that they are sc
many and so different from one another is enough tq
prove that the word ' religion * cannot stand for any singU
principle or essence, but is rather a collective name. The
theorizing mind tends always to the over-simplification oi
its materials. vThis is the root of all that absolutism and
one-sided dogmatism by which both philosophy and reli-
gion have been infested. Let us not fall immediately intc
a one-sided view of our subject, but let us rather admit
freely at the outset that we may very likely find no one
essence, but many-^characters which may, cdtornately be
equally Jmpoii^njLuijreligion. If we should inquire f oi
the essence of ' government,' for example, one man mighl
tell us it was authority, another submission, anothei
police, another an army, another an assembly, anothei
a system of laws; yet all the while it would be true
that no concrete government can exist without all these
things, one of which is more important at one moment
^nd others at another. The man who knows govern-
ments most completely is he who troubles himself least
about a definition which shall give their essence. Enjoy
ing an intimate acquaintance with all their particularitiea
CIRCUMSCRIPTION OP THE TOPIC 27
I turn, he would naturally regard ^n abstract conception
I which these were unified as a Uiing more misleading
lan enlightening.N And why may not religion be a con-
option equally complex ? ^
Consider also the ^ religious sentiment * which we see
3ferred to in so many books, as if it were a single sort
E mental entily.
In the psychologies and in the philosophies of religion,
^e find the authors attempting to specify just what en-
ty it is. One man allies it to the feeling of dependence ;
ne makes it a derivative from fear ; others connect it with
le sexual life ; others still identify it with the feeling of
le infinite ; and so on. Such different ways of conceive
)g it ought of themselves to arouse doubt as to whether
; possibly can be one specific thing ; and ihe moment we
re willing to treat the term ^religious sentiment' as a
oUective name for the many sentiments which religious
bjects may arouse in alternation, we see that it probably
ontains nothing whatever of a psychologically specific
ature^] There is religious fear, religious love, religious
we, religious joy, and so forth. But religious love is
nly man's natural emotion of love directed to a religious
bject ; religious fear is only the ordinary fear of com**
lerce, so to speak, the common quaking of the human
reast, in so far as the notion of divine retribution may
rouse it ; religious awe is the same organic thrill which
re feel in a forest at twilight, or in a mountain gorge ;
nly this. time it comes .over us at the thought of our
upernatural relations; and similarly of all the various
Butiments which may be called into play in the lives of
^ I ean do no bettor here tluui refer my readers to the extended and ad«
lirable remarks on the fntilitj of aU these definitions of religion, in in
rtide bj Professor Lenba, pnblished in the Monist for Jaanaiji 1901| after
tj own text was written.
28 THE VAHIETIES OF BEL16I0US EXFEBIENCB
religious persons. As concrete states of nund^ made u]
of a £eelingplu8 a specific sort of object^ religious emo
tions of course are psychic entities distinguishable fron
other concrete emotions; but there is no ground foi
assuming a simple abstract ^ religious emotion ' to exist
as a distinct elementaij mental affection by itself^ prdseni
in every religious experience without exception.
^ f^ere thus seems to be no one elementary religioufi
^emotion, but only a common storehouse of emotions upon
which religious objects may draw, so there might con-
ceivably also prove to be no one specific and essential
kind of religious object, and no one specific and essential
kind of reUgious act.)
The field of religion being as wide as this, it is mani-
festly impossible that I should pretend to cover it. My
lectures must be limited to a fraction of the subject.
And, although it would indeed be foolish to set up an
abstract definition of religion's essence, and then proceed
to defend that definition against all comers, yet this need
not prevent me from taking my own narrow view of what
religion shall consist in for the purpose of these lectures^
or, out of the many meanings of the word, from chooa*
ing the one meaning in which I wish to interest you par<
ticularly, and proclaiming arbitrarily that when I say
^religion' I mean that. This, in fact, is what I must do,
and I will now preliminarily seek to mark out the field I
choose.
\ One way to mark it out easily is to say what aspects
01 the subject we leave out. At the outset we are struck
by one great partition which divides the religious field
[\' On the one side of it lies institutional, on ,the other per
sonal religion. As M. P. Sabatier says, tin^ branch ol
religion keeps the divinil^, ano'^er keeps man most in
CIBCUMSCRIPnbN OP THE TOPIC 29
view, ^^orship and sacrifice^ procedure for working on
the disp^itions of the deity^ theology and ceremony and
ecclesiastical organization^ are the essentials of religion
in^the institutional branch^vOTere we to limit our view
to it^ we should have to d^ne^ religion as an external
art^ the art^of .winning. the. favor of the^godSTSjn the
more personal branch of religion it is on the collmtry the
inner dispositions of man himself which form the centre
of interest^ his conscience^ his deserts^ his helplessnesS|
his incompleteness. And although the favor of the God^
as forfeited or grained, is still an essential feature of the
story^ and theology plays a vital part therein^ yet the acts*
t(t. which this sort of religion prompts are personal not '
ritual acts^ the individual transacts the business by him*
self alone^ and the ecclesiastical organization, with its'
priests and sacraments and other go-betweens, sinks to
an altogether secondary place. The relation goes' direct *
from heart to heart, from soul to soul, between man and
hismaker,\
Now injthese^lectutesJE^pro^
tionajlit^^fi^ to say .nothing.of the ecclesiastical ;
organization, to consider as little as possible the systom*
afio theology and the ideas about the gods themselves,
and tc^^nfine myself as far as I can to personal religion '
pure and simple^ To some of you personal religion^ i
thus, nakedly considered, will no doubt seem too incom*
plet^ a thing to wear the general name. ^^ It is a part
of religion,'' you will say, ^'but only its unorganized •
rudiment; if we are to name it by itself , we had better
Ctall^it man's^cpnacience or m than his religion.
The n^^e^K^ligionr should be reserved for the fuUy
organized, system, of. JeeUng;; thought, a institution,
for the Church, in short, of which this personal religioui
•0 called, is but a fractional element.''
80 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE ^^'^*''
But if yott say this^ it will only show the more plainl}
I how much the question of definition tends to. become
•a dispute about, names. (lUther than prolong such a
dispute^ I am willing to accept almost any name for the
personal religion of which I propose to treat.\ Call i1
conscience or morality^ if you yourselves prefer^ and noi
religion — under either name it will be equally worthy oi
our study. As for myself ^ I think it will prove to con*
tain some elements which morality pure and simple does
not contain^ and these elements I shall soon seek to poini
out ; so I will myself continue to apply the word ^ reli'
gion ' to it ; and in the last lecture of all^ I will bring ii
the theologies and the ecclesiasticismsi and say something
of its relation to them.
1 In one sense at least the personal religion will prove
itself more fundamental than either theology or ecclesias-
ticism. Churches^ when once established, Uve at second
'^' ' hand upon tradition j but the founder 8 of every churcl
owed their power originally to the fact of their direct
personal communion with the divine. Not only the
superhimian founders, the Christ, the Buddha, Mahomet
but all the originators of Christian sects have been ii
this case; — so personal, religion should still seem the
primordial thing, even to those who continue to esteen
it incomplete.\
There are, it is true, other things in religion chrono
logically more primordial than personal deyoutness in the
moral sense. Fetishism and magic seem to have precedec
inward piety historically — at least our records of inward
' piety do not reach back so far. ^And if fetishism anc
magic be regarded as stages of religion, one may sa]
that personal religion in the inward sense and the genu
inely spiritual ecclesiasticisms which it founds are phe
Domena of secondary or even tertiary order. But, quiti
Vl . O
'J
*•
• CIBOUMSCBIFnON OV THE TOPIC 81
I
iparfc from the fact that many anihropologi$ts *— f or m«
itance^ Jevona and Vxusa&r --- espressly oppose ^ religion *
ind ^ magic' to each other^ it ii certain that^^e iirhole
lystem of thought which leads to niagic^ fetishism^ and
the lower superstitions may just as well be called prioii-
live science as called primitive religionX The question
bhtts becomes a verbal one again; and our knowledge o£
lU these early stages of thought and feeling is in any.
me so conjectural and imperfect that farther discussioqj
nrould not be worth while.
^ BoHgon^ as I now ask you arbitrarily to
ta^eit^shall mean for us the feelinf/s^ actSj and experir ^
znces of individual men in their aoliiude^ so far as thetf
jfhrehend themaelvee to stand in relation to whatever
Ihey may consider the divine. "| Since^^the relation may
be either moral, physical, (bi^ ritual, it. is evident that out
of, religion in the sense m which we take it, theologies, i
philosophies^ and ecclesiasticid''6rganizations may second- \
irily grdwr' In these lectures, however, as I have already '
mid, the immediate personal experiences will amply fill
3ur time, and we shall hardly consider theology or eccle-
dasticism at all.
We escape much controversial matter by this arbitrary
definition of our field. But, still, a chance of controversy
somes up over the .word / divine,' if we take it in the
iefinition in too narrow a sense. There are systems of
thought which the world usually calls religious, and yet
wbioh do not positively assume a God. i/Buddhism is
in this case. Popularly, of course, the Buddha. himself
itands in place of a God ; bui' in^strictness the^BudcUus-^
lac system is atheistic.. v^Modem transcendental idealism,
Emersonianism, for instance^ also seems to l^t^God evap-
orate into ^abstract Idealilrf. Not .a deity, tn concreto,
aot a superhuman persb% (but) th.6 immanent divinity in
%....^
32 THE VARIETIES OF BELI6I0US EXPEBIEKCE
things^ the essentially spiritoal stractore of the QnivetM^
is the object ^o£ the transcendentalist eult.^ In that ad«
dress to the graduating class at Divinity College in 1838
\rhich made Emerson famoosi the frank expression of
this worship of mere abstract laws was what made the
scandal of the performance*
^ These laws,'' said the speakeri '* execute themselves. They
are out of time, out of spaoe, aud not subject to circumstance s
Thus, in the soul of man there is a justice whose retributions
are instant and entire. He who does a good deed is instantly
ennobled. He who does a mean deed is by the action itself
contracted. He who puts off impurity thereby puts on purity.
If a man is at heart just, then in so &ir is he God ; the safety
of God, the immortidity of Grod, the majesty of God, do enter
into that man with justice. If a man dissemble, deceive, he
deceives himself, and goes out of acquaintance with his own
being. Character is always known* Thefts never enrich;
alms never impoverish ; murder will speak out of stone walls.
The least admixture of a lie -7 for example, the taint of vanity,
any attempt to make a good impression, a favorable appearance
— will instantly vitiate the effect But speak the truth, and
all things alive or bmte are vouchers, and the very roots of the
grass underground there do seem to stb and move to bear your
witness. For all things proceed out of the same spirit, which
is differently named love, justice, temperance, in its different
applications, just as the ocean receives different names on the
several shores which it washes. In so far as he roves from
these ends, a man bereaves himself of power, of auxiliaries.
His being shrinks ... he becomes less and less, a mote, a
point, until absolute badness is absolute death. The perception
of this law awakens in the mind a sentiment which we call the
religious sentiment, and which makes onr highest happiness.
Wonderful is its power to charm and to command. It is a
mountain air. It is the embalmer of the world. It makes tb)
s^ and the hills sublime, and the silent song of the stars is it*
It is the beatitude of man. It makes him illimitable. When
he says * I ought ' ; when love warns him ; when he chooses^
r
/
\
CIRCUMSCEIPnON OF THE TO?I0 83
warned from on high, the good and great deed ; then, deep
molodioB wander through his soul from supreme wisdom. Then
he can worship, and be enlarged by his worship ; for he can
oetror go behind this sentiment All the expressions of this
sentiment are sacred and permanent in proportion to their
purity* [They] affect us more than all other compositions,
Tlio sentences of the olden time, which ejaculate this piety, are
still fresh and fragrant. And the unique impression of Jesus
upon mankind, whose name is not so much written as ploughed
Into the histoiy of this world, is proof of the subtle virtue of
this infusion/' ^
^Such is the Emersonian religion. The universe has a
oivine soul of order, which soul is moral, being also the
soul Avithin the soul of man.) But whether this soul of the
universe be a mere quality like the eye*s brilliancy or
the skin's softness, or whether it be a self-conscious life
like the eye's seeing or the skin's feeling, is a decision
that never unmistakably appears in Emerson's pages.
It quivers on the boundary of these things, sometimes
leaning one way, sometimes the other, to suit the literary
rather than the philosophic need. Whatever it is, though,
it is active. As much as. if it were a God, we can trust
it to protect all ideal interests and keep the world's bal-
ance straight..^ The sentences in which Emerson, to the
very end, gave utterance to this faith are as fine as any-
thing in literature: "If you love and serve men, you
cannot by any hiding or stratagem escape the remunera*
tion. Secret retributions are always restoring the level,
when disturbed, of the divine justice. It is impossible
to tilt the beam. All the tyrants and proprietors and
monopolists of the world in vain set their shoulders to
heave the bar. Settles f orevermore the ponderous equa«
tor to its line, and man and mote, and star and sun, must
range to it, or be pulverized by the recoil." *
> Misoellanies, 1868, p. 120 (abridged).
* Leetttxes and Biographical Sketches, 1868, p. 186.
[■.
M THE VAUIETIES OF RELIOIOUS EXPERIENCE
Now it would bo too absurd to Bay that the itmei
experiences that underlie such ^expressions . of faith as
this and impel the writer to their utterance are quite
unworthy to be called religious experiences. The sort of
appeal that Emersonian optimism, on the one hand, and
Buddhistic pessimism, on the other, make to the individ*
ual and the sort of response which he makes to them in
his life are in fact indistinguishable from, and in many
respects identical with, the best Christian appeal and
response. We must therefore, from the experiential
point of view, call these godless or quasi-godless creeds
^ religions ' ; land accordingly when in our definition of
religion we speak of the indiyiduaFs relation to ' what
' he considers the divine,' we must interpret the term
* divine ' very broadly, as denoting any object that is
godZi^e, whether it be a concrete deity or not.;;^
X But the term ^ godlike,' if thus treated as a floating
general quality, becomes exceedingly vague, for many
gods have flourished in religious history, and their attri-
butes have been discrepant enough. What then is that
essentially godlike quality — be it embodied in a con-
crete deity or not — our relation to which determines our
character as religious men?* It will repay us to seek
some answer to this question before we proceed farther.
For one thing, gods are conceived to be first things
in the way of being and power. vThey overarch and
envelop, and from them there is no escape. vWhat relates
to them is the first and last word in the way of truth.
Whatever then were most primal atid enveloping and
deeply true might at this rate be treated as godlike,
and b, man's religion might thus be identified with his
attitude, whatever it might. be,^. towards what.heuielt to
be the primal truth.^
. CIBCUMSCBIFnON OF THE TOPIC 3S
I
Such a definition as this would in a way be defensible,
toligion^p whatever it is^ is a man's total reaction upon
leTso^iwhy not say that any total reaction upon life is a
Bligion ? Total |:eactions are different frbin casual reac-
ionS| and total attitudes are different from usual or pro-
Bssional attitudes. To get at them you must go behind
lie foreground of existence and reach down to that curi-
us sense of the whole residual cosmos as an everlasting
resence^ intimate or alien^ terrible or amusing^ lovable
r odious, which in some degree every one possesses,
'his sense of the world's presence, appealing as it does
} our peculiar individual temperament, makes us either
brenuous or careless, devout or blasphemous, gloomy or
jcultant, about life at large ; and our reaction, involun-
iry and inarticulate and often half unconscious as it
(, is the completest of aU our answers to the question,
What is the character of this universe in which we
well ? " It expresses our individuial sense of it in the
lost definite way. Why then not call these reactions
ur religion, no matter what specific character they may
ave ? Non-reUgious as some of these reactions may be,
1 one sense of the word ^ rehgious,' they yet belong to
he general sphere of the religious life, and so should
enerically be classed as religions reactions. '^He be-
eves in No-God, and he worships him," said a colleague
f mine of a student who was manifesting a fine atheistic
rdor fand the more fervent opponents of Christian doct
tine have often enough shown a temper which, psychoj
)gically considered, is indistinguishable from religious
eal. ^ '
But so very broad a use of the word ' religion ' would
>e inconvenient, however defensible it might remain on
3gical grounds. Inhere are trifling, sneering attitudes
ven towards the wHole of life ; an4 in some men these
36 THE YARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPEBIENCE
attitudes are final and systematic. It wotdd strain the
ordinary use of language too much to call such attitudes
religious^ even though, from the point of view of an
unbiased critical philosophy, they might conceiyahly be
perfectly reasonable ways of looking upon life. Voltaire,
for example, writes thus to a friend, at the age of sev-
enty-three : ^^ As for myself,** he says, ^^^eak as I am, I
carry on the war to the last moment, I get a hundred
pike-thrusts, I return two hundred, and I laugh. I see
near my door Oeneva on fire with quarrels over nothing,
and I laugh again ; and, thank God, I can look upon
the world as a farce even when . it becomes as tragic as
it sometimes does. All comes out even at the end of
the day, and all comes out stiU more even when all the
days are over."
Much as we may admire such a robust old gamecock
spirit in a valetudinarian, to call it a religious spirit
would be odd. Yet it is for the moment Voltaire's reac-
tion on the whole of life. Je nCen fiche is the vulgar
French equivalent for our English ejaculation ^Who
cares ? ' And the happy term je nCm Jichisme recently
has been invented to designate the systematic determi-
nation not to take anything in life too solemnly. ' All
is vanity ' is the relieving word in all difficult crises for
this mode of thought, which that exquisite literary
genius Benan took pleasure, in his later days of sweet
decay, in putting into coquettishly sacrilegious forms
which remain to us as excellent expressions of the ^ all
is vanity * state of mind. Take the following passage,
for example, — we must hold to duty, even against the
evidence, Benan says, — but he then goes on : —
*' There are many obances that the world may be nothing but
a fairy pantomime of which no Ood has care. We must there-
fore arrange ourselves so that on neither hypothesis we shall be
CIRCUMSCRIPTION OF THE TOPIC 87
completely wrong. We most listen to the superior voices, but
in each a way that if the second hypothesis were true we should
not bare been too completely duped. If in effect the world be
not a serious thmg, it is the dogmatic people who will be the
shallow ones, and the worldly minded whom the theologians
now call frivolous will be those who are really wise.
** In utrumque paratus^ then. Be ready for anything — that
perhaps is wisdom. Give ourselves up, according to the hour,
to oonfidence, to skepticism, to optimism, to irony, and we may
be sure that at certain moments at least we shall be with the
truth. • • • Good-humor is a philosophic state of mind; it
seems to say to Nature that we take her no more seriously than
she takes us. I maintain that one should always talk of pbilo*
Sophy with a smUe. We owe it to the Eternal to be virtuous ;
but we have the right to add to this tribute our irony as a sort
of personal reprisaL In this way we return to the right quarter
jest for jest ; we play the trick that has been played on us.
Saint Augustine's phrase : Lord, if we are deceived, .it is by
ikeel remains a fine one, well suited to our modem feeling.
Only we wish the Eternal to know that if we accept the fraud,
we accept it knowingly and willingly. We are resigned in
advancQ to losing the interest on our investments of virtue, but
we wish not to appear ridiculous by having counted on them
too securely." ^
Surely all the usual associations of the word ^ religion '
would have to be stripped away if such a systematic
parti pris of irony were also to be denoted by the name.
For common men ' religion/ whatever more special mean-
ings it may have^ signifies always a serious state of mind.
If any one phrase could gather its universal message,
that phrase would be, ^ All is not vanity in this Universe,
whatever the appearances may suggest.' If it can stop
anything, religion as commonly apprehended can stop just
such chaffing talk as Benan's. It favors gravity, not
pertness ; it says ^ hush ' to all vain chatter and smart wit
> Fenilles d^tach^ pp. 391-398 (abridged).
38 THE VABIETIES OF RELIQIOUS EXPERIENCE
But if hostile to light irony^ religion is equally hostile
to heavy grumbling and complaint. The world appears
tragic enough in some religions^ but the tragedy is real"
ized as purging, and a way of deliverance is held to exist
We shall see enough of the religious melancholy in a
future lecture; but melancholyi according to our ordi*
nary use of language, forfeits all title to be called reli*
gious when, in Marcus Aurelius's racy words, the sufferer
simply lies kicking and screaming after the fasliion of
a sacrificed pig. The mood of a Schopenhauer or a
Nietzsche, — and in a less degree one may sometimes say
the same of our own sad Carlylo, — though often an
ennobling sadness, is almost as often only peevishness
running away with the bit between its teeth. The sal-
lies of the two Greiman authors remind one, half the
time, of the sick shriekings o^two dying rats. They
lack the purgatorial note which religious sadness gives
forth.
There must be something solemn, serious, and tender
about any attitude which we denominate religious. If glad,
it must not grin or snicker ; if sad, it must not scream or
curse. It is precisely as being solemn experiences that I
wish to interest you in religious experiences. So I pro-
pose — arbitrarily again, if you please — to narrow our
definition once more by saying that Ihe word ^ divine,'
as employed therein, shall moan for us not merely the
primal and enveloping and real, for that meaning if taken
without restriction might well prove too broad. The
, (divine shall mean for us only such a primal reality as
\ tlie individual feels impelled to respond to solemnly and
! gravely, and neither by a curse nor a jest.^^
But solemnity, and gravity, and all such emotional at-
tributes, admit of various shades ; and, do what we will
with our defining, the truth must at last be confronted
CIRCUMSCRIPTION OP THE TOPIC 89
that we are dealing with a field of experience where there
18 not a single conception that can be sharply drawn.
The pretension, under such conditions, to be rigorously
'scientific' or 'exact' in our terms would only stamp
us as lacking in undei-standing of our task. TThings are
more or less divine, states of mind are more or less reli-
gious, reactions are more or less total, but the bounda*
rics are always misty, and it is everywhere a question
of amoiuit and degree. ] Nevertheless, at their extreme of
dovclophiont, there can never ho any qnoHtion as to what
experiences are religious. The divinity of the object
and the solemnity of tlie reaction are too well marked
for doubt. . Hesitation as to whether a state of mind is
'religious,* or 'irreligious,* or 'moral,' or 'philosophi-
caV is only Hkely to arise when the state of mind is
wcaldy characterized, but in that case it will be hardly
worthy of our study at all. With states that can only
by courtesy be called religious we need have nothing to
do, our only profitable business being with what nobody
can possibly feel tempted to call anything else. I said
in my former lecture that we learn most about a thing
when we view it under a microscope, as it were, or in its
most exaggerated form. This is as true of religious
phenomena as of any other kind of fact. The only cases
likely to be profitable enough to repay our attention will
therefore be cases where the religioiut spirit is unmistak*
able and extreme. Its fainter manifestations we may
tranquilly pass by. Here, for example, is the total reac-
tion upon life of Frederick Locker Lampson, whose auto-
biography, entitled 'Confidences,' proves him to have
been a most amiable man.
** I am so far resigned to my lot that I feel small pain at the
thought of having to part from what has been called the plea-
sant habit of existence, the sweet fable of life. I would not
40 THE VARIETIES OP BELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
care to live my wasted life over again, and so to prolong mjr
span. Strange to say, I have but little wish to be younger. I
submit with a chill at my heart. I humbly submit because it
is the Divine Willi and my appointed destiny. I dread the in-
crease of infirmities that will make me a burden to those around
roe, those dear to me. No I let me slip away as quietly and
comfortably as I can. Let the end come, if peace come with it.
** I do not know that there is a great deal to be said for this
world, or our sojourn here upon it ; but it has pleased God so
to place us, and it must please me also. I ask you, what is
human life? Is not it a maimed happiness — care and wean*
ness, weariness and care, with the baseless expectation, the
strange cozenage of a brighter to-morrow ? At best it is but a
froward child, that must be played with and humored, to keep
it quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over.'* ^
This is a complex^ a tender^ It submissive, and a grace-
ful state of mind. For myself, I should have no objec-
tion to calling it on the whole a religious state of mind,
although I dare sdy that to many of you it may seem too
listless and half-hearted to merit so good a name. But
what matters it in the end whether we call such a state
of mind religious or not ? It is too insignificant for our
instruction in any case ; and its very possessor wrote it
down in terms which he would not have used unless he
had been thinking of more energetically religious moods in
others, with which he found himself unable to compete*
It is with these more energetic states that our sole busi*
ness lies, and we can perfectly well afford to let the minor
notes and the uncertain border go.
(It was the extremer cases that I had in mind a litUe
while ago when I said that personal religion, even with-
out theology or ritual, would prove to embody some ele-
ments that morality pure and simple does not contain^
/Tou may remember that I promised shortly to point out
1 Op. oit, pp. 314, ais
\
\
CIBCUMSCSIPTIOK OF THE TOPIC 41
xfhxit those elements were. In a general way I can now
say what I had in mind.
'^ I accept the nniverse '' is reported to have been a
favorite utterance of our New England transcendental*
ist, Margaret Fuller ; and when some one repeated this
phrase to Thomas Carlyle^ his sardonic comment is said
to have been : ^' Gad I she 'd better 1 '' ^t bottom the
whole concern of both molality and religion is with the
manner of our acceptance of the universe. j'Do we ac-
cept it only in part and grudgingly^ or heartily and alto*
gether ? Shall our protests against certain things in it
be radical and unf orgiving, or shall we think that^ even
with evil, there are ways of living that must lead to
good? If we accept the whole, shall we do so as if
stunned into submission, — as Carlyle would have us —
" Gad 1 we 'd better I " — or shall we do so with enthu-
siastic assent? ^Morality pure and simple accepts the
law of the wholV^hich it finds reigning, so far as to
acknowledge and obey it, but it may obey it with the
heaviest and coldest heart, and never cease to feel it as \^
a yoke. ) £Sut for religioh, in its strong and fully devel-
oped manifestations, the service of the highest never is
felt as a yoke. Dull submission is left far behind, and a
mood of welcome, which may fill any place on the scale
between cheerful serenity and enthusiastic gladness, has
taken its place. )
It makes a tremendous emotional and practical difiEer-
ence to one whether one accept the universe in the drab
discolored way of stoic resignation to necessity, or with
the passionate happiness of Christian saints. The differ*
ence is as great as that between passivity and activity^
as that between the defensive and the aggressive mood.
Gradual as are the steps by which an individual may
42 TH£ VABIETIES OF BELIQIOUS EXPERIENCE '
grow from one state into the other^ many as are the in«
termediate stages which different individuals represent,
yet when you place the typical extremes beside each other
for comparison/you feel that two discontinuous psycho*
logical universes confront you, and that in passing from
one to the other a ' critical point ' has been overcome.
\lf we compare stoic with Christian ejaculations we see
much more than a difference of doctrine ; rather is it a
difference of emotional mood that parts them.] When
Marcus Aurelius reflects on the eternal reason^ that has
ordered things, there is a frosty chill about his words
which you rarely find in a Jewish, and never in a Chris-
tian piece of religious writing. The universe is ^ac-
cepted ' by all these writers ; but how devoid of passion
or exultation tlie spirit of the Roman Emperor is I Com-
pare his fine sentence : '' If gods care not for me or
my children, here is a reason for it," with Job's cry :
" Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him ! " and you
immediately see the difference I mean. The anima
mundi, to whose disposal of his own personal destiny
the Stoic consents, is there to be respected and sub-
mitted to, but the Christian God is there to be loved ;
and the difference of emotional atmosphere is like that
between an arctic climate and the tropics, though the out-
come in the way of accepting actual conditions uncom-
plainingly may seem in abstract terms to be much the
same.
"It is a man's duty,'' says Marcus Aurelius, "to comfort
himself and wait for the natural dissolution, and not to be
vexed, but to find refreshment solely in these thoughts — first
that nothing will happen to me which is not conformable to the
nature of the universe ; and secondly that I need do nothing
contrary to the God and deity within me ; for there is no man
who can compel me to transgress.^ He is an abscess on the
^ Book v.. ch, z. (abridged).
CIRCUMSCRIPTION OF THE TOPIC 43
uniTene who withdraws and separates himself from the reason
of our common nature, through being displeased with the things
which happen.' For the same nature produces these, and has
produced Uieo too. And so accept everything which happens,
even if it seem disagreeable, because it leads to this, the health
of the universe and to the prosperity and felicity of Zeus. For
he would not have brought on any man what he has brought,
if it were not useful for the whole. The integrity of the whole
is mutilated if thou cuttest ofiE anything. And thou dost cut
off, as far as it is in thy power, when thou art dissatisfied, and
in a manner triest to put anything out of the way." ^
Compare now this mood with that of the old Christian
author of the Theologia Germanica : —
^^ Where men are enlightened with the true light, they re«
nounce all desire and choice, and commit and commend them-
selves and all things to the eternal Goodness, so that every
enlightened man could say : * I would fain be to the Eternal
Goodness what his own hand is to a man.* Such men are in
a state of freedom, because they have lost the fear of pain or
hell, and the hope of reward or heaven, and are living in pure
submission to the eternal Goodness, in the perfect freedom of
fervent love. When a man truly perceivcth and considereth
himself, who and what he is, and findeth himself utterly vile
and wicked and unworthy, he faUeth into such a deep abase-
ment that it seemeth to him reasonable that all creatures in
heaven and earth should rise up against him. And therefore
he will not and dare not desire any consolation and release ;
but he is willing to be unconsoled and unreleased ; and he doth
not grieve over his sufferings, for they are right in his eyes, and
he hath nothing to say against them. This is what is meant
by true repentance for sin ; and he who in this present time
entoreth into this hell, none may console him. Now God hath
not forsaken a man in this hell, but He is laying his hand upon
him, that the man may not desire nor regard anything but the
eternal Good only. And then, when the man neither careth
for nor desireth anything but the eternal Good alone, and seek«
^ Book y., ch. iz. (abridged).
^^it\mmimi\, mif llm mm umlm uu ilU
III Iflir li(|i/ilill(i (jlllliil,. 'lUmmmt of M.llglatm oxiim-
III0M, llitl tiling Uy wliliili'wo iliial)^ mimt ju%o thorn,
mlMt bo llmt oloinont or quality in tliem vhich we can
ino6t nowhere else. And Buch a quality will be of course
Rinst prominent and easy to notice in those religious
oipcriences which are most one-sided, exag^eratedj and
intense.
^.^ow when we compare these intenser experiences with
the experiences o£ tamer minds, so cool and reasonable
that we are tempted to call them philosophical rather
than religious, we find a character that is perfectly dia-
tinct) T^at character, it seems to me, should be regarded
as'ihe practicallj important differentia of religion for
our purpose j and just what it is can easily be broaght
out by comparing the mind of an abstractly conceived
Christian with that of a moralist similarly conoeived.
A life is manly, stoical, moral, or philosophical, we say,
ia proportion as it is less swayed by paltry personal con-
siderations and more by objective ends that call for
enei|;y, even though that energy bring personal loss and
pain. This is l^e good side of war, in so far as it calls
for ' volunteers.' And for morality life is a war, and
the service of the highest is a sort of cosmic patriotism
vhich also calls for volunteers. Even a sick man, unable
to be militant outwudly, can carry on the moral warfare.
He can willfully turn his attention away from his owi
tonsliut nifferor, with ona ptoriio, — tbit I knov it ii Hia tgenej. I wIU
We Him tbough He ihed fnwt and dukneu on trtry vaj o( ndna." B>'
W. JtiMaaas : LeotntM uid Biognphiul Skstebea, p. 18S.
Iltilfilliiii \^i\k ill mii'tijifi lilu [km In Ik nukm )«j
Mmm AiiriilliiN iifftmn to i\m fHiliuino— ilio (kmmt
ili(iulof(lim a^rtrnmoilh it. liaWtotaWy t^ounda in ngroo*
nioiiL, Iiu runs out to ombraco fclio divino decrees.
OccaHioDally, it is true, the Stoic rises to something like
a Christian warmth of sentiment, as in the often quoted
passage of Marcus Aurelius : —
" Everything barmonizea with me which is bannonioaB to
thee, O Universe. Nothing for me is too early nor too latOt
which is in due time for thee. Everything is fruit to me whioh
thy soasons hring, O Nature : from thee are all things, in thee
are all things, to thee all things retnro. The poet says. Dear
City of Cecrops; and wilt thoo not say, Dear City of Zeus?"'
But compare even as derout a passage as this witli a
]B^nuine ChristiaD outpouring, and it seems a little cold.
Turn, for instance, to the Imitation of Christ : —
" Lord, thon knovest what is hest ; let this or that he aooord*
ing as thou wilt, Give what thou wilt, so much as thon wilt,
when thou wilt. Do with me as thou knowest hest, and u
shall he most to thine honoar. Place me where thou wilt, and
freely work thy will with me in all things. . . . When could it
be evil when thou wert near 7 I had rather he poor for thy
sake than rich without thee. I ohoose rather to be a pilgrim
upon the earth with thee, than without thee to possesB heaven.
Where thou art, there ia heaven ; and where thon art not, b»
hold there death and helL" *
1 Cbapi. I,, zi. (abridged): Wiakworth'* tnuuUtion.
» Book IV., S 23.
* Banbftro'i tTuulationi Book IH., ehftpi. xv., lie Compue Huj
Uoodj Emenoni " Let ma be a blot on this fair trorld, tlw obMutest, tha
.f
46 THE VAEIETIES OF BELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
f uture, whether in this world or the next* He can train
himself to indifference to his present drawbacks and im-
merse himself in whatever objective interests still remain
accessible. He can follow public news^ and sympathize
with other people's affairs. He can cultivate cheerful
manners, and be silent about his miseries* (He can con*
template whatever ideal aspects of existence his philo*
sophy is able to present to him, and practice whatever
duties, such as patience, resignation, trust, his ethical
system requires^ Such a man lives on his loftiest, largest
plane* , He is a high-hearted freeman ^aridnp^ .pining^
slave. (^And /jret) he lacks something which the Christian
par exceUenceithe^mystio and ascetic saint, for example,
has in abundant measure, and which makes of him. a
human being of an altogether different denomination. )
^ The Christian also spurns the pinched and mumping
sick-room attitude, and the lives of saints are full of a
kind of callousness to diseased conditions of body which
probably no other human records show, {put whereas
the merely (.moralistic spurning takes an effort ofjirolition,
the Christian spurning is the result of the excitement of a
higher kind of emotion, in the presence of which no ese^
tion of volition is required.^ The moralist must hold his
breath and keep his muscles tense ; and so long as this
athletic attitude is possible all goes well — morality suf*
iices. But the athletic attitude tends ever to break
down, and it inevitably does break down even in the most
stalwart when the organism begins to decay, or when
morbid fears invade the mind. To suggest personal will
and effort to one all sicklied o'er with the sense of irre*
mediable impotence is to suggest the most impossible of
things. What he craves is to be consoled in his verj
powerlessness, to feel that the spirit of the universe re-
cognizes and secures him, all decaying and failing as be
CIRCDMSCBIPTION OP THE TOPIC 47
18. Well^ we are all such helpless failures in the last
resort. The sanest and best of us are of one clay with
lunatics and prison inmates^ and deai^ finally runs the
robustest of _us down* And whenever we^eeTt^ such
a sense, of jthe vanity and proyisionality of our voluntary
career comes over us that all our moralitv appears but as
a plaster hiding a sore it can never cure^ and all our well-
doing as the hollo west jsubstitute for. that well-&et7i^ that
our lives ought to Jbe grounded in, but, alas ! are not. _
l. And ^ere ^eligiqn^comes to our rescue and takes our
i f ate into her hands* There is a state of mind, known
^ to relijnous men. but to no others, m which the will to
assert ourselves and hold our own has been displaced by
a willingness to close our mouths and be as nothing in the
floods and waterspouts of God. vin this state of mind,
iviiat we most dreaded has become the habitation of
our safety, and the hour of our moral death has turned
into our spiritual birthday. The time for tension in
our soul is over, and that of happy relaxation, of calm
deep breathing, of an eternal present, wlthjio. discpjcdant
future to - be^ anxious about, has arrived. I'Qar^is not
hold in abeyance as it is by mere morality, it is positively-
expunged and washed away* -J
We shall see abundant examples of this happy state of
mind in later lectures of this course. We shall see how^
infinitely ^passionate .a thing religion at its highest flights
can be. vljike love, like wrath, like hope, ambition, jeal-
ousy, like every other instinctive eagerness and impulse,
it adds to life an .enchantment which is not rationally or
logically deducible from anything else. This enchant-
ment, coming as a gift when it does come, —fa gift of our
organism, the physiologistifwill tell us," a gift of God's
grace, the theologians sa^^ — is either there or not there
for us, and there are persons who can no more become
■ y
\
4S TBB VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
possessed by it than they can M in love ^th a giver
^ woman by mere word of command* ^J[leligiouafeelih|
^iilUf^l IB thus an absolute addition to the Subject's rang^e of life
Jf^^ It ^ves him a new sphere-of powef^QVhen the outwarc
battle IS lost^ and the outer world (Bsowns him^ it redeemi
and yivifies an interior world which otherwise would b<
an empty waste^
I If ^religion is to mean anything definite for us. it seemi
I to me that we ought. to . take Ji|t^.as. meaning this, addec
I / dimension of emotion] this enthusiastic temper of espousal
H in regions' where moraUty strictly socaUed can.Lbesj
but bow its head and acquiesce. It ought to mean no
thing short of this new reach of freedom for us^ with thi
struggle over^ the keynote of the universe sounding ii
our earS; and everlasting possession spread before oui
eyes.^
This sort of happiness in the absolute and eyerlastinj
\^A I is what'^e'fihd nowhere but in religion. Itjs parted, of
from all mere' animal happinesst; all mere enjoyment oj
the present) by that element of solemnity of which I havt
already made so much account. (Solemnity is a hare
thing to define abstractly^ but certain of its marks an
patent enough.^ A solemn state of mind is never crudt
or simple — it seems to contain a certain measure of iti
own opposite in solution. ^^ solemn joy preserves a sor
of bitter in its sweetness ; a solemn sorrow is one to whicl
we intimately consent (But there are writers who^ real
izing that happiness of a supreme sort is the prerogativt
of reKgion, forget tiiis compKcation, and call afl happi
nesS| as such; religious.\ Mr. Havelock Ellis^ for exam
^ Once moroi there are plenty of meoi eoostitationaUy sombre meni ii
whoso religious life this raptnronsness is lackiog. They are religious ii
the wider sense; yet in this acntest of aU senses they are not so, and .iJLi
religion in the acutest sense that I wish, without disputing ahoutjro'dsr i
study first, so as to get at its typical difftrw^
CIRCUMSCRIPTION OF THE TOPIC 49
plei identifies religion with the entire field of the soul's
liberation from oppressive moods.
^The simplest functions of physiological life/* he writes,
*<iDay be its ministers. Every one who is at all acquainted
with the Persian mystics knows bow wine may bo regarded as
an instrument of religion. Indeed, in all countries and in all
ages, some form of physical enlargement •— singing, dancing,
drinking, sexual excitement — has been intimately associated
with worship. Even the momentary expansion of the soul in
laughter is, to however slight an extent, a religious exercise.
• • • Whenever an impulse from tho world strikes against the
organism, and the resultant is not discomfort or pain, not even
tho muscular contraction of strentious manhood, but a joyous
expansion or aspiration of the whole soul — there is religion.
It is the infinite for which we hunger, and we ride gladly on
every little wave that promises to bear us towards it" ^
But such a straight identification of religion with anyi
and every form of happiness leaves the essential peculiar-l
ity of religip^ l^ppi^oss out. •^The^ more commonplace »
happinesses which we get . are .^relief s/ occasioned by
our momentary escapes from evils -either experienced or
threatened. (Butf in its most characteristic embodiments^
^religious happin.essiS'no4nere. feeling of ^scapel It cares
no^longer to escape. It consents to the evil outwardly as
a form of sacrifice — inwardly it knows it to be perma-
nently overcome. If you ask how religion thus falls on ,
tho thorns and faces 'death, and in the very act annuls :
annihilation, I cannot explain the matter, for it is reli- \
gion's secret, and to understand it^oui must yourself have/
been a religious man of the extromer type. In our fu-
ture examples, even of the simplest and healthiest-minded
type of religious consciousness, we shall find this complex
sacrificial constitution, in which ajiigher happiness holds
a lower unhappiness-in-oheck. In ^he Louvre there is a
^ The New Spirit, p. 232.
to THE VAEIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXFEKIENCE
pictare^ by Guido Beni^ of St. Michael with his foot on
Satan's neck. The richness of the picture is in large part
due to the fiend's figure being there, ^he richness of its
allegorical meaning also is due to his being there — that
is, the world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so
r long as we keep our foot upon his neck. In the religious
consciousness, that is just the position in which the fiend,
the negative or tragic principle, is found ; and for that
very reason the religious consciousness is so rich from the
emotional point of view.^vWe shall see how in certain
men and women it takes'^n a monstrously ascetic form.
I There are saints who have literally fed on the negative
Wiple, on ha-Biliatioa «d privion, «,d tte thigkt
of suffering and death, — their souls gr6wing in happi-
ness just in proportion as their outward state grew more
intolerable. J No other emotion than religious emotion
can bring a man td^hisIjTeculiatpass^ ^And^iFii" f or
that reason that when we ask our question about the
value of religion for human life, I think we ought to
look for the answer among these violenter examples
rather than among those of a more moderate hue.
Having the phenomenon of our study in its acutest
possible form to start with, we can shade down as much
as we please later. And if in these cases, repulsive as
they are to our ordinary worldly way of judging, we^find
; ourselves compelled to acknowledge reUgion's value and
treat fewith respect,:it>ili have proved in. some way.it.
, value for life at large. By subtracting and toning down
> extravagances we may thereupon proceed to trace the
i boundaries of its legitimate sway.
To be sure, it makes our task difficult to have to deal
so much with eccentricities and extremes. *^How can
^ I owo this allegorieal Ulnsiration to mj lamontod coUeagne aud friesdi
Chorlca CorroU ETerett.
CIBCTJMSCRIPTION OP THE TOPIC 51
roli^on on the whole be the most important of all human
functions/' you may ask^ ^^ if every several manifestation
of it in turn have to be corrected and sobered down and
pruned away ? '* Such a thesis seems a paradox impos-
sible^ tcT sustain reasonably^ — yet I beUeve that some-
thing like it will have to be our final contention. /That
personal attitude which the individual finds himselT im-
pelled to take up towards what he apprehends to be the
divine — and you will remember that this was our defi-
nition — will prove to be both a helpless and a sacrificial
attitudeTN That is, wejshall haycL to, confess. to at least
some amount of dependence , on -sheer mercy^ and to
practice some amount of renunciation, great or small, to
save our souls alive. The constitution of the world we
live in requires it : —
^Entbcbren BolUt da I follst entbebien I
^ Dm iat der owige Gesaog
Per jedcm an die Ohreu klingt,
.Den, unsor ganzes Leben lang
Una keiser jede Stunde fingt."
For when aU is said and done, we are in the end abso-
lutely dependent on the universe ; and into sacrifices
and surrenders of some sort, deliberately looked at and
acceptearVe are draW and pressed as into our only
permanent positions of repose, /^ow in those states of
mind ij^hich fall short of religion, the surrender is sub-
mitted to as7an imposition of necessity, and the sacrifice
is undergone at the very best without complaint^^ In the •
religious lite) on. the contrary, surrender and sacrifice
are positively espoused : even unnecessary givings-up are
added^in order that the happiness may increase<^i?.e%!ion\
thus maJc^ easy and felicitous what in.anyjSaseisxX
necessary ; and if it be the only agency that can accom- \\
plish this result, its vital importance as a human faculty \\
- ■ ■ — ■ f. * >t l»» I
03 THE TARIETIES OF BEUQIOUS EXFESIEKOIS
stands vindicated beyond dispnidk It becomes an essen*
tial organ of our.Iifeji performmg a fonoidon^^ w no
. other portion of our nature can bo successfully fulfill
"TFrom the merely biological point of vieW.M to^ it,
this is a conclusion to which^ so far as I can now see^ wo
shall inevitably be led| and led moreover by following^
the purely empirical method of demonstration which I
sketched to you in the first lecture. Of the farther
office of religion as a metaphysical revelation I will say
nothing now.
But to foreshadow the terminus of one's investigations
is one thing, and to arrive there safely is another. In the
next lecture, abandoning the extreme generalities which
have engrossed us hitherto, I propose that we beg^n our
actual journey by addressing ourselves directly to the
concrete facts*
LECTURE m
THE REALTIT OP THE UNSEEN
WERE one aaked to char^
in ihe broadeat and most general terms possible^
one mic^ht say that it consists of the belief that there
b an unseen orders and that our supreme. good lies in
luifmoniousiy adjusting ourselye^. .thereto. This belief
ind this adjustment are the religious attitude in the soul.
I wish during this hour to call your attention to some of
the psychological peculiarities of such an attitude as this^
of belief in an object which we cannot.see. (AJl our atti*
tudesy moral, practical, or emotional, as well as religious,
are due to the ^ objects ' of our consciousness, the things
which we believe to exist, whether really or ideally, along
witli ourselves. Such objects may be present to our
lenses, or ; they may be present only to our thought;) In
cither case they elicit from .us a reaction ; and the reac-
tion due to ilungs of thought is notoriously in many
cases as strong as that due to sensible presences^ It
may be even stronger. The memory of an insult may
make us angrier than the insult did when we received it.
Wo are frequently more ashamed of our blunders after-
wards than we were at the moment of making them;
ind in general our whole higher prudential and moral
life is based on the fact that material sensations actually
present may have a weaker influence on our action than
ideas of remoter facts.
Thejmore.xK)ncreto. objects of most^men's^yeligion, the
leities whom they worship, are known to them only in
/•
M THE 7ABIETIE8 OF RELIGIOUS EXPEBIENCE
idea. It has been youcbsafed, for example, to very few
Christian beHevers to have had a sensible vision of tlieir
Saviour ; though enough appearances of this sort are on
record, by way of miraculous exception, to merit our
attention later, ^e whole force of the.Christiaji reli-
gion, therefore, solar as beHef ^injthe divine, personages
determines the prevalent attitude, of _the. believer, (is^ in
general exerted by the^ipstrumentaliiy ot pure^ideaa^ of
which nothing in the individual's past experience directly
serves as a model.
(But in addition .to these ideas of the more concrete
religious objects, religion) is full of abstract^objects which
prove to have an ei^ual power. God's attributes as such,
his holiness. His justice, his mercy, his absoluteness, his
infinity, his omniscience, his tri-unily, the various myster-
ies of the redemptive process, the operation of the sacra-
ments, ete., have proved fertQe wells of inspiringonedita-
tion for Christian believers.^ We shall see later that thd
absence of .definite, sensible images .is positively, jn^sted
on by the mystical authorities in all religions as the ^ne
qua non of a . successful orison, or contemplation of the
higher divine truths. Sugh^contemplations are expected
(and abundantly verify the expectation, as we shall also
see) to influence the believer's subsequent attitude very
powerfully for good. ^
y Immanuel Kant held a curious doctrine about such ob«
jects of belief as God, the design of creation, the soul, its
freedom, and the life hereafter. These things, he said,
^ Example : " 1 have bad maoh comfort latelj in meditating on the pas-
sages which show the personality of the Holj Ghost, and his distinctness
from the Father and the Son. It is a subject that requires searching into
to find out, but, when realized, gives one so much more true and liyelj s
sense of the fnllness of the Godhead, and its work in us and to ut, than
when onlj thinking of the Spirit in its e£feot on nt." AxTQUBTUS HabS)
Memorials, i. 244, Maria Hare to Lucj H. Hare.
THB REALITX OF THE UJNbJBlirr 55
are properly not objects of knowledge at all. Our con<
ceptions always require a sense-content to work with^ and
as the words ' soul/ * God/ ^ immortality/ cover no dis-
tinctiye smise-content whatever^ it follows that theoreti*
cally speaking they are words devoid of any significance.
Tet stoangely enough they have a definite meaning /or ''l
(MT pracHce. We can act as if there were a God j feel
asify^e were free ; consider Nature 08 if she were full
of special designs ; lay plans as if we were to be immor-
tal ; and we find then that these words do make a genu*
ine difference in our moral life. Our faith that these
nnintelligible objects actually exist proves thus to be a
full equivalent in praktiacher Hinsichtf as Kant calls it^ or
from the point of view of our action^ for a knowledge of
what they might be^ in case we were permitted positively
to conceive them. /^So we have the strange phenomenon,
as Kant assures us, of a mind believing with all its
strength in the real presence of a set of things of no one '^
of which it can form any notion whatsoever.") ^
My object in thus recalling Kant's doctrine to your
mind is not to express any opinion as to the accuracy of
this particularly uncouth part of his philosophy, but only
to illustrate the characteristic of human nature which we
ore considering, by an example so classical in its exagger-
ation. The sentiment of reality can indeed attach itself:
80 strpngly^to^^onr object qfbeliel^t our. whole life is'^
poUiized tiirough and .through, so to speak,, by its sense | .
of the existence of the thing believed in, and yet that\^ '
thing, for purpose of definite description, can hardly be i
said to be present to our mind at all. It is as if a bar of
iron, without touch or sight, with no representative faculty
nrhatever, might nevertheless be strongly endowed with an
inner capacity for magnetic feeling ; and as if, through
the various arousaU of its magnetUm by magnets coming
86 THE VAEIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXFERIENC]^
and goinp^ in its neighborhood^ it might be consciously
determined to different attitudes and tendencies* Such
a bar of iron could never give you an outward descrip-
tion of the agencies that had the power of stirring it so
strongly ; yet of ^ their presence^ and of their significance
for its life^ it would be intensely aware through every
fibre of its being.
It is not only the Ideas of pure Reason, as Kant styled
them, that have this power of making us vitally feel pre-
sences that we are impotent articulately to describe. All
sorts of higher abstractions bring with them the same
kind of impalpable appeal. Remember those passages
from Emerson which I read at my last lecture. The
whole universe of concrete objects, as we know them,
swims, not only for such a transcendentalist writer, but
for all of us, in a wider and higher universe of abstract
ideas, that lend it its significance. (As time, space, and
the ether soak through all things, so (we feel) do abstract
and essential goodness, beauty, strength, significance,
justice, soalc through all things good, strong, significant,
and justr)
SucITiaeas, and others equally abstract, form the back-
ground for all our facts, the fountain-head of all the
possibilities we conceive of. They give its ^ nature,' as
we call it, to every special thing. Everything we know
is ^ what ' it is by sharing in the nature of one of these
abstractions. We can never look directly at them, for
they are bodiless and featureless and footless, but we
grasp all other things by their means, and in handling
the real world we should be stricken with helplessness in
just so far forth as we might lose these mental objects,
these adjectives and adverbs and predicates and heads of
classification and conception.
This absolute determinability of our mind by abstrao
w- •> • . ■
THE SEALIXr OF THE UNSEEN SJ
tkms 18 one of the cardinal facts in our human constitu'*
tion. Folariadng and magnetizing us as they do^ vre turn
\. towards them and frotn ^em^ we seek them^ hold them^
bate ihem^ hless them, just as if they were so many con-
crete beings* And beings they are, beings as real in the
realm which they inhabit as the changing things of sense
are in the realm of space.
Plato gave so brilliant and impressive a defense of this
common human feelings that the doctrine of the reality
of abstract objects has been known as the platonic theory
of ideas ever since. Abstract Beauty, for example, is for
Plato a perfectly definite individual being, of which the
intellect is aware as of something additional to all the per-
ishing beauties of the earth. ^^ The true order of going/'
he says, in the often quoted passage in his ^ Banquet,'
^ is to use the beauties of earth as steps along which one
mounts upwards for the sake of that other Beauty, going
from one to two, and from two to all fair forms, and from
£air forms to fair actions, and from fair actions to fair
notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion
of absolute Beauty, and at last knows what the essence
of Beauty is/' ^ In our last lecture we had a glimpse of
the way in which a platonizing writer Uke Emerson may
treat the abstract divineness of things, the moral struc*
ture of the universe, as a fact worthy of worship. /"In
those various churches without a God which to-day are
spreading through the world under the name of ethical
societies, we have a similar worship of the abstract di-
vine, the moral law believed in as an ultimate object.
'Science' in many minds is genuinely taking „the. place
of ajreligionf Where this is so, the scientist treats the
'Laws of Nature' as objective facts io be reveredA A
brillmT school of interpretation of Greek mythology
1 SjrnipoMam, Jowotti 1871| L 627.
*»^
68 THE YABIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
'would have it that in their origin the Greek gods
were only half-metaphorio personifications of those greal
spheres of abstract law and order into which the natural
world falls apart — the sk^r-sphere^ the ocean-sphere^ the
earth-sphere^ and the like; just as even now we maji
speak of the smile of the morning, the kiss of the breeze^
or the bite of the cold, without really meaning that these
phenomena of nature actually wear a human face.^
As regards the origin of the Greek gods, we need not
at present seek an opinion. But the whole array of out
instances leads to a conclusion something like this :/ It is
as if there were in the human consciousness a sense oj
reality f a feeling of objective presence, a perception of
what we may call ^ something there,* more deep and more
general than any of the special and particular ' senses '
by which the current psychology supposes existent reali^
ties to be originally revealed. \ If tbiis were so, we might
suppose the senses to waken otir attitudes and conduct as
they so habitually do, by first exciting this sense of real'
ity ; but anything else, any idea, for example, that might
similarly excite it, would have that same prerogative of
appearing real which objects of sense normally possess.
f So far as religious conceptions were able to touch this
reality-feeling, they would be believed in in spite of criti-
cism, even though they might be so vague and remote ac
to be almost unimaginable, even though they might be
such non-entities in point of whatness, as Kant makes
the objects of his moral theology to be. ;
The most curious proofs of the existence of such an
undifEerentiated sense of reality as this are found in ex
periences of hallucination. It often happens that an
^ Example : " Naiare is olwaji so interestmg, nndor whateyer aspect sIh
shows herself, that when it rainsi I seem to see a beantifal woman weeping
She appears the more bcantifal| the more afflicted she is.^ B. de St. Pierre
THE REALITY OP THE UNSEEN 59
hallucination is imperfectly developed: the person af*
f ected will feel a ^ presence ' in the room^ definitely locat
ized, facing in one particular way^ real in the most em**
phatic sense of the word^ often coming suddenly^ and as
suddenly gone ; and yet neither seen> heard, touched,
nor cognized in any of the usual ' sensible ' ways. Let
me give you an example of this, before I pass to the
objects with whose presence religion is more peculiarly
concerned.
An intimate friend of mine, one of the keenest intellects
I know, has had several experiences of this sort. He
writes as follows in response to my inquiries : —
** I have several times within the past few years felt the so-
called ^ conscioasness of a presence.' The experiences which I
bave in mind are clearly distinguishable from another kind of
experience which I have bad very frequently, and which I fancy
many persons would also call the * consciousness of a presence.'
But the difference for me between the two sets of experience
is as great as the difference between feeling a slight warmth
originating I know not where, and standing in the midst of a
conflagration with all the ordinary senses alert.
** It was about September, 1884, when I had the first cxperi«
ence. On the previous night I had had, after getting into bed
at my rooms in College, a vivid tactile hallucination of being
grasped by the arm, which made me get up and search the
room for an intruder ; but the sense of presence properly so
called came on the next night. After I had got into bed and
blown out the candle, I lay awake awhile thinking on the pre-
vious night's experience, when suddenly Ifdt something come
into the room and stay close to my bed. It remained only a
minute or two. I did not recognize it by any ordinary sense,
and yet there was a horribly unpleasant ^ sensation ' connected
with it. It stirred something more at the roots of my being
than any ordinary perception. The feeling had something of
the quality of a very large tearing vital pain spreading chiefly
over the chest, but within the organism — and yet the feeling
60 THE YAEIETIES OF BEUGIOUS KXFKRTKWCB
was not pain so much as abhorrence. At all ermitit ■^"^^TPg
was present with me, and I knew its piesenca far more snrely
than I have ever known the presence of any fleshly living
creature. I was conscious of its departure as of its coming:
an almost instantaneously swift going through the door, and
the * horrible sensation ' disappeared.
** On the third night when I retired my mind was absorbed
in some lectures which I was preparing, and I was still ab»
sorbed in these when I became aware of the actual presence ^
(though not of the coming) of the thing that was there the
night before, and of the * horrible sensation.' I then mentally
concentrated all my effort to charge this * thing,' if it was evil,
to depart, if it was not evil, to tell me who or what it was, and
if it could not explain itself, to go, and that I would compel it
to go. It went as on the previous night, and my body quickly
recovered its normal state.
** On two other occasions in my life I have had precisely the
same * horrible sensation.* Once it lasted a full quarter of an
hour. In all three instances the certainty that there in out-
ward space there stood something was indescribably stronger
than the ordinary certainty of companionship when we are in
the close presence of ordinary living people. The something
seemed close to me, and intensely more real than any ordinaiy
perception. Although I felt it to be like unto myself, so to
speak, or finite, small, and distressful, as it were, I did n*t recog*
nize it as any individual being or person.**
Of course such an experience as this does not connect
itself with the religious sphere. Tet it may upon occa*
sion do so ; and the same correspondent informs me that
at more than one other conjuncture he had the sense of
presence developed with equal intensity and abruptness^
only then it was filled with a quality of joy. ,
*^ There was not a mere consciousness of something there,
but fused in the central happiness of it, a startling awareness of
some ineffable good. Not vague either, not like the emotional
effect of some poem, or scene, or blossom, of music, but the sure
knowledge of the close presence of a sort of mighty person, and
66
THE VARIETIES OF EELIGIOUS EXPEBIENCE
198 THE YABIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
of time ' has afi enormous influence. Moreov^, all these
influences may work subconsciously or half unconsciously.^
And when you get a Subject in whom the subconscious
life — of which I must speak more fully soon — is largely
developed, and in whom motives habitually ripen in si-
lence, you get a case of which you can never give a full
account, and in which, both to the Subject and the
onlookers, there may appear an element of marvel. \Emo-
tional occasions, especially violent ones, are extremely
potent in precipitating mental rearrangements. The
sudden and explosive ways in which love, jealousy, guilt,
fear, remorse, or anger can seize upon one are known to
everybody .^J Hope, happiness, security, resolve, emotions
characteristic of conversion, can be equally explosive.
And emotions that come in this explosive way seldom
leave things as they found them.
In his recent work on the Psychology of Religion,
Professor Starbuck of California has shown by a statis-
^ Jouffroy is an example : " Down this slope it was that my intelligence
had glided, and little by little it had got far from its first faith. But this
melancholy reyolntion had not taken place in the broad daylight of my con-
scioosness ; too many scruples, too many glides and sacred affections had
made it dreadful to me, so that I was far from avowing to myself the pro-
gress it had made. It had gone on in silence, by an inyoluntary elabora-
tion of which I was not the accomplice ; and although I had in reality long
ceased to be a Christian, yet, in the innocence of my intention, I should haye
shuddered to suspect it, and thought it calumny had I been accused of such
a falling away." Then follows Jouffroy's account of his counter-conversion,
quoted above on p. 176.
^ One hardly needs examples ; but for love, see p. 179, note ; for fear,
p. 162 ; for remorse, see Othello after the murder ; for anger, see Lear after
Cordelia's first speech to him ; for resolve, see p. 178 (J. Foster case). Here
' a pathological case in which guilt was the feeling that suddenly exploded:
' ^ night I was seized on entering bed with a rigor, such as Swedenborg
' as coming over him with a sense of holiness, but over me with a
tilt. During that whole night I lay under the influence of the rigor,
'^8 inception I felt that I was under the curse of Grod. I have
one act of duty in my life ^ sins against God and man, begin-
1 my memory goes back — a wildcat in human shape."
CONVERSION 197
repeatedly, but on a oertain day the real meaning of the
thought peals through ub for the first time, or the act
has suddenly tamed into a moral impossibihty. All we
know is that there are dead feelings, dead ideas, and cold
beliefs, and there are hot and live ones ; and when one
grows hot and alive within us, everything has to re-crystal-
lize about it. We may say that the heat and liveliness
mean only the ^ motor efGicacy,' long deferred but now
operative, of the idea; but such talk itself is only cir-
cumlocution, for whence the sudden motor efficacy?
And our explanations then get so vag^e and general
that one realizes all the more the intense individuality
of the whole phenomenon.
In the end we fall back on the hackneyed symbolism of
a mechanical equilibrium. A mind is a system of ideas,
each with the excitement it arouses, and with tendencies
impulsive and inhibitive, which mutually check or rein-
force one another. The collection of ideas alters by sub-
traction or by addition in the course of experience, and
the tendencies alter as the organism gets more aged. A
mental system may be undermined or weakened by this
interstitial alteration just as a building is, and yet for a
time keep upright by dead habit. But a new perception, a
sudden emotional shock, or an occasion which lays bare
the organic alteration, will make the whole fabric fall
together; and then the centre of gravity sinlcs into an
attitude more stable, for the new ideas that reach the
centre in the rearrangement seem now to be locked there,
and the new structure remains permanent.
Formed associations of ideas and habits are usually
factors of retardation in such changes of equilibrium.
New information, however acquired, plays an accelerating
part in the changes ; and the slow mutation of our in-
stincts and propensities^ under the ^ unimaginable touch
/•66 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
*^ I had a revelation last Friday evening. I was at Mary's,
and happening to say something of the presence of spirits (of
whom, I said, I was often dimly aware), Mr. Putnam entered
into an argument with me on spiritual matters. As I was
speaking, the whole system rose up before me like a vague
destiny looming from the Abyss. I never before so clearly felt
the Spirit of God in me and around me. The whole room
seemed to me full of God. The air seemed to waver to and fro
with the presence of Something I knew not what. I spoke with
the calmness and clearness of a prophet. I cannot tell you
what this revelation was. I have not yet studied it enough.
But I shall perfect it one day, and then you shall hear it and
acknowledge its grandeur." ^
Here is a longer and more developed experience from a
manuscript communication by a clergyman, — I take it
from Starbuck's manuscript collection : —
*^ I remember the night, and almost the very spot on the hill-
top, where my soul opened out, as it were, into the Infinite,
and there was a rushing together of the two worlds, the inner
and the outer. It was deep calling unto deep, — the deep that
my own struggle had opened up within being answered by the
unfathomable deep without, reaching beyond the stars. I stood
alone with Him who had made me, and all the beauty of the
world, and love, and sorrow, and even temptation. I did not
seek Him, but felt the perfect unison of my spirit with His. The
ordinary sense of things around me faded. For the moment
nothing but an ineffable joy and exaltation remained. It is
impossible fully to describe the experience. It was like the
effect of some great orchestra when all the separate notes have
melted into one swelling harmony that leaves the listener con-
scious of nothing save that his soul is being wafted upwards,
and almost bursting with its own emotion. The perfect stillness
of the night was thrilled by a more solemn silence. The dark-
ness held a presence that was all the more felt because it was
not seen. I could not any more have doubted that He was
^ Letters of Lowell, i. 75.
r
THE REALITY OF THE UNSEEN 65
lar trouble, and it always strengthened me and seemed to give
me endless vitality to feel its underlying and supporting pre-
sence. In fact, it was an unfailing fountain of living justice,
truth, and strength, to which I instinctively turned at times of
weakness, and it always brought me out. I know now that it
was a personal relation I was in to it, because of late years the
power of communicating with it has left me, and I am conscious
of a perfectly definite loss. I used never to fail to find it when
I turned to it. Then came a set of years when sometimes I
found it, and then again I would be wholly unable to make
connection with it. I remember many occasions on which at
night in bed, I would be unable to get to sleep on account of
worry. I turned this way and that in the darkness, and groped
mentally for the familiar sense of that higher mind of my mind
which had always seemed to be close at hand as it were, closing
the passage, and yielding support, but there was no electric
current. A blank was there instead of It: I couldn't find
anything. Now, at the age of nearly fifty, my power of getting
into connection with it has entirely left me ; and I have to con-
fess that a great help has gone out of my life. Life has become
curiously dead and indifferent ; and I can now see that my old
experience was probably exactly the same thing as the prayers
of the orthodox, only I did not call them by that name. What
I have spoken of as ^It' was practically not Spencer's Un-
knowable, but just my own instinctive and individual God,
whom I relied upon for higher sympathy, but whom somehow I
have lost."
Nothing is more common in the pages of religious
biography than the way in which seasons of lively and
of difi&cult faith are described as alternating. Probably
every religious person has the recollection of particular
crises in which a director vision of the truth, a direct
perception, perhaps, of a living God's existence, swept
in and overwhelmed the languor of the more ordinary
belief. In James Russell Lowell's correspondence there
is a brief memorandum of an experience of this kind : —
f
64 THE VABIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
In another lecture we shall see how in morbid melan
choly this sense of the unreality of things may become
a carking pain, and even lead to suicide.
We may now lay it down as certain that in the dis-
tinctively rehgious sphere of experience, many persom
(how many we cannot tell) possess the objects of theii
behef, not in the form of mere conceptions which theii
intellect accepts as true, but rather in the form of quasi-
sensible realities directly apprehended. As his sense
of the real presence of these objects fluctuates, so the
believer alternates between warmth and coldness in his
faith. Other examples will bring this home to one bettei
than abstract description, so I proceed immediately to cite
some. The first example is a negative one, deploring the
loss of the sense in question. I have extracted it from
an account given me by a scientific man of my acquaint-
ance, of his reUgious life. It seems to me to show clearly
that the feeling of reality may be something more like
a sensation than an intellectual operation properly so-
called.
^^ Between twenty and thirty I gradually became more and
more agnostic and irreligious, yet I cannot say that I ever
lost that * indefinite consciousness ' which Herbert Spencer
describes so well, of an Absolute Reality behind phenomena.
For me this Reality was not the pure Unknowable of Spender's
philosophy, for although I had ceased my childish prayers to
God, and never prayed to It in a formal manner, yet my more
recent experience shows me to have been in a relation to It which
practically was the same thing as prayer. Whenever I had any
trouble, especially when I had conflict with other people, either
domestically or in the way of business, or when I was depressed
in spirits or anxious about affairs, I now recognize that I used
to fall back for support upon this curious relation I felt myself
to be in to this fundamental cosmical M, It was on my side, or
I was on Its side, however you please to term it, in the particu-
THE REALITY OF THE UNSEEN 63
his other senses, hearing, etc., vfere not involved in this
false perception. It seems to have been an abstract con-
ception rather, with the feelings of reaUty and spatial
outwardness directly attached to it — in other words, a
fully objectified and exteriorized idea.
Such cases, taken along with others which would be
too tedious for quotation, seem sufiiciently to prove the
existence in our mental machinery of a sense of present
reality more diffused and general than that which our
special senses yield. For the pyschologists the tracing of
the organic seat of such a feeling would form a pretty
problem — notliing could be more natural than to con-
nect it with the muscular sense, with the feeling that our
muscles were innervating themselves for action. What-
soever thus innervated our activity, or * made our flesh
creep,* — our senses are what do so oftenest, — might
then appear real and present, even though it were but an
abstract idea. But with such vague conjectures we have
no concern at present, for our interest lies with the fac-
ulty rather than with its organic seat.
Like all positive affections of consciousness, the sense
of reality has its negative counterpart in the shape of a
feeling of imreality by which persons may be haunted,
and of which one sometimes hears complaint : —
'^ When I reflect on the fact that I have made my appear-
ance by accident upon a globe itself whirled through space as
the sport of the catastrophes of the heavens," says Madame
Ackermann ; '^ when I see myself surrounded by beings as
ephemeral and incomprehensible as I am myself, and all excit-
edly pursuing pure chimeras, I experience a stitinge feeling of
being in a dream. It seems to me as if I have loved and
suffered and that erelong I shall die, in a dream. My last
word will be, * I have beto dreaming.' " ^
^ Pensdes d'an Solitaire, p. 66.
THE KEALTTT OF THE UNSEEN 07
jhere than that I was. Indeed, I felt myself to be, if possible,
lie less real of the two.
: '^ My highest faith in Ood and truest idea of him were then
iK)m in me. I have stood npon the Mount of Vision sinoe, and
(elt the Eternal round about me. But never since has there
some quite the same stirring of the heart Then, if ever, I
believe, I stood face to face with Ood, and was bom anew of
bis spirit. There was, as I recall it, no sudden change of
bought or of belief, except that my early crude conception
iad, as it were, burst into flower. There was no destruction of
ihe old, but a rapid, wonderful unfolding. Since that time no
liscussion that I have heard of the proofs of Ood's existence
las been able to shake my faith. Having once felt the presence
if God's spirit, I have never lost it again for long. My most
UMuring evidence of his existence is deeply rooted in that
lonr of vision, in the memory of that supreme experience,
md in the conviction, gained from reading and reflection, that
lomething the same has come to all who have found Ood.
[ am aware that it may justly be called mystical. I am not
mough acquainted with philosophy to defend it from that or
iny other charge. I feel that in writing of it I have overlaid
t with words rather than put it clearly to your thought. But,
luch as it is, I have described it as carefully as I now am able
o do."
Here is another document, even more definite in char-
icter, which, the writer being a Swiss, I translate from
lie French original.'
^ I was in perfect health : we were on our sixth day of tramp-
ng, and in good training. We had come the day before from
$ixt to Trient by Buet. I felt neither fatigue, hunger, nor
hirst, and my state of mind was equally healthy. I had had at
?orlaz good news from home; I was subject to no anxiety,
ather near or remote, for we had a good guide, and there was
lot a shadow of uncertainty about the road we should follow.
[ can best describe the condition in which I was by calling it a
^ I borrow it, with Professor Floomoj'B permission, from hb rich colleo-
ion of psychological docamenti.
68 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
state of equilibrium. When all at once I experienced a feeling
of being raised abore myself, I felt the presence of God — I
tell of the thing just as I was conscious of it — as if his good-
ness and his power were penetrating me altogether. The throb
of emotion was so violent that I could barely tell the boys to
pass on and not wait for me. I then sat down on a stone,
unable to stand any longer, and my eyes overflowed with tears.
I thanked God that in the course of my life he had taught me
to know him, that he sustained my life and took pity both on
the insignificant creature and on the sinner that I was. I
begged him ardently that my life might be consecrated to the
doing of his will. I felt his reply, which was that I should do
his will from day to day, in humility and poverty, leaving him,
the Almighty God, to be judge of whether I should some time
be called to bear witness more conspicuously. Then, slowly, the
ecstasy left my heart ; that is, I felt that God had withdrawn
the communion which he had granted, and I was able to walk on,
but very slowly, so strongly was I still possessed by the interior
emotion. Besides, I had wept uninterruptedly for several min-
utes, my eyes were swollen, and I did not wish my companions to
see me. The state of ecstasy may have lasted four or five min-
utes, although it seemed at the time to last much longer. My
comrades waited for me ten minutes at the cross of Barine, but
I took about twenty-five or thirty minutes to join them, for as
well as I can remember, they said that I had kept them back for
about half an hour. The impression had been so profound that
in climbing slowly the slope I asked myself if it were possible
that Moses on Sinai could have had a more intimate communi-
cation with God. I think it well to add that in this ecstasy of
mine God had neither form, color, odor, nor taste ; moreover,
that the feeling of his presence was accompanied with no deter-
minate localization. It was rather as if my personality had
been transformed by the presence of a spiritval spirit But
the more I seek words to express this intimate intercourse, the
more I feel the impossibility of describing the thing by any of
our usual images. At bottom the expression most apt to render
what I felt is this : God was present, though invisible ; he fell
imder no one of my senses, yet my consciousness perceived him.''
THE BEALTTY OF THE UNSEEN 69
The adjective ^mystical' is technieallj applied, most
often, to states that are of brief duration. Of course
such hours of rapture as the last two persons describe
are mystical experiences, of which in a later lecture I
shall have much to say. Meanwhile here is the abridged
record of another mystical or semi-mystical experience,
in a mind evidently framed by nature for ardent piety.
I owe it to Starbuck's collection. The lady who gives
the account is the daughter of a man well known in his
time as a writer against Christianity. The suddenness of
her conversion shows well how native the sense of God's
presence must be to certain minds. She relates that she
was brought up in entire ignorance of Christian doc-
trine, but, when in Germany, after being talked to by
Christian friends, she read the Bible and prayed, and
finally the plan of salvation flashed upon her like a
stream of light.
^* To this day," she writes, '* I cannot understand dallying
with religion and the commands of God. The very instant I
heard my Father's cry calling unto me, my heart bounded in
reoognitioD. I ran, I stretched forth my arms, I cried aloud,
* Here, here I am, my Father.' Oh, happy child, what should
I do ? * Love me,' answered my God. * I do, I do,' I cried
passionately. * Come unto me,' called my Father. ^ I will,'
my heart panted. Did I stop to ask a single question ? Not
one. It never occurred to me to ask whether I was good
enough, or to hesitate over my unfitness, or to find out what I
thought of his church, or ... to wait until I should be satis-
fied. Satisfied ! I was satisfied. Had I not found my God
and my Father? Did he not love me? Had he not called
me? Was there not a Church into which I might enter? . . .
Since then I have had direct answers to prayer — so significant
as to be almost like talking with God and hearing his answer.
The idea of God's reality has never left me for one moment."
Here is still another case, the writer being a man aged
%
70 THE VAEIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
twenty-seven, in which the experience, probably ahnost
as characteristic, is less vividly described : —
'* I have on a number of occasions felt that I had enjoyed a
period of intimate communion with the divine. These meetings
came unasked and unexpected, and seemed to consist merely in
the temporary obliteration of the conventionalities which usually
surround and cover my life. • • • Once it was when from the
summit of a high mountain I looked over a gashed and cor-
rugated landscape extending to a long convex of ocean that
ascended to the horizon, and again from the same point when I
could see nothing beneath me but a boundless expanse of white
cloud, on the blown surface of which a few high peaks, includ-
ing the one I was on, seemed plunging about as if they were
dragging their anchors. What I felt on these occasions was a
temporary loss of my own identity, accompanied by an illumi-
nation which revealed to me a deeper significance than I bad
been wont to attach to life. It is in this that I find my justifi-
cation for saying that I have enjoyed communication with God.
Of course the absence of such a being as this would be chaos.
I cannot conceive of life without its presence."
Of the more habitual and so to speak chronic sense of
God's presence the following sample from Professor Star-
buck's manuscript collection may serve to give an idea.
It is from a man aged forty-nine, — probably thousands
of unpretending Christians would write an almost identi-
cal account.
*' God is more real to me than any thought or thing or per-
son. I feel his presence positively, and the more as I live in
closer harmony with his laws as written in my body and mind.
I feel him in the sunshine or rain ; and awe mingled with a
delicious restfulness most nearly describes my feelings. I talk
to him as to a companion in prayer and praise, and our com-
munion is delightfuL He answers me again and again, often
in words so clearly spoken that it seems my outer ear must
have carried the tone, but generally in strong mental impres-
sions. Usually a text of Scripture, unfolding some new view
THE REALITY OF THE UNSEEN 71
of him and his love for me, and care for my safety. I could
give hundreds of instances, in school matters, social problems,
financial difficulties, etc That he is mine and I am his never
leaves me, it is an abiding joy. Without it life would be a
Uank, a desert, a shoreless, trackless waste.''
I subjoin some more examples from writers of different
ages and sexes. They are also from Professor Starbuok's
collection^ and their number might be greatly multiplied.
The first is from a man twenty-seven years old : —
^Gh)d is quite real to me. I talk to him and often get
answers. Thoughts sudden and distinct from any I have been
entertaining come to my mind after asking God for his direction.
Something over a year ago I was for some weeks in the direst
perplexity. When the trouble first appeared before me I was
dazed, but before long (two or three hours) I could hear dis-
tinctly a passage of Scripture : * My grace is sufficient for
thee.' Every time my thoughts turned to the trouble I could
hear thb quotation. I don't think I ever doubted the existence
of God, or had him drop out of my consciousness. God has
frequently stepped into my affairs very perceptibly, and I feel
that he directs many little details all the time. But on two or
three occasions he has ordered ways for me very contrary to my
ambitions and plans."
Another statement (none the less valuable psychologi-
cally for being so decidedly childish) is that of a boy of
seventeen : —
^ Sometimes as I go to church, I sit down, join in the ser-
vice, and before I go out I feel as if God was with me, right
side of me, singing and reading the Psalms with me. . . • And
then again I feel as if I could sit beside him, and put my arms
around him, kiss him, etc. When I am taking Holy Conmiun-
ion at the altar, I try to get with him and generally feel his
presence."
I let a few other cases follow at random : —
^God surrounds me like the physical atmosphere. He is
72 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
closer to me than my own breath. In him literally I live and
move and have my being." —
'^ There are times when I seem to stand in his very presence,
to talk with him. Answers to prayer have come, sometimes
direct and overwhelming in their revelation of his presence and
powers. There are times when God seems far off, but this b
always my own fault." —
^' I have the sense of a presence, strong, and at the same time
soothing, which hovers over me. Sometimes it seems to enwrap
me with sustaining arms."
Such is the human ontological imagination^ and such
is the convincingness of what it brings to birth. Unpic-
turable beings are realized, and realized with an intensity
almost like that of an hallucination. They determine
our vital attitude as decisively as the vital attitude of
lovers is determined by the habitual sense, by which each
is haunted, of the other being in the world. A lover has
notoriously this sense of the continuous being of his
idol, even when his attention is addressed to other mat-
ters and he no longer represents her features. He can-
not forget her ; she uninterruptedly affects him through
and through.
I spoke of the convincingness of these feelings of
reality, and I must dwell a moment longer on that point.
They are as convincing to those who have them as any
direct sensible experiences can be, and they are, as a rule,
much more convincing than results established by mere
logic ever are. One may indeed be entirely without
them ; probably more than one of you here present is
without them in any marked degree ; but if you do have
them, and have them at all strongly, the probability is
that you cannot help regarding them as genuine percep-
tions of truth, as revelations of a kind of reality which
no adverse argument, however unanswerable by you in
THE REAUTY OF THE UNSEEN 73
words, can expel from your belief. The opinion opposed
to mysticism in philosophy is sometimes spoken of as
rationalism. Rationalism insists that all our beliefs
ought ultimately to find for themselves articulate grounds.
Such grounds, for rationalism, must consist of four
things : (1) definitely statable abstract principles ; (2) defi-
nite facts of sensation ; (3) definite hypotheses based on
such facts ; and (4) definite inferences logically drawn.
Vague impressions of something indefinable have no
place in the rationalistic system, which on its positive
side is surely a splendid intellectual tendency, for not
only are all our philosophies fruits of it, but physical
science (amongst other good things) is its result.
Nevertheless, if we look on man's whole mental life as
it exists, on the life of men that Ues in tiiem apart from
their learning and science, and tiiat they inwardly and
privately f ouL, we have to confess that L part li it of
which rationalism can give an account is relatively super-
ficial. It is the part that has the prestige undoubtedly,
for it has the loquacity, it can challenge you for proofs,
and chop logic, and put you down with words. But it
will fail to convince or convert you all the same, if your
dumb intuitions are opposed to its conclusions. If you
have intuitions at all, they come from a deeper level of
your nature than the loquacious level which rationalism
inhabits. Your whole subconscious life, your impulses,
your faiths, your needs, your divinations, have prepared
the premises, of which your consciousness now feels the
weight of the result; and something in you absolutely
knows that that result must be truer than any logic-
chopping rationalistic talk, however clever, that may con-
tradict it. This inferiority of the rationalistic level in
founding belief is just as manifest when rationalism
argues for religion as when it argues against it. That
74 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
vast literature of proofs of God's existence drawn froo
the order of nature^ which a century ago seemed so ovei
whehningly convincing, to-day does little more thai
gather dust in libraries, for the simple reason that ou
generation has ceased to beUeve in the kind of God i
argued for. Whatever sort of a being God may be, wi
know to-day that he is nevermore that mere externa
inventor of ^ contrivances ' intended to make manifest hu
^ glory ' in which our gi'eat-grandfathers took such satis
faction, though just how we know this we cannot possi
bly make clear by words either to others or to ourselves
I defy any of you here fully to account for your persua
sion that if a God exist he must be a more cosmic anc
tragic personage than that Being.
The truth is that in the metaphysical and religious
sphere, articulate reasons are cogent for us only whec
our inarticulate feeUngs of reality have already beer
impressed in favor of the same conclusion. Then, indeed;
our intuitions and our reason work together, and greal
world-ruling systems, like that of the Buddhist or of the
Catholic philosophy, may grow up. Our impulsive beliei
is here always what sets up the original body of truth,
and our articulately verbalized philosophy is but its show}
translation into formulas. The unreasoned and immedi-
ate assurance is the deep thing in us, the reasoned argu-
ment is but a surface exhibition. Instinct leads, intelli-
gence does but follow. If a person feels the presence oi
a living God after tlie fashion shown by my quotations,
yoiu" critical arguments, be they never so superior, wil]
vainly set themselves to change his faith.
Please observe, however, that I do not yet say that it is
better that the subconscious and non-rational should thus
hold primacy in the religious realm. I confine myself to
simply pointing out that they do so hold it as a matter of
fact.
THE REALITY OF THE UNSEEN 76
So much for our sense of the reality of the religious
objects. Let me now say a brief word more about the
attitudes they characteristically awaken.
We have already agreed that they are solemn ; and we
have seen reason to think that the most distinctive of
them is the sort of joy which may result in extreme cases
from absolute self-surrender. The sense of the kind of
object to which the surrender is made has much to do
with determining the precise complexion of the joy ; and
the whole phenomenon is more complex than any simple
formula allows. In the literature of the subject, sadness
and gladness have each been emphasized in turn. The
ancient saying that the first maker of the Gods was fear
receives voluminous corroboration from every age of
religious history ; but none the less does religious his-
tory show the part which joy has evermore tended to
play. Sometimes ihe joy has been primary ; sometimes
secondary, being the gladness of deliverance from the
fear. This latter state of things, being the more com-
plex, is also the more complete ; and as we proceed, I
think we shall have abundant reason for refusing to
leave out either the sadness or the gladness, if we look
at religion with the breadth of view which it demands.
Stated in the completest possible terms, a man's religion
involves both moods of contraction and moods of ex-
pansion of his being. But the quantitative mixture and
order of these moods vary so much from one age of the
world, from one system of thought, and from one indi-
vidual to another, that you may insist either on the dread
and the submission, or on the peace and the freedom as the
essence of the matter, and still remain materially within
the limits of the truth. The constitutionally sombre and
the constitutionally sanguine onlooker are bound to em-
phasize opposite aspects of what lies before their eyes.
76 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
The constitutionally sombre religious person makes
even of his religious peace a very sober thing. Danger
still hovers in the air about it. Flexion and contraction
are not wholly checked. It were sparrowlike and child-
ish after our deliverance to explode into twittering laugh-
ter and caper-cutting, and utterly to forget tlie imminent
hawk on bough. Lie low, rather, he low ; for you are
in the hands of a living God. In the Book of Job, for
example, the impotence of man and the omnipotence of
God is the exclusive burden of its author's mind. ^^ It
is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? — deeper
than hell ; what canst thou know ? " There is an astrin-
gent reUsh about the truth of this conviction which some
men can feel, and which for them is as near an approach
as can be n10.de to the feeling of religious joy.
"In Job," says that coldly truthful writer, the author of
Mark Rutherford, '^ God reminds us that man is not the mea-
sure of his creation. The world is immense, constructed on
no plan or theory which the intellect of man can grasp. It is
transcendent everywhere. This is the burden of every verse,
and is the secret, if there be one, of the poem. Sufficient or
insufficient, there is nothing more. . . . God is great, we know
not his ways. He takes from us all we have, but yet if we pos-
sess our souls in patience, we may pass the valley of the shadow,
and come out in sunlight again. We may or we may not I
. . . What more have we to say now than God said from the
whirlwind over two thousand five hundred years ago ? " ^
If we turn to the sanguine onlooker, on the other hand,
we find that deliverance is felt as incomplete unless the
burden be altogether overcome and the danger forgotten.
Such onlookers give us definitions that seem to the som-
bre minds of whom we have just been speaking to leave
out all the solemnity that makes religious peace so differ-
ent from merely animal joys. In the opinion of some
^ Mark Rntherford's Deliverance, London, 1885, pp. 196, 198.
THE REALITY OF THE UNSEEN 77
writers an attitude might be called religious, though no
touch were left in it of sacrifice or submission, no tend-
ency to flexion, no bowing of the head. Any ^^ habitual
and regulated admiration/' says Professor J. R. Seeley/
^^ is worthy to be called a religion " ; and accordingly he
thinks that our Music, our Science, and our so-called
^ Civilization,' as these things are now organized and
admiringly believed in, form the more genuine religions
of our time. Certainly the unhesitating and unreasoning
way in which we feel that we must inflict our civilization
upon Mower' races, by means of Hotchkiss guns, etc.,
reminds one of nothing so much as of the early spirit of
Islam spreading its religion by the sword.
In my last lecture I quoted to you the ultra-radical
opinion of Mr. Havelock Ellis, that laughter of any sort
may be considered a religious exercise, for it bears wit-
ness to the soul's emancipation. I quoted this opinion in
order to deny its adequacy. But we must now settle our
scores more carefully with this whole optimistic way of
thinking. It is far too complex to be decided off-hand.
I propose accordingly that we make of religious optimism
the theme of the next two lectures.
^ In bis book (too little read, I fear), Natural Beligion, 3d edition,
Boston, 1886, pp. 91, 122.
LECTURES IV AND V
THE RELIGION OF HEALTHY-MINDEDNESS
IF we were to ask the question : ' What is human
life's chief concern ? ' one of the answers we should
receive would be : ^ It is happiness.' How to gain, how
to keep, how to recover happiness, is in fact for most
men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of
all they are willing to endure. The hedonistic school in
ethics deduces the moral life wholly from the experiences
of happiness and unhappiness which different kinds of
conduct bring ; and, even more in the religious life than
in the moral life, happiness and unhappiness seem to be
the poles round which the interest revolves. We need
not go so far as to say with the author whom I lately
quoted that any persistent enthusiasm is, as such, reli-
gion, nor need we call mere laughter a religious exercise ;
but we must admit that any persistent enjoyment may
prodvce the sort of religion which consists in a grateful
admiration of the gift of so happy an existence ; and we
must also acknowledge that the more complex ways of
experiencing religion are new manners of producing hap-
piness, wonderful inner paths to a supernatural kind
of happiness, when the first gift of natural existence is
unhappy, as it so often proves itself to be.
With such relations between religion and happiness, it
is perhaps not surprising that men come to regard the
happiness which a religious belief affords as a proof of
its truth. If a creed makes a man feel happy, he almost
inevitably adopts it. Such a belief ought to be true;
THE RELIGION OF HEALTHY-MINDEDNESS 79
therefore it is true — such, rightly or wrongly, is one
of the ^ immediate inferences ' of the religious logic used
by ordinary men.
^^ The near presence of God's spirit,'* says a German writer,^
** may be experienced in its reality — indeed only experienced.
And the mark by which the spirit's existence and nearness are
made irrefutably clear to those who have ever had the expe-
rience is the utterly incomparable /ee^in^ of happiness which is
connected with the nearness, and which is therefore not only a
possible and altogether proper feeling for us to have here below,
but is the best and most indispensable proof of God's reality.
No other proof is equally convincing, and therefore happiness
is the point from which every efficacious new theology should
start."
In the hour immediately before us, I shall invite you
to consider the simpler kinds of religious happiness, leav-
ing the more complex sorts to be treated on a later day.
In many persons, happiness is congenital and irre-
claimable. ^ Cosmic emotion ' inevitably takes in them
the form of enthusiasm and freedom. I speak not only
of those who are animally happy. I mean those who,
when unhappiness is offered or proposed to them, posi-
tively refuse to feel it, as if it were something mean and
wrong. We find such persons in every age, passionately
flinging themselves upon their sense of the goodness
of Ufe, in spite of the hardships of their own condition,
and in spite of the sinister theologies into which they
may be born. From the outset their religion is one of
union with the divine. The heretics who went before the
reformation are lavishly accused by the church writers
of antinomian practices, just as the first Christians were
accused of indulgence in orgies by the Romans. It is
probable that there never has been a century in which the
deliberate refusal to think ill of life has not been ideal*
» C. HttTT : Glttck, dritter Theil, 1900, p. 18.
80 THE VARIETIES OF REUGIOUS EXPERIENCE
ized by a sufficient number of persons to form sects^ open
or secret, who claimed all natural things to be permitted.
Saint Augustine's maxim, Dilige et quod visfaCy — if you
but love [God], you may do as you incline, — is morally
one of the profoundest of observations, yet it is pregnant,
for such persons, with passports beyond the bounds of
conventional morality. According to their characters
they have been refined or gross; but their belief has
been at all times systematic enough to constitute a defi-
nite religious attitude. God was for them a giver of
freedom, and the sting of evil was overcome. Saint Fran-
cis and his immediate disciples were, on the whole, of
this company of spirits, of which there are of course infi-
nite varieties. Rousseau in the earUer years of his writ-
ing, Diderot, B. de Saint Pierre, and many of the leaders
of the eighteenth century anti-christian movement were
of this optimistic type. They owed their influence to a
certain authoritativeness in their feeling that Nature, if
you will only trust her sufficiently, is absolutely good.
It is to be hoped that we all have some friend, perhaps
more often feminine than masculine, and young than old,
whose soul is of this sky-blue tint, whose affinities are
rather with flowers and birds and all enchanting inno-
cencies, than with dark human passions, who can think
no ill of man or God, and in whom religious gladness,
being in possession from the outset, needs no deliverance
from any antecedent burden.
" God has two families of children on this earth," says Fran-
cis W. Newman,^ " the once-born and the twice-born^** and the
once-born he describes as follows : '^ They see God, not as a
strict Judge, not as a Glorious Potentate ; but as the animating
Spirit of a beautiful harmonious world. Beneficent and Kind,
Merciful as well as Pure. The same characters generally have
1 The Sonl ; its Sorrows and its Aspirations, 3d edition, 1S52, pp. 89, 91.
THE RELIGION OF HEALTHY-MINDEDNESS 81
no metaphysical tendencies : they do not look back into them-
selves. Hence they are not distressed by their own imperfec-
tions : yet it would be absurd to call them self-righteous ; for
they hardly think of themselves at all. This childlike quality
of their nature makes the opening of religion very happy to
them : for they no more shrink from God, than a child from an
emperor, before whom the parent trembles : in fact, they have
no vivid conception of any of the qualities in which the severer
Majesty of God consists.^ He is to them the impersonation
of Kindness and Beauty. They read his character, not in
the disordered world of man, but in romantic and harmonious
nature. Of human sin they know perhaps little in their own
hearts and not very much in the world ; and human suffering
does but melt them to tenderness. Thus, when they approach
God, no inward disturbance ensues ; and without being as yet
spiritual, they have a certain complacency and perhaps romantic
sense of excitement in their simple worship."
In the Romish Church such characters find a more
congenial soil to grow in than in Protestantism, whose
fashions of feeling have been set by minds of a decidedly
pessimistic order. But even in Protestantism they have
been abundant enough ; and in its recent ^ liberal ' de-
velopments of Unitarianism and latitudinarianism gener-
ally, minds of this order have played and still are playing
leading and constructive parts. Emerson himself is an
admirable example. Theodore Parker is another, — here
are a couple of characteristic passages from Parker's cor-
respondence.^
** Orthodox scholars say : * In the heathen classics you find no
consciousness of sin.' It is very true — God be thanked for it.
They were conscious of wrath, of cruelty, avarice, drunkenness,
lust, sloth, cowardice, and other actual vices, and struggled
and got rid of the deformities, but they were not conscious of
1 I once heard a lady describe the pleasure it gave her to think that she
^ oonld always onddle np to Grod."
* JOHH Weiss : Life of Theodore Parker, i. 152, 32.
82 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
* enmity agaiiiBt Ood/ and did n't sit down and whine and groan
against non-existent eviL I have done wrong things enough in
my life, and do them now ; I miss the mark, draw bow, and
try again. But I am not conscious of hating God, or man, or
right, or love, and I know there is much ^ health in me ' ; and in
my body, even now, there dwelleth many a good thing, spite of
consumption and Saint Paul." In another letter Parker writes :
*'I have swum in clear sweet waters all my days; and if
sometimes they were a little cold, and the stream ran adverse
and something rough, it was never too strong to be breasted and
swum through. From the days of earliest boyhood, when I
went stumbling through the grass, ... up to the gray-boarded
manhood of this time, there is none but has left me honey in
the hive of memory that I now feed on for present delight.
When I recall the years ... I am filled with a sense of sweet-
ness and wonder that such little things can make a mortal so
exceedingly rich. But I must confess that the chiefest of all
my delights is still the religious."
Another good expression of the * once-born ' type of
consciousness^ developing straight and natural, with no
element of morbid compunction or crisis, is contained in
the answer of Dr. Edward Everett Hale, the eminent
Unitarian preacher and writer, to one of Dr. Starbuck's
circulars. I quote a part of it : —
^' I observe, with profound regret, the religious struggles
which come into many biographies, as if almost essential to
the formation of the hero. I ought to speak of these, to say
that any man has an advantage, not to be estimated, who is
bom, as I was, into a family where the religion is simple and
rational ; who is trained in the theory of such a religion, so that
he never knows, for an hour, what these religious or irreligious
struggles are. I always knew God loved me, and I was always
grateful to him for the world he placed me in. I always liked
to tell him so, and was always glad to receive his suggestions to
me. ... I can remember perfectly that when I was coming to
manhood, the half-philosophical novels of the time had a deal
THE RELIGION OF HEALTHY-MINDEDNESS 83
to Bay about the young men and maidens who were facing the
^ problem of life.' I had no idea whatever what the problem
of life was. To live with all my might seemed to me easy ; to
learn where there was so much to learn seemed pleasant and
almost of course ; to lend a hand, if one had a chance, natu-
ral ; and if one did this, why, he enjoyed life because he could
not help it, and without proving to himself that he ought to en-
joy it ... A child who is early taught that he is God's child,
that he may live and move and have his being in God, and that
he has, therefore, infinite strength at hand for the conquering
of any difficulty, will take life more easily, and probably will
make more of it, than one who is told that he is bom the child
of wrath and wholly incapable of good." ^
One can but recognize in such writers as these the
presence of a temperament organically weighted on the
side of cheer and fatally forbidden to linger^ as those of
opposite temperament linger, oyer the darker aspects of
the universe. In some individuals optimism may be-
come quasi-pathological. The capacity for even a tran-
sient sadness or a momentary humility seems cut off
fcom them » by a kind o£ oo7geoi.al a,L.he«a.'
^ Starbuck : Psychology of Religion, pp. 305, 306.
s « I know not to what physical laws philosophers will some day refer the
feelings of melancholy. For myself, I find that they are the most volnp-
taons of all sensations," writes Saint Pierre, and accordingly he devotes a
series of sections of his work on Nature to the Plaisirs de la Ruine, Plaisirs
des Tomheaoz, Rnines de la Nature, Plaisirs de la Solitude — each of them
more optimistic than the last.
This finding of a luxury in woe is very common during adolescence. The
imth-telling Marie Bashkirtseff expresses it well : —
** In this depression and dreadful uuinterrupted suffering, I don't con-
demn life. On the contrary, I like it and find it good. Can you believe it ?
I find everything good and pleasant, even my tears, my grief. I enjoy
weeping, I enjoy my despair. I enjoy being exasperated and sad. I feel
M if these were so many diversions, and I love life in spite of them all. I
want to live on. It would be cruel to have me die when I am so accommo-
dating. I cry, I grieve, and at the same time I am pleased — no, not
exactly that — I know not how to express it. But everything in life pleases
me. I find everything agreeable, and in the very midst of my prayers for
84 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
The supreme contemporary example of such an inabil-
ity to feel evil is of course Walt Whitman.
^^ His favorite occupation," writes his disciple, Dr. Bucke,
*^ seemed to be strolling or sauntering about outdoors by him-
self, looking at the grass, the trees, the flowers, the vistas of
light, the varying aspects of the sky, and listening to the birds,
the crickets, the tree frogs, and all the hundreds of natural
sounds. It was evident that these things gave him a pleasure
far beyond what they give to ordinary people. Until I knew
the man," continues Dr. Bucke, '^ it had not occurred to me
that any one could derive so much absolute happiness from
these things as he did. lie was very fond of flowers, either wild
or cultivated ; liked all sorts. I think he admired lilacs and
sunflowers just as much as roses. Perhaps, indeed, no man
who ever lived liked so many things and disliked so few as
Walt Whitman. All natural objects seemed to have a charm
for him. All sights and sounds seemed to please him. He
appeared to like (and I believe he did like) all the men, women,
and children he saw (though I never knew him to say that he
liked any one), but each who knew him felt that he liked him
or her, and that he liked others also. I never knew him to argue
or dispute, and he never spoke about money. He always justi-
fied, sometimes playfully, sometimes quite seriously, those who
spoke harshly of himself or his writings, and I often thought
he even took pleasure in the opposition of enemies. When I
first knew [him], I used to think that he watched himself, and
would not allow his tongue to give expression to fretf ulness, an-
tipathy, complaint, and remonstrance. It did not occur to me
as possible that these mental states could be absent in him.
After long observation, however, I satisfied myself that such
absence or unconsciousness was entirely real. He never spoke
deprecatingly of any nationality or class of men, or time in the
world's history, or against any trades or occupations — not even
against any animals, insects, or inanimate things, nor any of the
happiness, I flud myself happy at being miserable. It is not I who undergo
all this — my body weeps and cries ; but something inside of me which is
above me is glad of it aU.'' Journal de Marie Bashkirtseff, i. 67.
THE RELIGION OF HEALTHY-MINDEDNESS ^ 85
laws of nature, nor any of the results of those laws, such as ill-
ness, deformity, and death. He never complained or grumbled
either at the weather, pain, illness, or anything else. He never
swore. He could not very well, since he never spoke in anger
and apparently never was angry. He never exhibited fear, and
I do not believe he ever felt it." ^
Walt Whitman owes his importance in Hterature to the
systematic expulsion from his writings of all contractile
elements. The only sentiments he allowed himself to
express were of the expansive order ; and he expressed
these in the first person, not as your mere monstrously
conceited individual might so express them, but vicari-
ously for all men, so that a passionate and mystic ontolo-
gical emotion suffuses his words, and ends by persuading
the reader that men and women, life and death, and all
things are divinely good.
Thus it has come about that many persons to-day
regard Walt Whitman as the restorer of the eternal natu-
ral religion. He has infected them with his own love of
comrades, with his own gladness that he and they exist.
Societies are actually formed for his cult; a periodical
organ exists for its propagation, in which the lines of
orthodoxy and heterodoxy are already beginning to be
drawn ; ^ hymns are written by others in his peculiar
prosody ; and he is even explicitly compared with the
founder of the Christian religion, not altogether to the
advantage of the latter.
Whitman is often spoken of as a ^ pagan/ The word
nowadays means sometimes the mere natural animal man
without a sense of sin ; sometimes it means a Greek or
Boman with his own peculiar religious consciousness. In
1 R. M. Bucks : Cosmic Consciousness, pp. 182-186, abridged.
' I refer to The Conservator, edited by Horace Tranbel, and published
monthly at Philadelphia.
86 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
neither of these senses does it fitly define this poet. He
is more than your mere animal man who has not tasted
of the tree of good and evil. He is aware enough of sin
for a swagger to be present in his indifEerence towards it,
a conscious pride in his freedom from flexions and con-
tractions, which your genuine pagan in the first sense of
the word would never show.
« I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-containedf
I stand and look at them long and long ;
They do not sweat and whine about their condition.
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins.
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning
things.
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of yean
ago.
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth." ^
No natural pagan could have written these well-known
lines. But on the other hand Whitman is less than a
Greek or Roman ; for their consciousness, even in Ho-
meric times, was full to the brim of the sad mortality
of this sunlit world, and such a consciousness Walt Whit-
man resolutely refuses to adopt. When, for example,
Achilles, about to slay Lycaon, Priam's young son, hears
him sue for mercy, he stops to say : —
*^Ah, friend, thou too must die: why thus lamentest thou?
Patroclos too is dead, who was better far than thou. • • .
Over me too hang death and forceful fate. There cometh mom
or eve or some noonday when my life too some man shall take
in battle, whether with spear he smite, or arrow from the
string." »
Then Achilles savagely severs the poor boy's neck with
his sword, heaves him by the foot into the Scamander,
and calls to the fishes of the river to eat the white fat of
Lycaon. Just as here the cruelty and the sympathy each
1 Song of Myself, 32.
' Iliad, XXI., E. Myers's translation.
THE RELIGION OF HEALTHY-MINDEDNESS 87
ring true, and do not mix or interfere with one another,
80 did the Greeks and Romans keep all their sadnesses and
gladnesses unmingled and entire. Instinctive good they
did not reckon sin ; nor had they any such desire to save
the credit of the universe as to make them insist, as so
many of us insist, that what immediately appears as evil
must be ^ good in the making,' or something equally in-
genious. Good was good, and bad just bad, for the earlier
Greeks. They neither denied the ills of nature, — Walt
Whitman's verse, ^ What is called good is perfect and
what is called bad is just as perfect,' would have been
mere silliness to them, — nor did they, in order to escape
from those ills, invent ^ another and a better world ' of the
imagination, in which, along with the ills, the innocent
goods of sense would also find no place. This integrity
of the instinctive reactions, this freedom from all moral
sophistry and strain, gives a pathetic dignity to ancient
pagan feeling. And this quality Whitman's outpourings
have not got. His optimism is too voluntary and defi-
ant ; his gospel has a touch of bravado and an affected
twist,^ and this diminishes its effect on many readers who
yet are well disposed towards optimism, and on the whole
quite wUling to admit that in important respects Whitman
is of the genuine lineage of the prophets.
If, then, we give the name of healthy-mindedness to the
tendency which looks on all things and sees that they are
good, we find that we must distinguish between a more
involuntary and a more voluntary or systematic way of
being healthy-minded. In its involuntary variety, healthy-
^ ** God IB afraid of me I '' remarked snob a titanic-optimistic frieod in
mj presence one morning when he was feeling particularly hearty and can-
nibalistic. The defiance of the phrase showed that a Christian education
in bomility stiU rankled in bis breast.
88 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
mindedness is a way of feeling happy about things im-
mediately. In its systematical variety, it is an abstract
way of conceiving things as good. Every abstract way of
conceiving things selects some one aspect of them as their
essence for the time being, and disregards the other as-
pects. Systematic healthy-mindedness, conceiving good as
the essential and universal aspect of being, deliberately
excludes evil from its field of vision ; and although,
when thus nakedly stated, this might seem a difficult feat
to perform for one who is intellectually sincere with him-
self and honest about facts, a little reflection shows that
the situation is too complex to lie open to so simple a
criticism.
In the first place, happiness, like every other emotional
state, has blindness and insensibility to opposing facts
given it as its instinctive weapon for self-protection
against disturbance. When happiness is actually in pos-
session, the thought of evil can no more acquire the feel-
ing of reality than the thought of good can gain reality
when melancholy rules. To the man actively happy,
from whatever cause, evil simply cannot then and there
be believed in. He must ignore it ; and to the bystander
he may then seem perversely to shut his eyes to it and
hush it up.
But more than this : the hushing of it up may, in a
perfectly candid and honest mind, grow into a deliberate
religious policy, or parti j^ris. Much of what we call
evil is due entirely to the way men take the phenomenon.
It can so often be converted into a bracing and tonic
good by a simple change of the sufferer's inner attitude
from one of fear to one of fight ; its sting so often de-
parts and turns into a relish when, after vainly seeking
to shun it, we agree to face about and bear it cheerfully,
that a man is simply bound in honor, with reference to
THE RELIGION OF HEALTHY-MINDEDNESS 89
many of the facts that seem at first to disconcert his
peace, to adopt this way of escape. Refuse to admit
their badness 5 despise their power; ignore their pre-
sence ; turn your attention the other way ; and so far as
you yourself are concerned at any rate, though the facts
may still exist, their evil character exists no longer.
Since you make them evil or good by your own thoughts
about them, it is the ruling of your thoughts which
proves to be your principal concern.
The deliberate adoption of an optimistic turn of mind
thus makes its entrance into philosophy. And once in,
it is hard to trace its lawful bounds. Not only does the
human instinct for happiness, bent on self-protection by
ignoring, keep working in its favor, but higher inner
ideals have weighty words to say. The attitude of unhap-
piness is not only painful, it is mean and ugly. What can
be more base and unworthy than the pining, puling,
mumping mood, no matter by what outward ills it may
have been engendered ? What is more injurious to oth-
ers ? What less helpful as a way out of the difficulty ?
It but fastens and perpetuates the trouble which occa-
sioned it, and increases the total evil of the situation.
At all costs, then, we ought to reduce the sway of that
mood ; we ought to scout it in ourselves and others, and
never show it tolerance. But it is impossible to carry on
this discipUne in the subjective sphere without zealously
emphasizing the brighter and minimizing the darker as-
pects of the objective sphere of things at the same time.
And thus our resolution not to indulge in misery, begin-
ning at a comparatively small point within ourselves,
may not stop until it has brought the entire frame of
reality under a systematic conception optimistic enough
to be congenial with its needs.
In all this I say nothing of any mystical insight or
90 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
persuasion that the total frame of things absolutely must
be good. Such mystical persuasion plays an enormous
part in the history of the religious consciousness, and
we must look at it later with some care. But we need
not go so far at present. More ordinary non-mystical con-
ditions of rapture suffice for my immediate contention.
All invasive moral states and passionate enthusiasms
make one feelingless to evil in some direction. The
common penalties cease to deter the patriot, the usual
prudences are flung by the lover to the winds. When
the passion is extreme, suffering may actually be gloried
in, provided it be for the ideal cause, death may lose its
sting, the grave its victory. In these states, the ordinary
contrast of good and ill seems to be swallowed up in a
higher denomination, an omnipotent excitement which
engulfs the evil, and which the human being welcomes
as the crowning experience of his life. This, he says, is
truly to live, and I exult in the heroic opportunity and
adventure.
The systematic cultivation of healthy-mindedness as a
religious attitude ib therefore consonant with important
currents in human nature, and is anything but absurd.
In fact, we all do cultivate it more or less, even when our
professed theology should in consistency forbid it. We
divert our attention from disease and death as much as
we can ; and the slaughter-houses and indecencies with-
out end on which our life is founded are huddled out of
sight and never mentioned, so that the world we recog-
nize officially in literature and in society is a poetic fiction
far handsomer and cleaner and better than the world that
really is.^
^ " As I go on in this life, day by day, I become more of a bewildered
child; I cannot get used to this world, to procreation, to heredity, to sight,
to hearing ; the commonest things are a burthen. The prim, obliterated^
THE RELIGION OF HEALTHY-MINDEDNESS 91
The^ advance of liberalism, so-called, in Christianity,
during the past fifty years, may fairly be called a victory
of healthy-mindedness within the church over the morbid-
ness with which the old hell-fire theology was more har-
moniously related. We have now whole congregations
whose preachers, far from magnifying our consciousness
of sin, seem devoted rather to making little of it. They
ignore, or even deny, eternal punishment, and insist on
the dignity rather than on the depravity of man. They
look at the continual preoccupation of the old-fashioned
Christian with the salvation of his soul as something
sickly and reprehensible rather than admirable; and a
sanguine and ^muscular' attitude, which to our fore-
fathers would have seemed purely heathen, has become
in their eyes an ideal element of Christian character. I
am not asking whether or not they are right, I am only
pointing out the change.
The persons to whom I refer have still retained for the
most part their nominal connection with Christianity, in
spite of their discarding of its more pessimistic theologi-
cal elements. But in that ^ theory of evolution ' which,
gathering momentum for a century, has within the past
twenty-five years swept so rapidly over Europe and Amer-
ica, we see the ground laid for a new sort of religion of
Nature, which has entirely displaced Christianity from
the thought of a large part of our generation. The idea
of a universal evolution lends itself to a doctrine of gen-
eral meliorism and progress which fits the religious needs
of the healthy-minded so well that it seems sdmost as if
it might have been created for their use. Accordingly
we find ^ evolutionism ' interpreted thus optimistically and
polite snrface of life, and the broad, bawdy, and orgiastic — or nuenadio —
foundations, form a spectacle to which no habit reconciles me." R. L.
Stevxkson : Letters, ii. 356.
92 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
embraced as a substitute for the religion they were born
in, by a multitude of our contemporaries who have either
been trained scientifically, or been fond of reading pop-
ular science, and who had already begun to be inwardly
dissatisfied with what seemed to them the harshness and
irrationality of the orthodox Christian scheme. As exam-
ples are better than descriptions, I will quote a document
received in answer to Professor Starbuck's circular of ques-
tions. The writer's state of mind may by courtesy be
called a religion, for it is his reaction on the whole nature
of things, it is systematic and reflective, and it loyally
binds him to certain inner ideals. I think you will recog-
nize in him, coarse-meated and incapable of wounded
spirit as he is, a sufficiently familiar contemporary type.
Q. What does Religion mean to you ? *
A. It means nothing ; and it seems, so far as I can observe,
useless to others. I am sixty-seven years of age and have re-
sided in X. fifty years, and have been in business forty-five,
consequently I have some little experience of life and men, and
some women too, and I find that the most religious and pious
people are as a rule those most lacking in uprightness and mo-
rality. The men who do not go to church or have any religious
convictions are the best. Praying, singing of hymns, and ser-
monizing are pernicious — they teach us to rely on some super-
natural power, when we ought to rely on ourselves. I f eetotally
disbelieve in a God. The God-idea was begotten in ignorance,
fear, and a general lack of any knowledge of Nature. If I were
to die now, being in a healthy condition for my age, both men-
tally and physically, I would just as lief, yes, rather, die with a
hearty enjoyment of music, sport, or any other rational pastime.
As a timepiece stops, we die — there being no immortality in
either case.
Q. What comes before your mind corresponding to the
toords God^ Heaven^ Angels^ etc. f
A. Nothing whatever. I am a man without a religion.
These words mean so much mythic bosh.
THE RELIGION OF HEALTHT-MINDEDNESS 93
Q. Siave you had any ea^eriences xjohich appeared provi-
dential?
A. None whatever. There is no agency of the snperintend-
ing kind. A little judicious observation as well as knowledge
of scientific law will convince any one of this fact.
Q. What things work most strongly on your emotions ?
A. Lively songs and music ; Pinafore instead of an Oratorio.
I like Scott, Bums, Byron, Longfellow, especially Shake-
speare, etc., etc. Of songs, the Star-spangled Banner, America,
Marseillaise, and all moral and soul-stirring songs, but wishy-
washy hymns are my detestation. I greatly enjoy nature,
especially fine weather, and until within a few years used to
walk Sundays into the country, twelve miles often, with no
fatigue, and bicycle forty or fifty. I have dropped the bicycle.
I never go to church, but attend lectures when there are any
good ones. All of my thoughts and cogitations have been of
a healthy and cheerful kind, for instead of doubts and fears I
see things as they are, for I endeavor to adjust myself to my
environment. This I regard as the deepest law. Mankind
is a progressive animaL I am satisfied he will have made a
great advance over his present status a thousand years hence.
Q. What is your notion of sin ?
A. It seems to me that sin is a condition, a disease, inciden-
tal to man's development not being yet advanced enough.
Morbidness over it increases the disease. We should think
that a million of years hence equity, justice, and mental and
physical good order will be so fixed and organized that no one
will have any idea of evil or sin.
Q. What is your temperament ?
A. Nervous, active, wide-awake, mentally and physically.
Sorry that Nature compels us to sleep at all.
If we are in search of a broken and a contrite heart,
clearly we need not look to this brother. His content-
ment with the finite incases him like a lobster-shell and
shields him from all morbid repining at his distance from
the Infinite. We have in him an excellent example of the
optimism which may be encouraged by popular science.
94 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
To my mind a current far more important and inters
esting religiously than that which sets in from natural
83ience towards healthy-mindedness is that which has
recently poured over America and seems to be gathering
force every day, — I am ignorant what foothold it may
yet have acquired in Great Britain, — and to which, for
the sake of having a brief designation, I will give the
title of the ^ Mind-cure movement/ There are various
sects of this ^ New Thought,' to use another of the names
by which it calls itself ; but their agreements are so pro-
found that their differences may be neglected for my
present purpose, and I will treat the movement, without
apology, as if it were a simple thing.
It is h deliberately optimistic scheme of life, with both
a speculative and a practical side. In its gradual develop-
ment during the last quarter of a century, it has taken
up into itself a number of contributory elements, and it
must now be reckoned with as a genuine religious power.
It has reached the stage, for example, when the demand
for its literature is great enough for insincere stuff,
mechanically produced for the market, to be to a certain
extent supplied by publishers, — a phenomenon never
observed, I imagine, until a religion has got well past
its earliest insecure beginnings.
One of the doctrinal sources of Mind-cure is the four
Gospels ; another is Emersonianism or New England tran-
scendentalism ; another is Berkeleyan idealism ; another
is spiritism, with its messages of ^ law ' and ^ progress '
and ^ development ' ; another the optimistic popular sci-
ence evolutionism of which I have recently spoken ; and,
finally, Hinduism has contributed a strain. But the
most characteristic feature of the mind-cure movement
is an inspiration much more direct. The leaders in this
faith have had an intuitive belief in the all-saving power
THE RELIGION OF HEALTHY-MINDEDNESS 06
of healthy-minded attitudes as such, in the conquering
efficacy of courage, hope, and trust, and a correlative
contempt for doubt, fear, worry, and all nervously pre-
cautionary states of mind.» Their beUef has in a gen-
eral way been corroborated by the practical experience of
their disciples : and this experience forms to-day a mass
imposing in amount.
The blind have been made to see, the halt to walk ;
lifelong invalids have had their health restored. The
moral fruits have been no less remarkable. The deliber-
ate adoption of a healthy-minded attitude has proved pos-
sible to many who never supposed they had it in them ;
regeneration of character has gone on on an extensive
scale; and cheerfulness has been restored to countless
homes. The indirect influence of this has been great.
The mind-cure principles are beginning so to pervade
the air that one catches their spirit at second-hand.
One hears of the ^ Gospel of Relaxation,' of the ^ Don't
Worry Movement,' of people who repeat to themselves,
^ Touth, health, vigor ! ' when dressing in the morning,
as their motto for the day. Complaints of the weather
are getting to be forbidden in many households; and
more and more people are recognizing it to be bad form
to speak of disagreeable sensations, or to make much of
the ordinary inconveniences and ailments of life. These
general tonic effects on public opinion would be good
even if the more striking results were non-existent. But
the latter abound so that we can afford to overlook the
^ ' Cautionary Verses for Children ' : this title of a mnch used work, pub-
lished early in the nineteenth century, shows how far the muse of evangelical
protestantism in England, with her mind fixed on the idea of danger, had
at last drifted away from the original gospel freedom. Mind-cure might
be briefly called a reaction against all that religion of chronic anxiety which
marked the earlier part of our century in the eTangelioal circles of England
•nd America.
96 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
innumerable failures and self-deceptions that are mixed
in with them (for in everything human failure is a matter
of course), and we can also overlook the verbiage of a
good deal of the mind-cure literature, some of which is
so moonstruck with optimism and so vaguely expressed
that an academically trained intellect finds it almost im-
possible to read it at all/
The plain fact remains that the spread of the move-
ment has been due to practical fruits, and the extremely
practical turn of character of the American people has
never been better shown than by the fact that this, their
only decidedly original contribution to the systematic
philosophy of life, should be so intimately knit up with
concrete therapeutics. To the importance of mind-cure
the medical and clerical professions in the United States
are beginning, though with much recalcitrancy and pro-
testing, to open their eyes. It is evidently bound to
develop still farther, both speculatively and practically,
and its latest writers are far and away the ablest of the
group.^ It matters nothing that, just as there are hosts
of persons who cannot pray, so there are greater hosts
who cannot by any possibility be influenced by the mind-
curers' ideas. For our immediate purpose, the important
point is that so large a number should exist who can be
so influenced. They form a psychic type to be studied
with respect.^
' I refer to Mr. Horatio W. Dresser and Mr. Henry Wood, especially the
former. Mr. Dresser's works are published by G. P. Putnam's Sods, New
York and London ; Mr. Wood's by Lee & Shepard, Boston.
' Lest my own testimony be suspected, I will quote another reporter. Dr.
H. H. Goddard, of Clark University, whose thesis on *< the Effects of Mind
on Body as evidenced by Faith Cures " is published in the American Jour-
nal of Psychology for 1899 (vol. z.). This critic, after a wide study of the
facts, concludes that the cures by mind-cure exist, but are in no respect
different from those now officially recognized in medicine as cures by sug^
gestion ; and the end of his essay contains an interesting physiological
THE RELIGION OF HEALTHT-MINDEDNESS 97
To come now to a little closer quarters with their
creed. The fundamental pillar on which it rests is
nothing more than the general basis of all reUgious
experience, the fact that man has a dual nature, and is
connected with two spheres of thought, a shallower and
a profounder sphere, in either of which he may learn to
live more habitually. The shallower and lower sphere is
that of the fleshly sensations, instincts, and desires, of
egotism, doubt, and the lower personal interests. But
whereas Christian theology has always considered fro-
speculation as to the way in which the suggestive ideas may work (p. 67 of
the reprint). As regards the general phenomenon of mental cure itself,
Dr. Goddard writes : ** In spite of the severe criticism we have made of
reports of cure, there still remains a vast amount of material, showing a
powerful influence of the mind in disease. Many cases are of diseases that
have been diagnosed and treated by the best physicians of the country, or
which prominent hospitals have tried their hand at curing, but without suc-
cess. People of culture and education have been treated by this method
with satisfactory results. Diseases of long standing have been ameliorated,
and even cured. . . . We have traced the mental element through primi-
tive medicine and folk-medicine of to-day, patent medicine, and witchcraft.
We are convinced that it is impossible to account for the existence of these
practices, if they did not cure disease, and that if they cured disease, it
must have been the mental element that was effective. The same argu-
ment applies to those moc(em schools of mental therapeutics — Divine
Healing and Christian Science. It is hardly conceivable that the large body
of intelligent people who comprise the body known distinctively as Mental
Scientists should continue to exist if the whole thing were a delusion. It is
not a thing of a day ; it is not confined to a few ; it is not local. It is true
that many failures are recorded, but that only adds to the argument There
must be many and striking successes to counterbalance the failures, other-
wise the failures would have ended the delusion. . . . Christian Science,
Divine Healing, or Mental Science do not, and never can in the very nature
of things, cure all diseases ; nevertheless, the practical applications of the
general principles of the broadest mental science will tend to prevent
disease. . . . We do find sufficient evidence to convince us that the proper
reform in mental attitude would relieve many a sufferer of ills that the
ordinary physician cannot touch ; would even delay the approach of death
to many a victim beyond the power of absolute cure, and the faithful
adherence to a truer philosophy of life will keep many a man well, and
give the doctor time to devote to alleviating ills that are unpreventable "
(pp. 33, 31 of reprint).
96 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
wardne88 to be the essential vice of this part of human
nature, the mind-curers say that the mark of the beast
in it is fear ; and this is what gives such an entirely new
religious turn to their persuasion.
^^ Fear," to quote a writer of the school, ^^ has had its uses in
the evolutionary process, and seems to constitute the whole of
forethought in most animals ; but that it should remain any
part of the mental equipment of human civilized life is an
absurdity. I find that the fear element of forethought is not
stimulating to those more civilized persons to whom duty and
attraction are the natural motives, but is weakening and deter-
rent. As soon as it becomes unnecessary, fear becomes a posi-
tive deterrent, and should be entirely removed, as dead flesh is
removed from living tissue. To assist in the analysis of fear,
and in the denunciation of its expressions, I have coined the
word fcarthouglit to stand for the unprofitable element of fore-
thought, and have defined the word * worry ' as fearthought in
contradistinction to forethought I have also defined fear-
thought as the self imposed or self-permitted suggestion of
inferiority^ in onler to place it where it really belongs, in the
category of harmful, unnecessary, and therefore not respectable
things/' 1
The ' misery-habit/ the ' martyr-habit/ engendered by
the prevalent ^ fearthought/ get pungent criticism from
the mind-cure writers : —
** Consider for a moment the habits of life into which we are
bom. There are certain social conventions or customs and
alleged requirements, there is a theological bias, a general view
of the world. There are conservative ideas in regard to our
early training, our education, marriage, and occupation in life.
Following close upon this, there is a long series of anticipations,
namely, that we shall suffer certain children's diseases, diseases
of middle life, and of old age ; the thought that we shall grow
^ Horace Fletcher : Happiness as found in Forethought minus Fear-
thought, Menticulture Series, ii. Chicago and New York, Stone, 1897, pp*
21-1^, abridged.
THE RELIGION OF HEALTHT-MINDEDNESS 99
old, lose our faculties, and again become childlike ; while crown-
ing all is the fear of death. Then there is a long line of
particular fears and trouble-bearing expectations, such, for
example, as ideas associated with certain articles of food, the
dread of the east wind, the terrors of hot weather, the aches
and pains associated with cold weather, the fear of catching
cold if one sits in a draught, the coming of hay-fever upon the
14th of August in the middle of the day, and so on through
a long list of fears, dreads, worriments, anxieties, anticipations,
expectations, pessimisms, morbidities, and the whole ghostly
train of fateful shapes which our fellow-men, and especially
physicians, are ready to help us conjure up, an array worthy to
rank with Bradley's ' unearthly ballet of bloodless categories.'
^^ Yet this is not all. This vast array is swelled by innumer-
able volunteers from daily life, — the fear of accident, the pos-
sibility of calamity, the loss of property, the chance of robbery,
of fire, or the outbreak of war. And it is not deemed sufficient
to fear for ourselves. When a friend is taken ill, we must
forthwith fear the worst and apprehend death. If one meets
with sorrow . • • sympathy means to enter into and increase
the suffering." ^
^* Man," to quote another writer, ^ often has fear stamped
upon him before his entrance into the outer world ; he is reared
in fear ; all his life is passed in bondage to fear of disease and
death, and thus his whole mentality becomes cramped, limited,
and depressed, and his body follows its shrunken pattern and
specification. . . . Think of the millions of sensitive and respon*
sive souls among our ancestors who have been under the domin-
ion of such a perpetual nightmare ! Is it not surprising that
health exists at sdl ? Nothing but the boundless divine love,
exuberance, and vitality, constantly poured in, even though
unconsciously to us, could in some degree neutralize such an
ocean of morbidity." »
Although the disciples of the mind-cure often use
Christian terminology, one sees from such quotations
^ H. W. Dresser : Voices of Freedom, New York, 1899, p. 38.
* Hekry Wood : Ideal Snggestion throngh Mental Fhotograpbj, Boston,
1899, p. 54.
100 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
how widely their notion of the fall of man diverges from
that of ordinary Christians.^
Their notion of man's higher nature is hardly less
divergent, being decidedly pantheistic. The spiritual in
man appears in the mind-cure philosophy as partly con-
scious, but chiefly subconscious ; and through the sub-
conscious part of it we are already one with the Divine
without any miracle of grace, or abrupt creation of a
new inner man. As this view is variously expressed by
different writers, we find in it traces of Christian mysti-
cism, of transcendental idealism, of vedantism, and of
the modern psychology of the subliminal self. A quota-
tion or two will put us at the central point of view : —
^^ The great central fact of the universe is that spirit of inftw
nite life and power that is back of all, that manifests itself in
and through all. This spirit of infinite life and power that is
back of all is what 1 call God. I care not what term you may
use, be it Kindly Light, Providence, the Over-Soul, Omnipo-
^ Whether it differs so much from Christ's own notion is for the ezeg^t>
ists to decide. According to Ilarnack, Jesus felt about evil and diieuc
much as our mind-curers do. " What is the answer which Jesus senda to
John the Baptist ? " asks Hamack, and says it is this : " * The blind see,
and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead rise
up, and the gospel is preached to the poor.' That is the * coming of the
kingdom,' or rather in these saving works the kingdom is already there.
By the overcoming and removal of misery, of need, of sickness, by these
actual effects John is to see that the new time has arrived. The easting
out of devils is only a part of this work of redemption, hut Jesus points to
that as the sense and seal of his mission. Thus to the wretched, sick, and
poor did he address himself, but not as a moralist, and without a trace of
sentimentalism. He never makes groups and departments of the ills ; he
never spends time in asking whether the sick one * deserves ' to be cored ;
and it never occurs to him to sympathize with the pain or the death. He
nowhere says that sickness is a beneficent infliction, and that evil has a
healthy use. No, he calls sickness sickness and health health. All evil,
all wretchedness, is for him something dreadful ; it is of the great kingdom
of Satan ; but he feels the power ai the Saviour within him. He knows
that advance is possible only when weakness is overcome, when sickness is
made weU." Das Wesen des Christenthums, 1900, p. 39.
THE RELIGION OF HEALTHY-MINDEDNE8S 101
tence, or whatever term may be most convenient, so long as we
are agreed in regard to the great central fact itseU. God then
fills the universe alone, so that all is from Him and in Him,
and there is nothing that is outside. He is the life of our life,
our very life itself. We are partakers of the life of God ; and
though we differ from Him in that we are individualized spirits,
while He is the Infinite Spirit, including us, as well as all else
beside, yet in essence the life of God and the life of man are
identically the same, and so are one. They differ not in essence
or quality ; they differ in degree.
^ The great central fact in human life is the coming into a
conscious vital realization of our oneness with this Infinite Life,
and the opening of ourselves fully to thb divine inflow. In
just the degree that we come into a conscious realization of our
oneness with the Infinite Life, and open ourselves to this divine
inflow, do we actualize in ourselves the qualities and powers
of the Infinite Life, do we make ourselves channels through
which the Infinite Intelligence and Power can work. In just
the degree in which you realize your oneness with the Infinite
Spirit, you will exchange dis-ease for ease, inharmony for har-
mony, suffering and pain for abounding health and strength.
To recognize our own divinity, and our intimate relation to the
Universal, is to attach the belts of our machinery to the power-
house of the Universe. One need remain in hell no longer than
one chooses to ; we can rise to any heaven we ourselves choose ;
and when we choose so to rise, all the higher powers of the
Universe combine to help us heavenward." ^
Let me now pass from these abstracter statements to
some more concrete accounts of experience with the
mind-cure religion. I have many answers from corre-
spondents — the only difficulty is to choose. The first
two whom I shall quote are my personal friends. One of
them, a woman, writing as follows, expresses well the
feeling of continuity with the Infinite Power, by which
all mind-cure disciples are inspired.
^ R. W. Trine: In Tone with the Infinite, 26th thonsand, N. Y., 1899.
I have strong scattered passages together.
102 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
^^ The first underlying cause of all sickness, weakness, or
depression is the human sense of separateness from that
Divine Energy which we call God. The soul which can feel
and affirm in serene but jubilant confidence, as did the Nassa-
rene : * I and my Father are one,' has no further need of healer,
or of healing. This is the whole truth in a nutshell, and other
foundation for wholeness can no man lay than this fact of
impregnable divine union. Disease can no longer attack one
whose feet are planted on this rock, who feels hourly, momently,
the influx of the Deific Breath. If one with Omnipotence, how
can weariness enter the consciousness, how illness assail that
indomitable spark ?
^' This possibility of annulling forever the law of fatigue has
been abundantly proven in my own case ; for my earlier life
bears a record of many, many years of bedridden invalidism,
with spine and lower limbs paralyzed. My thoughts were no
more impure than they are to-day, although my belief in the
necessity of illness was dense and unenlightened ; but since my
resurrection in the flesh, I have worked as a healer unceasingly
for fourteen years without a vacation, and can truthfully assert
that I have never known a moment of fatigue or pain, although
coming in touch constantly with excessive weakness, illness, and
disease of all kinds. For how can a conscious part of Deity be
sick? — since ^Greater is he that is tvith us than all that can
strive against us.' "
My second correspondent^ also a woman, sends me the
following statement : —
^' Life seemed difficult to me at one time. I was always break-
ing down, and had several attacks of what is called nervous
prostration, with terrible insomnia, being on the verge of insan-
ity ; besides having many other troubles, especially of the
digestive organs. I had been sent away from home in charge
of doctors, had taken all the narcotics, stopped all work, been
fed up, and in fact knew all the doctors within reach. But
I never recovered permanently till this New Thought took pos-
session of me.
^^ I think that the one thing which impressed me most was
THE RELIGION OF HEALTHY-MINDEDNESS 103
learning the fact that we must be in absolutely constant relation
or mental touch (this word is to me very expressive) with that
essence of life which permeates all and which we call God.
This is almost unrecognizable unless we live it into ourselves
actually^ that is, by a constant turning to the very innermost,
deepest consciousness of our real selves or of Grod in us, for
illumination from within, just as we turn to the sun for light,
warmth, and invigoration without. When you do this con-
sciously, realizing that to turn inward to the b'ght within you
is to live in the presence of God or your divine self, you soon
discover the unreality of the objects to which you have hitherto
been turning and which have engrossed you without.
^^ I have come to disregard the meaning of this attitude for
bodily health as such^ because that comes of itself, as an inci-
dental result, and cannot be found by any special mental act or
desire to have it, beyond that general attitude of mind I have
referred to above. That which we usually make the object of
life, those outer things we are all so wildly seeking, which we
80 often live and die for, but which then do not give us peace
and happiness, they should all come of themselves as accessory,
and as the mere outcome or natural result of a far higher life
sunk deep in the bosom of the spirit. This life is the real seek-
ing of the kingdom of God, the desire for his supremacy in our
hearts, so that all else comes as that which shall be ^ added
unto you ' — as quite incidental and as a surprise to us, per-
haps ; and yet it is the proof of the reality of the perfect poise
in the very centre of our being.
^^ When I say that we commonly make the object of our life
that which we should not work for primarily, I mean many
things which the world considers praiseworthy and excellent,
such as success in business, fame as author or artist, physician
or lawyer, or renown in philanthropic undertakings. Such
things should be results, not objects. I would also include
pleasures of many kinds which seem harmless and good at the
time, and are pursued because many accept them — I mean
conventionalities, sociabilities, and fashions in their various de-
velopment, these being mostly approved by the masses, although
Uiey may be unreal, and even unhealthy superfluities."
104 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
Here is another case, more concrete^ also that of a
woman. I read you these cases without comment, — they
express so many varieties of the state of mind we are
studying.
^^ I bad been a sufferer from my cbildbood till my f ortieih
year. [Details of ill-bealtb are given which I omit.] I had
been in Vermont several months hoping for good from the
change of air, but steadily growing weaker, when one day dur-
ing the latter part of October, while resting in the afternoon,
I suddenly heard as it were these words : ^ You will be healed
and do a work you never dreamed of.' These words were
impressed upon my mind with such power Fsaid at once that
only God could have put them there. I believed them in spite
of myself and of my suffering and weakness, which continued
until Christmas, when I returned to Boston. VTithin two
days a young friend offered to take me to a mental healer (this
was January 7, 1881). The healer said : ^ There is nothing
but Mind ; we are expressions of the One Mind ; body is only
a mortal belief ; as a man thinketh so is he.' I could not ac-
cept all she said, but I translated all that was there for me in
this way : ^ There is nothing but God ; I am created by Him,
and am absolutely dependent upon Him ; mind is given me to
use ; and by just so much of it as I will put upon the thought
of right action in body I shall be lifted out of bondage to my
ignorance and fear and past experience.' That day I com-
menced accordingly to take a little of every food provided for
the family, constantly saying to myself : *• The Power that cre-
ated the stomach must take care of what I have eaten.' By
holding these suggestions through the evening I went to bed
and fell asleep, saying : ^ I am soul, spirit, just one with Gtid's
Thought of me,' and slept all night without waking, for the first
time in several years [the distress-turns had usually recurred
about two o'clock in the night]. I felt the next day like an
escaped prisoner, and believed I had found the secret that
would in time give me perfect health. Within ten days I was
able to eat anjrthing provided for others, and after two weeks
I began to have my own positive mental suggestions of Truth,
«
THE RELIGION OF HEALTHY-MINDEDKESS 105
which were to me like stepping-stones. I will note a few of
them ; they came about two weeks apart.
*^ 1st. I am Soul, therefore it is well with me.
^^ 2d. I am Soul, therefore I am well.
** 8d. A sort of inner vision of myself as a four-footed beast
with a protuberance on every part of my body where I had
suffering, with my own face, begging me to acknowledge it as
myself. I resolutely fixed my attention on being well, and
refused to even look at my old self in this form.
^^ 4th. Again the vision of the beast far in the background,
with faint voice. Again refusal to acknowledge.
^^ 5th. Once more the vision, but only of my eyes with the
longing look ; and again the refusal. Then came the convic-
tion, the inner consciousness, that I was perfectly well and al-
ways had been, for I was Soul, an expression of Grod's Perfect
Thought. That was to me the perfect and completed separa-
tion between what I was and what I appeared to be. I suc-
ceeded in never losing sight after this of my real being, by
constantly affirming this truth, and by degrees (though it took
me two years of hard work to get there) / expressed health
continuoiLsly throughout my whole body.
** In my subsequent nineteen years* experience I have never
known this Truth to fail when I applied it, though in my igno-
ranee I have often failed to apply it, but through my failures I
have learned the simplicity and trustfulness of the little child."
But I fear that I risk tiring you by so many examples,
and I must lead you back to philosophic generalities again.
You see already by such records of experience how im-
possible it is not to class mind-cure as primarily a re-
ligious movement. Its doctrine of the oneness of our
life with God's life is in fact quite indistinguishable from
an interpretation of Christ's message which in these very
Gifford lectures has been defended by some of your very
ablest Scottish religious philosophers.^
^ The Cairds, for example. In Edward Caird's Glasgow Lectures of
1800-92 passages like this aboand : —
^ The declaration made in the beginning of the ministry of Jesus that
106 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
But philosophers usually profess to give a qoasiylogical
explanation of the existence of evil, whereas of the gen-
eral &ct of evil in the world, the existence of the selfish,
suffering, timorous finite consciousness, the mind-curers,
so far as I am acquainted with them, profess to give no
speculative explanation. Evil is empirically there for
them as it is for everybody, but the practical point of
view predominates, and it would ill agree with the spirit
of their system to spend time in worrying over it as a
* mystery ' or * problem,' or in ^ laying to heart ' the les-
son of its experience, after the manner of the Evangeli-
cals. Don't reason about it, as Dante says, but give a
glance and pass beyond ! It is Avidhya, ignorance !
something merely to be outgrown and left behind, tran-
scended and forgotten. Christian Science so-called, the
sect of Mrs. Eddy, is the most radical branch of mind-
cure in its dealings with evil. For it evil is simply a licy
* the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of heaven is at hand/ passes with
scarce a break into the announcement that * the kingdom of God is among
you ' ; and the importance of this announcement is asserted to be such that
it makes, so to speak, a difference in kind between the greatest saints and
prophets who lived under the previous reign of division, and * the least in
the kingdom of heaven.' The highest ideal is brought close to men and
declared to be within their reach, they are called on to be ' perfect as their
Father in heaven is perfect.' The sense of alienation and distance from
God which had g^wn upon the pious in Israel just in proportion as they
had learned to look upon Him as no mere national divinity, but as a God
of justice who would punish Israel for its sin as certainly as Edom or Moab,
is declared to be no longer in place; and the typical form of Christian
prayer points to the abolition of the contrast between this world and the
next which through all the history of the Jews had continually been grow-
ing wider : * As in heaven, so on earth.' The sense of the division of man
from God, as a finite being from the Infinite, as weak and sinful from the
Onmipotent G<»odness, is not indeed lost ; but it can no longer overpower
the consciousness of oneness. The terms * Son ' and * Father ' at once state
the opposition and mark its limit. They show that it is not an absolute
opposition, but one which presupposes an indestructible principle of unity,
that can and must become a principle of reconciliation." The Etolution of
Beligion, iL pp. 146, 147.
THE RELIGION OF HEALTHY-MINDEDNESS 107
and any one who mentions it is a liar. The optimistic
ideal of duty forbids us to pay it the compliment even of
explicit attention. Of course, as our next lectures will
show us, this is a bad speculative omission, but it is
intimately linked with the practical merits of the system
we are examining. Why regret a philosophy of evil, a
mind-curer would ask us, if I can put you in possession
of a life of good ?
After all, it is the life that tells ; and mind-cure has
developed a living system of mental hygiene which may
well claim to have thrown all previous literature of the
Diiitetik der Seele into the shade. This system is wholly
and exclusively compacted of optimism : ^ Pessimism leads
to weakness. Optimism leads to power.' ^ Thoughts
are things,' as one of the most vigorous mind-cure writ-
ers prints in bold type at the bottom of each of his pages ;
and if your thoughts are of health, youth, vigor, and suc-
cess, before you know it these things will also be your
outward portion. No one can fail of the regenerative
influence of optimistic thinking, pertinaciously pursued.
Every man owns indefeasibly this inlet to the divine.
Fear, on the contrary, and all the contracted and egoistic
modes of thought, are inlets to destruction. Most mind-
curers here bring in a doctrine that thoughts are ^ forces,'
and that, by virtue of a law that like attracts like, one
man's thoughts draw to themselves as allies all the
thoughts of the same character that exist the world over.
Thus one gets, by one's thinking, reinforcements from
elsewhere for the realization of one's desires ; and the
great point in the conduct of life is to get the heavenly
forcea on one's side by opening one's own mind to their
influx.
On the whole, one is struck by a psychological similar-
ity between the mind-cure movement and the Lutheran
108 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
and Weslejan movements. To the believer in moralism
and works, with his anxious query, ^ What shall I do to
be saved ? * Luther and Wesley replied : * You are saved
now, if you would but believe it/ And the mind-eurers
come with precisely similar words of emancipation. They
speak, it is true^ to persons for whom the conception of
salvation has lost its ancient theological meaning, but who
labor nevertheless with the same eternal human difficulty.
Things are wrong with them; and 'What shall I do to
be clear, right, sound, whole, well ? ' is the form of their
question. And the answer is: 'You are well, sound,
and clear already, if you did but know it.' " The whole
matter may be summed up in one sentence," says one of
the authors whom I have already quoted, " God is welly
and so are you. You must awaken to the knowledge of
your real being."
The adequacy of their message to the mental needs of
a large fraction of mankind is what gave force to those
earlier gospels. Exactly the same adequacy holds in the
case of the mind-cure message, foolish as it may sound
upon its surface ; and seeing its rapid growth in influ*
ence, and its therapeutic triumphs, one is tempted to ask
whether it may not be destined (probably by very reason
of the crudity and extravagance of many of its manifes-
tations ^) to play a part almost as great in the evolution
of the popular religion of the future as did those earlier
movements in their day.
But I here fear that I may begin to ' jar upon the
nerves ' of some of the members of this academic audi-
ence. Such contemporary vagaries, you may think,
^ It remains to be seen whether the school of Mr. Dresser, which assumes
more and more the form of mind-cure experience and academic philosophy
mutually impregnating each other, wiU score the practical triumphs of the
less critical and rational sects.
THE RELIGION OF HEALTHT-MINDEDNESS 109
should hardly take so large a place in dignified Gifford
lectures. I can only beseech you to have patience* The
whole outcome of these lectures will^ I imagine, be the
emphasizing to your mind of the enormous diversities
which the spiritual lives of different men exhibit. Their
wants, their susceptibilities, and their capacities all vary
and must be classed under different heads. The result
is that we have really different types of religious expe-
rience ; and, seeking in these lectures closer acquaint-
ance with the healthy-minded tjrpe, we must take it where
we find it in most radical form. The psychology of in*
dividual types of character has hardly begun even to be
sketched as yet — our lectures may possibly serve as a
crumb-like contribution to the structure. The first thing
to bear in mind (especially if we ourselves belong to the
clerico-academic-scientific type, the officially and conven-
tionally ' correct ' type, ^ the deadly respectable ' type, for
which to ignore others is a besetting temptation) is that
nothing can be more stupid than to bar out phenomena
from our notice, merely because we are incapable of tak-
ing part in anything like them ourselves.
Now the history of Lutheran salvation by faith, of
methodistic conversions, and of what I call the mind-cure
movement seems to prove the existence of numerous per-
sons in whom — at any rate at a certain stage in their
development — a change of character for the better, so
far from being facilitated by the rules laid down by offi-
cial moralists, will take place all the more successfully if
those rules be exactly reversed. Official moralists advise
us never to relax our strenuousness. " Be vigilant, day
and night," they adjure us ; " hold your passive tenden-
cies in check ; shrink from no effort ; keep your will like
a bow always bent." But the persons I speak of find
that all this conscious effort leads to nothing but failure
110 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
and vexation in their hands, and only makes them two-
fold more the children of hell they were before. The
tense and voluntary attitude becomes in them an impos-
sible fever and torment. Their machinery refuses to run
at all when the bearings are made so hot and the belts
are so tightened.
Under these circumstances the way to success, as
vouched for by innumerable authentic personal narra*
tions, is by an ^nti-moralistic method, by L < surrender '
of which I spoke in my second lecture. Passivity, not
activity ; relaxation, not intentness, should be now the
rule. Give up the feeling of responsibility, let go your
hold, resign the care of your destiny to higher powers,
be genuinely indifferent as to what becomes of it all, and
you wilt find not only that you gain a perfect inward re-
lief, but often also, in addition, the particular goods you
sincerely thought you were renouncing. This is the sal-
vation through self-despair, the dying to be truly bom,
of Lutheran theology, the passage into nothing of which
Jacob Behmen writes. To get to it, a critical point must
usually be passed, a comer turned within one. Some-
thing must give way, a native hardness must break down
and liquefy ; and this event (as we shall abundantly see
hereafter) is frequently sudden and automatic, and leaves
on the Subject an impression that he has been wrought
on by an external power.
Whatever its ultimate significance may prove to be,
this is certainly one fundamental form of human expe-
rience. Some say that the capacity or incapacity for it
is what divides the religious from the merely moralistic
character. With those who undergo it in its fullness, no
criticism avails to cast doubt on its reality. They know ;
for they have actually /e/f the higher powers, in giving
up the tension of their personal will.
THE RELIGION OF HEALTHY-MINDEDNESS 111
A story which revivalist preachers often tell is that of
a man who found himself at night slipping down the side
of a precipice. At last he caught a branch which stopped
his fall, and remained clinging to it in misery for hours.
But finally his fingers had to loose their hold, and with a
despairing farewell to life, he let himself drop. He fell
just six inches. If he had given up the struggle earlier,
his agony would have been spared. As the mother earth
received him, so, the preachers tell us, will the everlasting
arms receive us if we confide absolutely in them, and
give up the hereditary habit of relying on our personal
strength, with its precautions that cannot shelter and
safeguards that never save.
The mind-curers have given the widest scope to this
sort of experience. They have demonstrated that a form
of regeneration by relaxing, by letting go, psychologically
indistinguishable from the Lutheran justification by faith
and the Wesleyan acceptance of free grace, is within
the reach of persons who have no conviction of sin and
care nothing for the Lutheran theology. It is but giving
your little private convulsive self a rest, and finding that
a greater Self is there. The results, slow or sudden, or
great or small, of the combined optimism and expectancy,
the regenerative phenomena which ensue on the abandon-
ment of effort, remain firm facts of human nature, no
matter whether we adopt a theistic, a pantheistic-idealis-
tic, or a medical-materialistic view of their ultimate causal
explanation.^
^ The theistic explanation is by divine grace, which creates a new nature
within one the moment the old nature is sincerely given up. The pantheis-
tic explanation (which is that of most mind-curers) is by the merging of
the narrower private self into the wider or greater self, the spirit of the
universe (which is your own * subconscious ' self), the moment the isolating
barriers of mistrust and anxiety are removed. The medico-materialistic
explanation is that simpler cerebral processes act more freely where they
are left to act automatically by the ihunting-out of physiologically (though
112 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
When we take up the phenomena of revivalistic con-
version, we shall learn something more about all this.
Meanwhile I will say a brief word about the mind-curer's
methods.
They are of course largely suggestive. The sugges-
tive influence of environment plays an enormous part
in all spiritual education. But the word ^suggestion/
having acquired ofi&cial status^ is unfortunately already
beginning to pky in many quarters the part of a wet
blanket upon investigation^ being used to fend off all
inquiry into the varying susceptibilities of individual
cases. ^ Suggestion ' is only another name for the power
of ideas^ so far as they prove efficacious over belief and
conduct. Ideas efficacious over some people prove ineffi-
cacious over others. Ideas efficacious at some times and
in some human surrounding^s are not so at other times
and elsewhere. The ideas of Christian churches are not
efficacious in the therapeutic direction to-day^ whatever
they may have been in earlier centuries ; and when the
whole question is as to why the salt has lost its savor
here or gained it there, the mere blank waving of the
word ^ suggestion ' as if it were a banner gives no light.
Dr. Goddard, whose candid psychological essay on Faith
Cures ascribes them to nothing but ordinary suggestion,
concludes by saying that ^^ Religion [and by this he
seems to mean our popular Christianity] has in it aU
there is in mental therapeutics, and has it in its best
form. Living up to [our religious] ideas will do any-
thing for us that can be done." And this in spite of
the actual fact that the popular Christianity does abso-
in this instance not spiritually) * higher ' ones which, seeking to regulate,
only succeed in inhibiting results. — Whether this third explanation mighty
in a psycho-physical account of the universe, be combined with either of the
others may be left an open question here.
THE RELIGION OF HEALTHY-MINDEDNESS 113
lately nothingy or did nothing until mind-cure came to
the rescue.^
An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual
with the force of a revelation. The mind-cure with its
gospel of healthy-mindedness has come as a revelation
to many whose hearts the church Christianity had left
hardened. It has let loose their springy of higher life.
1 Within the churches a diaposition has always prevailed to regard sick-
ness as a visitation ; something sent by God for our good, either as chastise-
ment, as warning, or as opportunity for exercising virtue, and, in the Catho-
lic Church, of earning * merit.' ** Illness," says a good Catholic writer (P.
Lejeune : Introd. k la Vie Mystique, 1899, p. 218), « is the most excellent ol
corporeal mortifications, the mortification which one has not one's self chosen,
which is imposed directly by Grod, and is the direct expression of his will.
* If other mortifications are of silver,' Mgr. Gray says, * this one is of gold ;
since although it comes of ourselves, coming as it does of original sin, still
on its greater side, as coming (like all that happens) from the providence
of God, it is of divine manufacture. And how just are its blows ! And
how efficacious it is ! ... I do not hesitate to say that patience in a long
illness is mortification's very masterpiece, and consequently the triumph of
mortified souls.' " According to this view, disease should in any case be
submissively accepted, and it might under certain circumstances even be
blasphemous to wish it away.
Of course there have been exceptions to this, and cures by special mir^^l^
have at all times been recognized within the church's pale, almost all the
great saints having more or less performed them. It was one of the here-
sies of Edward Irving, to maintain them still to be possible. An extremely
pure faculty of healing after confession and conversion on the patient's
part, and prayer on the priest's, was quite spontaneously developed in the
German pastor, Joh. Chiistoph Blumhardt, in the early forties and exerted
during nearly thirty years. Blumhardt's Life by Zilndel (5th edition,
Zurich, 1887) gives in chapters ix., x., xi., and xvii. a pretty full account
of his healing activity, which he invariably ascribed to direct divine inter-
position. Blumhardt was a singularly pure, simple, and non-fanatical char-
acter, and in this part of his work followed no previous model. In Chicago
to-day we have the case of Dr. J. A. Dowie, a Scottish Baptist preacher,
whose weekly < Leaves of Healing ' were in the year of grace 1900 in their
sixth volume, and who, although he denounces the cures wrought in other
sects as ' diabolical counterfeits ' of his own exclusively * Divine Healing,'
must on the whole be counted into the mind-cure movement. In mind-cure
circles the fundamental article of faith is that disease should never be
accepted. It is wholly of the pit Grod wants us to be absolutely healthy,
and we should not tolerate ourselves on any lower terms.
114 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
In what can the originality of any religious movement
consist, save in finding a channel, until then sealed up,
through which those springs may be set free in some
group of human beings ?
The force of personal faith, enthusiasm, and example,
and above all the force of novelty, are always the prime
suggestive agency in this kind of success. If mind-cure
should ever become official, respectable, and intrenched,
these elements of suggestive efficacy will be lost. In its
acuter stages every religion must be a homeless Arab of
the desert. The church knows this well enough, with
its everlasting inner struggle of the acute religion of the
few against the chronic religion of the many, indurated
into an obstructiveness worse than that which irreligion
opposes to the movings of the Spirit. " We may pray,"
says Jonathan Edwards, ^^ concerning all those saints
that are not lively Christians, that they may either be
enlivened, or taken away ; if that be true that is dften
said by some at this day, that these cold dead saints do
more hurt than natural men, and lead more souls to hell,
and that it would be well for mankind if they were all
dead." '
The next condition of success is the apparent exist-
ence, in large numbers, of- minds who unite healthy-
mindedness with readiness for regeneration by letting go.
Protestantism has been too pessimistic as regards the
natural man, Catholicism has been too legalistic and
moralistic, for either the one or the other to appeal in
any generous way to the type of character formed of this
peculiar mingling of elements. However few of us here
present may belong to such a type, it is now evident that
^ Edwards, from whose book on the ReTiyal in New England I qnote
these words, dissuades from such a use of prayer, but it is easy to see that
he enjoys making his thrust at the cold dead church members.
TH£ RELIGION OF HEALTHY-MINDEDNESS 115
it forms a specific moral combination^ well represented in
the world.
Finally, mind-cure has made what in our protestant
countries is an unprecedentedly great use of the subcon-
scious life. To their reasoned advice and dogmatic
assertion, its founders have added systematic exercise in
passive relaxation, concentration, and meditation, and
have even invoked something like hypnotic practice. I
quote some passages at random : —
«« The value, the potency of ideals is the grest practical truth
on which the New Thought most strongly insists, — the devel-
opment namely from within outward, from small to great.^
Consequently one^s thought should be centred on the ideal
outcome, even though this trust be literally like a step in the
dark.^ To attain the ability thus effectively to direct the mind,
the New Thought advises the practice of concentration, or in
other words, the attainment of self-control. One is to learn to
marshal the tendencies of the mind, so that they may be held
together as a unit by the chosen ideal. To this end, one should
set apart times for silent meditation, by one^s self, preferably
in a room where the surroundings are favorable to spiritual
thought In New Thought terms, this is called ^ entering the
silence.' " ^
** The time will come when in the busy office or on the noisy
street you can enter into the silence by simply drawing the
mantle of your own thoughts about you and realizing that
there and everywhere the Spirit of Infinite Life, Love, Wis-
dom, Peace, Power, and Plenty is guiding, keeping, protecting,
leading you. This is the spirit of continual prayer.^ One of
the most intuitive men we ever met had a desk at a city office
where several other gentlemen were doing business constantly,
and often talking loudly. Entirely undisturbed by the many
various sounds about him, this self-centred faithful man would,
> H. W. Dresser : Voices of Freedom, 46.
> Dresser : Living by the Spirit, 58.
• Dresser : Voices of Freedom, 33.
« Trine : In Tone with the Infinite, p. 214.
116 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
in any moment of perplexity, draw the curtains of privacy so
completely about him that he would be as fully inclosed in his
own psychic aura, and thereby as effectually removed from all
distractions, as though he were alone in some primeval wood.
Taking his difficulty with him into the mystic silence in the
form of a direct question, to which he expected a certain an-
swer, he would remain utterly passive until the reply came,
and never once through many years' experience did he find
himself disappointed or misled." ^
Wherein, I should like to know, does this intrinsically
differ from the practice of ^ recollection ' which plays so
great a part in Catholic discipline ? Otherwise called the
practice of the presence of God (and so known among
ourselves, as for instance in Jeremy Taylor), it is thus
defined by the eminent teacher Alvarez de Paz in his
work on Contemplation.
*^ It is the recollection of God, the thought of God, which in
all places and circumstances makes us see him present, lets us
commune respectfully and lovingly with him, and fills us with
desire and affection for him. . . . Would you escape from
every ill ? Never lose this recollection of God, neither in pros-
perity nor in adversity, nor on any occasion whichsoever it be.
Invoke not, to excuse yourself from this di^' y, either the diffi-
culty or the importance of your business, fl^i* you can always
remember that God sees you, that you are ander his eye. If a
thousand times an hour you forget him, reanimate a thousand
times the recollection. If you cannot practice this exercise
continuously, at least make yourself as familiar with it as pos-
sible ; and, like unto those who in a rigorous winter draw near
the fire as often as they can, go as often as you can to that
ardent fire which will warm your soul." ^
All the external associations of the Catholic discipline
are of course unlike anything in mind-cure thought, but
the purely spiritual part of the exercise is identical in
i Thine : p. 117.
^ Quoted by Lejeuite : Introd. k la Vie Mystiqne, 1899, p. 66.
THE RELIGION OF HEALTHY MINDEDNESS 117
both communions^ and in both communions those who
urge it write with authority, for they have evidently ex-
perienced in their own persons that whereof they tell.
Compare again some mind-cure utterances : —
^^High, healthful, pure thinking can be encouraged, pro-
moted, and strengthened. Its current can be turned upon
grand ideals until it forms a habit and wears a channel. By
means of such discipline the mental horizon can be flooded
with the sunshine of beauty, wholeness, and harmony. To
inaugurate pure and lofty thinking may at first seem difficult,
even almost mechanical, but perseverance will at length render
it easy, then pleasant, and finally delightfuL
*^The soul's real world is tiiat which it has built of its
thoughts, mental states, and imaginations. If we wUl^ we can
turn our backs upon the lower and sensuous plane, and lift our-
selves into the realm of the spiritual and Beal, and there
gain a residence. The assumption of states of expectancy and
receptivity will attract spiritual sunshine, and it will flow in
as naturally as air inclines to a vacuum. • • • Whenever the
thought is not occupied with one's daily duty or profession, it
should be sent aloft into the spiritual atmosphere. There are
quiet leisure moments by day, and wakeful hours at night,
when this wholesome and delightful exercise may be engaged
in to great advant re. ' If one who has never made any system-
atic effort to lift and citotrol the thought-forces will, for a
single month, eames'tly pursue the course here suggested, he
will be surprised and delighted at the result, and nothing will
induce him to go bWk to careless, aimless, and superficial
thinking. At such favorable seasons the outside world, with
all its current of daily events, is barred out, and one goes into
the silent sanctuary of the inner temple of soul to commune
and aspire. The spiritual hearing becomes delicately sensitive,
so that the ^ still, small voice ' is audible, the tumultuous waves
of external sense are hushed, and there is a great calm. The
ego'gradually becomes conscious that it is face to face with the
Divine Presence ; that mighty, healing, loving. Fatherly life
which is nearer to us than we are to ourselves. There is soul-
118 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
contact with the Parent-Soul, and an influx of life, love, virtue,
health, and happiness from the Inexhaustible Fountain." ^
When we reach the subject of mysticism, you will
undergo so deep an immersion into these exalted states
of consciousness as to be wet all over, if I may so express
myself; and the cold shiver of doubt with which this
little sprinkling may affect you will have long since
passed away — doubt, I mean, as to whether all such
writing be not mere abstract talk and rhetoric set down
pour encourager les autres. You will then be con-
vinced, I trust, that these states of consciousness of
^ union ' form a perfectly definite class of experiences,
of which the soul may occasionally pa?' '^'' , and which
certain persons may live by in a deeper sense than they
live by anything else with which they Iiave acquaintance.
This brings me to a general philosophical eflection with
which I should like to pass from the subject of healthy-
mindedness, and close a topic which I fear is already
only too long drawn out. It concerns the relation of all
this systematized healthy-mindedness and mind-cure re-
ligion to scientific method and the scientific life.
In a later lecture I shall have to treat explicitly of the
relation of religion to science on the one hand, and to
primeval savage thought on the other, i uere are plenty
of persons to-day — ^scientists' or ^po .i.ists,' they are
fond of calling themselves — who will tell you that reli-
gious thought is a mere survival, an atavistic reversion
to a type of consciousness which humanity in its more
enlightened examples has long since left behind and out-
grown. If you ask them to explain themselves more
fully, they will probably say that for primitive thought
1 Henry Wood : Ideal Suggestion through Mental Photography, pp. 51|
70 (abridged).
THE RELIGION OF HEALTHY-MINDEDNESS 119
everything is conceived of under the form of personality.
The savage thinks that things operate by personal forces,
and for the sake of individual ends. For him^ even exter-
nal nature obeys individual needs and claims, just as if
these were so many elementary powers. Now science, on
the other hand, these positivistsT say, has proved that
personality, so far from being an elementary force in
nature, is but a passive resultant of the really elementary
forces, physical, chemical, physiological, and psycho-phy-
sical, which are all impersonal and general in character.
Nothing individual accomplishes anything in the universe
save in so far as it obeys and exempUfies some universal
law. Should you then inquire of them by what means sci-
ence has thus supplanted primitive thought, and discredited
its personal way of looking at things, they would un-
doubtedly say it has been by the strict use of the method
of experimental verification. Follow out science's concep-
tions practically, they will say, the conceptions that ignore
personality altogether, and you will always be corrobo-
rated. The world is so made that all your expectations
will be experientially verified so long, and only so long,
as you keep the terms from which you infer them imper-
sonal and universal.
But here we have mind-cure, with her diametrically
opposite philosophy, setting up an exactly identical claim.
Live as if I were true, she says, and every day will practi-
cally prove you right. That the cpntroUing energies of
nature are personal, that your own personal thoughts are
forces, that the powers of the universe will directly re-
spond to your individual appeals and needs, are proposi-
tions which your whole bodily and mental experience will
verify. And that experience does largely verify these
primeval religious ideas is proved by the fact that the
mind-cure movement spreads as it does, not by proclama-
120 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
tion and assertion simply, but by palpable experiential
results. Here, in the very heyday of science's authority,
it carries on an aggressive warfare against the scientific
philosophy, and succeeds by using science's own pe-
culiar methods and weapons. Believing that a higher
power will take care of us in certain ways better than we
can take care of ourselves, if we only genuinely throw
ourselves upon it and consent to use it, it finds the
belief, not only not impugned, but corroborated by its
observation.
How conversions are thus made, and converts con-
firmed, is evident enough from the narratives which I
have quoted. I will quote yet another couple of shorter
ones to give the matter a perfectly concrete turn. Here
is one : —
^' One of my first experiences in applying my teaching was
two months after I first saw the healer. I fell, spraining my
right ankle, which I had done once four years before, having
then had to use a crutch and elastic anklet for some months,
and carefully guarding it ever since. As soon as I was on my
feet I made the positive suggestion (and felt it through all my
being) : ' There is nothing but God, all life comes from him
perfectly. I cannot be sprained or hurt, I will let him take care
of it.' Well, I never had a sensation in it, and I walked two
miles that day."
The next case not only illustrates experiment and veri-
fication, but also the element of passivity and surrender
of which awhile ago I made such account.
^^ I went into town to do some shopping one morning, and I
had not been gone long before I began to feel ill. The ill feel-
ing increased rapidly, until I had pains in all my bones, nausea
and faintness, headache, all the symptoms in short that precede
an attack of influenza. I thought that I was going to have the
g^ppe, epidemic then in Boston, or something worse. The
mind-cure teachings that I had been listening to all the winter
THE RELIGION OF HEALTHT-MINDEDNESS 121
thereupon came into my mind, and I thought that here was an
opportunity to test myself. On my way home I met a friend,
and I refrained with some effort from telling her how I felt.
That was the first step gained. I went to bed immediately,
and my husband wished to send for the doctor. But I told
him that I would rather wait until morning and see how I felt.
Then followed one of the most beautiful experiences of my Ufe.
^' I cannot express it in any other way than to say that I did
^ lie down in the stream of life and let it flow over me.' I gave
up all fear of any impending disease ; I was perfectly willing
and obedient. There was no intellectual effort, or train of
thought. My dominant idea was: ^Behold the handmaid of
the Lord : be it unto me even as thou wilt,' and a perfect con-
fidence that all would be well, that all wcxs well. The creative
life was flowing into me every instant, and I felt myself allied
with the Infinite, in harmony, and full of the peace that pass-
eth understanding. There was no place in my mind for a jar-
ring body. I had no consciousness of time or space or persons ;
but only of love and happiness and faith.
^' I do not know how long this state lasted, nor when I fell
asleep ; but when I woke up in the morning, / w(M wdV^
These are exceedingly trivial instances/ but in them,
if we have anything at bJHj we have the method of exper-
iment and verification. For the point I am driving
at now, it makes no difference whether you consider the
patients to be deluded victims of their imagination or not.
That they seemed to themselves to have been cured by
the experiments tried was enough to make them converts
to the system. And although it is evident that one must
be of a certain mental mould to get such results (for
not every one can get thus cured to his own satisfaction
any more than every one can be cured by the first regu-
lar practitioner whom he calls in), yet it would surely be
pedantic and over-scrupulous for those who can get their
savage and primitive philosophy of mental healing veri-
' See Appendix to this lectare for two other cases famished me hy friends.
122 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
fied in such experimental ways as this, to give them up
at word of command for more scientific therapeutics.
What are we to think of all this ? Has science made
too wide a claim ?
I believe that the claims of the sectarian scientist are,
to say the least, premature. The experiences which we
have been studying during this hour (and a great many
other kinds of religious experiences are like them) plainly
show the universe to be a more many-sided affair than
any sect, even the scientific sect, allows for. What, in
the end, are all our verifications but experiences that
agree with more or less isolated systems of ideas (concep-
tual systems) that our minds have framed ? But why in
the name of common sense need we assume that only
one such system of ideas can be true ? The obvious out-
come of our total experience is that the world can be
handled according to many systems of ideas, and is so
handled by different men, and wiU each time give some
characteristic kind of profit, for which he cares, to the
handler, while at the same time some other kind of profit
has to be omitted or postponed. Science gives to all of
us telegraphy, electric lighting, and diagnosis, and suc-
ceeds in preventing and curing a certain amount of dis-
ease. Religion in the shape of mind-cure gives to some
of us serenity, moral poise, and happiness, and prevents
certain forms of. disease as well as science does, or even
better in a certain class of persons. Evidently, then, the
science and the religion are both of them genuine keys
for unlocking the world's treasure-house to him who can
use either of them practically. Just as evidently neither
is exhaustive or exclusive of the other's simultaneous use.
And why, after all, may not the world be so complex as
to consist of many interpenetrating spheres of reality,
which we can thus approach in alternation by using dif-
THE RELIGION OF HEALTHY-MINDEDNESS 123
ferent conceptions and assuming different attitudes, just
as mathematicians handle the same numerical and spatial
facts by geometry, hj analytical geometry, by algebra,
by the calculus, or by quaternions, and each time come
out right ? On this view religion and science, each veri-
fied in its own way from hour to hour and from life to
life, would be co-eternal. Primitive thought, with its
belief in individualized personal forces, seems at any rate
as far as ever from being driven by science from the field
to-day. Numbers of educated people still find it the
directest experimental channel by which to carry on their
intercourse with reality.^
The case of mind-cure lay so ^ eady to my hand that I
could not resist the temptation of using it to bring these
last truths home to your attention, but I must content
myself to-day with this very brief indication. In a later
lecture the relations of religion both to science and to
primitive thought will have to receive much more explicit
attention.
APPENDIX
(See note to p. 121.)
Case I. '^ My own experience is this : I had long been ill,
and one of the first results of my illness, a dozen years before,
had been a diplopia which deprived me of the use of my eyes
for reading and writing almost entirely, while a later one had
been to shut me out from exercise of any kind under penalty of
^ Whether the yarioos spheres or systems are ever to fuse integrally into
one absolute conception, as most philosophers assume that they most, and
bow, if so, that conception may best be reached, are questions that only the
future can answer. What is certain now is the fact of lines of disparate
conception, each corresponding to some part of the world's truth, each yeri-
fled in some degree, each leaying oat some part of real experience.
124 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
immediate and great exhaustion. I had been under the care
of doctors of the highest standing both in Europe and America,
men in whose power to help me I had had great faith, with no or
ill result. Then, at a time when I seemed to be rather rapidly
losing ground, I heard some things that gave me interest
enough in mental healing to make me try it ; I had no great
hope of getting any good from it — it was a c?iance I tried,
partly because my thought was interested by the new possibility
it seemed to open, partly because it was the only chance I then
could see. I went to X. in Boston, from whom some friends
of mine had got, or thought that they had got, great help ; the
treatment was a silent one ; little was said, and that little car-
ried no conviction to my mind ; whatever influence was exerted
was that of another person's thought or feeling silently pro-
jected on to my unconscioife mind, into my nervous system as it
were, as we sat still together. I believed from the start in the
possibility of such action, for I knew the power of the mind to
shape, helping or hindering, the body's nerve-activities, and I
thought telepathy probable, although unproved, but I had no
belief in it as more than a possibility, and no strong conviction
nor any mystic or religious faith connected with my thought of
it that might have brought imagination strongly into play.
^' I sat quietly with the healer for half an hour each day, at
first with no result ; then, after ten days or so, I became quite
suddenly and swiftly conscious of a tide of new energy rising
within me, a sense of power to pass beyond old halting-places,
of power to break the bounds tiiat, though often tried before,
had long been veritable walls about my life, too high to climb.
I began to read and walk as I had not done for years, and the
change was sudden, marked, and unmistakable. This tide
seemed to mount for some weeks, three or four perhaps, when,
summer having come, I came away, taking the treatment up
again a few months later. The lift I got proved permanent,
and left me slowly gaining ground instead of losing it, but with
this lift the influence seemed in a way to have spent itself, and,
though my confidence in the reality of the power had gained
immensely from this first experience, and should have helped
me to ms^e further gain in health and strength if my belief in
THE RELIGION OF HEALTHY-MINDEDNESS 125
it had been the potent factor there, I never after this got any
result at all as striking or as clearly marked as this which came
when I made trial of it first, with little faith and doubtful
expectation. It is difficult to put all the evidence in such a
matter into words, to gather up into a distinct statement all
that one bases one's conclusions on, but I have always felt that
I had abundant evidence to justify (to myself, at least) the
conclusion that I came to then, and since have held to, that the
physical change which came at that time was, first, the re-
sult of a change wrought within me by a change of mental
state ; and, secondly, that that change of mental state was not,
save in a very secondary way, brought about through the influ-
ence of an excited imagination, or a conscUmsly received sug-
gestion of an hypnotic sort. Lastly, I believe that this change
was the result of my receiving telepathioally, and upon a mental
stratum quite below the level of immediate consciousness, a
healthier and more energetic attitude, receiving it from another
person whose thought was directed upon me with the intention
of impressing the idea of this attitude upon me. In my case
the disease was distinctly what would be classed as nervous, not
organic ; but from such opportunities as I have had of observ-
ing, I have come to the conclusion that the dividing line that
has been drawn is an arbitrary one, the nerves controlling the
internal activities and the nutrition of the body throughout;
and I believe that the central nervous system, by starting and
inhibiting local centres, can exercise a vast influence upon dis-
ease of any kind, if it can be brought to bear. In my judg-
ment the question is simply how to bring it to bear, and I think
that the uncertainty and remarkable differences in the results
obtained through mental healing do but show how ignorant we
are as yet of the forces at work and of the means we should
take to make them effective. That these results are not due to
chance coincidences my observation of myself and others makes
me sure ; that the conscious mind, the imagination, enters into
them as a factor in many cases is doubtless true, but in many
others, and sometimes very extraordinary ones, it hardly seems
to enter in at all. On the whole I am inclined to think that as
the healing action, like the morbid one, springs from the plane
126 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
of the normally unconscious mind, so the strongest and most
effective impressions are those which it receives, in some as yet
unknown, subtle way, directly from a healthier mind whose
state, through a hidden law of sympathy, it reproduces."
Case II. ^^ At the urgent request of friends, and with no
faith and hardly any hope (possibly owing to a previous unsuc-
cessful experience with a Christian Scientist), our little daugh-
ter was placed under the care of a healer, and cured of a trouble
about which tl^e physician had been very discouraging in his
diagnosis. This interested me, and I began studying earnestly
the method and philosophy of this method of healing. Gradu-
ally an inner peace and tranquillity came to me in so positive
a way that my manner changed greatly. My children and
friends noticed the change and commented upon it. All feel-
ings of irritability disappeared. Even the expression of my
face changed noticeably.
^' I had been bigoted, aggressive, and intolerant in discus-
sion, both in public and private. I grew broadly tolerant and
receptive toward the views of others. I had been nervous and
irritable, coming home two or three times a week with a
sick headache induced, as I then supposed, by dyspepsia and
catarrh. I grew serene and gentle, and the physical troubles
entirely disappeared. I had been in the habit of approaching
every business interview with an almost morbid dread. I now
meet every one with confidence and inner calm.
^ I may say that the growth has all been toward the eliminsr
tion of selfishness. I do not mean simply the grosser, more
sensual forms, but those subtler and generally unrecognized
kinds, such as express themselves in sorrow, grief, regret, envy,
etc. It has been in the direction of a practical, working real-
ization of the immanence of God and the Divinity of man's
true, inner self."
LECTURES VI AND VH
THE SIOK SOUL
AT our last meeting, we considered the healthy-minded
Jl\^ temperament, the temperament which has a consti-
tutional incapacity for prolonged suffering, and in which
the tendency to see things optimistically is like a water
of crystallization in which the individual's character is
set. We saw how this temperament may become the
basis for a peculiar type of religion, a religion in which
good, even the good of this world's life, is regarded as
the essential thing for a rational being to attend to.
This religion directs him to settle his scores with the
more evil aspects of the universe by systematically de-
clining to lay them to heart or make much of them, by
ignoring them in his reflective calculations, or even, on
occasion, by denying outright that they exist. Evil is a
disease ; and worry over disease is itself an additional
form of disease, which only adds to the t>riginal com-
plaint. Even repentance and remorse, affections which
come in the character of ministers of good, may be but
sickly and relaxiDg impulses. The best repentance is to
up and act for righteousness, and forget that you ever
had relations with sin.
Spinoza's philosophy has this sort of healthy-minded-
ness woven into the heart of it, and this has been one
secret of its fascination. He whom Reason leads, ac-
cording to Spinoza, is led altogether by the influence
over his mind of good. Eaiowledge of evil is an ^ inade-
quate ' knowledge, fit only for slavish minds. So Spi-
128 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
Doza categorically condemns repentance. When men
make mistakes^ he says, —
^^ One might perhaps expect gnawings of conscience and
repentance to help to bring them on the right path, and might
thereupon conclude (as every one does conclude) that these
affections are good thiugs. Yet when we look at the matter
closely, we shall find that not only are they not good, but on
the contrary deleterious and evil passions. For it is manifest
that we can always get along better by reason and love of truth
than by worry of conscience and remorse. Harmful are these
and evil, inasmuch as they form a particular kind of sadness ;
and the disadvantages of sadness," he continues, " I have al-
ready proved, and shown that we should strive to keep it from
our life. Just so we should endeavor, since uneasiness of con-
science and remorse are of this kind of complexion, to flee and
shun these states of mind." ^
Within the Christian body, for which repentance of
sins has from the beginning been the critical religious
act, healthy-mindedness has always come forward vnth
its milder interpretation. Repentance according to such
healthy-minded Christians means getting away from the
sin, not groaning and writhing over its commission. The
Catholic practice of confession and absolution is in one
of its aspects little more than a systematic method of
keeping healthy-mindedness on top. By it a man's
accounts with evil are periodically squared and audited,
so that he may start the clean page with no old debts
inscribed. Any Catholic will tell us how clean and fresh
and free he feels after the purging operation. Martin
Luther by no means belonged to the healthy-minded
type in the radical sense in which we have discussed it,
and he repudiated priestly absolution for sin. Yet in this
matter of repentance he had some very healthy-minded
^ Tract on Grod, Man, and Happiness, Book ii. ch. x.
THE SICK SOUL 129
ideas, due In the main to the largeness of his conception
of God.
«« When I was a monk," he says, ^' I thought that I was ut-
terly cast away, if at any time I felt the lust of the flesh : that
is to say, if I felt any evil motion, fleshly lust, wrath, hatred,
or envy against any brother. I assayed many ways to help to
quiet my conscience, but it would not be ; for the concupiscence
and lust of my flesh did always return, so that I could not rest,
but was continually vexed with these thoughts : This or that
sin thou hast committed : thou art infected with envy, with
impatiency, and such other sins : therefore thou art entered
into this holy order in vain, and all thy good works are unpro-
fitable. But if then I had rightly understood these sentences
of Paul : ^ The flesh lusteth contrary to the Spirit, and the
Spirit contrary to the flesh ; and these two are one against
another, so that ye cannot do the things that ye would do,'
I should not have so miserably tormented myself, but should
have thought and said to myself, as now commonly I do, ^ Mar-
tin, thou shalt not utterly be without sin, for thou hast flesh ;
thou shalt therefore feel the battle thereof.' I remember that
Staupitz was wont to say, ^ I have vowed unto God above a
thousand times that I would become a better man : but I never
performed that which I vowed. Hereafter I will make no
such vow : for I have now learned by experience that I am not
able to perform it. Unless, therefore, God be favorable and
merciful unto me for Christ's sake, I shall not be able, with all
my vows and all my good deeds, to stand before him.' This
(of Staupitz's) was not only a true, but also a godly and a
holy desperation ; and this must they all confess, both with
mouth and heart, who will be saved. For the godly trust not
to their own righteousness. They look unto Christ their recon-
ciler, who gave his life for their sins. Moreover, they know
that the remnant of sin which is in their flesh is not laid to
their charge, but freely pardoned. Notwithstanding, in the
mean while they fight in spirit against the flesh, lest they should
fulfill, the lusts thereof ; and although they feel the flesh to
rage and rebel, and themselves also do fall sometimes into sin
through infirmity, yet are they not discouraged, nor think there-
I
130 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
fore that their state and kind of life, and the works which ^are
done according to their calling, displease God ; but they raim
up themselves by faith." ^
One of the heresies for which the Jesuits got that
spiritual genius, Molinos, the founder of Quietism, so
abominably condemned was his healthy-minded opinion
of repentance : —
<< When thou f allest into a fault, in what matter soever it be,
do not trouble nor afflict thyself for it. For they are effects
of our frail Nature, stained by Original Sin. The common
enemy will make thee believe, as soon as thou fallest into
any fault, that thou walkest in error, and therefore art out of
God and his favor, and herewith would he make thee distrust
of the divine Grace, telling thee of thy misery, and making a
giant of it ; and putting it into thy head that every day thy
soul grows worse instead of better, whilst it so often repeats
these failings. O blessed Soul, open thine eyes ; and shut
the gate against these diabolical suggestions, knowing thy
misery,' and trusting in the mercy divine. Would not he be a
mere fool who, running at tournament with others, and falling
in the best of the career, should lie weeping on the ground and
afflicting himself with discourses upon his fall? Man (they
' would tell him), lose no time, get up and take the course again,
for he that rises again quickly and continues his race is as if
he had never fallen. If thou seest thyself fallen once and
a thousand times, thou oughtest to make use of the remedy
which I have given thee, that is, a loving confidence in the
divine mercy. These are the weapons with which thou must
fight and conquer cowardice and vain thoughts. This is the
means thou oughtest to use — not to lose time, not to disturb
thyself, and reap no good." ^
Now in contrast with such healthy-minded views as
these, if we treat them as a way of deliberately minimiz-
ing evil, stands a radically opposite view, a way of max-
^ Commentary on Galatians, Philadelpbia, 1891, pp. 510-514 (abridged).
* MoLiNoe : Spiritual Guide, Book II., chaps, xvii., xviiL (abridged).
THE 8ICK SOUL 131
imizing evil, If you please so to call it, based on the
persuasion that the evil aspects of our life are of its very
essence, and that the world's meaning most comes home
to us when we lay them most to heart. We have now
to address ourselves to this more morbid way of looking
at the situation. But as I closed our last hour with a
general philosophical reflection on the healthy-minded
way of taking life, I should like at this point to make
another philosophical reflection upon it before turning
to that heavier task. You will excuse the brief delay.
If we admit that evil is an essential part of our being
and the key to the interpretation of our life, we load our*
selves down with a difficulty that has always proved bur-
densome in philosophies of religion. Theism, whenever
it has erected itself into a systematic philosophy of the
universe, has shown a reluctance to let God be anything
less than All-in- All. In other words, philosophic theiim
has always shown a tendency to become pantheistic and
monistic, and to consider the world as one unit of abso-
lute fact ; and this has been at variance with popular or
practical theism, which latter has ever been more or less
frankly pluralistic, not to say polytheistic, and shown
itself perfectly well satisfied with a universe composed
of many original principles, provided we be only allowed
to believe that the divine principle remains supreme, and
that the others are subordinate. In this latter case God
is not necessarily responsible for the existence of evil ;
I he would only be responsible if it were not finally over-
I come. But on the monistic or pantheistic view, evil, like
everything else, must have its foundation in God ; and
the difficulty is to see how this can possibly be the case
if God be absolutely good. This difficulty faces us in
every form of philosophy in which the world appears as
one flawless unit of fact. Such a unit is an Individual,
132 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
and in it the worst parts most be as essential as the best,
must be as necessary to make the individual what he is ;
since if any part whatever in an individual were to vanish
or alter, it would no longer be that individual at all. The
philosophy of absolute idealism, so vigorously represented
both in Scotland and America to-day, has to struggle
with this difficulty quite as much as scholastic theism
struggled in its time ; and although it would be prema-
ture to say that there is no speculative issue whatever
from the puzzle, it is perfectly fair to say that there is
no clear or easy issue, and that the only ohvioti8 escape
from paradox here is to cut loose from the monistic
assumption altogether, and to allow the world to have
existed from its origin in pluralistic form, as an aggre-
gate or collection of higher and lower things and princi-
ples, rather than an absolutely unitary fact. For then evil
would not need to be essential ; it might be, and may
always have been, an independent portion that had no
rational or absolute right to live with the rest, and which
we might conceivably hope to see got rid of at last.
Now the gospel of healthy-mindedness, as we have
described it, casts its vote distinctly for this pluralistic
view. Whereas the monistic philosopher finds himself
more or less bound to say, as Hegel said, that everything
actual is rational, and that evil, as an element dialec-
tically required, must be pinned in and kept and con- ^
secrated and have a function awarded to it in the final •
system of truth, healthy-mindedness refuses to say any- J
tiling of the sort.^ Evil, it says, is emphatically irrational, 1
^ I say this in spite of the monistic utterances of many mind-cure
writers ; for these utterances are really inconsistent with their attitude
towards disease, and can easily be shown not to be logically involved in the
experiences of union with a higher Presence with which they connect them-
selves. The higher Presence, namely, need not be the absolute whole of
things, it is quite sufficient for the life of religious experience to regard it as
a part, if only it be the most ideal part.
THE SICK SOUL 133
and not to be pinned in, or preserved, or consecrated
in any final system of truth. It is a pure abomination
to the Lord, an alien unreality, a waste element, to be
sloughed off and negated, and the very memory of it,
if possible, wiped out and forgotten. The ideal, so far
from being co-extensive with the whole actual, is a mere
extract from the actual, marked by its deliverance from
all contact with this diseased, inferior, and excrementi-
tious stuff.
Here we have the interesting notion fairly and squarely
presented to us, of there being elements of the universe
which may make no rational whole in conjunction with
the other elements, and which, from the point of view of
any system which those other elements make up, can only
be considered so much irrelevance and accident — so
much ^ dirt,' as it were, and matter out of place. I ask
you now not to forget this notion ; for although most
philosophers seem either to forget it or to disdain it too'
much ever to mention it, I believe that we shall have to*
admit it ourselves in the end as containing an element of
truth. The mind-cure gospel thus once more appears
to us as having dignity and importance. We have seen
it to be a genuine religion, and no mere silly appeal U^
imagination to cure disease ; we have seen its method of
experimental verification to be not unlike the method
of all science ; and now here we find mind-cure as the
champion of a perfectly definite conception of the meta-
physical structure of the world. I hope that, in view of
all this, you will not regret my having pressed it upon
your attention at such length.
Let us now say good-by for a while to all this way of
thinking, and turn towards those persons who cannot so
swiftly throw off the burden of the consciousness of evil.
134 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
but are congenitally fated to suffer from its presence.
Just as we saw that in healtby-mindedness there are
shallower and profounder levels, happiness like that of
the mere animal, and more regenerate sorts of happiness,
so also are there different levels of the morbid mind, and
the one is much more formidable than the other. There
are people for whom evil means only a mal-adjustment
with thingSy a wrong correspondence of one's life with
the environment. Such evil as this is curable, in princi-
ple at least, upon the natural plane, for merely by modi-
fying either the self or the things, or both at once, the
two terms may be made to fit, and all go merry as a mar-
riage bell again. But there are others for whom evil is
no mere relation of the subject to particular outer things,
but something more radical and general, a wrongness
or vice in his essential nature, which no alteration of
the environment, or any superficial rearrangement of the
inner self, can cure, and which requires a supernatural
remedy. On the whole, the Latin races have leaned more
towards the former way of looking upon evil, as made up
of ills and sins in the plural, removable in detail ; while
the Germanic races have tended rather to think of Sin in
the singular, and with a capital S, as of something inerad-
cably ingrained in our natural subjectivity, and never
io be removed by any superficial piecemeal operations.^
These comparisons of races are always open to excep-
tion, but undoubtedly the northern tone in religion has
inclined to the more intimately pessimistic persuasion,
and this way of feeling, being the more extreme, we shall
find by far the more instructive for our study.
Recent psychology has found great use for the word
^ threshold ' as a symbolic designation for the point at
which one state of mind passes into anothex« Thus we
^ Ct J. Mu^AND : Luther et le Serf-Arbitrei lSS4,/xufiiii.
THE SICE SOUL 135
gpeak of the threshold of a man's consciousness in gen-
eral, to indicate the amount of noise, pressure, or other
outer stimulus which it takes to arouse his attention at
all. One with a high threshold will doze through an
amount of racket by which one with a low threshold
would be immediately waked. Similarly, when one is sen-
sitive to small differences in any order of sensation, we
say he has a low ^ difference-threshold ' — his mind easily
steps over it into the consciousness of the differences in
question. And just so we might speak of a ' pain-thresh-
old,' a ^ fear-threshold,' a ^ misery-threshold,' and find it
quickly overpassed by the consciousness of some individ-
uals, but lying too high in others to be often reached by
their consciousness. The sanguine and healthy-minded
live habitually on the sunny side of their misery-line, the
depressed and melancholy live beyond it, in darkness and
apprehension. There are men who seem to have started
in life with a bottle or two of champagne inscribed to
their credit ; whilst others seem to have been bom close
to the pain-threshold, which the sUghtest irritants fatally
send them over.
Does it not appear as if one who lived more habitually
on one side of the pain-threshold might need a different
sort of religion from one who habitually hved on the
other ? This question, of the relativity of different types
of religion to different types of need, arises naturally at
this point, and will become a serious problem ere we have
done. But before we confront it in general terms, we
must address ourselves to the unpleasant task of hearing
what the sick souls, as we may call them in contrast to
the healthy-minded, have to say of the secrets of their
prison-house, their own peculiar form of consciousness.
Let us then resolutely turn our backs on the once-born
and their sky-blue optimistic gospel ; let us not simply cry
136 THE YABIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
out, in spite of all appearances, ^^ Hurrah for the Uni-
verse ! — God 's in his Heaven, all 's right with the
world." Let us see rather whether pity, pain, and fear,
and the sentiment of human helplessness may not open
a profounder view and put into our hands a more com-
pHcated key to the meaning of the situation.
To begin with, how can things so insecure as the suc-
cessful experiences of this world afford a stable anchor-
age ? A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and
life is after all a chain. In the healthiest and most pros-
perous existence, how many links of illness, danger, and
disaster are always interposed ? Unsuspectedly from the
bottom of every fountain of pleasure, as the old poet
said, something bitter rises up : a touch of nausea, a fall-
ing dead of the delight, a whiff of melancholy, things
that sound a knell, for fugitive as they may be, they
bring a feeling of coming from a deeper region and often
have an appalling convincingness. The buzz of Ufe
ceases at their touch as a piano-string stops sounding
when the damper falls upon it.
Of course the music can commence again ; — and again
and again, — at intervals. But with this the healthy-
minded consciousness is left with an irremediable sense
of precariousness. It is a bell with a crack ; it draws its
breath on sufferance and by an accident.
Even if we suppose a man so packed with healthy-
mindedness as never to have experienced in his own per-
son any of these sobering intervals, still, if he is a reflect-
ing being, he must generalize and class his own lot with
that of others ; and, doing so, he must see that his escape
is just a lucky chance and no essential difference. He
might just as well have been born to an entirely different
fortune. And then indeed the hollow security ! What
THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS
EXPERIENCE
LECTUEE I
RELIGION Ain) NEUBOLOGY '
IT is with no small amount of trepidation that I take my
place hehind this desk^ and &ce this learned audience.
To us Americans, the experience of receiving instruction
from the living voice, as well as from the books, of Euro-
pean scholars, is very familiar. At my own University
oE Harvard, not a winter passes without its harvest, large
or small, of lectures from Scottish, English, French, or
German representatives of the science or literature of
their respective countries whom we have either induced
to cross the ocean to address us, or captured on the wing
as they were visiting our land. It seems the natural
thing for us to listen whilst the Europeans talk. The
contrary habit, of talking whilst the Europeans listen, we
have not yet acquired ; and in him who first makes the
adventure it begets a certain sense of apology being due
for so presumptuous an act. Particularly must this be the
case on a soil as sacred to the American imagination aa
that of Edinburgh. The glories of the philosophic chair
of this university were deeply impressed on my imagina-
tion in boyhood. Professor Fraser's Essays in Philo*
sophy, then just published, was the first philosophic
book I ever looked into, and I well remember the awe*
struck feeling I received from the account of Sir Wil-
THE SICK SOUL 137
of a frame of things is it of which the best you can
say is, '^ Thank God, it has let me o£E clear this time 1 **
Is not its blessedness a fragile fiction ? Is not your joy
in it a yeiy vulgar glee, not much unlike the snicker of
any rogue at his success ? If indeed it were all success^
even on such terms as that I But take the happiest man,
the one most envied by the world, and in nine cases out
of ten his inmost consciousness is one of failure. Either
his ideals in the line of his achievements are pitched far
higher than the achievements themselves, or else he has
secret ideals of which the world knows nothing, and in
regard to which he inwardly knows himself to be found
wanting.
When such a conquering optimist as Goethe can ex-
press himself in this wise, how must it be with less suc-
cessful men ?
** I will say nothing/' writes Goethe in 1824, ^ against the
course of my existence. But at bottom it has been nothing but
pain and burden, and I can affirm that during the whole of my
75 years, I have not had four weeks of genuine well-being. It
is but the perpetual rolling of a rock that must be raised up
again forever."
What single-handed man was ever on the whole as
successful as Luther? yet when he had grown old, he
looked back on his life as if it were an absolute failure.
** I am utterly weary of life. I pray the Lord wiU come
forthwith and carry me hence. Let him come, above all, with
his last Judgment: I will stretch out my neck, the thunder will
burst forth, and I shall be at rest." — And having a necklace
of white agates in his hand at the time he added : ^^ O God,
grant that it may come without delay. I would readily eat up
this necklace to-day, for the Judgment to come to-morrow/* — *
The Electress Dowager, one day when Luther was dining with
her, said to him : *^ Doctor, I wish you may live forty years to
138 THE VABIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
come.'* ^ Madam,*' replied he, ** rather than live forty years
more, I would give up my chance of Paradise."
Failure, then, failure ! so the world stamps ns at every
turn. We strew it with our blunders, our misdeeds, our
lost opportunities, with all the memorials of our inade^
quacy to our vocation. And with what a damning em«
phasis does it then blot us out 1 No easy fine, no mere
apology or formal expiation, will satisfy the world's de-
mands, but every pound of flesh exacted is soaked with
all its blood. The subtlest forms of suffering known to
man are connected with the poisonous humiliations inci-
dental to these results.
And they are pivotal human experiences. A process
60 ubiquitous and everlasting is evidently an integral part
of life. ^^ There is indeed one element in human des-
tiny,'' Robert Louis Stevenson writes, ^^ tiliat not blindness
itself can controvert. Whatever else we are intended to
do, we are not intended to succeed ; failure is the fate
allotted." ^ And our nature being thus rooted in failure^
is it any wonder that theologians should have held it to
be essential, and thought that only through the personal
experience of humiliation which it engenders the deeper
sense of life's significance is reached ? ^
^ He adds with charactexistio healthj-mindednets : *' Oar busineas is to
continue to fail in good spirits.'*
* The God of many men is little more than their court of appeal against
the damnatory judgment passed on their failures by the opinion of this
world. To our own consciousness there is usually a residuum of worth left
over after our sins and errors have been told off — our capacity of acknow-
ledging and regretting them is the germ of a better self in poise at least.
But the world deals with us in actu and not m poue: and of this hidden
germ, not to be guessed at from without, it never takes account. Then we
turn to the All-knower, who knows our bad, but knows this good in us also,
and who is just. We cast ourselves with our repentance on his mercy:
only by an All-knower can we finally be judged. So the need of a God
Tezy definitely emerges from this sort of experience of life.
THE SICE SOUL 139
But this is only the first stage of the world-sickness.
Make the human being's sensitiveness a little greater,
carry him a little farther over the misery-threshold, and
the good quality of the successful moments themselves
when they occur is spoiled and vitiated. All natural
goods perish. Riches take wings; fame is a breath;
love is a cheat ; youth and health and pleasure vanish.
Can things whose end is always dust and disappointment
be the real goods which our souls require? Back of
everything is the great spectre of universal death, the
all-encompassing blackness : —
** What profit bath a man of all his labour which he taketh
under the Sun ? I looked on all the works that my hands had
wrought, and behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit.
For that which befalleth the sons of men bef alleth beasts ; as
the one dieth, so dieth the other ; all are of the dust, and all
turn to dust again. . . . The dead know not anything, neither
have they any more a reward ; for the memory of them is for-
gotten. Also their love and their hatred and their envy is now
perished ; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any-
thing that is done under the Sun. . . . Truly the light is sweet,
and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the Sun : but
if a man live many years and rejoice in them all, yet let him
remember the days of darkness ; for they shall be many."
In short, life and its negation are beaten up inextrica-
bly together. But if the life be good, the negation of it
must be bad. Yet the two are equally essential facts of
existence ; and all natural happiness thus seems infected
with a contradiction. The breath of the sepulchre sur-
rounds it.
To a mind attentive to this state of things and rightly
subject to the joy-destroying chill which such a contem-
plation engenders, the only relief that healthy-minded-
ness can give is by saying: ^ Stuff and nonsense, get
out into the open air ! ' or ^ Cheer up, old fellow, you '11
f
140 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
be all right erelong, if you will only drop your morbid-
ness I' But in all seriousness, can such bald animal
talk as that be treated as a rational answer ? To ascribe
religious value to mere happy-go-lucky contentment with
one's brief chance at natural good is but the very conse-
cration of forgetf ulness and superficiality. Our troubles
lie indeed too deep for that cure. The fact that we can
^ die, that we can be ill at all, is what perplexes us ; the
fact that we now for a moment live and are well is irrele-
vant to that perplexity. We need a life not correlated
with death, a health not liable to illness, a kind of good
that wiU not perish, a good in fact that flies beyond the
Goods of nature.
It all depends on how sensitive the soul may become
to discords. ^^ The trouble with me is that I believe too
much in common happiness and goodness," said a friend
of mine whose consciousness was of this sort, ^^ and
nothing can console me for their transiency. I am
appalled and disconcerted at its being possible." And so
with most of us : a little cooling down of animal excita-
bility and instinct, a little loss of animal toughness, a
little irritable weakness and descent of the pain-threshold,
will bring the worm at the core of all our usual springs
of delight into full view, and turn us into melancholy
metaphysicians. The pride of life and glory of the
world will shrivel. It is after all but the standing quarrel
of hot youth and hoary eld. Old age has the last word :
the purely naturalistic look at life, however enthusiastic
cally it may begin, is sure to end in sadness.
This sadness lies at the heart of every merely posi-
tivistic, agnostic, or naturalistic scheme of philosophy.
Let sanguine healthy-mindedness do its best with its
strange power of living in the moment and ignoring and
forgetting, still the evil background is really there to be
THE SICK SOUL 141
thought of, and the skull will grin in at the banquet. In
the practical life of the individual, we know how his
whole gloom or glee about any present fact depends on
the remoter schemes and hopes with which it stands re-
lated. Its significance and framing give it the chief part
of its value. Let it be known to lead nowhere, and
however agreeable it may be in its immediacy, its glow
and gilding vanish. The old man, sick with an insidi-
ous internal disease, may laugh and quaff his wine at fiirst
as well as ever, but he knows his fate now, for the doc-
tors have revealed it; and the knowledge knocks the
satisfaction out of all these functions. They are part-
ners of death and the worm is their brother, and they
turn to a mere flatness.
The lustre of the present hour is always borrowed
from the background of possibilities it goes with. Let
our common experiences be enveloped in an eternal moral
order ; let our suffering have an immortal significance ;
let Heaven smile upon the eartfi, and deities pay their
visits ; let faith and hope be the atmosphere which man
breathes in ; — and his days pass by with zest ; they stir
with prospects, they thrill with remoter values. Place
round them on the contrary the curdling cold and gloom
and absence of all permanent meaning which for pure
naturalism and the popular science evolutionism of our
time are all that is visible ultimately, and the thrill stops
short, or turns rather to an anxious trembUng.
For naturalism, fed on recent cosmological specula-
tions, mankind is in a position similar to that of a set of
people living on a frozen lake, surrounded by cliffs over
which there is no escape, yet knowing that little by little
the ice is melting, and the inevitable day dra^g near
when the last film of it will disappear, and to be drowned
ignominiously will be the human creature's portion. The
142 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
merrier the skating, the wanner and more sparkling the
sun by day, and the ruddier the bonfires at night, the
more poignant the sadness with which one must take in
the meaning of the total situation.
The early Greeks are continually held up to us in lit-
erary works as models of the healthy-minded joyousness
which the religion of nature may engender. There was
indeed much joyousness among the Greeks — Homer's
flow of enthusiasm for most things that the sun shines
upon is steady. But even in Homer the reflective pas-
sages are cheerless/ and the moment the Greeks grew
systematically pensive and thought of ultimates, they
became unmitigated pessimists.^ The jealousy of the
gods, the nemesis that follows too much happiness, the
all-encompassing death, fate's dark opacity, the ultimate
and unintelligible cruelty, were the fixed background of
^ E. g., Iliad, XVII. 446 : " Nothing then is more wretched anywhere
than man of all that breathes and creeps upon this earth."
3 £. g., Theognis, 425-428 : « Best of all for all things upon earth is it
not to be bom nor to behold the splendors of the Sun ; next best to traverse
as soon as possible the gates of Hades.'' See also the almost identical
passage in (Edipus in Colouus, 1225. — The Anthology is full of pessimis-
tic utterances : " Naked came I upon the earth, naked I go below the
ground — why then do I vainly toil when I see the end naked before me ? "
— " How did I come to be ? Whence am I ? Wherefore did I come ? To
pass away. How can I learn aught when naught I know ? Being naught I
came to life : once more shall I be what I was. Nothing and nothingness
is the whole race of mortals." — " For death we are all cherished and fat-
tened like a herd of hogs that is wantonly butchered."
The difference between Greek pessimism and the oriental and modem
variety is that the Greeks had not made the discovery that the pathetic
mood may be idealized, and figure as a higher form of sensibility. Their
spirit was still too essentially masculine for pessimism to be elaborated or
lengthily dwelt on in their classic literature. They would have despised a
life set wholly in a minor key, and summoned it to keep within the proper
bounds of lachrymosity. The discovery that the enduring emphasis, so far
as this world goes, may be laid on its pain and failure, was reserved for
races more complex, and (so to speak) more feminine than the Hellenes
had attained to being in the classic period. But aU the same was the out-
look of those Hellenes blackly pessimistic.
THE SICK SOUL 143
their imagination. The beautiful joyousness of their
polytheism is only a poetic modem fiction. They knew
no joys comparable in quality of preciousness to those
which we shall erelong see that Brahmans, Buddhists,
Christians, Mohammedans, twice-born people whose reli-
gion is non-naturaUstic, get from their several creeds of
mysticism and renunciation.
Stoic insensibility and Epicurean resignation were the
farthest advance which the Greek mind made in that di-
rection. The Epicurean said : ^^ Seek not to be happy,
but rather to escape unhappiness ; strong happiness is
always Unked with pain ; therefore hug the safe shore,
and do not tempt the deeper raptures. Avoid disap-
pointment by expecting Uttle, and by aiming low ; and
above all do not fret." The Stoic said : ^^ The only
genuine good that life can yield a man is the free pos-
session of his own soul; all other goods are lies.''
Each of these philosophies is in its degree a philosophy
of despair in nature's boons. Trustful self-abandonment
to the joys that freely offer has entirely departed from
both Epicurean and Stoic ; and what each proposes is a
way of rescue from the resultant dust-and-ashes state of
mind. The Epicurean still awaits results from economy
of indulgence and damping of desire. The Stoic hopes
for no results, and gives up natural good altogether-
There is dignity in both these forms of resignation.
They represent distinct stages in the sobering process
which man's primitive intoxication with sense-happiness
is sure to undergo. Jn the one the hot blood has grown
cool, in the other it has become quite cold ; and although
I have spoken of them in the past tense, as if they were
merely historic, yet Stoicism and Epicureanism will prob-
ably be to all time typical attitudes, marking a certain
definite stage accomplished in the evolution of the world-
144 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
sick soul.^ They mark the conclusion of T^hat we call
the once-born period, and represent the highest flights of
what twice-born religion would call the purely natural
man — Epicureanism, which can only by great courtesy
be called a religion, showing his refinement, and Stoi-
cism exhibiting his moral will. They leave the world
in the shape of an unreconciled contradiction, and seek
no higher unity. Compared with the complex ecstasies
which the supernaturally regenerated Christian may en-
joy, or the oriental pantheist indulge in, their receipts
for equanimity are expedients which seem almost crude
in their simplicity.
Please observe, however, that I am not yet pretending
finally to judge any of these attitudes. I am only
describing their variety.
The securest way to the rapturous sorts of happiness
of which the t Whom make report has as an hLoric
matter of fact been through a more radical pessimism
than anything that we have yet considered* We have
seen how the lustre and enchantment may be rubbed off
from the goods of nature. But there is a pitch of unhap-
piness so great that the goods of nature may be entirely
forgotten, and all sentiment of their existence vanish from
the mental field. For this extremity of pessimism to be
reached, something more is needed than observation of
^ For instance, on the very day on which I write this page, the post
brings me some aphorisms from a worldly-wise old friend in Heidelberg
which may serve as a good contemporaneous expression of Epicureanism :
*' By the word < happiness ' every hnman being understands something dif-
ferent. It is a phantom pursued only by weaker minds. The wise man is
satisfied with the more modest but much more definite term contentment.
What education should chiefly aim at is to save us from a discontented life.
Health is one favoring condition, but by no means an indispensable one, of
contentment. Woman's heart and love are a shrewd device of Nature, a
trap which she sets for the average man, to force him into working. But
the wise man wiU always prefer work chosen by himself."
THE SICK SOUL 146
life and reflection upon death. The individual must in
his own person become the prey of a pathological mel-
ancholy. As the healthy-minded enthusiast succeeds in
ignoring evil's very existence^ so the subject of melan-
choly is forced in spite of himself to ignore that of all
good whatever : for him it may no longer have the least
reality. Such sensitiveness and susceptibility to mental
pain is a rare occurrence where the nervous constitution is
entirely normal ; one seldom finds it in a healthy subject
even where he is the victim of the most atrocious cruel-
ties of outward fortune. So we note here the neurotic
constitution, of which I said so much in my first lecture,
making its active entrance on our soene, and destined to
play a part in much that follows. Since these experi-
ences of melancholy are in the first instance absolutely
private and individual, I can now help myself out with
personal documents. Painful indeed they will be to
listen to, and there is almost an indecency in handling
them in public. Yet they lie right in the middle of our
path ; and if we are to touch the psychology of religion
at all seriously, we must be willing to forget convention-
alities, and dive below the smooth and lying official con-
versational surface.
One can distinguish many kinds of pathological depres-
sion. Sometimes it is mere passive joylessness and drear-
iness, discouragement, dejection, lack of taste and zest
and spring. Professor Ribot has proposed the name
anhedonia to designate this condition.
^* The state of anhedonia^ if I may coin a new word to pair
off with analgesia^^ he writes, ^*has been very little stadied, but
it exists. A young girl was smitten with a liver disease which
for some time altered her constitation. She felt no longer any
affection for her father and mother. She would have played
with her doll, but it was impossible to find the least pleasure in
146 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
the act. The same things which formerly convulsed her with
laughter entirely failed to interest her now. Esquirol observed
the case of a very intelligent magistrate who was also a prey to
hepatic disease. Every emotion appeared dead within him. He
manifested neither perversion nor violence, but complete absence
of emotional reaction. If he went to the theatre, which he did
out of habit, he could find no pleasure there. The thought of
his house, of his home, of his wife, and of his absent children
moved him as little, he said, as a theorem of £uclid." ^
Prolonged seasickness will in most persons produce a
temporary condition of anhedonia. Every good, terres-
tial or celestial, is imagined only to be turned from with
disgust. A temporary condition of this sort, connected
widi the religious evolution of a singularly lofty charac-
ter, both intellectual and moral, is well described by the
Catholic philosopher, Father Gratry, in his autobiographi-
cal recollections. In consequence of mental isolation and
excessive study at the Polytechnic school, young Gratry
fell into a state of nervous exhaustion with symptoms
which he thus describes : —
^' I had such a universal terror that I woke at night with a
start, thinking that the Pantheon was tumbling on the Poly-
technic school, or that the school was in flames, or that the
Seine was pouring into the Catacombs, and that Paris was
being swallowed up. And when these impressions were past,
all day long without respite I suffered an incurable and intol-
erable desolation, verging on despair. I thought myself, in
fact, rejected by God, lost, damned ! I felt something like the
suffering of heU. Before that I had never even thought of
hell. My mind had never turned in that direction. Neither
discourses nor reflections had impressed me in that way. I
took no account of hell. Now, and all at once, I suffered in a
measure what is suffered there.
*^ But what was perhaps still more dreadful is that every idea
of heaven was taken away from me : I could no longer conceive
^ RiBOT : Psychologie des sentiments, p. 54.
THE SICK SOUL 147
of aDything of the sort. Heaven did not seem to me worth
going to. It was like a vacuum ; a mythological elysium, an
abode of shadows less real than the earth. I could conceive no
joy, no pleasure in inhabiting it. Happiness, joy, light, affec-
tion, love — all these words were now devoid of sense. With-
out doubt I could still have talked of all these things, but I had
become incapable of feeling anything in them, of understanding
anything about them, of hoping anything from them, or of
believing them to exist. There was my great and inconsolable
grief I I neither perceived nor conceived any longer the exist-
ence of happiness or perfection. An abstract heaven over a
naked rock. Such was my present abode for eternity." ^
So much for melancholy in the sense of incapacity
for joyous feeling. A much worse form of it is positive
and active anguish, a sort of psychical neuralgia wholly
unknown to healthy life. Such anguish may partake of
various characters, having sometimes more the quality of
loathing ; sometimes that of irritation and exasperation ;
or again of self-mistrust and self-despair ; or of suspicion,
anxiety, trepidation, fear. The patient may rebel or sub-
^ A. Gbatrt : SooTenin de ma jeunesse, 1880, pp. 119-121, abridged.
Some persons are affected with anhedonia permanently, or at any rate with
a loss of the usoal appetite for life. The annals of suicide supply such ex-
amples as the following : —
An uneducated domestic servant, aged nineteen, poisons herself, and
leaves two letters expressing her motive for the act To her parents she
writes : —
" Life is sweet perhaps to some, but I prefer what is sweeter than life,
and that is death. So good-by forever, my dear parents. It is nobody's
fault, but a strong desire of my own which I have longed to fulfill for three
or four years. I have always had a hope that some day I might have an
opportunity of fulfilling it, and now it has come. ... It is a wonder I have
put this off so long, but I thought perhaps I should cheer up a bit and put
all thought out of my head." To her brother she writes : « Good-by for-
ever, my own dearest brother. By the time you get this I shall be gone for-
ever. I know, dear love, there is no forgiveness for what I am going to
do. ... I am tired of living, so am willing to die. . . . Life may be sweet
to some, but death to me is sweeter." S. A. EL Stbahan : Suicide and
Insanity, 2d edition, London, 1894, p. 131.
148 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
mit ; may accuse himself , or accuse outside powers ; and
he may or he may not be tormented by the theoretical
mystery of why he should so have to suffer. Most cases
are mixed cases, and we should not treat our classifi-
cations with too much respect. Moreover, it is only a
relatively small proportion of cases that connect them-
selves with the reUgious sphere of experience at all.
Exasperated cases, for instance, as a rule do not. I quote
now Uterally from the first case of melancholy on which
I lay my hand. It is a letter from a patient in a French
asylum.
^^ I suffer too much in this hospital, both physically and mor-
ally. Besides the burnings and the sleeplessness (for I no
longer sleep since I am shut up here, and the little rest I get is
broken by bad dreams, and I am waked with a jump by night-
mares, dreadful visions, lightning, thunder, and the rest), fear,
atrocious fear, presses me down, holds me without respite, never
lets me go. Where is the justice in it all I What have I done
to deserve this excess of severity ? Under what form will this
fear crush me ? What would I not owe to any one who would
rid me of my life I Eat, drink, lie awake all night, suffer with-
out interruption — such is the fine legacy I have received from
my mother I What I fail to understand is this abuse of power.
There are limits to everything, there is a middle way. But
God knows neither middle way nor limits. I say God, but
why ? All I have known so far has been the deviL After all,
I am afraid of God as much as of the devil, so I drift along,
thinking of nothing but suicide, but with neitlier courage nor
means here to execute the act. As you read this, it will easily
prove to you my insanity. The style and the ideas are incoher-
ent enough — I can see that myself. But I cannot keep myself
from being either crazy or an idiot ; and, as things are, from
whom should I ask pity ? I am defenseless against the invis-
ible enemy who is tightening his coils around me. I should be
no better armed against him even if I saw him, or had seen
him. Oh, if he would but kill me, devil take him I Death,
THE SICK SOUL 149
death, once for all I But I stop. I have raved to you long
enough. I say raved, for I can write no otherwise, having
neither brain nor thoughts left. O God I what a misfortune
to be bom! Bom liba a mushroom, doubtless between an
evening and a morning ; and how true and right I was when in
our philosophy-year in college I chewed the cud of bitterness
with the pessimists. Yes, indeed, there is more pain in life than
gladness — it is one long agony until the grave. Think how
gay it makes me to remember that this horrible misery of mine,
coupled with this unspeakable fear, may last fifty, one hundred,
who knows how many more years I " ^
This letter shows two things. First, you see how the
entire consciousness of the poor man is so choked with
the feeling of evil that the sense of there being any good
in the world is lost for him altogether. His attention
excludes it, cannot admit it : the sun has left his heaven.
And secondly you see how the querulous temper of his
misery keeps his mind from taking a religious direction.
Querulousness of mind tends in fact rather towards irre-
ligion ; and it has played, so far as I know, no part
whatever in the construction of religious systems.
Religious melancholy must be cast in a more melting
mood. Tolstoy has left us, in his book called My Con-
fession, a wonderful account of the attack of melancholy
which led him to his own religious conclusions. The
latter in some respects are peculiar ; but the melancholy
presents two characters which make it a typical document
for our present purpose. First it is a well-marked case
of anhedonia, of passive loss of appetite for all life's
values ; and second, it shows how the altered and es-
tranged aspect which the world assumed in consequence
of this stimulated Tolstoy's intellect to a gnawing, cark-
ing questioning and effort for philosophic relief. I mean
> KouBiNOvrrcH st Toulouse : La Melancolie, 1897, p. 170, abridged.
150 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
to quote Tolstoy at some length ; but before doing so, I
will make a general remark on each of these two points.
First on our spiritual judgments and the sense of value
in general.
It is notorious that facts are compatible with opposite
emotional comments, since the same fact will inspire en-
tirely different feelings in different persons, and at differ-
ent times in the same person ; and there is no rationally
deducible connection between any outer fact and the
sentiments it may happen to provoke. These have their
source in another sphere of existence altogether, in the
animal and spiritual region of the subject's being. Con-
ceive yourself, if possible, suddenly stripped of all the
emotion with which your world now inspires you, and try
to imagine it as it exists^ purely by itself, without your
favorable or unfavorable, hopeful or apprehensive com-
ment. It will be almost impossible for you to realize
such a condition of negativity and deadness. No one
portion of the universe would then have importance be-
yond another ; and the whole collection of its things and
series of its events would be without significance, char-
acter, expression, or perspective. Whatever of value,
interest, or meaning our respective worlds may appear
endued with are thus pure gifts of the spectator's mind.
The passion of love is the most familiar and extreme
example of this fact. If it comes, it comes ; if it does
not come, no process of reasoning can force it. Yet it
transforms the value of the creature loved as utterly as
the sunrise transforms Mont Blanc from a corpse-like
gray to a rosy enchantment ; and it sets the whole world
to a new tune for the lover and gives a new issue to his
life. So with fear, with indignation, jealousy, ambition,
worship. If they are there, life changes. And whether
they shall be there or not depends almost always upon
THE SICK SOUL 151
non-logical^ often on organic conditions. And as the
excited interest which these passions put into the world
is our gift to the world, just so are the passions them-
selves gifts y — gifts to us, from sources sometimes low
and sometimes high ; hut almost always non-logical and
beyond our control. How can the moribund old man
reason back to himself the romance, the mystery, the
.imminence of great things with which our old earth
tingled for him in the days when he was young and well ?
Gifts, either of the flesh or of the spirit ; and the spirit
bloweth where it listeth ; and the world's materials lend
their surface passively to all the gifts alike, as the stage-
setting receives indifferently whatever alternating colored
lights may be shed upon it from the optical apparatus in
the gallery.
Meanwhile the practically real world for each one of
us, the effective world of the individual, is the compound
world, the physical facts and emotional values in indisr
tinguishable combination. Withdraw or pervert either
factor of this complex resultant, and the kind of experi-
ence we call pathological ensues.
In Tolstoy's case the sense that life had any meaning
whatever was for a time wholly withdrawn. The result
was a transformation in the whole expression of reality.
When we come to study the phenomenon of conversion
or religious regeneration, we shall see that a not infre-
quent consequence of the change operated in the subject
is a transfiguration of the face of nature in his eyes. A
new heaven seems to shine upon a new earth. In melan-
choliacs there is usually a similar change, only it is in the
reverse direction. The world now looks remote, strange,
sinister, uncanny. Its color is gone, its breath is cold,
there is no speculation in the eyes it glares with. ^^ It is
as if I lived in another century," says one asylum patient.
152 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
— "I see everything through a cloud/* says another,
" things are not as they were, and I am changed/' — "I
see/' says a third, ^^ I touch, but the things do not come
near me, a thick veil alters the hue and look of every-
thing/' — ^^ Persons move like shadows, and sounds seem
to come from a distant world/' — " There is no longer
any past for me ; people appear so strange ; it is as if I
could not see any reality, as if I were in a theatre ; as if
people were actors, and everything were scenery ; I can
no longer find myself ; I walk, but why ? Everything
floats before my eyes, but leaves no impression/' — : " I
weep false tears, I have unreal hands : the things I see
are not real things/' — Such are expressions that natu-
rally rise to the lips of melancholy subjects describing
their changed state/
Now there are some subjects whom all this leaves a
prey to the profoundest astonishment. The strangeness
is wrong. The unreality cannot be. A mystery is con-
cealed, and a metaphysical solution must exist. If the
natural world is so double-faced and unhomelike, what
world, what thing is real ? An urgent wondering and
questioning is set up, a poring theoretic activity, and
in the desperate effort to get into right relations with
the matter, the sufferer is often led to what becomes for
him a satisfying religious solution.
At about the age of fifty, Tolstoy relates that he began
to have moments of perplexity, of what he calls arrest,
as if he knew not * how to live,' or what to do. It is ob-
vious that these were moments in which the excitement
and interest which our functions naturally bring had
ceased. Life had been enchanting, it was now flat sober,
more than sober, dead. Things were meaningless whose
^ I cuU these examples from the work of G. Dumas : La Tristesse et 1»
Joie, 1900.
TH£ SICK SOUL 153
meaning had always been self-evident. The questions
* Why ? ' and * What next ? ' began to beset him more
and more frequently. At first it seemed as IF such ques-
tions must be answerable^ and as if he could easily find
the answers if he would take the time ; but as they ever
became more urgent, he perceived that it was like those
first discomforts of a sick man, to which he pays but little
attention till they run into one continuous suffering, and
then he realizes that what he took for a passing disorder
means the most momentous thing in the world for him,
means his death.
These questions ' Why ? ' ' Wherefore ? ' ' What for ? '
found no response.
^* I felt," says Tolstoy, ^^ that something had broken within
me on which my life had always rested, that I had nothing
left to hold on to, and that morally my life had stopped. An
invincible force impelled me to get rid of my existence, in one
way or another.' It cannot be said exactly that I vnshed to kill
myself, for the force which drew me away from life was fuller,
more powerful, more general than any mere desire. It was a
force like my old aspiration to live, only it impelled me in the
opposite direction. It was an aspiration of my whole being to
get out of life.
' ^ Behold me then, a man happy and in good health, hiding
the rope in order not to hang myself to the rafters of the room
where every night I went to sleep alone ; behold me no longer
going shooting, lest I should yield to the too easy temptation of
putting an end to myself with my gun.
** I did not know what I wanted. I was afraid of life ; I
was driven to leave it ; and in spite of that I still hoped some-
thing from it.
^^ All this took place at a time when so far as all my outer
circumstances went, I ought to have been completely happy. I
had a good wife who loved me and whom I loved; good chil-
dren and a large property which was increasing with no pains
taken on my part. I was more respected by my kinsfolk and
164 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
acquaintance than I had ever been ; I was loaded with praise
by strangers ; and without exaggeration I could believe my
name already famous. Moreover I was neither insane nor ill.
On the contrary, I possessed a physical and mental strength
which I have rarely met in persons of my age. I could mow
as well as the peasants, I could work with my brain eight hours
uninterruptedly and feel no bad effects.
^ And yet I could give no reasonable meaning to any actions
of my life. And I was surprised that I had not understood
this from the very beginning. My state of mind was as if
some wicked and stupid jest was being played upon me by some
one. One can live only so long as one is intoxicated, drunk
with life ; but when one grows sober one cannot fail to see
that it is all a stupid cheat. What is truest about it is that
there is nothing even funny or silly in it ; it is cruel and stupid,
purely and simply.
^^ The oriental fable of the traveler surprised in the desert
by a wild beast is very old.
'' Seeking to save himself from the fierce animal, the traveler
jumps into a well with no water in it ; but at the bottom of
this well he sees a dragon waiting with open mouth to devour
him. And the unhappy man, not daring to go out lest he
should be the prey of the beast, not daring to jump to the
bottom lest he should be devoured by the dragon, clings to the
branches of a wild bush which grows out of one of the cracks
of the well. His hands weaken, and he feels that he must soon
give way to certain fate ; but still he clings, and sees two mice,
one white, the other black, evenly moving round the bush to
which he hangs, and gnawing off its roots.
'^ The traveler sees this and knows that he must inevitably
perish ; but while thus hanging he looks about him and finds
on the leaves of the bush some drops of honey. These he
reaches with his tongue and licks them off with rapture.
^^ Thus I hang upon the boughs of life, knowing that the
inevitable dragon of death is waiting ready to tear me, and
I cannot comprehend why I am thus made a martyr. I try to
suck the honey which formerly consoled me; but the honey
pleases me no longer, and day and night the white mouse and
THE SICK SOUL 155
the black mouse gnaw the branch to which I cling. I can see
but one thing : the inevitable dragon and the mice — I cannot
turn my gaze away from them.
^^ This is no fable, but the literal incontestable truth which :
every one may understand. What will be the outcome of what
I do to-day ? Of what I shall do to-morrow ? What will be
the outcome of all my life ? Why should I live ? Why should
I do anything? Is there in life any purpose which the inev*
itable death which awaits me does not undo and destroy ?
«« These questions are the simplest in the world. From the
stupid child to the wisest old man, they are in the soul of every
human being. Without an answer to them, it is impossible, as
I experienced, for life to go on.
'^ * But perhaps,' I often said to myself, ^ there may be some-
thing I have failed to notice or to comprehend. It is not
possible that this condition of despair should be natural to
mankind.' And I sought for an explanation in all the branches
of knowledge acquired by men. I questioned painfully and
protractedly and .with no idle curiosity. I sought, not with
indolence, but laboriously and obstinately for days and nights
together. I sought like a man who is lost and seeks to save
himself, — and I found nothing. I became convinced, more-
over, that all those who before me had sought for an answer in
the sciences have also found nothing. And not only this, but
that they have recognized that the very thing which was lead-
ing me to despair — the meaningless absurdity of life — is the
only incontestable knowledge accessible to man."
To prove this pointy Tolstoy quotes the Buddha, Solo-
mon, and Schopenhauer. And he finds only four ways
in which men of his own class and society are accustomed
to meet the situation. Either mere animal blindness,
sucking the honey without seeing the dragon or the
mice, — " and from such a way," he says, " I can learn
nothing, after what I now know ; " or reflective epicurean-
ism, snatching what it can while the day lasts, — which is
only a more deliberate sort of stupefaction like the first ;
166 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
or manly suicide ; or seeing the mice and dragon and yet
weakly and plaintively clinging to the bush of life.
Suicide was naturally the consistent course dictated by
the logical intellect.
*^ Yet," says Tolstoy, ^^ whilst my intellect was working, some-
thing else in me was working too, and kept me from the deed
— a consciousness of life, as I may call it, which was like a
force that obliged my mind to fix itself in another direction
and draw me out of my situation of despair. . • • During the
whole course of this year, when I almost unceasingly kept ask-
ing myself how to end the business, whether by the rope or by
the bullet, during all that time, alongside of all those move-
ments of my ideas and observations, my heart kept languishing
with another pining emotion. I can call this by no other name
than that of a thirst for God. This craving for God had
nothing to do with the movement of my ideas, — in fact, it was
the direct contrary of that movement, — but it came from my
heai*t. It was like a feeling of dread that made me seem like
an orphan and isolated in the midst of all these things that
were so foreign. And this feeling of dread was mitigated by
the hope of finding the assistance of some one." ^
Of the process^ intellectual as well as emotional, which,
starting from this idea of God, led to Tolstoy's recovery,
I will say nothing in this lecture, reserving it for a later
hour. The only thing that need interest us now is the
phenomenon of his absolute disenchantment with ordi-
nary life, and the fact that the whole range of habitual
values may, to a man as powerful and full of faculty as
he was, come to appear so ghastly a mockery.
When disillusionment has gone as far as this, there is
seldom a restitutio ad integrum. One has tasted of the
fruit of the tree, and the happiness of Eden never comes
again. The happiness that comes, when any does come,
^ My extracts are from the French translation by * ZoNiA.' In abridging
I have taken the liberty of transposing one passage.
THE SICK SOUL 157
— and often enough it fails to return in an acute f orm^
though its form is sometimes very acute, — is not the
simple ignorance of ill, but something vastly more com-
plex, including natural evil as one of its elements, but
finding natural evil no such stumbling-block and terror
because it now sees it swallowed up in supernatural good.
The process is one of redemption, not of mere reversion
to natural health, and the sufferer, when saved, is saved
by what seems to him a second birth, a deeper kind of
conscious being than he could enjoy before.
We find a sOmewhat different type of religious melan-
choly enshrined in literature in John Bunyan's autobio-
graphy. Tolstoy's preoccupations were largely objective,
for the purpose and meaning of life in general was what
so troubled him ; but poor Bunyan's troubles were over
the condition of his own personal self. He was a t3rpical
case of the psychopathic temperament, sensitive of con-
science to a diseased degree, beset by doubts, fears, and
insistent ideas, and a victim of verbal automatisms, both
motor and sensory. These were usually texts of Scrip-
ture which, sometimes damnatory and sometimes favoV-
able, would come in a half-hallucinatory form as if they
were voices, and fasten on his mind and buffet it between
them like a shuttlecock. Added to this were a fearful
melancholy self-contempt and despair.
" Nay, thought I, now I grow worse and worse ; now I am
farther from conversion than ever I was before. If now I
should have burned at the stake, I could not believe that Christ
had love for me ; alas, I could neither hear him, nor see him,
nor feel him, nor savor any of his things. Sometimes I would
t€'ll my condition to the people of God, which, when they heard,
they would pity me, and would tell of the Promises. But they
had as good have told me that I must reach the Sun with my
finger as have bidden me receive or rely upon the Prombe.
158 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
[Yet] all this while as to the act of sinning, I never was more
tender than now ; I durst not take a pin or stick, though but
so big as a straw, for my conscience now was sore, and would
smart at every touch ; I could not tell how to speak my words,
for fear I should misplace them. Oh, how gingerly did I then
go, in aU I did or said I I found myself as on a miry bog that
shook if I did but stir ; and was as there left both by God and
Christ, and the spirit, and all good things.
^* But my original and inward pollution, that was my plague
and my affliction. By reason of that, I was more loathsome in
my own eyes than was a toad ; and I thought I was so in Grod's
eyes too. Sin and corruption, I said, would as naturally bubble
out of my heart as water would bubble out of a fountain. I
could have changed heart with anybody. I thought none but
the Devil himself could equal me for inward wickedness and
poUution of mind. Sure, thought I, I am forsaken of God ; and
thus I continued a long while, even for some years together.
** And now I was sorry that God had made me a man. The
beasts, birds, fishes, etc., I blessed their condition, for they had
not a sinful nature ; they were not obnoxious to the wrath of
God; they were not to go to hell-fire after death. I could
therefore have rejoiced, had my condition been as any of
theirs. Now I blessed the condition of the dog and toad,
yea, gladly would I have been in the condition of the dog
or horse, for I knew they had no soul to perish under the
everlasting weight of Hell or Sin, as mine was like to do.
Nay, and though I saw this, felt this, and was broken to pieces
with it, yet that which added to my sorrow was, that I could
not find with all my soul that I did desire deliverance. My
heart was at times exceedingly hard. If I would have given
a thousand pounds for a tear, I could not shed one ; no, nor
sometimes scarce desire to shed one.
^' I was both a burthen and a terror to myself ; nor did I
ever so know, as now, what it was to be weary of my life, and
yet afraid to die. How gladly would I have been anything but
myself I Anything but a man I and in any condition but liiy
own."i
^ Grace aboanding to the Chief of Sinners : I have printed a nonklfer of
detached passages continuously. ^
THE SICK SOUL 169
Poor patient Bunjan, like Tolstoy, saw the light again,
but we must also postpone that fait of his story to an-
other hour. In a later lecture I will also give the end
of the experience of Henry Alline, a devoted evangelist
who worked in Nova Scotia a hundred years ago, and
who thus vividly describes the high-water mark of the
religious melancholy which formed its beginning. The
type was not unlike Bunyan's.
^^ Everything I saw seemed to be a burden to me ; the earth
seemed accursed for my sake: all trees, plants, rocks, hills,
and vales seemed to be dressed in mourning and groaning,
under the weight of the curse, and everything around me
seemed to be conspiring my ruin. My sins seemed to be laid
open ; so that I thought that every one I saw knew them, and
sometimes I was almost ready to acknowledge many things,
which I thought they knew : yea sometimes it seemed to me as
if every one was pointing me out as the most guilty wretch upon
earth. I had now so great a sense of the vanity and emptiness
of all things here below, that I knew the whole world could not
possibly make me happy, no, nor the whole system of creation.
When I waked in the morning, the first thought would be, Oh,
my wretched soul, what shall I do, where shall I go ? And
when I laid down, would say, I shall be perhaps in hell before
morning. I would many times look on the beasts with envy,
wishing with all my heart I was in their place, that I might
have no soul to lose ; and when I have seen birds flying over
my head, have often thought within myself. Oh, that I could
fly away from my danger and distress I Ob, how happy should
I be, if I were in their place ! " ^
Envy of the placid beasts seems to be a very wide-
spread affection in this type of sadness.
The worst kind of melancholy is that which takes the
^ The Life and Journal of the Rev. Mr. Henrj Alline, Boston, 1806,
pp. 25, 26. I owe my acquaintanoe with this book to my ooUeagae, Dr.
Benjamin Band.
160 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
form of panic fear. Here is an excellent example, for
permission to print which I have to thank the sufferer.
The original is in French, and though the subject was
evidently in a bad nervous condition at the time of which
he writes, his case has otherwise the merit of extreme
simplicity. I translate freely.
^' Whilst in this state of philosophic pessimism and general
depression of spirits about my prospects, I went one evening
into a dressing-room in the twilight to procure some article that
was there ; when suddenly there fell upon me without any
warning, just as if it came out of the darkness, a horrible fear
of my own existence. Simultaneously there arose in my mind
the image of an epileptic patient whom I had seen in the asy-
lum, a black-haired youth with greenish skin, entirely idiotic,
who used to sit all day on one of the benches, or rather shelves
against the wall, with his knees drawn up against his chin,
and the coarse gray undershirt, which was his only garment,
drawn over them inclosing his entire figure. He sat there like
a sort of sculptured Egyptian cat or Peruvian mummy, moving
nothing but his black eyes and looking absolutely non-human.
This image and my fear entered into a species of combination
with each other. ITiat shape am /, I felt, potentially. Nothing
that I possess can defend me against that fate, if the hour for
it should strike for me as it struck for him. There was such a
horror of him, and such a perception of my own merely momen-
tary discrepancy from him, that it was as if something hitherto
solid within my breast gave way entirely, and I became a mass
of quivering fear. After this the universe was changed for me
altogether. I awoke morning after morning with a horrible
dread at the pit of my stomach, and with a sense of the inse-
curity of life that I never knew before, and that I have never
felt since.^ It was like a revelation ; and although the imme-
^ Compare Banyan : " There was I struck into a very great trembling,
insomuch that at some times I could, for days together, feel my very body,
as well as my mind, to shake and totter under the sense of the dreadful
judgment of God, that should fall on those that have sinned that most fear-
ful and unpardonable sin. I felt also such clogging and heat at my stem-
THE SICK SOUL 161
diate feelings passed away, the experience has made me sympa-
thetic with the morbid feelings of others ever since. It grad-
ually faded, but for months I was unable to go out into the
dark alone.
*>In general I dreaded to be left alone. I remember won-
dering how other people could live, how I myself had ever
lived, so unconscious of that pit of insecurity beneath the sur-
face of life. My mother in particular, a very cheerful per-
son, seemed to me a perfect paradox in her unconsciousness of
danger, which you may well believe I was very careful not to
disturb by revelations of my own state of mind. I have always
thought that this experience of melancholia of mine had a reli-
gious bearing."
On asking this correspondent to explain more fully
what he meant by these last words^ the answer he wrote
was this : —
^^ I mean that the fear was so invasive and powerful that if I
had not clung to scripture-texts like ^ The eternal God is my
refuge,' etc., ^ Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy-
laden,' etc., ^ I am the resurrection and the life,' etc., I think I
should have grown really insane." ^
There is no need of more examples. The cases we
have looked at are enough. One of them gives us the
vanity of mortal things ; another the sense of sin ; and
the remaining one describes the fear of the universe ; —
and in one or other of these three ways it always is that
man's original optimism and self-satisfaction get leveled
with the dust.
In none of these cases was there any intellectual insan-
ach, by reason of this my terror, that I was, especially at some times, as if
my breast-bone would have split asunder. . . . Thus did I wind, and twine,
and shrink, under the burden that was upon me ; which burden ahio did
so oppress me that I could neither stand, nor go, nor lie, either at rest or
quiet/'
1 For another case of fear equally sudden, see Hrnrt James : Society
the Redeemed Form of Man, Boston, 1879, pp. 43 ff.
v^
s
162 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
ity or delusion about matters of fact ; but were we dis-
posed to open the chapter of really insane melancholia,
with its hallucinations and delusions, it would be a worse
story still — desperation absolute and complete, the whole
universe coagulating about the sufferer into a material of
overwhelming horror, surrounding him without opening
or end. Not the conception or intellectual perception of
evil, but the grisly blood-freezing heart-palsying sensation
of it close upon one, and no other conception or sensation
able to live for a moment in its presence. How irrele-
vantly remote seem all our usual refined optimisms and
intellectual and moral consolations in presence of a need
of help like this ! Here is the real core of the religious
problem : Help ! help ! No prophet can claim to bring
a final message unless he says things that will have a
sound of reality in the ears of victims such as these.
But the deliverance must come in as strong a form as
the complaint, if it is to take effect ; and that seems a
reason why the coarser religions, revivalistic, orgiastic,
with blood and miracles and supernatural operations, may
possibly never be displaced. Some constitutions need
them too much.
Arrived at this point, we can see how great an antag-
onism may naturally arise between the healthy-minded
way of viewing life and the way that takes all this expe-
rience of evil as something essential. To this latter
way, the morbid-minded way, as we might call it, healthy-
mindedness pure and simple seems unspeakably blind and
shallow. To the healthy-minded way, on the other hand,
the way of the sick soul seems unmanly and diseased.
With their grubbing in rat-holes instead of living in the
light ; with their manufacture of fears, and preoccupation
with every unwholesome kind of misery, there is some-
THE SICK SOUL 163
thing almost obscene about these children of wrath and
cravers of a second birth. If religious intolerance and
hanging and burning could again become the order of
the day, there is little doubt that, however it may have
been in the past, the healthy-minded would at present
show themselves the less indulgent party of the two.
In our own attitude, not yet abandoned, of impartial
onlookers, what are we to say of this quarrel ? It seems
to me that we are bound to say that morbid-mindedness
ranges over the wider scale of experience, and that its
survey is the one that overlaps. The method of avert-
ing one's attention from evil, and living simply in the
light of good is splendid as long as it will work. It will
work with many persons ; it will work far more gener-
ally than most of us are ready to suppose ; and within
the sphere of its successful operation there is nothing to
be said against it as a religious solution. But it breaks
down impotently as soon as melancholy comes ; and even
though one be quite free from melancholy one's self, there
is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a
philosophical doctrine, because the evil facts which it
refuses positively to account for are a genuine portion
of reality ; and liiey may after all be the best key to life's
significance, and possibly the only openers of our eyes to
the deepest levels of truth.
The normal process of life contains moments as bad
as any of those which insane melancholy is filled with,
moments in which radical evil gets its innings and takes
its soUd turn. The lunatic's visions of horror are all
drawn from the material of daily fact. Our civilization
is founded on the shambles, and every individual exist-
ence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony. If
you protest, my friend, wait till you arrive there your-
self 1 To believe in the carnivorous reptiles of geologic
ia4 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
times is hard for our imagination — they seem too much
like mere museum specimens. Yet there is no tooth in
any one of those musemn- skulls that did not daily
through long years of the foretime hold fast to the body
struggling in desp^ of some fated living victim. Forms
of horror just as dreadful to their victims, if on a smaller
spatial scide; fill the world about us to-day. Here on our
very hearths and in. our gardens the infernal cat plays
with the panting mouse, or holds the hot bird fluttering
in her jaws. Crocodiles and rattlesnakes and pythons
are at this moment vessels of life as real as we are ; their
loathsome existence fills every minute of every day that
drags its length along ; and whenever they or other wild
beasts clutch their living prey, the deadly horror which
an agitated melancholiac feels is the literally right reac-
tion on the situation.^
It may indeed be that no religious reconciliation with
the absolute totality of things is possible. Some evils,
indeed, are ministerial to higher forms of good ; but it
^ Example : ** It was about eleven o'clock at Dight . . . but I strolled
on still with the people. . . . Suddenly upon the left side of our road, a
crackling was heard among the bushes ; all of us were alarmed, and in an
instant a tiger, rushing out of the jungle, pounced upon the one of the party
that was foremost, and carried him off in the twinkling of an eye. The rush
of the animal, and the crush of the poor victim's bones in his mouth, and his
last cry of distress, ' Ho hai I ' involuntarily reechoed by all of us, was over
in three seconds ; and then I know not what happened till I returned to my
senses, when I found myself and companions lying down on the ground as if
prepared to be devoured by our enemy, the sovereign of the forest. I find
my pen incapable of describing the terror of that dreadful moment. Our
limbs stiffened, our power of speech ceased, and our hearts beat violently,
and only a whisper of the same * Ho hai I ' was heard from us. In this
state we crept on all fours for some distance back, and then ran for life
with the speed of an Arab horse for about half an hour, and fortunately
happened to come to a small village. . . . After this every one of us was
attacked with fever, attended with shivering, in which deplorable state we
remained till morning." — Autobiography of Lutfullah, a Mohammedan
Gentleman, Leipzig, 1857, p. 112.
THE SICK SOUL 165
may be that there are forms of evil so extreme as to enter
into no good system whatsoever^ and that^ in respect of
such evil, dimib submission or neglect to notice is the
only practical resource. This question must confront us
on a later day. But provisionally, and as a mere matter
of program and method, since the evil facts are as genuine
parts of nature as the good ones, the philosophic pre-
sumption should be that they have some rational signifi-
cance, and that systematic healthy-mindedness, failing as
it does to accord to sorrow, pain, and death any positive !
and active attention whatever, is formally less complete
than systems that try at least to include these elements in
their scope.
The completest religions would therefore seem to be
those in which the pessimistic elements are best devel-
oped. Buddhism, of course, and Christianity are the
best known to us of these. They are essentially religions
of deliverance : the man must die to an unreal life before
he can be bom into the real life. In my next lecture, I
will try to discuss some of the psychological conditions
of this second birth. Fortunately from now onward
we shall have to deal with more cheerful subjects than
those which we have recently been dwelling on.
LECTURE Vm
THE DIVIDED SELF, AND THE PROCESS OF ITS
UNIFICATION
THE last lecture was a painful one, dealing as it did
with evil as a pervasive element of the world we
live in. At the close of it we were brought into full
view of the contrast between the two ways of looking
at life which are characteristic respectively of what we
called the healthy-minded, who need to be born only
once, and of the sick souls, who must be twice-born in
order to be happy. The result is two different con-
ceptions of the universe of our experience. In the re-
ligion of the once-born the world is a sort of rectilinear
or one-storied affair, whose accounts are kept in one de-
nomination, whose parts have just the values which natu-
rally they appear to have, and of which a simple alge-
braic sum of pluses and minuses will give the total worth.
Happiness and religious peace consist in living on the
plus side of the account. In the religion of the twice-
born, on the other hand, the world is a double-storied
mystery. Peace cannot be reached by the simple addition
of pluses and elimination of minuses from life. Natural
good is not simply insufficient in amount and transient,
there lurks a falsity in its very being. Cancelled as it
all is by death if not by earlier enemies, it gives no final
balance, and can never be the thing intended for our last-
ing worship. It keeps us from our real good, rather;
and renunciation and despair of it are our first step in
the direction of the truth. There are two lives, the nat-
THE DIVIDED SELF 167
ural and the spiritual, and we must lose the one before
we can participate in the other.
In their extreme forms, of pure naturalism and pure
salvationism, the two types are violently contrasted ;
though here as in most other current classifications, the
radical extremes are somewhat ideal abstractions, and the
concrete human beings whom we oftenest meet are inter-
mediate varieties and mixtures. Practically, however,
you all recognize the difference : you understand, for ex-
ample, the disdain of the methodist convert for the mere
sky-blue healthy-minded moralist ; and you likewise enter
into the aversion of the latter to what seems to him the
diseased subjectivism of the Methodist, dying to live, as
he calls it, and making of paradox and the inversion of
natural appearances the essence of God's truth.^
The psychological basis of the twice-born character
seems to be a certain discordancy or heterogeneity in the
native temperament of the subject, an incompletely uni-
fied moral and intellectual constitution.
^^ Homo duplex, homo duplex ! " writes Alphonse Daudet.
*^The first time that I perceived that I was two was at the
death of my brother Henri, when my father cried out so dra-
matically, ^ He is dead, he is dead I ' While my first self wept,
my second self thought, ^ How truly given was that cry, how
fine it would be at the theatre.' I was then fourteen years
old.
" This horrible duality has often given me matter for reflec-
tion. Oh, this terrible second me, always seated whilst the
other is on foot, acting, living, suffering, bestirring itself. This
' E. g., « Oup young people are diseased with the theological problems
of original sin, origin of evil, predestination, and the like. These never
presented a practical difficulty to any man — never darkened across any
man's road, who did not go out of his way to seek them. These are the
soul's mumps, and measles, and whooping-conghs,*' etc. Emerson : * Spir-
itual Laws.'
168 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
second me that I have never been able to intoxicate, to make
shed tears, or put to sleep. And how it sees into things, and
how it mocks ! " *
Recent works on the psychology of character have
had much to say upon this point.^ Some persons are
bom with an inner constitution which is harmonious and
well balanced from the outset. Their impulses are con-
sistent with one another, their will follows without
trouble the guidance of their intellect, their passions
are not excessive, and their lives are little haunted by
regrets. Others are oppositely constituted; and are so
in degrees which may vary from something so slight as
to result in a merely odd or whimsical inconsistency,
to a discordancy of which the consequences may be in-
convenient in the extreme. Of the more innocent kinds
of heterogeneity I find a good example in Mrs. Annie
Besant's autobiography.
**I have ever been the queerest mixture of weakness and
strength, and have paid heavily for the weakness. As a child
I used to suffer tortures of shyness, and if my shoe-lace was
untied would feel shamefacedly that every eye was fixed on
the unlucky string ; as a girl I would shrink away from stran-
gers and think myself unwanted and unliked, so that I was full
of eager gratitude to any one who noticed me kindly ; as the
young mistress of a house I was afraid of my servants, and
would let careless work pass rather than bear the pain of
reproving the ill-doer ; when I have been lecturing and debat-
ing with no lack of spirit on the platform, I have preferred to go
without what I wanted at the hotel rather than to ring and make
the waiter fetch it. Combative on the platform in defease oi
any cause I cared for, I shrink from quarrel or disapproval in
the house, and am a coward at heart in private while a good
^ Notes SUP la Vie, p. 1.
^ See, for example, F. Panlhan, in his book Les Caract^res, 1894, who
contrasts les Equilibr^s, les Unifies, with les Inquiets, les Contrariants, les
Ineohdrents, les Emiett^ as so many diverse psychic types.
THE DIVIDED SELF 169
fighter in public. How often have I passed unhappy quarters
of an hour screwing up my courage to find fault with some
subordinate whom my duty compelled me to reprove, and how
often have I jeered at myself for a fraud as the doughty plat-
form combatant, when shrinking from blaming some lad or lass
for doing their work badly. An unkind look or word has
availed to make me shrink into myself as si snail into its shell,
while, on the platform, opposition makes me speak my best." ^
This amount of inconsistency will only count as ami-
able weakness; but a stronger degree of heterogeneity
may make havoc of the subject's life. There are per-
sons whose existence is little more than a series of zig-
zags, as now one tendency and now another gets the
upper hand. Their spirit wars with their flesh, they'
wish for incompatibles, wayward impulses interrupt their
most deliberate plans, and their lives are one long drama .
of repentance and of effort to repair misdemeanors and
mistakes.
Heterogeneous personality has been explained as the
result of inheritance — the traits of character of incom-
patible and antagonistic ancestors are supposed to be
preserved alongside of each other.^ This explanation
may pass for what it is worth — it certainly needs cor-
roboration. But whatever the cause of heterogeneous
personality may be, we find the extreme examples of it
in the psychopathic temperament, of which I spoke in my
first lecture. All writers about that temperament make
the inner heterogeneity prominent in their descriptions.
Frequently, indeed, it is only this trait that leads us to
ascribe that temperament to a man at all. A ^ d^g^
n^r^ sup^rieur' is simply a man of sensibility in many
directions, who finds more difficulty than is common in
^ Annie Besant : an Autobiography, p. 82.
* Smcth Baker, in Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, September,
18d3.
170 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
keeping his spiritual house in order and running his fur-
row straight, because his feelings and impulses are too
keen and too discrepant mutually. In the haunting and
insistent ideas, in the irrational impulses, the morbid
scruples, dreads, and inhibitions which beset the psycho-
pathic temperament when it is thoroughly pronounced,
we have exquisite examples of heterogeneous personality.
Bunyan had an obsession of the words, ^^ Sell Christ for
this, sell him for that, sell him, sell him ! " which would
run through his mind a hundred times together, until one
day out of breath with retorting, ^' I will not, I will not,"
I he impulsively said, ^^ Let him go if he will," and this
; loss of the battle kept him in despair for over a year.
. The lives of the saints are full of such blasphemous
/ obsessions, ascribed invariably to the direct agency of
Satan. The phenomenon connects itself with the life of
tlie subconscious self, so-called, of which we .must ere-
long speak more directly.
Now in all of us, however constituted, but to a degree
the greater in proportion as we are intense and sensitive
and subject to diversified temptations, and to the greatest
possible degree if we are decidedly psychopathic, does
the normal evolution of character chiefly consist in the
straightening out and unifying of the inner self. The
higher and the lower feelings, the useful and the erring
impulses, beg^n by being a comparative chaos within us —
they must end by forming a stable system of functions
in right subordination. Unhappiness is apt to character-
ize the period of order-making and struggle. If the indi-
vidual be of tender conscience and religiously quickened,
the unhappiness will take the form of moral remorse and
compunction, of feeling inwardly vile and wrong, and of
standing in false relations to the author of one's being
and appointer of one's spiritual fate. This is the reli-
I -7-
THE DIVIDED SELF 171
t
gious melancholy and ^ conviction of sin ' that have played
so large a part in the history of Protestant Christianity. .
The man's interior is a battle-ground for what he feels to ;
be two deadly hostile selves, one actual, the other ideal.
As Victor Hugo makes his Mahomet say : —
" Je suis le lieu yil des sublimes combats :
Tantot I'homme d'en haut, et tantot Phomme d'en bas ;
£t le mal dans ma bouche aveo le bien alteme,
Comme dans le desert le sable et la citenie."
Wrong living, impotent aspirations ; " What I would, that
do I not ; but what I hate, that do I^" as Saint Paul says ;
self-loathing, self -despair ; an unintelligible and intoler-
able bui*den to which one is mysteriously the heir.
Let me quote from some typical cases of discordant
personality, with melancholy in the form of self-condem- ^ _
nation and sense of sin. %intf Ang"*^^"**^^^^^^^**^ a classic / ' '^
example. You all remember his half-pagan, half-Chris- '"^
tian bringing up at Carthage, his emigration to Rome and
Milan, his adoption of Manicheism and subsequent skep-
ticism, and his restless search for truth and purity of life ;
and finally how, distracted by the struggle between the
two souls in his breast, and ashamed of his own weak-
ness of will, when so many others whom he knew and
knew of had thrown off the shackles of sensuality and
dedicated themselves to chastity and the higher life, he
heard a voice in the garden say, " Sumey lege " (take and
read), and opening the Bible at random, saw the text,
" not in chambering and wantonness," etc., which seemed
directly sent to his address, and laid the inner storm
to rest forever.* Augustine's psychological genius has
^ Louis GtOurdok (Essai sur la Conversion de Saint Angostine, Paris,
Fischbacher, 1900) bas shown by an analysis of Augustine's writings imme-
diately after the date of his conversion (a. d. 386) that the account he gives
in the Confessions is premature. The crisis in the garden marked a defini-
tive conversion from his former life, but it was to the neo-platonic spiritualism
i
172 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
given an account of the trouble of having a divided s^ it
which has never been surpassed. ^q
** The new will which I began to have was not yet strong
enough to overcome that other will, strengthened by long in-
dulgence. So these two wills, one old, one new, one carnal, the
other spiritual, contended with each other and disturbed my
soul. I understood by my own experience what I had read,
* flesh lusteth against spirit, and spirit against flesh.' It was
myself indeed in both the wills, yet more myself in that which
I approved in myself than in that which I disapproved in my-
self. Yet it was through myself that habit had attained so
fierce a mastery over me, because I had wiUingly come whither
I willed not. Still bound to earth, I refused, O God, to fight
on thy side, as much afraid to be freed from all bonds, as I
ought to have feared being trammeled by them.
^^ Thus the thoughts by which I meditated upon thee were
like the efforts of one who would awake, but being overpowered
with sleepiness is soon asleep again. Often does a man when
heavy sleepiness is on his limbs defer to shako it off, and though
not approving it, encourage it ; even so I was sure it was better
to surrender to thy love than to yield to my own lusts, yet, though
the former course convinced me, the latter pleased and held me
bound. There was naught in me to answer thy call, ' Awake,
thou sleeper,' but only drawling, drowsy words, ' Presently ; yes,
presently; wait a little while.' But the ^presently' had no
^ present,' and the * little while ' grew long. . . . For I was afraid
thou wouldst hear me too soon, and heal me at once of my dis-
ease of lust, which I wished to satiate rather than to see extin-
guished. With what lashes of words did I not scourge my own
soul. Yet it shrank back ; it refused, though it had no excuse
to offer. ... I said within myself : ^ Come, let it be done now,'
and as I said it, I was on the point of the resolve. I all but
did it, yet I did not do it. And I made another effort, and
almost succeeded, yet I did not reach it, and did not grasp it,
hesitating to die to death, and live to life ; and the evil to which
and only a halfway stage toward Christianity. The latter he appears not
foUy and radically to have embraced ontil four years more had passed.
THE DIVIDED SELF 173
I was so wonted held me more than the better life I had not
tried." 1
There could be no more perfect description of the
divided will, when the higher wishes lack just that last
acuteness, that touch of explosive intensity, of dynamo-
genie quality (to use the slang of the psychologists), that
enables them to burst their shell, and make irruption
efBcaciously into life and quell the lower tendencies for-
ever. In a later lecture we shall have much to say
about this higher excitability.
I find another good description of the divided will in
the autobiography of Henry Alline, the Nova Scotian
evangelist, of whose melancholy I read a brief account in
my last lecture. . The poor youth's sins were, as you will
see, of the most harmless order, yet they interfered with
what proved to be his truest vocation, so they gave him
great distress.
^* I was now very moral in my life, but found no rest of con-
science. I now began to be esteemed in young company, who
knew nothing of my mind all this while, and their esteem began
to be a snare to my soul, for I soon began to be fond of carnal
mirth, though I still flattered myself that if I did not get drunk,
nor curse, nor swear, there would be no sin in frolicking and
carnal mirth, and I thought God would indulge young people
with some (what I called simple or civil) recreation. I still
kept a round of duties, and would not suffer myself to run into
any open vices, and so got along very well in time of health
and prosperity, but when I was distressed or threatened by
sickness, death, or heavy storms of thunder, my religion would
not do, and I found there was something wanting, and would
begin to repent my going so much to frolics, but when the
distress was over, the devil and my own wicked heart, with the
solicitations of my associates, and my fondness for young com-
^ Confessions, Book VIII., chaps, v., vii., xi., abridged.
174 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
pany, were such strong alluremeDts, I would again give way,
and thus I got to be very wild and rude, at the same time kept
up my rounds of secret prayer and reading ; but God, not will
ing I should destroy myself, still followed me with his calls, and
moved with such power upon my conscience, that I could not
satisfy myself with my diversions, and in the midst of my mirth
sometimes would have such a sense of my lost and undone con-
dition, that I would wish myself from the company, and after
it was over, when I went home, would make many promises
that I would attend no more on these frolics, and would beg
forgiveness for hours and hours ; but when I came to have the
temptation again, I would give way : no sooner would I hear
the music and drink a glass of wine, but I would find my mind
elevated and soon proceed to any sort of merriment or diver-
sion, that I thought was not debauched or openly vicious ; but
when I returned from my carnal mirth I felt as guilty as ever,
and could sometimes not close my eyes for spme hours after I
had gone to my bed. I was one of the most unhappy creatures
on earth.
*^ Sometimes I would leave the company (often speaking to
the fiddler to cease from playing, as if I was tired), and go out
and walk about crying and praying, as if my very heart would
break, and beseeching God that he would not cut me off, nor
give me up to hardness of heart. Oh, what unhappy hours and
nights I thus wore away I When I met sometimes with merry
companions, and my heart was ready to sink, I would labor
to put on as cheerful a countenance as possible, that they might
not distrust anything, and sometimes would begin some dis-
course with young men or young women on purpose, or propose
a merry song, lest the distress of my soul would be discovered,
or mistrusted, when at the same time I would then rather have
been in a wilderness in exile, than with them or any of their
pleasures or enjoyments. Thus for many months when I was
in company, I would act the hypocrite and feign a merry heart,
but at the same time would endeavor as much as I could to
shun their company, oh wretched and unhappy mortal that I
was ! Everything I did, and wherever I went, I was still in a
storm, and yet I continued to be the chief contriver and ring-
THE DIVIDED SELF 176
leader of the frolics for many months after ; though it was a
toil and torment to attend them ; but the devil and my own
wicked heart drove me about like a slave, teUing me that I
must do this and do that, and bear this and bear that, and turn
here and turn there, to keep my credit up, and retain the
esteem of my associates : and all this while I continued as strict
as possible in my duties, and left no stone unturned to pacify
my conscience, watching even against my thoughts, and praying
continually wherever I went : for I did not think there was any
sin in my conduct, when I was among carnal company, because
I did not take any satisfaction there, but only foUowed it, I
thought, for sufficient reasons.
'* But still, all that I did or could do, conscience would roar
night and day."
Saint Augustine and AUine both emerged into the
smooth waters of inner unity and peace, and I shall next
ask you to consider more closely some of the peculiarities
of the process of unification, when it occurs. It may
come gradually, or it may occur abruptly ; it may come
through altered feelings, or through altered powers of ;
action ; or it may come through new intellectual insights, ;
or through experiences which we shall later have to desig- ,
nate as ^ mystical/ However it come, it brings a char-
acteristic sort of relief ; and never such extreme relief as
when it is cast into the religious mould. Happiness!
happiness ! religion is only one of the ways in which men
gain that gift. Easily, permanently, and successfully,
it often transforms the most intolerable misery into the
profoundest and most enduring happiness. •
But to find religion is only one out..Qf . many ways^i
of reaching unity ; and the process of remedying inner
incompleteness and reducing inner discord is a general
psychological process, which may take place writh any sort
of mental material, and need not necessarily assume the
religious form. In judging of the religious types of
176 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
regeneration which we are about to study, it is important
to recognize that they are only one species of a genus
that contains other types as well. For example, the new
birth may be away from reUgion into incredulity ; or it
' may be from moral scrupulosity into freedom and license ;
or it may be produced by the irruption into the individ-
ual's life of some new stimulus or passion, such as love,
ambition, cupidity, revenge, or patriotic devotion. In all
these instances we have precisely the same psychological
form of event, — a JLcimLess, qtabilifcy. and equilibrium
succeeding a period of storm and stress and inconsistency.
In these non-rehgious cases the new man may also be
born either gradually or suddenly.
The French philosopher Jouffroy has left an eloquent
memorial of his own ' countei^conversion,' as the transi-
tion from orthodoxy to infidehty has been well styled
by Mr. Starbuck. Jouffroy's doubts had long harassed
him ; but he dates his final crisis from a certain night
when his disbelief grew fixed and stable, and where the
immediate result was sadness at the illusions he had lost.
** I shall never forget that night of December," writes Jouf-
froy, ** in which the veil that concealed from me tny own in-
credulity was torn. I hear again my steps in that narrow
naked chamber where long after the hour of sleep had come I
had the habit of walking up and down. I see again that moon,
half-veiled by clouds, which now and again iUuminated the
frigid wiudow-panes. The hours of the night flowed on and I
did not note their passage. Anxiously I followed my thoughts,
as from layer to layer they descended towards the foundation
of my consciousness, and, scattering one by one all the illusions
which until then had screened its windings from my view, made
them every moment more clearly visible.
^^ Vainly I clung to these last beliefs as a shipwrecked sailor
clings to the fragments of his vessel ; vainly, frightened at the
unknown void in which I was about to float, I turned with them
THE DIVIDED SELF 177
towards my childhood, my family, my country, all that was
dear and sacred to me : the inflexible current of my thought
was too strong, — parents, family, memory, beliefs, it forced me
to let go of everything. The investigation went on more obsti-
nate and more severe as it drew near its term, and did not stop
until the end was reached. I knew then that in the depth of
my mind nothing was left that stood erect
** This moment was a frightful one ; and when towards morn-
ing I threw myself exhausted on my bed, I seemed to feel my
earlier life, so smiling and so full, go out like a fire, and before
me another life opened, sombre and unpeopled, where in future
I must live alone, alone with my fatal thought which had exiled
me thither, and which I was tempted to curse. The days which
followed this discovery were the saddest of my life." ^
^ Th. Jouffrot: Noaveauz Melanges philosophiques, 2me ^ition, p. 83.
I add two other cases of counter-oonyersioii dating from a certain moment.
The first is from Professor Starbuck's manuscript collection, and the nar-
rator is a woman.
^ Away down in the bottom of my heart, I believe I was always more or
less skeptical about ' God; ' skepticism grew as an undercurrent, all through
my early youth, but it was controlled and covered by the emotional ele-
ments in my religious growth. When I was sixteen I joined the ohorch
and was asked if I loved God. I replied 'Tes,' as was customary and
expected. But instantly with a flash something spoke within me, ' No,
you do not.' I was haunted for a long time with shame and remorse for
my falsehood and for my wickedness in not loving God, mingled with fear
that there might be an avenging God who would punish me in some terrible
way. ... At nineteen, I had an attack of tonsilitis. Before I had quite
recovered, I heard told a story of a brute who had kicked his wife down-
stairs, and then continued the operation until she became insensible. I felt
the horror of the thing keenly. Instantly this thought flashed through my
mind: * I have no use for a God who permits such things.' This experience
was followed by months of stoical indifference to the God of my previous
life, mingled with feelings of positive dislike and a somewhat proud defiance
of him. I still thought there might be a God. If so he would probably
damn me, but I should have to stand it. I felt very little fear and no
desire to propitiate him. I have never had any personal relations with him
since this painful experience."
The second case exemplifies how small an additional stimnlus will over-
throw the mind into a new state of equilibrium when the process of prepa-
ration and incubation has proceeded far enough. It is like the proverbial
last straw added to the camel's burden, or that touch of a needle which
178 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
In John Foster's Essay on Decision of Character, there
is an account of a case of sudden conversion to avarice,
which is illustrative enough to quote : —
A youDg man, it appears, *' wasted, in two or three years, a
large patrimony in profligate revels with a number of worthless
associates who called themselves his friends, and who, when his
last means were exhausted, treated him of course with neglect
or contempt. Reduced to absolute want, he one day went out
of the house with an intention to put an end to his life ; but
wandering awhile ahnost unconsciously, he came to the brow of
an eminence which overlooked what were lately his estates.
Here he sat down, and remained fixed in thought a number of
hours, at the end of which he sprang from the ground with a
vehement, exulting emotion. He had formed his resolution,
which was, that all these estates should be his again ; he had
formed his plan, too, which he instantly began to execute. He
walked hastily forward, determined to seize the first opportu-
nity, of however humble a kind, to gain any money, though it
were ever so despicable a trifle, and resolved absolutely not to
makes the salt in a sapersatorated fluid suddenly begin to crystallize
out.
Tolstoy writes : '< S., a frank and intelligent man, told me as follows how
he ceased to believe : —
<* He was twenty-six years old when one day on a hunting expedition, the
time for sleep having come, he set himself to pray according to the custom
he had held from childhood.
<< His brother, who was hunting with him, lay upon the hay and looked at
him. When S. had finished his prayer and was turning to sleep, the brother
said, * Do you still keep up that thing ? ' Nothing more was said. But
since that day, now more than thirty years ago, S. has never prayed again ;
he never takes communion, and does not go to church. AU this, not be-
cause he became acquainted with convictions of his brother which he then
and there adopted ; not because he made any new resolution in his soul,
but merely because the words spoken by his brother were like the light
push of a finger against a leaning wall already about to tumble by its own
weight. These words but showed him that the place wherein he supposed
religion dwelt in him had long been empty, and that the sentences he
uttered, the crosses and bows which he made during his prayer, were ac-
tions with no inner sense. Having once seized their absurdity, he could
no longer keep them up." Ma Confession, p. 8.
THE DIVIDED SELF 179
spend, if he could help it, a farthing of whatever he might
obtain. The first thing that drew his attention was a heap of
coals shot out of carts on the pavement before a house. He
offered himself to shovel or wheel them into the place where
they were to be laid, and was employed. He received a few
pence for the labor ; and then, in pursuance of the saving part
of his plan, requested some small gratuity of meat and drink,
which was given him. He then looked out for the next thing
that might chance ; and went, with indefatigable industry,
through a succession of servile employments in different places,
of longer and shorter duration, still scrupulous in avoiding, as
far as possible, the expense of a penny. He promptly -seized
every opportunity which could advance his design, without re-
garding the meanness of occupation or appearance. By this
method he had gained, after a considerable time, money enough
to purchase in order to sell again a few cattle, of which he had
taken pains to understand the value. He speedily but cau-
tiously turned his first gains into second advantages ; retained
without a single deviation his extreme parsimony; and thus
advanced by degrees into larger transactions and incipient
wealth. I did not hear, or have forgotten, the continued
course of his life, but the final result was, that he more than
recovered his lost possessions, and died an inveterate miser,
worth £60,000." i
' Op. cit., Letter IIL, abridged.
I subjoin an additional document which has come into my possession,
and which represents in a vivid way what is probably a very frequent sort
of conversion, if the opposite of ' falling in love/ falling out of love, may
be so termed. Falling in love also conforms frequently to this type, a
latent process of unconscious preparation often preceding a sudden awaken-
ing to the fact that the mischief is irretrievably done. The free and easy
tone in this narrative gives it a sincerity that speaks for itself.
** For two years of this time I went through a very bad experience, which
almost drove me mad. I had fallen violently in love with a girl who,
young as she was, had a spirit of coquetry like a cat. As I look back on
her now, I hate her, and wonder how I could ever have fallen so low as to
be worked upon to such an extent by her attractions. Nevertheless, I fell
into a regular fever, could think of nothing else ; whenever I was alone, I
pictured her attractions, and spent most of the time when I should have
been working, in recalling our previous interviews, and imagining future
conversations. She was very pretty, good humored, and jolly to the last
180 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
Let me turn now to the kind of case, the religious
case, namely, that immediately concerns us. Here is one of
degree, and iutenselj pleased with my admiration. Would give me no de-
cided answer yes or no, and the queer thing about it was that whilst pursu-
ing her for her hand, I secretly knew all along that she was unfit to be a
wife for me, and that she never would say yes. Although for a year we
took our meals at the same boarding-house, so that I saw her continually
and familiarly, our closer relations had to be largely on the sly, and this
fact, together with my jealousy of another one of her male admirers, and
my own conscience despising me for my uncontrollable weakness, made me so
nervous and sleepless that I really thought I should become insane. I under-
stand well those young men murdering their sweethearts, which appear so
often in the papers. Nevertheless I did love her passionately, and in some
ways she did deserve it.
"The queer thing was the sudden and unexpected way in which it all
stopped. I was going to my work after breakfast one morning, thinking as
usual of her and of my misery, when, just as if some outside power laid
hold of me, I found myself turning round and almost running to my room,
where I immediately got out all the relics of her which I possessed, includ-
ing some hair, all her notes and letters, and ambrotypes on glass. The
former I made a fire of, the latter I actually crushed beneath my heel, in a
sort of fierce joy of revenge and punishment. I now loathed and despised
her altogether, and as for myself I felt as if a load of disease had suddenly
been removed from me. That was the end. I never spoke to her or wrote
to her again in all the subsequent years, and I have never had a single mo-
ment of loving thought towards one who for so many months entirely filled
my heart In fact, I have always rather hated her memory, though now I
can see that I had gone unnecessarily far in that direction. At any rate,
from that happy morning onward I regained possession of my own proper
soul, and have never since fallen into any similar trap."
This seems to me an unusually clear example of two different levels of
personality, inconsistent in their dictates, yet so well balanced against each
other as for a long time to fill the life with discord and dissatisfaction. At
last, not gradually, but in a sudden crisis, the unstable equilibrium is re-
solved, and this happens so unexpectedly that it is as if , to use the writer's
words, ** some outside power laid hold."
Professor Starbuck gives an analogous case, and a converse case of hatred
suddenly turning into love, in his Psychology of Religion, p. 141. Com-
pare the other highly curious instances which he gives on pp. 137-144, of
sudden non-religious alterations of habit or character. He seems right in
conceiving all such sudden changes as results of special cerebral functions
unconsciously developing until they are ready to play a controlling part,
when they make irruption into the conscious life. When we treat of sad-
den ' conversion,' I shall make as much use as I can of this hypothesis of
subconscious incubation.
THE DIVIDED SELF 181
the simplest possible type, an account of the conversion
to the systematic reUgion of healthy-mindedness of a man
who must already have been naturally of the healthy-
minded type. It shows how, when the fruit is ripe, a
touch will make it fall.
Mr. Horace Fletcher, in his little book called Menti-
culture, relates that a friend with whom he was talking
of the self-control attained by the Japanese through their
practice of the Buddhist discipline said : —
" ' You must first get rid of anger and worry.' * But,' said
I, *• is that possible ? ' * Yes,' replied he ; ^ it is possible to the
Japanese, and ought to be possible to us.'
'^ On my way back I could think of nothing else but the
words *' get rid, get rid ' ; and the idea must have continued to
possess me during my sleeping hours, for the first consciousness
in the morning brought back the same thought, with the revela-
tion of a discovery, which framed itself into the reasoning, ^ If
it is possible to get rid of anger and worry, why is it necessary
to have them at all ? ' I felt the strength of the argument, and
at once accepted the reasoning. The baby had discovered that
it could walk. It would scorn to creep any longer.
^^ From the instant I realized that these cancer spots of worry
and anger were removable, they left me. With the discovery
of their weakness they were exorcised. From that time life has
had an entirely different aspect.
^^ Although from that moment the possibility and desirability
of freedom from the depressing passions has been a reality to
me, it took me some months to feel absolute security in my new
position ; but, as the usual occasions for worry and anger have
presented themselves over and over again, and I have been
unable to feel them in the slightest degree, I no longer dread
or guard against them, and I am amazed at my increased energy
and vigor of mind ; at my strength to meet situations of all
kinds, and at my disposition to love and appreciate everything.
'^ I have had occasion to travel more than ten thousand miles
by rail since that morning. The same Pullman porter, con-
ductor, hotel-waiter, peddler, book-agent, cabman, and others
182 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
who were fonnerly a source of annoyance and irritation have
been met, but I am not conscious of a single incivility. All at
once the whole world has turned good to me. I have become,
as it were, sensitive only to the rays of good.
*^ I could recount many experiences which prove a brand-new
condition of mind, but one will be sufficient. Without the
slightest feeling of annoyance or impatience, I have seen a
train that I had planned to take with a good deal of interested
and pleasurable anticipation move out of the station without
me, because my baggage did not arrive. The porter from the
hotel came running and panting into the station just as the train
pulled out of sight. When he saw me, he looked as if he feared
a scolding, and began to tell of being blocked in a crowded
street and unable to get out. When he had finished, I said to
him : ^ It does n't matter at all, you could n't help it, so we will
try again to-morrow. Here is your fee, I am sorry you had all
this trouble in earning it.' The look of surprise that came
over his face was so filled with pleasure that I was repaid on
the spot for the delay in my departure. Next day he would
not accept a cent for Uie service, and he and I are friends for
life.
^^ During the first weeks of my experience I was on guard
only against worry and anger ; but, in the mean time, having
noticed the absence of the other depressing and dwarfing pas-
sions, I began to trace a relationship, until I was convinced
that they are all growths from the two roots I have specified.
I have felt the freedom now for so long a time that I am sure
of my relation toward it ; and I could no more harbor any of
the thieving and depressing influences that once I nursed as a
heritage of humanity than a fop would voluntarily wallow in a
filthy gutter.
^^ There is no doubt in my mind that pure Christianity and
pure Buddhism, and the Mental Sciences and all Religions,
fundamentally teach what has been a discovery to me; but
none of them have presented it in the light of a simple and
easy process of elimination. At one time I wondered if the
elimination would not yield to indifference and sloth. In my
experience, the contrary is the result. I feel such an increased
THE DIVIDED SELF 183
desire to do something useful that it seems as if I were a boy
agaiu and the energy for play had returned. I could fight as
readily as (and better than) ever, if there were occasion for
it. It does not make one a coward. It can't, since fear is
one of the things eliminated. I notice the absence of timidity
in the presence of any audience. When a boy, I was standing
under a tree which was struck by lightning, and received a
shock from the effects of which I never knew exemption until
I had dissolved partnership with worry. Since then, lightning
and thunder have been encountered under conditions which
would formerly have caused great depression and discomfort,
without [my] experiencing a trace of either. Surprise is also
greatly modified, and one is less liable to become startled by
unexpected sights or noises.
'' As far as I am individuaUy concerned, I am not bothering
myself at present as to what the results of this emancipated
condition may be. I have no doubt that the perfect health
aimed at by Christian Science may be one of the possibilities,
for I note a marked improvement in the way my stomach does
its duty in assimilating the food I give it to handle, and I am
sure it works better to the sound of a song than under the
friction of a frown. Neither am I wasting any of this precious
time formulating an idea of a future existence or a future
Heaven. The Heaven that I have within myself is as attractive
as any that has been promised or that I can imagine ; and I
am willing to let the growth lead where it will, as long as the
anger and their brood have no part in misguiding it." ^
The older medicine used to speak of two ways, h/sis
and crisisy one gradual, the other abrupt, in which one
might recover from a bodily disease. In the spiritual
realm there are also two ways, one gradual, the other
sudden, in which inner unification may occur. Tolstoy
and Bunyan may again serve us as examples, examples, as
it happens, of the gradual way, though it must be con-
fessed at the outset that it is hard to follow these wind-
* H. Fletcher : Menticulture, or the A-B-C of True Living, New York
and Chicago, 1899, pp. 26-36, abridged.
184 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
ings of the hearts of others, and one feels that their
words do not reveal their total secret.
Howe'er this be, Tolstoy, pursuing his unending ques-
tioning, seemed to come to one insight after another.
First he perceived that his conviction that life was mean-
ingless took only this finite life into account. He was
looking for the value of one finite term in that of an-
other, and the whole result could only be one of those
indeterminate equations in mathematics which end with
0=0. Yet this is as far as the reasoning intellect by
itself can go, unless irrational sentiment or faith brings
in the infinite. Believe in the infinite as common people
do, and life grows possible again.
** Since mankind has existed, wherever life has been, there
also has been the faith that gave the possibility of living. Faith
is the sense of life, that sense by virtue of which man does not
destroy himself, but continues to live on. It is the force whereby
we live. If Man did not believe that he must live for some-
thing, he would not live at all. The idea of an infinite God, of
the divinity of the soul, of the union of men's actions with God
— these are ideas elaborated in the infinite secret depths of
human thought. They are ideas without which there would be
no life, without which I myself," said Tolstoy, " would not exist.
I began to see that I had no right to rely on my individual rea-
soning and neglect these answers given by faith, for they are
the only answers to the question."
Yet how believe as the common people believe, steeped
as they are in grossest superstition ? It is impossible, —
but yet their life ! their life ! It is normal. It is happy !
It is an answer to the question !
Little by little, Tolstoy came to the settled conviction
— he says it took him two years to arrive there — that
his trouble had not been with life in general, not with
the common life of common men, but with the life of the
upper, intellectual, artistic classes, the life which he hac*
THE DIVIDED SELF 185
personally always led, the cerebral life, the life of con-
ventionality, artificiality, and personal ambition. He had
been living wrongly and must change. To work for
animal needs, to abjure lies and vanities, to relieve com-
mon wants, to be simple, to believe in God, therein lay
happiness again.
'' I remember," he says, *^ one day in early spring, I was alone
in the forest, lending my ear to its mysterious noises. I listened,
and my thought went back to what for these three years it
always was busy with — the quest of God. But the idea of
him, I said, how did I ever come by the idea?
^' And again there arose in me, with this thought, glad aspi-
rations towards life. Everything in me awoke and received
a meaning. . . . Why do I look farther ? a voice within me
asked. He is there : he, without whom one cannot live. To
acknowledge God and to live are one and the same thing. God
is what life is. WeU, then I live, seek God, and there will be
no life without him. . . .
*^ After this, things cleared up within me and about me bet-
ter than ever, and the light has never wholly died away. I was
saved from suicide. Just how or when the change took place I
cannot tell. But as insensibly and gradually as the force of
life had been annulled within me, and I had reached my moral
death-bed, just as gradually and imperceptibly did the energy
of life come back. And what was strange was that this energy
that came back was nothing hew. It was my ancient juvenile
force of faith, the belief that the sole purpose of my life was to
be better. I gave up the life of the conventional world, recog-
nizing it to be no life, but a parody on life, which its superfluities
simply keep us from comprehending," — and Tolstoy thereupon
embraced the life of the peasants, and has felt right and happy,
or at least relatively so, ever since.^
As I interpret his melancholy, then, it was not merely
an accidental vitiation of his humors, though it was doubt-
less also that. It was logically called for by the clash
^ I haye considerablj abridged Tolstoy's words in my translation.
186 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
between his inner character and his outer activities and
aims. Although a literary artist, Tolstoy was one of
those primitive oaks of men to whom the superfluities
and insincerities, the cupidities, complications, and cruel-
ties of our polite civiUzation are profoundly unsatisfying,
and for whom the eternal veracities he with more natural
and animal things. His crisis was the getting of his
soul in order, the discovery of its genuine habitat and
vocation, the escape from falsehoods into what for him
were ways of truth. It was a case of heterogeneous per-
sonality tardily and slowly finding its unity and level.
And though not many of us can imitate Tolstoy, not
having enough, perhaps, of the aboriginal human marrow
in our bones, most of us may at least feel as if it might
be better for us if we could.
Bunyan's recovery seems to have been even slower.
For years together he was alternately haunted with texts
of Scripture, now up and now down, but at last with an
ever growing relief in his salvation through the blood of
Christ.
*' My peace would be in and out twenty times a day : com-
fort now and trouble presently ; peace now and before I could
go a furlong as full of guilt and fear as ever heart could bold.*'
When a good text comes home to him, " This," he writes, " gave
me good encouragement for the space of two or three hours *' ;
or " This was a good day to me, I hope I shall not forget it " ;
or " The glory of these words was then so weighty on me that
I was ready to swoon as I sat ; yet not with grief and trouble,
but with solid joy and peace " ; or ^' This made a strange seizure
on my spirit ; it brought light with it, and commanded a silence
in my heart of all those tumultuous thoughts that before did
use, like masterless hell-hounds, to roar and bellow and make a
hideous noise within me. It showed me that Jesus Christ had
not quite forsaken and cast off my Soul."
Such periods accumulate until he can write : '^ And now
THE DIVIDED SELF 187
remained only the hinder part of the tempest, for the thunder
was gone beyond me, only some drops would still remain, that
now and then would fall upon me " ; — and at last : ^* Now did
my chains fall off my legs indeed ; I was loosed from my afflic-
tions and irons ; my temptations also fled away ; so that from
that time, those dreadful Scriptures of God left off to trouble
me ; now went I also home rejoicing, for the grace and love of
God. . . . Now could I see myself in Heaven and Earth at
once ; in Heaven by my Christ, by my Head, by my Righteous-
ness and Life, though on Earth by my body or person. . . .
Christ was a precious Christ to my soul that night ; I could
scarce lie in my bed for joy and peace and triumph through
Christ."
Banyan became a minister of the gospel, and in spite
of his neurotic constitution, and of the twelve years he
lay in prison for his non-conformity, his life was turned to
active use. He was a peacemaker and doer of good, and
the immortal Allegory which he wrote has brought the
very spirit of religious patience home to English hearts.
But neither Bunyan nor Tolstoy could become what
we have called hfta-lthy-ipinrlpd. They had drunk too
deeply of the cup of bitterness ever to forget its taste,
and their redemption is into a universe two stories deep.
Each of them realized a good which broke the effective
edge of his sadness ; yet the sadness was preserved as a
minor ingredient in the heart of the faith by which it
was overcome. The fact of interest for us is that as a
matter of fact they could and did find something welling
up in the inner reaches of their consciousness, by which
such extreme sadness could be overcome. Tolstoy does
well to talk of it as that by which men live ; for that is ex-
actly what it is, a stimulus, an excitement, a faith, a force
that re-infuses the positive willingness to live, even in
full presence of the evil perceptions that erewhile made
life seem unbearable. For Tolstoy's perceptions of evil
188 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
appear within their sphere to have remained unmodified.
His later works show him implacable to the whole sys-
tem of o£Bicial values : the ignobility of fashionable life ;
the infamies of empire ; the spuriousness of the church,
the vain conceit of the professions ; the meannesses and
cruelties that go with great success; and every other
pompous crime and lying institution of this world. To
all patience with such things his experience has been for
him a permanent minist^ of death.
Bunyan also leaves this world to the enemy.
'' I must first pass a sentence of death," he says, '^npon
everything that can properly be called a thing of this life, even
to reckon myself, my wife, my children, my health, my enjoy-
ments, and all, as dead to me, and myself as dead to them ; to
trust in God through Christ, as touching the world to come ;
and as touching this world, to count the grave my house, to
make my bed in darkness, and to say to corruption. Thou art
my father, and to the worm. Thou art my mother and sister. . . .
The parting with my wife and my poor children hath often
been to me as the pulling of my fiesh from my bones, especially
my poor blind child who lay nearer my heart than all I had
besides. Poor child, thought I, what sorrow art thou like to
have for thy portion in this world I Thou must be beaten, must
beg, suffer hunger, cold, nakedness, and a thoussind calamities,
though I cannot now endure that the wind should blow upon
thee. But yet I must venture you all with God, though it
goeth to the quick to leave you." ^
The ^ hue of resolution ' is there, but the full flood of
ecstatic liberation seems never to have poured over poor
John Bunyan's soul.
These examples may suffice to acquaint us in a general
way with the phenomenon technically called * Conver-
sion.' In tlie next lecture I shall invite you to study its
peculiarities and concomitants in some detail.
^ In my quotatioDS from Bunyan I haye omitted certain intervening por-
tions of the text
LECTURE IX
CONVERSION
TO be converted, to be regenerated, to receive grace^
to experience religion, to gain an assurance, are so
many phrases which denote the process, gradual or sud-
den, by which a self hitherto divided, and consciously
wrong inferior and unhappy, becomes unified and con-
sciously right superior and happy, in consequence of its
firmer hold upon rehgious realities. This at least is what
conversion signifies in general terms, whether or not we
believe that a direct divine operation is needed to bring
such a moral change about.
Before entering upon a minuter study of the process,
let me enliven our understanding of the definition by a
concrete example. I choose the quaint case of an unlet-
tered man, Stephen H. Bradley, whose experience is
related in a scarce American pamphlet.^
I select this case because it shows how in these inner
alterations one may find one unsuspected depth below
another, as if the possibilities of character lay disposed
in a series of layers or shells, of whose existence we have
no premonitory knowledge.
Bradley thought that he had been already fully con-
verted at the age of fourteen.
*' I thought I saw the Saviour, by faith, in human shape, for
about one second in the room, with arms extended, appearing
^ A sketch of the life of Stephen H. Bradley, from the age of fire to
twenty-four years, indnding his remarkable experience of the power of the
Holy Spirit on the second evening of November, 1829. Madison, Con-
necticut, 1830.
190 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
to say to me, Come. The next day I rejoiced with trembling ;
soon after, ray happiness was so great that I said that I wanted
to die ; this world had no place in my affections, as I knew of,
and every day appeared as solemn to me as the Sabbath. I had
an ardent desire that all mankind might feel as*! did; I wanted
to have them all love God supremely. Previous to this time
I was very selfish and self-righteous; but now I desired the
welfare of all mankind, and could with a feeling heart forgive
my worst enemies, and I felt as if I should be willing to bear
the scoffs and sneers of any person, and suffer anything for
His sake, if I could be the means in the hands of God, of the
conversion of one soul."
Nine years later, in 1829, Mr. Bradley heard of a revival of
religion that had begun in his neighborhood. '' Many of the
young converts," he says, " would come to me when in meeting
and ask me if I had religion, and my reply generally was, I
hope I have. This did not appear to satisfy them ; they said
they knew they had it. I requested them to pray for me,
thinking with myself, that if I had not got religion now, after
so long a time professing to be a Christian, that it was time I
had, and hoped their prayers would be answered in my behalf.
'^ One Sabbath, I went to hear the Methodist at the Acad-
emy. He spoke of the ushering in of the day of general
judgment ; and he set it forth in such a solemn and terrible
manner as I never heard before. The scene of that day ap-
peared to be taking place, and so awakened were all the powers
of my mind that, like Felix, I trembled involuntarily on the
bench where I was sitting, though I felt nothing at heart. The
next day evening I went to hear him again. lie took his text
from Revelation : ' And I saw the dead, small and g^eat, stand
before God.' And he represented the terrors of that day in
such a manner that it appeared as if it would melt the heart
of stone. When he finished his discourse, an old gentleman
turned to me and said, 'This is what I call preaching.' I
thought the same ; but my feelings were still unmoved by what
he said, and I did not enjoy religion, but I believe he did.
" I will now relate my experience of the power of the Holy
Spirit which took place on the same night. Had any person
CONVERSION 191
told me preyious to this that I could faaye experienced the
power of the Holy Spirit in the manner which I did, I could
not have believed it, and should have thought the person de-
luded that told me so. I went directly home after the meet-
ing, and when I got home I wondered what made me feel so
stupid. I retired to rest soon after I got home, and felt indif-
ferent to the things of religion until I began to be exercised by
the Holy Spirit, which began in about five minutes after, in the
following manner : —
'^ At first, I began to feel my heart beat very quick all on a
sudden, which made me at first think that perhaps something
is going to ail me, though I was not alarmed, for I felt no pain.
My heart increased in its beating, which soon convinced me
that it was the Holy Spirit from the effect it had on me. I
began to feel exceedingly happy and humble, and such a sense
of unworthiness as I never felt before. I could not very well
help speaking out, which I did, and said. Lord, I do not deserve
this happiness, or words to that effect, while there was a stream
(resembling air in feeling) came into my mouth and heart in a
more sensible manner than that of drinking anything, which
continued, as near as I could judge, five minutes or more, which
appeared to be the cause of such a palpitation of my heart. It
took complete possession of my soul, and I am certain that I
desired the Lord, while in the midst of it, not to give me any
more happiness, for it seemed as if I could not contain what I
had got. My heart seemed as if it would burst, but it did not
stop until I felt as if I was unutterably full of the love and
grace of God. In the mean time while thus exercised, a thought
arose in my mind, what can it mean ? and all at once, as if to
answer it, my memory became exceedingly clear, and it ap-
peared to me just as if the New Testament was placed open
before me, eighth chapter of Komans, and as light as if some
candle lighted was held for me to read the 26tb and 27th verses
of tliat chapter, and I read these words : ^ The Spirit helpeth
our infirmities with gleanings which cannot be uttered.' And
all the time that my heart was a-beating, it made me groan
like a person in distress, which was not very easy to stop,
though I was in no pain at all, and my brother being in bed in
192 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
another room came and opened the door, and asked me if I
had got the toothache. I told him no, and that he might get
to sleep. I tried to stop. I felt unwilling to go to sleep my-
self, I was so happy, fearing I should lose it — thinking within
myself
' My willing soul would stay
In such a frame as this.'
And while I lay reflecting, after my heart stopped beating,
feeling as if my soul was full of the Holy Spirit, I thought that
perhaps there might be angels hovering round my bed. I felt
just as if I wanted to converse with them, and finally I spoke,
saying, ' O ye affectionate angels I how is it that ye can take
so much interest in our welfare, and we take so little interest
in our own.' After this, with difficulty I got to sleep ; and
when I awoke in the morning my first thoughts were : What
has become of my happiness ? and, feeling a degree of it in my
heart, I asked for more, which was given to me as quick as
thought I then got up to dress myself, and found to my sur-
prise that I could but just stand. It appeared to me as if it
was a little heaven upon earth. My soul felt as completely
raised above the fears of death as of going to sleep ; and like a
bird in a cage, I had a desire, if it was the will of God, to get
released from my body and to dwell with Christ, though willing
to live to do good to others, and to warn sinners to repent. I
went downstairs feeling as solemn as if I had lost all my
friends, and thinking with myself, that I would not let my
parents know it until I had first looked into the Testament. I
went directly to the shelf and looked into it, at the eighth chap-
ter of Romans, and every verse seemed to almost speak and to
confirm it to be truly the Word of God, and as if my feelings
corresponded with the meaning of the word. I then told my
parents of it, and told them that I thought that they must see
that when I spoke, that it was not my own voice, for it appeared
so to me. My speech seemed entirely under the control of the
Spirit within me ; I do not mean that the words which I spoke
were not my own, for they were. I thought that I was influ-
enced similar to the Apostles on the day of Pentecost (with
the exception of having power to give it to others, and doing
CONYXRSION 193
what they did). After brMkfast I went round to conyerse
with my neighbors on religion, which I could not have been
hired to have done before ih]i» and at their request I prayed
with them, though I had noTer prayed in public before.
'' I now feel as if I had diecharged my duty by telling the
truth, and hope by the blessing of God, it may do some good to
all who shall read it. He has fulfilled his promise in sending
the Holy Spirit down into our hearts, or mine at least, and I
now defy all the Deists and Atheists in the world to shake my
faith in Christ."
So much for Mr. Bradley and his conversion^ of the
effect of which upon his later life we gain no informa-
tion. Now for a minuter survey of the constituent ele-
ments of the conversion process.
If you open the chapter on Association^ of any treatise
on Psychology^ you will read that a man's ideas^ aims,
and objects form diverse internal groups and systems,
relatively independent of one another. Each ^ aim ' which
he follows awakens a certain specific kind of interested
excitement, and gathers a certain group of ideas together
in subordination to it as its associates ; and if the aims
and excitements are distinct in kind, their groups of ideas
may have little in common. When one group is present
and engrosses the interest, all the ideas connected with
other groups may be excluded from the mental field.
The President of the United States when, with paddle,
gun, and fishing-rod, he goes camping in the wilderness
for a vacation, changes his system of ideas from top to
bottom. The presidential anxieties have lapsed into the
background entirely ; the official habits are replaced by
the habits of a son of nature, and those who knew the
man only as the strenuous magistrate would not ^ know
him for the same person ' if they saw him as the camper.
If now he should never go back^ and never again
IM THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
suffer political interests to gain dominion over him^ he
would be for practical intents and purposes a perma-
nently transformed being. Our ordinary alterations of
character^ as we pass from one of our aims to another,
are not commonly called transformations^ because each
of them is so rapidly succeeded by another in the re-
verse direction ; but whenever one aim grows so stable
as to expel definitively its previous rivals from the indi-
vidual's hfe, we tend to speak of the phenomenon^ and
perhaps to wonder at it, as a ' transformation.'
These alternations are the completest of the ways in
which a self may be divided. A less complete way is the
simultaneous coexistence of two or more different groups
of aims, of which one practically holds the right of way
and instigates activity, whilst the others are only pious
wishes, and never practically come to anything. Saint
Augustine's aspirations to a purer life, in our last lecture,
were for a while an example. Another would be the
President in his full pride of office, wondering whether it
were not all vanity, and whether the life of a wood-chop-
per were not the wholesomer destiny. Such fleeting aspira-
tions are mere velleitateSy whimsies. They exist on the
remoter outskirts of the mind, and the real self of the
man, the centre of his energies, is occupied with an
entirely different system. As life goes on, there is a
constant change of our interests, and a consequent
change of place in our systems of ideas, from more cen-
tral to more peripheral, and from more peripheral to more
central parts of consciousness. I remember, for instance,
that one evening when I was a youth, my father read
aloud from a Boston newspaper that part of Lord Gif-
ford's will which founded these four lectureships. At
that time I did not think of being a teacher of philosophy :
and what I listened to was as remote from my own life
OOVTERSION 105
as if it related to tibo plaiMt Mars. Yet here I am, with
the Gifford system part and parcel of my very self^ and
all my energies^ for Ih/B time being, devoted to success-
fully identifying myaelf with it. My soul stands now
planted in what once was for it a practically unreal ob-
ject, and speaks from it as from its proper habitat and
centre.
When I say ^Soul/ you need not take me in the
ontological sense unless you prefer to; for although
ontological language is instinctive in such matters, yet
Buddhists or Humians can perfectly well describe the
facts in the phenomenal terms which are their favorites.
For them the soul is only a succession of fields of con-
sciousness: yet there is found in each field a part, or
sub-fieldy which figures as focal and contains the excite-
ment, and from which, as from a centre, the aim seems
to be taken. Talking of this part, we involuntarily
apply words of perspective to distinguish it from the rest,
words Uke 'here,' Hhis,' 'now,' 'mine,' or 'me'; and we
ascribe to the other parts the positions 'there,' 'then,'
' that,' ' his ' or ' thine,' ' it,' ' not me.' But a ' here ' can
change to a ' there,' and a ' there ' become a ' here,' and
what was ' mine ' and what was ' not mine ' change their
places.
What brings such changes about is the way in which
emotional excitement alters. Things hot and vital to us
to-day are cold to-morrow. It is as if seen from the hot
parts of the field that the other parts appear to us, and
from these hot parts personal desire and vohtion make
their saUies. They are in short the centres of our dy-
namic energy, whereas the cold parts leave us indiffer*
ent and passive in proportion to their coldness.
Whether such lang^ge be rigorously exact is for the
present of no importance. It is exact enough, if you
196 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
recognize from your own experience the facts which I
seek to designate by it.
Now there may be great oscillation in the emotional
interest^ and the hot places may shift before one almost
as rapidly as the sparks that run through bumt-up paper.
Then we have the wavering and divided self we heard so
much of in the previous lecture. Or the focus of excite-
ment and heat, the point of view from which the aim is
taken, may come to lie permanently within a certain sys-
tem ; and then, if the change be a religious one, we call
it a conversion^ especially if it be by crisis, or sudden.
. Let us hereafter, in speaking of the hot place in a
man's consciousness, the group of ideas to which he
devotes himself, and from which he works, call it the
habitual centre of his personal energy. It makes a great
difference to a man whether one set of his ideas, or an-
other, be the centre of his energy ; and it makes a great
difference, as regards any set of ideas which he may pos-
sess, whether they become central or remain peripheral in
him. To say that a man is ^ converted ' means, in these
terms, that religious ideas, previously peripheral in his con-
sciousness, now take a central place, and that religious
aims form the habitual centre of his energy.
^ Now if you ask of psychology just how the excitement
jshifts in a man's mental system, and why aims that were
peripheral become at a certain moment central, psychology
has to reply that although she can give a general de-
scription of what happens, she is unable in a given case
to account accurately for all the single forces at work.
INeither an outside observer nor the Subject who undei^
goes the process can explain fully how particular expe-
riences are able to change one's centre of energy so
decisively, or why they so often have to bide their hour
to do so. \tWe have a thought, or we perform an act,
CONYEBSION 199
deal inquiry how closely parallel in its manifestations
the ordinary ^ conversion ' which occurs in young people
brought up in evangelical circles is to that growth into a
larger spiritual life which is a normal phase of adolescence
in every class of human beings. The age is the same,
falling usually between fourteen and seventeen. The
symptoms are the same^ — sense of incompleteness and
imperfection ; brooding, depression, morbid introspection,
and sense of sin ; anxiety about the hereafter ; distress
over doubts, and the like. And the result is the same,
— a happy relief and objectivity, as the confidence in self
gets greater through the adjustment of the faculties to
the wider outlook. In spontaneous religious awakening,
apart from revivalistic examples, and in the ordinary storm
and stress and moulting^time of adolescence, we also may
meet with mystical experiences, astonishing the subjects
by their suddenness, just as in revivalistic conversion.
The analogy, in fact, is complete ; and Starbuck's con-
clusion as to these ordinary youthful conver^ons would
seem to be the only sound one: Conversion is in its
essence a normal adolescent phenomenon, incidental to
the passage from the child's small universe to the wider
intellectual and spiritual life of maturi^.
'^ Theology," says Dr. Starbuck, ^^ takes the adolescent
tendencies and builds upon them ; it sees that the essen*
tial thing in adolescent growth is bringing the person out
of childhood into the new life of maturity and personal
insight. It accordingly brings those means to bear which
will intensify the normal tendencies. It shortens up the
period of duration of storm and stress." The conversion
phenomena of ^ conviction of sin ' last, by this investiga-
tor's statistics, about one fifth as long as the periods
of adolescent storm and stress phenomena of which he
also got statistics, but they are very much more intenseu
; I
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t?
It),
1 1-
200 THE VABIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE ;
Bodily accompaniments^ loss of sleep and appetite^ foi ]
example, are much more frequent in them* ^^ The essen* j
tial distinction appears to be that conyersion intensifies j
bat shortens the period by bringing the person to a
definite crisis/' ^
The conversions which Dr. Starbuck here has in mind
are of course mainly those of very commonplace perso
kept true to a pre-appointed type by instruction^ appeal^^
and example. The particular form which they affect is
the result of suggestion and imitation.^ If they went j
through their growth-crisis in other faiths and otherj
countries, although the essence of the change would be]
the same (since it is one in the main so inevitable), its^l
accidents would be different. In Catholic lands, for esrx
ample, and in our own Episcopalian sects, no such anxiety^j
and conviction of sin is usual as in sects that encourage ^
revivals. The sacraments being more relied on in these ;
more strictly ecclesiastical bodies, the individual's per-
sonal acceptance of salvation needs less to be accentuated \
and led up to. A
1 E. D. Stakbuck : The Psychology of Religion, pp. 224» 262. \
* No one nndentands this better th&n Jonathan Edwards understood if \
already. Conversion narratives of the more commonplace sort most always
be taken with the allowances which he suggests : '' A role reeeired and es-
tablished by common consent haa a very g^at, thougb to many persons an j
insensible inflaenoe in forming their notions of the process ol their owa 'i
experience. I know very weU how they proceed as to this matter, for II
have had frequent opportunities of obserring their oondoet. Very often i
their experience at first appears like a confused chaos, bat then those partsi
are selected which bear the nearest resemblance to such particular st^ie asj
are insisted on ; and these are dwelt upon in their thoughts, and spoken aii
from time to time, till they grow more and more conspicuous in their Tiewy^
and other parts which are neglected grow more and more obscure. Thns^
what they hare experienced is insensibly strained, so at to bring it to an j
exact conformity to the scheme already established in their minds. And it :
becomes natural also for ministers, who have to deal with those who insist^
upon distinctness and clearness of method, to do so too.*' l^mittse oof
Religious Affections* .[^
CONVEBSION 201
But every imitatiye phenomenon must once have had
its original^ and I propose that for the future we keep as
close as may be to the more first-hand and original forma
of experience. These are more likely to be found in
sporadic adult cases.
Professor Leuba, in a valuable article on the psycho*
logy of conversion,^ subordinates the theological aspect
of the religious life almost entirely to its moral aspect.
The religious sense he defines as ^^the feeling of uiP-
wholeness, of moral imperf ection, of sin, to use the tech-
nical word, accompanied by the yearning after the peace
of unity." " The word * religion/ ** he says, ** is gjetting—
more and more to signify the conglomerate of desires and
emotions springing from the sense of sin and its release "u
and he gives a large number of examples, in which the
sin ranges from drunkenness to spiritual pride, to show
that the sense of it may beset one and crave relief as
urgently as does the anguish of the sickened flesh or any
form of physical misery.
Undoubtedly this conception covers an immense num«
ber of cases. A good one to use as an example is that
of Mr. S. H. Hadley, who after his conversion became
an active and useful rescuer of drunkards in New York.
His experience runs as follows : —
^ One Tuesday evening I sat in a saloon in Harlem, a home-
less, friendless, dying drunkard. I had pawned or sold every-
thing that would bring a drink. I could not sleep unless I was
dead drunk. I had not eaten for days, and for four nights pre-
ceding I had suffered with delirium tremens, or the horrors,
from midnight till morning. I had often said, * I will never be
a tramp. I will never be cornered, for when that time comes,
if ever it comes, I will find a home in the bottom of the river.'
But the Lord so ordered it that when that time did oome I was
^ Studies in the Psyobologj of BsUgions Fhenomeiia, Ameriotn Jounial
of FsjehoLogj, viL 309 (1S96).
^ I
S02 THE YABIETIES OF BEUGIOUS
D#.^;jrx:^i;i.^
•I
i^
not able to walk one qnaxter o£ the way to the mmt* As I sal
there thinkingi I seemed to £sel some great and miglity pre-
sence. I did not know then what it was. I did learn after-
wards that it was Jesns, the sinner^s friend. I walked np to
the bar and poonded it with my fist till I made the gliises
ratde. Those who stood by drixiking looked on with soomfol
curiosity. I said I would never take another drink, if I died
on the streeti and really I felt as though that would happen
before morning. Something said, * If yoa want to keep this
promise, go and have yourself locked up.' I went to the near-
est station-house and had myself looked up. j
^ I was placed in a narrow cell, and it seemed as though all ]
the demons that could find room came in that place with me. - J
This was not all the company I had, either. No, praise the ^
Lord; that dear Spirit that came to me in the saloon was
present, and said, Pray. I did pray, and though I did not feel
any great help, I kept on praying. As soon as I was aUe to
leave my cell I was taken to the police court and remanded
back to the cell. I was finally released, and found my way to
my brother^s house, where every care was given me. "Wnile ^^
lying in bed the admonishing Spirit never left me, and when I ^
arose the following Sabbath morning I felt that day would
decide my fate, and toward evening it came into my hcAd to go ^
to Jeny M*Auley's Mission. I went. The house was paokedt ^
and with great difBculty I made my way to the space near the Z
platform. There I saw the apostle to the drunkard and the -- *
outcast — that man of God, Jerry M'Auley. He rose, and
amid deep silence told his experience. There was a sincerity *.
about this man that carried conviction with it, and I found my* .^
self saying, * I wonder if Qod can save met* I listened to the 'f
testimony of twenty-five or thirty persons, every one of whom *'^
had been saved from rum, and I made up my mind that I would ^^•
be saved or die right there. When the invitation was g^ven, I .-
knelt down with a crowd of drunkards. Jerry made the first -
prayer. Then Mrs. M'AuIey prayed fervently for us. Oh, '.^
what a conflict was going on for my poor soul I A blessed
whisper said, * Come ' ; the devil said, * Be careful.* I halted . /
but a moment, and then, with a breaking heart, I said, *Deai -;'
\
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CONVEBSIOH 203
JesoBf can 70a help me?' Nerer wiih mortal tongne oan I
describe that moment Although up to that moment my soul
had been filled with indescribable gloom^ I felt the glorious
brightness of the noonday sun shine into my heart I felt I was
a free man. Oh, the precious feeling of safety, of freedom, of
resting on Jesus I I felt that Christ with all his brightness and
power had come into my life; that| indeed, old things had
passed away and all things had become new.
^ From Uiat moment till now I haTe neTer wanted a drink of
whiskey, and I have never seen money enough to make me take
one. I promised Gtod that night that if he would take away
the appetite for strong drink, I would work for him all my life*
He has done his part, and I have been trying to do mine." ^
Dr. Leoba rightly remarks that there is little doctrinal
theology in such an experience^ which starts with the
absolute need of a higher helper^ and ends with the sense
that he has helped us. He gives other cases of drunk-
ards^ conversions which are purely ethical, containing,
as recorded, no theological belie& whatever. John B.
Crough's case, for instance, is practically, says Dr. Leuba,
the conversion of an atheist — neither Grod nor Jesus
being mentioned.' But in spite of the importance of
this type of regeneration, with little or no intellectual
readjustment, this writer surely makes it too exclusive.
It corresponds to the subjectively centred form of morbid
melancholy, of which Bunyan and Alline were examples.
But we saw in our seventh lecture that there are objective
forms of melancholy also, in which the lack of rational
^ I hare abridged Mr. Hadlej's acoount. For other oooTernone of drank*
ards, see his pamphlet^ Resoue Mission Work, published at the Old Jeny
M'Anley Water Street Mission, New York city. A strildog collection of
cases also appears in the appendix to Professor Lenba's article.
* A restanrant waiter serred proTisionaUj as Googh's ' Saviour.' Greneral
Booth, the founder of the Salvation Armj, considers that the first vital
step in saving outcasts consists in making them feel that some decent human
being cares enough for them to take an interest in the question whether
they are to rise or sink.
■■ I
i
;l
90ft THE TJjasnSS OF RlKLKmHTS IRHMiaiSSX*
meuung of the univwsi^ niidof U^n lu^^w^^ ^VmnI«
that iraghs upon one — ymi nmiMiWr IfV^nM^V ^nmKs
So there are distinct elemeuti in ^mtim^m^ AUli^ ll^i^
relations to individual lives deserve hi W \fa»yill^^»<»iil>.^
Some persons, for instance^ nevw i^r«% i^m) i^^^aNiiiMb
never under any circumstances couki W| ^h(mx^^N^
Beligious ideas cannot become the centre tvC Ihe^r i^^W^
ual energy. They may be esccellent pemmei «!Mr>iinNi \)li
God in practical ways, but they are not i^htKlren uf Kk
kingdom. They are either incntmble of tn\a|)^n(iV|t ihi!
invisible ; or else, in the language o( devtitioiii IhtMT A^li
life-long subjects of 'barrenness* and ^dryniHiiii^ ffm^
inaptitude for religious faith may in Nomn iimiiim \\P \\\\f\*
lectual in its origin. Their roligicHts f»itiutliiN< niKy W
checked in their natural tendency to rtx|miHli tiv ti«ilti*rM
about the world that are inhibit! v«t ilie ppnmIiiiIiiHm Hiut
materialistic beliefs, for examplei witliin >ylitcfli Mil HiNMy
good souls, who in former tlmni wontrl Imyn t\i^p\}f
indulged their religious propensitinsi lUu] iliitMiM^IVM
nowadays, as it were, trwAtn ; or itie HKtiimMH tii|inM
upon fsdth as something weak and i^\mnmfii]f uwUr wliti'll
so many of ns to^y lie c/;weiin^, utmiit Ut U9m ii\i¥
instincts* In many ytmttmn muM mh\\M\iim AfM hn^il^t
oirereome. To the end of th^r fUyn iU^y p^futm in
believe, dieir penonal tM^fcy itHf^r yif^M Sai M># fii\\\f^m\^
i the latti^ r^mm ine/^t# \u ff^p^tiHilff,
other perMMks th« UfmU^ U \ffff1imii4mf, ^tU^i'M Hf^
ztaaiA^eat mi tfa>^ t^t^fm mAm^ Mu':mf% m SSitAi
KS HMPrfii ^ue i« ieO, ^$A Im^ ^tl^^ t^ ^^Mf^p^ \fi ^ piHi%H^ ^
«...
\
\
204 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXFERIBNCB:
meaning of the universe^ and of life anyhow^ is the hoiden
that weighs upon one — you remember Tolstoy's case.^ :
So there are distinct elements in conversion^ and their
relations to individual lives deserve to be discriminated.^ t
Some persons^ for instance^ never are^ and possibly i
never under any circumstances could be^ converted.
Beligious ideas cannot become the centre of their spirit- x
ual energy. They may be excellent persons^ servants of '
God in practical ways, but they are not children of his *
kingdom. They are either incapable of imagining the \
invisible ; or else, in the language of devotion, they are i
life-long subjects of ^ barrenness ' and ^ dryness.' Such :
inaptitude for religious faith may in some cases be intel* '■
lectual in its origin. Their religious faculties may be '
checked in their natural tendency to expand, by beliefs }
about the world that are inhibitive, the pessimistic and
materialistic beliefs, for example, within which so many
good souls, who in former times would have freely {
indalged their religious propensities, find themselves :r
nowadays, as it were, frozen ; or the agnostic vetoes «
upon faith as something weak and shameful, under whidi 1
so many of us to-day lie cowering, afraid to use our 'i
instincts. In many persons such inhibitions are never I
overcome. To the end of their days they refuse to |
believe, their personal energy never gets to its religious
centre, and the latter remains inactive in perpetuity.
In other persons the trouble is prof ounder. There are
men anaesthetic on the religious side, deficient in that !
1 The crisis of apathetio melancholy — no use in life — into whieli J. S. ^
Mill records that he fell, and from which he emerged bj the reading of f
Marmontel's Memoirs (Heaven save the mark I) and Wordsworth's poetrj» ^
is another intellectual and general metaphysical case. See Mill's Autobio-
graphy, New York, 1873, pp. 141, 148.
^ Starbuck, in addition to 'escape from sin,' discriminates ' spiritual
illumination ' as a distinct type of conrersion axperieocd. Psychologj of ^
Religion, p. 85. '^
CONVEBSION 205
category of sensibility. Just as a bloodless organism can
never^ in spite of all its goodwill, attain to the reckless
' animal spirits ' enjoyed by those of sanguine tempera-
ment; so the nature which is- spiritually barren i^y
admire and envy faith in others, but can never compass
the enthusiasm and peace which those who are tempera-
mentaUy qualified for faith enjoy. All this may, however,
turn out eventually to have been a matter of temporary
inhibition. Even late in life some thaw, some release may
take place, some bolt be shot back in the barrenest
breast, and the man's hard heart may soften and break
into religious feeling. Such cases more than any others
suggest the idea that sudden conversion is by miracle.
So long as they exist, we must not imagine ourselves to
deal with irretrievably fixed classes.
Now there are two forms of mental occurrence in
human beings, which lead to a striking difference in the
conversion process, a difference to which Professor Star-
buck has called attention. You know how it is when
you try to recollect a forgotten name. Usually you help
the recall by working for it, by mentally running over
the places, persons, and things with which the word was
connected. But sometimes this effort fails: you feel then
as if the harder you tried the less hope there would be,
as though the name were jammed^ and pressure in its
direction only kept it all the more from rising. And
then the opposite expedient often succeeds. Give up the
effort entirely; think of something altogether different,
and in half an hour the lost name comes sauntering into
your mind, as Emerson says, as carelessly as if it had
never been invited. Some hidden process was started in
you by the effort, which went on after the effort ceased,
and made the result come as if it came spontaneously.
206 THE YABIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
A certain music teacher, says Dr. Starbuck, says to her
pupils after the thing to be done has been clearly pointed
out, and unsuccessfully attempted : '^ Stop trying and it
wiU do itself!"*
There is thus a conscious and voluntary way and an
involuntary and unconscious way in which mental results
may get accomplished ; and we find both ways exempli-
fied in the history of conversion, giving us two types,
which Starbuck calls the volitional type and the type by
self-surrender respectively.
In the volitional type the regenerative change is usu-
ally gradual, and consists in the building up, piece by
piece, of a new set of moral and spiritual habits. But
there are always critical points here at which the move-
ment forward seems much more rapid. This psychologi-
cal fact is abundantly illustrated by Dr. Starbuck. Our
education in any practical accomplishment proceeds ap-
parently by jerks and starts, just as the growth of our
physical bodies does.
^^ An athlete . . . sometimes awakens suddenly to an under-
standing of the fine points of the game and to a real enjoyment
of it, just as the convert awakens to an appreciation of religion.
If he keeps on engaging in the sport, there may come a day
when all at once the game plays itself through him — when he
loses himself in some great contest. In the same way, a musi-
cian may suddenly reach a point at which pleasure in the tech-
nique of the art entirely falls away, and in some moment of
inspiration he becomes the instrument through which music
flows. The writer has chanced to hear two different married
persons, both of whose wedded lives had been beautiful from
the beginning, relate that not until a year or more after mar-
riage did they awake to the full blessedness of married life.
So it is with the religious experience of these persons we are
studying." ^
' PBychology of Religion, p. 117.
* Psychology of Religion, p. 385. Compare, also, pp. 137-144 and 262.
CONVERSION 207
We shall erelong hear still more remarkable illustra-
tioDS of subconsciously maturing processes eventuating in
results of which we suddenly grow conscious. Sir Wil-
liam Hamilton and Professor Laycock of Edinburgh were
among the first to call attention to this class of effects ;
but Dr. Carpenter firsts unless I am mistaken, introduced
the term ^ unconscious cerebration/ which has since then
been a popular phrase of explanation. The facts are now
known to us far more extensively than he could know
them, and the adjective ^ unconscious/ being for many
of them almost certainly a misnomer, is better replaced
by the vaguer term ^ subconscious * or ^ subliminal.'
r Of the volitional type of conversion it would be easy
>s.to give examples/ but ^ey are as a rule less interesting
^ For iustance, C. 6. Finney italicizes the Tolitional element : "Just at
this point the whole question of Gospel salvation opened to mj mind in a
manner most marvelous to me at the time. I think I then saw, as elearlj
as I ever have in my life, the reality and fullness of the atonement of Christ.
Gospel salvation seemed to me to be an ofifer of something to be accepted,
and all that was necessary on my part was to get my own consent to give up
my sins and accept Christ. After this distinct revelation had stood for some
little time before my mind, the question seemed to be put, < Will you accept
it now, to-day ? ' I replied, * Tes ; / vsUX accept it to-dayt or I will die in ^
attempt ! * " He then went into the woods, where he describes his struggles.
He could not pray, his heart was hardened in its pride. " I then reproached
myself for having promised to g^ve my heart to God before I left the
woods. When I came to try, I found I could not. . . . My inward soul
bung back, and there was no going out of my heart to Grod. The thought
was pressing me, of the rashness of my promise that I would g^ve my heart
to God that day, or die in the attempt. It seemed to me as if that was
binding on my soul ; and yet I was going to break my vow. A g^at sinking
and discouragement came over me, and I felt almost too weak to stand upon
my knees. Just at this moment I again thought I heard some one ap-
proach me, and I opened my eyes to see whether it were so. But right there
the revelation of my pride of heart, as the g^at difficulty that stood in the
way, was distinctly shown to me. An overwhelming sense of my wicked-
ness in being ashamed to have a human being see me on my knees before
God took such po^rerful possession of me, that I cried at the top of my voice f
and exclaimed that I would not leave that place if all the men on earth and all
the devils in heU turrounded me. * What 1 ' I said, * snch a degraded sinner
206 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
than those of the self-surrender type, in which the sub-
conscious effects are more abundant and often startling.
I will therefore hurry to the latter, the more so because
the difference between the two types is after all not radi-
cal. Even in the most voluntarily built-up sort of regen-
eration there are passages of partial self-surrender inters
posed ; and in the great majority of all cases, when the
will has done its uttermost towards bringing one close to
the complete unification aspired after, it seems that the
very last step must be left to other forces and performed
without the help of its activity. In other words, self-
surrender becomes then indispensable. ^'The personal
will," says Dr. Starbuck, " must be given up. In many
cases rehef persistently refuses to come until the person
ceases to resist, or to make an effort in the direction he
desires to go."
^^ I had said I would not give up ; but when my will was
broken, it was all over," writes one of Starbuck's correspond-
ents. — Another says : ^^ I simply said : ^ Lord, I have done all
I can ; I leave the whole matter with Thee ; ' and immediately
there came to me a great peace.*' — Another : ^^ All at once it
occurred to me that I might be saved, too, if I would stop try-
ing to do it all myself, and follow Jesus : somehow I lost my
load.*' — Another : ^^ I finally ceased to resist, and gave myself
up, though it was a hard struggle. Gradually the feeling came
over me that I had done my part, and God was willing to do
his." ^ — " Lord, Thy will be done ; damn or save I " cries John
Nelson,^ exhausted with the anxious struggle to escape danma-
tion ; and at that moment his soul was filled with peace.
as I am, on my knees confessing my sins to the great and holy God; and
ashamed to have any human heing, and a sinner like myself, find me on my
knees endeavoring to make my peace with my offended God I ' The sin
appeared awfnl, infinite. It broke me down before the Lord." Memoirs,
pp. 14-16, abridged.
1 Starbuck : Op. cit., pp. 91, 114.
^ Extracts from the Jonmal of Mr. John Nelson, London, no date, p. 24.
CONVEBSION 209
Dr. Starbuck gives an interesting, and it seems to me
a true, account — so far as conceptions so schematic can
claim truth at all — of the reasons why self -surrender at
the last moment should be so indispensable. To begin
with, there are two things in the mind of the candidate
for conversion : first, the present incompleteness or wrong-
ness, the ^ sin ' which he is eager to escape from ; and,
second, jhe positive ideal_wbich. he longs to..con2|Kass.
Now witfi most of us the sense of our present wrong-
ness is a far more distinct piece of our consciousness than
is the imagination of any positive ideal we can aim at.
In a majority of cases, indeed, the ' sin ' almost ex-
clusively engrosses the attention, so that conversion is
" a process of struggling away from sin rather than
of striving towards righteousness.^^ * A man's conscious
wit and wiU, so far as they strain towards the ideal, are
aiming at something only dimly and inaccurately ima-
gined. Yet all the while the forces of mere organic ripen-
ing within him are going on towards their own prefigured
result, and his conscious strainings are letting loose sub-
conscious allies behind the scenes, which in their way
work towards rearrangement; and the rearrangement to-
wards which all these deeper forces tend is pretty surely
definite, and definitely different from what he consciously
conceives and determines. It may consequently be ac-
tually interfered with {jammed^ as it were, like the lost
word when we seek too energetically to recall it), by his
voluntary efforts slanting from the true direction.
Starbuck seems to put his finger on the root of the
matter when he says that to exercise the personal will is
still to live in the region where the imperfect self is
the thing most emphasized. Where, on the contrary,
the subconscious forces take the lead, it is more probably
1 Starbuck, p. 64.
210 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
the better self in posse which directs the operation. In-
stead of being clumsily and vaguely aimed at from with-
outy it is then itself the organizing centre. What then
must the person do ? ^^ He must relax/' says Dr. Star-
buck, — " that is, he must fall back on the larger Power
that makes for righteousness, which has been welling up
in his own being, and let it finish in its own way the
work it has begun. . . . The act of jrielding, in this
point of view, is giving one's self over to the new life,
making it the centre of a new personality, and living,
from within, the truth of it which had before been viewed
objectively.-
j " Man's extremity is God's opportunity " is the theo-
I logical way of putting this fact of the need of self-sur-
\render ; whilst the physiological way of stating it would
l)e, ^^ Let one do all in one's power, and one's nervous
system will do the rest." Both statements acknowledge
the same f act.^
To state it in terms of our own symbolism : When the
new centre of personal energy has been subconsciously
incubated so long as to be just ready to open into flower,
^ hands off ' is the only word for us, it must burst forth
unaided 1
We have used the vague and abstract language of psy-
chology. But since, in any terms, the crisis described
is the throwing of our conscious selves upon the mercy
of powers which, whatever they may be, are more ideal
than we are actually, and make for our redemption, you
see why self^surrender has been and always must be re-
garded as the vital turning-point of the religious lif e^
so far as the religious Ufe is spiritual and no affair of
outer works and ritual and sacraments. One may say
that the whole development of Christianity in inwardness
^ Starbuck, p. 115. ' Stasbuck, p. 113.
CONVERSION 211
has consisted in little more than the grater and greater
emphasis attached to this crisis of self-surrender. From
Catholicism to Lutheranism, and then to Calvinism ; from
that to Wesleyanism ; and from this, outside of technical
Christianity altogether, to pure * liberalism ' or tran-
scendental idealism, whether or not of the mind-cure
type, taking in the mediaeval mystics, the quietists, the
pietists, and quakers by the way, we can trace the stages
of progress towards the idea of an immediate spiritual
help, experienced by the individual in his forlomness
and standing in no essential need of doctrinal apparatus
or propitiatory machineiy. ^
/' Psychology and religion are thus in perfect harmony /
up to this point, since both admit that there are forces |
seemingly outside of the conscious individual that bringj[
Vredemption to his life. Nevertheless psychology, defin- ;
mg these forces as ' subconscious,' and speaking of their
(effects as due to ' incubation,' or * cerebration,' implies
that they do not transcend the individual's personality ; ■
andf Herein she diverges from Christian theoloery^ which
-.. . .._ -JCr - -- -- — ^ — - ,11,11 , Jm .
insists that they are direct supernatural operations of tfie
Deity. I propose to you that we do not yet consider
this divergence final, but leave the question for a while
in abeyance — continued inquiry may enable us to get
rid of some of the apparent discord.
Revert, then, for a moment more to the psychology of
self-surrender.
When you find a man living on the ragged edge of
his consciousness, pent in to his sin and want and incom-
pleteness, and consequently inconsolable, and then simply
tell him that all is well with him, that he must stop his
worry, break with his discontent, and give up his anxiety,
you seem to him to come with -pure absurdities. The
212 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
only positive consciousness he has tells him that all is not
weU^ and the better way you offer sounds simply as if
you proposed to him to assert cold-blooded falsehoods.
* The will to believe ' cannot be stretched as far as that.
We can make ourselves more faithful to a belief of which
we have the rudiments, but we cannot create a beUef out
of whole cloth when our perception actively assures us of
its opposite. The better mind proposed to us comes in
that case in the form of a pure negation of the only mind
I we have, and we cannot actively will a pure negation.
There are only two ways in which it is possible to get
• rid of anger, worry, fear, despair, or other undesirable
affections. One is that an opposite affection should over-
poweringly break over us, and the other is by getting- so
exhausted with the struggle that we have to stop, — so
we drop down, give up, and don^t care any longer. Our
emotional brain-centres strike work, and we lapse into a
temporary apathy. Now there is documentary proof that
this state of temporary exhaustion not infrequently forms
part of the conversion crisis. So long as the egoistic worry
of the sick soul guards the door, the expansive confidence
of the soul of faith gains no presence. But let the former
faint away, even but for a moment, and the latter can
profit by the opportunity, and, having once acquired
possession, may retain it. Carlyle's Teuf elsdrockh passes
from the everlasting No to the everlasting Yes through
a * Centre of Indifference.'
Let me give you a good illustration of this feature
in the conversion process. That genuine saint, David
Brainerd, describes his own crisis in the following
words : —
^^ One morning, while I was walking in a solitary place as
usual, I at once saw that all my contrivances and projects to effect
or procure deliverance and salvation for myself were utterly in
CONVERSION 213
vain ; I was brought quite to a stand, as finding myself totally
lost. I saw that it was forever impossible for me to do anything
towards helping or delivering myself, that I had made all the
pleas I ever could have made to all eternity ; and that all my
pleas were vain, for I saw that self-interest had led me to pray,
and that I had never once prayed from any respect to the glory
of God. I saw that there was no necessary connection between
my prayers and the bestowment of divine mercy ; that they
laid not the least obligation upon God to bestow his grace upon
me ; and that there was no more virtue or goodness in them
than there would be in my paddling with my hand in the water.
I saw that I had been heaping up my devotions before God,
fasting, praying, etc., pretending, and indeed really thinking
sometimes timt I was aiming at the glory of God ; whereas I
never once truly intended it, but only my own happiness. I
saw that as I had never done anything for God, I had no claim
on anything from him but perdition, on account of my hypoc-
risy and mockery. When I saw evidently that I had regard
to nothing but self-interest, then my duties appeared a vile
mockery and a continual course of lies, for the whole was no-
thing but self -worship, and an horrid abuse of God.
^ I continued, as I remember, in this state of mind, from
Friday morning tiU the Sabbath evening foUowing (July 12,
1789), when I was walking again in the same solitary place.
Here, in a mournful melancholy state /ti^aa attempting to pray ;
hut found no heart to engage in that or any other duty ; my
former concern^ exercise^ and religious affections were now
gone. I thought that the Spirit of God had quite left me ;
hut still was not distressed ; yet disconsolate^ as if there was
nothing in heaven or earth could make me happy. Saving
been thus endeavoring to pray — though^ as I thought^ very
stupid and senseless — for near half an hour; then, as I was
walking in a thick grove, unspeakable glory seemed to open to
the apprehension of my soul. I do not mean any external
brightness, nor any imagination of a body of light, but it was a
new inward apprehension or view that I had of Gt>d, such as I
never had before, nor anjrthing which had the least resemblance
to it. I had no particular apprehension of any one person in
214 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
the Trinity, either the Father, the Son, or the Holy Ghost ; but
it appeared to be Divine glory. My soul rejoiced with joy un-
speakable, to see such a God, such a glorious Divine Being ;
and I was inwardly pleased and satisfied that he should be
God over all for ever and ever. My soul was so captivated
and delighted with the excellency of God that I was even
swallowed up in him; at least to that degree that I had no
thought about my own salvation, and scarce reflected that there
was such a creature as myself. I continued in this state of
inward joy, peace, and astonishing, till near dark without any
sensible abatement ; and then began to think and examine what
I had seen ; and felt sweetly composed in my mind all the even-
ing foUowing. I felt myself in a new world, and everything
about me appeared with a different aspect from what it was
wont to do. At this time, the way of salvation opened to me
with such infinite wisdom, suitableness, and excellency, that I
wondered I should ever think of any other way of salvation ;
was amazed that I had not dropped my own contrivances, and
complied with this lovely, blessed, and excellent way before.
If I could have been saved by my own duties or any other way
that I had formerly contrived, my whole soul would now have
refused it. I wondered that all the world did not see and com-
ply with this way of salvation, entirely by the righteousness of
Christ." 1
I have italicized the passage which records the exhaus-
tion of the anxious emotion hitherto habitual In a
large proportion, perhaps the majority, of reports, the
writers speak as if the exhaustion of the lower and the
entrance of the higher emotion were simultaneous,^ yet
1 Edward's and Dwight'b Life of Brainerd, New Haven, 1822, pp. 45-
47, abridged.
' Describing the whole phenomenon as a change of equilibrium, we might
say that the movement of new psychic energies towards the personal oentre
and the recession of old ones towards the margin (or the rising of some ob-
jects above, and the sinking of others below the conscious threshold) were
only two ways of describing an indivisible event. Doubtless this is often
absolutely true, and Starbuck is right when he says that ' self-surrender *
and ' new determination,' though seeming at first sight to be such different
CONy£RSION 215
often again they speak as if the higher actively drove the
lower out. This is undoubtedly true in a great many
instances, as we shall presently see. But often there
seems little doubt that both conditions — subconscious
ripening of the one affection and exhaustion of the other
— must simultaneously have conspired^ in order to pro-
duce the result.
T. W. B.y a convert of Nettleton's, being brought to an acute
paroxysm of conviction of sin, ate nothing all day, locked him-
self in his room in the evening in complete despair, crying
aloud, "How long, O Lord, how long?" "After repeating
this and similar language," he says, " several times, / seemed
to sink away into a state of insensibility. When I came to
myself again I was on my knees, praying not for myself but
for others. I felt submission to the will of God, willing that
he should do with me as should seem good in his sight. My
concern seemed all lost in concern for others.*' ^
Our great American revivalist Finney writes: "I said to
myself : * What is this ? I must have grieved the Holy Ghost
entirely away. I have lost all my conviction. I have not a
.particle of concern about my soul; and it must be that the
Spirit has left me.' * Why I ' thought I, ^ I never was so far
from being concerned about my own salvation in my life.' . . .
I tried to recall my convictions, to get back again the load of
sin under which I had been laboring. I tried in vain to make
myself anxious. I was so quiet and peaceful that I tried to
feel concerned about that, lest it should be the result of my
having grieved the Spirit away." ^
But beyond all question there are persons in whom, \
quite independently of any exhaustion in the Subject's .
capacity for feeling, or even in the absence of any acute
experiences, are *' really the same thing. Self -surrender sees the change in
terms of the old self ; determination sees it in terms of the new.'* Op.
cit.y p. 160.
1 A. A. BoNAR : Nettleton and his Lahors, Edinborgh, 1854, p. 261.
> Chasueb G. FnfNKT : Memoirs written by Himself, 1876| pp. 17» 18.
216 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
previous feeling, the higher condition, having reached
the due degree of energy, bursts through all barriers and
sweeps in like a sudden flood. These are the most strik-
ing and memorable cases, the cases of instantaneous con-
version to which the conception of divine grace has been
most peculiarly attached. I have given one of them at
length — the case of Mr. Bradley. But I had better re-
serve the other cases and my comments on the rest of
the subject for the following lecture.
LECTURE X
CONVERSION — Concluded
IN this lecture we have to finish the subject of Conyer-
sion, considering at first those striking instantaneous
instances of which Saint Paul's is the most eminent, and
in which, often amid tremendous emotional excitement
or perturbation of the senses, a complete division is estab-
lished in the twinkling of an eye between the old life
and the new. Conversion of this type is an important
phase of religious experience, owing to the part which it
has played in Protestant theology, and it behooves us to
study it conscientiously on that account.
I think I had better cite two or three of these cases
before proceeding to a more generalized account. One
must know concrete instances first; for, as Professor
Agassiz used to say, one can see no farther into a gen-
eralization than just so far as one's previous acquaintance
with particulars enables one to take it in. I will go back,
then, to the case of our friend Henry Alline, and quote
his report of the 26th of March, 1775, on which his poor
divided mind became unified for good.
** As I was about sunset wandering in the fields lamenting
my miserable lost and undone condition, and almost ready to
sink under my burden, I thought I was in such a miserable
case as never any man was before. I returned to the house,
and when I got to the door, just as I was stepping off the
threshold, the foUowing impressions came into my mind like a
powerful but small still voice. You have been seeking, pray-
218 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
iugy reforming, laboring, reading, hearing, and meditating, and
what have you done by it towards your salvation ? Are you
any nearer to conversion now than when you first began ? Are
you any more prepared for heaven, or fitter to appear before
the impartial bar of God, than when you first began to seek ?
^* It brought such conviction on me that I was obliged to say
that I did not think I was one step nearer than at first, but as
much condemned, as much exposed, and as miserable as before.
I cried out within myself, O Lord CK)d, I am lost, and if thou,
O Lord, dost not find out some new way, I know nothing of, I
shall never be saved, for the ways and methods I have pre-
scribed to myself have aU failed me, and I am wiUing they
should fail. O Lord, have mercy I O Lord, have mercy I
** These discoveries continued until I went into the house and
sat down. After I sat down, being all in confusion, like a
drowning man that was just giving up to sink, and almost in
an agony, I turned very suddenly round in my chair, and see-
ing part of an old Bible lying in one of the chairs, I caught
hold of it in great haste ; and opening it without any premedi-
tation, cast my eyes on the 38th Psalm, which was the first
time I ever saw the word of God : it took hold of me with such
power that it seemed to go through my whole soul, so that it
seemed as if God was praying in, with, and for me. About
this time my father called the family to attend prayers ; I at-
tended, but paid no regard to what he said in his prayer, but
continued praying in those words of the Psalm. Oh, help me,
help me ! cried I, thou Redeemer of souls, and save me, or I am
gone forever ; thou canst this night, if thou pleasest, with one
drop of thy blood atone for my sins, and appease the wrath of
an angry God. At that instant of time when I gave all up
to him to do with me as he pleased, and was willing that Orod
should rule over me at his pleasure, redeeming love broke into
my soul with repeated scriptures, with such power that my
whole soul seemed to be melted down with love ; the burden of
guilt and condemnation was gone, darkness was expelled, my
heart humbled and filled with gratitude, and my whole soul,
that was a few minutes ago groaning under mountains of death,
and crying to an unknown God for help, was now filled with
CONYEBSION 219
immortal love, soaring on the wings of faith, freed from the
chains of death and darkness, and crjring out. My Lord and my
God ; thou art my rock and my fortress, my shield and my
high tower, my life, my joy, my present and my everlasting por-
tion. Looking up, I thought I saw that same light [he had on
more than one previous occasion seen subjectively a bright blaze
of light], though it appeared different ; and as soon as I saw
it, the design was openc^l to me, according to his promise, and I
was obliged to cry out : Enough, enough, O blessed (rod I The
work of conversion, the change, and the manifestations of it are
no more disputable than that light which I see, or anything
that ever I saw.
** In the midst of all my joys, in less than half an hour after
my soul was set at liberty, the Lord discovered to me my la-
bor in the ministry and call to preach the gospel. I cried out.
Amen, Lord, I '11 go ; send me, send me. I spent the greatest
part of the night in ecstasies of joy, praising and adoring the
Ancient of Days for his free and unbounded gprace. After
I had been so long in this transport and heavenly frame that
my nature seemed to require sleep, I thought to close my eyes
for a few moments ; then the devil stepped in, and told me
that if I went to sleep, I should lose it all, and when I should
awake in the morning I would find it to be nothing but a fancy
and delusion. I immediately cried out, O Lord Grod, if I am
deceived, undeceive me.
^* I then plosed my eyes for a few minutes, and seemed to be
refreshed with sleep ; and when I awoke, the first inquiry was,
Where is my God ? And in an instant of time, my soul seemed
awake in and with Gt)d, and surrounded by the arms of ever-
lasting love. About sunrise I arose with joy to relate to my
parents what God had done for my soul, and declared to them
the miracle of God's unbounded grace. I took a Bible to show
them the words that were impressed by God on my soul the
evening before ; but when I came to open the Bible, it appeared
all new to me.
*' I so longed to be useful in the cause of Christ, in preach-
ing the gospel, that it seemed as if I could not rest any longer,
but go I must and tell the wonders of redeeming love. I lost
220 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
all taste for carnal pleasures, and carnal company, and was
enabled to forsake them." ^
Toung Mr. AUine, after the briefest of delays, and
with no book-learning but his Bible, and no teaching
save that of his own experience, became a Christian min-
ister, and thenceforward his life was fit to rank, for its
austerity and single-mindedness, with that of the most
devoted saints. But happy as he became in his strenu-
ous way, he never got his taste for even the most inno-
I cent carnal pleasures back. We must class him, like
i Bunyan and Tolstoy, amongst those upon whose soul the
I iron of melancholy left a permanent imprint. His re-
f demption was into another universe than this mere nat-
ural world, and life remained for him a sad and patient
trial. Tears later we can find him making such an entry
as this in his diary : ^^ On Wednesday the 12th I preached
at a wedding, and had the happiness thereby to be the
means of excluding carnal mirth."
The next case I will give is that of a correspond-
ent of Professor Leuba, printed in the latter's article,
already cited, in vol. vi. of the American Journal of
Psychology. This subject was an Oxford graduate, the
son of a clergyman, and the story resembles in many
points the classic case of Colonel Gardiner, which every-
body may be supposed to know. Here it is, somewhat
abridged : —
" Between the period of leaving Oxford and my conversion I
never darkened the door of my father's church, although I lived
with him for eight years, making what money I wanted by
journalism, and spending it in high carousal with any one who
would sit with me and drink it away. So I lived, sometimes
drunk for a week together, and then a terrible repentance, and
would not touch a drop for a whole month.
^ Life and JoomalBy Boston, 1806, pp. 31-40, abridged.
CONVEBSION 221
^^ In all this period, that is, up to thirty-three years of age, I
never had a desire to reform on religious grounds. But all my
pangs were due to some terrible remorse I used to feel after a
heavy carousal, the remorse taking the shape of regret after
my foUy in wasting my life in such a way — a man of superior
talents and education. This terrible remorse turned me gray
in one night, and whenever it came upon me I was perceptibly
grayer the next morning. What I suffered in this way is be-
yond the expression of words. It was hell-fire in all its most
dreadful tortures. Often did I vow that if I got over ^this
time ' I would reform. Alas, in about three days I fully recov-
ered, and was as happy as ever. So it went on for years, but,
with a physique like a rhinoceros, I always recovered, and as
long as I let drink alone, no man was as capable of enjoying
life as I was.
^ I was converted in my own bedroom in my father's rectory
house at precisely three o'clock in the afternoon of a hot July
day (July 18, 1886). I was in perfect health, having been off
from the drink for nearly a month. I was in no way troubled
about my souL In fact, God was not in my thoughts that day.
A young lady friend sent me a copy of Professor Drummond's
Natural Law in the Spiritual World, asking me my opinion of
it as a literary work only. Being proud of my critical talents
and wishing to enhance myself in my new friend's esteem«_I
took the book to my bedroom for quiet, intending to give it a
thorough study, and then write her what I thought of it. It
was here that God met me face to face, and I shall never for-
get the meeting. *He that hath the Son hath life eternal;
he that hath not the Son hath not life.' I had read this
scores of times before, but this made all the difference. I was
now in Grod's presence and my attention was absolutely ^ sol-
dered ' on to this verse, and I was not allowed to proceed with
the book till I had fairly considered what these words really
involved. Only then was I allowed to proceed, feeling all the
while that there was another being in my bedroom, though
not seen by me. The stillness was very marvelous, and I felt
supremely happy. It was most unquestionably shown me, in
one second of time, that I had never touched the Eternal : and
222 THE VARIETIES OF BELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
that if I died then, I must inevitably be lost. I was undone.
I knew it as weU as I now know I am saved. The Spirit of
God showed it me in ineffable love ; there was no terror in it ;
I felt God's love so powerfully upon me that only a mighty sor-
row crept over me that I had lost all through my own foUy ; and
what was I to do ? What could I do ? I did not repent even ;
God never asked me to repent. AU I felt was ^ I am undone,*
and God cannot help it, although he loves me. No fault on
the part of the Almighty. All the time I was supremely
happy : I felt like a little child before his father. I had done
wrong, but my Father did not scold me, but loved me most
wondrously. Still my doom was sealed. I was lost to a cer-
tainty, and being naturally of a brave disposition I did not
quail under it, but deep sorrow for the past, mixed with regret
for what I had lost, took hold upon me, and my soul thrilled
within me to think it was all over. Then th^jre crept in upon
me so gently, so lovingly, so unmistakably, a way of escape,
and what was it after all ? The old, old story over again, told
in the simplest way : * There is no name under heaven whereby
ye can be saved except that of the Lord Jesus Christ.' No
words were spoken to me ; my soul seemed to see my Saviour
in the spirit, and from that hour to this, nearly nine years now,
there has never been in my life one doubt that the Lord Jesus
Christ and God the Father both worked upon me that after-
noon in July, both differently, and both in the most perfect
love conceivable, and I rejoiced there and then in a conversion
so astounding that the whole village heard of it in less than
twenty-four hours.
** But a time of trouble was yet to come. The day after
my conversion I went into the hay-field to lend a hand with
the harvest, and not having made any promise to God to ab-
stain or drink in moderation only, I took too much and came
home drunk. My poor sister was heart-broken; and I felt
ashamed of myself and got to my bedroom at once, where she
followed me, weeping copiously. She said I had been con-
verted and fallen away instantly. But although I was quite
full of drink (not muddled, however), I knew that God's work
begun in me was not going to be wasted. About midday I
CONy£BSION 223
made on my knees the first prayer before God for twenty years.
I did not ask to be forgiven ; I felt that was no good, for I
would be sure to fall again. Well, what did I do ? I com-
mitted myself to him in the profoundest belief that my individ-
uality was going to be destroyed, that he would take all from
me, and I was willing. In such a surrender lies the secret of
a holy life. From that hour drink has had no terrors for me :
I never touch it, never want it. The same thing occurred with
my pipe : after being a regular smoker from my twelfth year
the desire for it went at once, and has never returned. So with
every known sin, the deliverance in each case being permanent
and complete. I have had no temptation since conversion, God
seemingly having shut out Satan from that course with me.
He gets a free hand in other ways, but never on sins of the
flesh. Since I gave up to God all ownership in my own life, '•
he has guided me in a thousand ways, and has opened my path
in a way almost incredible to those who do not enjoy the bless-
ing of a truly surrendered life."
So much for our graduate of Oxford^ in whom you
notice the complete abolition of an ancient appetite as
one of the conversion's fruits.
The most curious record of sudden conversion with
which I am acquainted is that of M. Alphonse Ratis-
bonne, a freethinking French Jew, to Catholicism, at
Rome in 1842. In a letter to a clerical friend, written a
few months later, the convert gives a palpitating account of
the circumstances.^ The predisposing conditions appear
to have been slight. He had an elder brother who had
been converted and was a Catholic priest. He was him-
self irreligious, and nourished an antipathy to the apos-
tate brother and generally to his ^ cloth.' Finding him-
self at Rome in his twenly-ninth year, he fell in with a
' My qaotations are made from an Italian translation of this letter in the
Biografia del Sig. M. A. RatiBbonne, Ferrara, 1843, which I have to thank
Monaignore D. O'Connell of Rome for bringing to my notice. I abridge
the originaL
224 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
Freuch gentleman who tried to make a proselyte of him^
but who succeeded no farther after two or three conversa-
tions than to get him to hang (half jocosely) a religious
medal round his neck^ and to accept and read a copy of
a short prayer to the Virgin. M. Ratisbonne represents
his own part in the conversations as having been of a light
and chaffing order ; but he notes the fact that for some
days he was unable to banish the words of the prayer
from his mind^ and that the night before the crisis he
had a sort of nightmare, in the imagery of which a black
cross with no Christ upon it figured. Nevertheless, until
noon of the next day he was free in mind and spent the
tine in trivial conventions. I now give his owTwords.
** If at this time any one had accosted me, saying : ^ Alphonse,
in a quarter of an hour you shall be adoring Jesus Christ as
your God and Saviour ; you shall lie prostrate with your face
upon the ground in a bumble church ; you shall be smiting
your breast at the foot of a priest ; you shall pass the carnival
in a college of Jesuits to prepare yourself to receive baptism,
ready to give your life for the Catholic faith ; you shall re-
nounce the world and its pomps and pleasures ; renounce your
fortune, your hopes, and if need be, your betrothed ; the affec-
tions of your family, the esteem of your friends, and your attach-
ment to the Jewish people ; you shall have no other aspiration
than to follow Christ and bear his cross till death ; ' — if , I say,
a prophet had come to me with such a prediction, I should have
judged that only one person could be more mad than he, —
whosoever, namely, might believe in the possibility of such
senseless folly becoming true. And yet that folly is at present
my only wisdom, my sole happiness.
^* Coming out of the caf ^ I met the carriage of Monsieur B.
[the proselyting friend]. He stopped and invited me in for a
drive, but first asked me to wait for a few minutes whilst he
attended to some duty at the church of San Andrea delle Fratte.
Instead of waiting in the carriage, I entered the church myself
to look at it. The church of San Andrea was poor, small^ and
CONVEBSION 225
empty ; I believe that I found myself there almost alone. No
work of art attracted my attention; and I passed my eyes
mechanically over its interior without being arrested by any
particular tliought. I can only remember an entirely black
dog which went trotting and turning before me as I mused In
an instant the dog had disappeared, the whole church had van-
ished, I no longer saw anything, ... or more truly I saw, O
my God, one thing alone.
" Heavens, how can I speak of it ? Oh no I human words
cannot attain to expressing the inexpressible. Any description,
however sublime it might be, could be but a profanation of the
unspeakable truth.
'^ I was there prostrate on the ground, bathed in my tears,
with my heart beside itself, when M. B. called me back to life.
I could not reply to the questions which followed from him one
upon the other. But finally I took the medal which I had on
my breast, and with all the effusion of my soul I kissed the
image of the Virgin, radiant with grace, which it bore. Oh,
indeed, it was She I It was indeed She I [What he had seen
had been a vision of the Virgin.]
*' I did not know where I was : I did not know whether I
was Alphonse or another. I only felt myself changed and be-
lieved myself another me ; I looked for myself in myself and
did not find myself. In the bottom of my soul I felt an explo-
sion of the most ardent joy ; I could not speak ; I had no wish
to reveal what had happened. But I felt something solemn
and sacred within me which made me ask for a priest. I was
led to one ; and there, alone, after he had given me the positive
order, I spoke as best I could, kneeling, and with my heart still
trembling. I could give no account to myself of the truth
of which I had acquired a knowledge and a faith. All that I
can say is that in an instant the bandage had fallen from my
eyes ; and not one bandage only, but the whole manifold of
bandages in which I had been brought up. One after another
they rapidly disappeared, even as the mud and ice disappear
under the rays of the burning sun.
*^ I came out as from a sepulchre, from an abyss of darkness ;
and I was living, perfectly living. But I wept, for at the bot-
I
1
226 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
torn of that g^ulf I saw the extreme of misery from which I had
been saved by an infinite mercy ; and I shuddered at the sight
of my iniquities, stupefied, melted, overwhehned with wonder
and with gratitude. You may ask me how I oame to this new
insight, for truly I had never opened a book of religion nor
even read a single page of the Bible, and the dogma of original
sin is either entirely denied or forgotten by the Hebrews of
to-day, so that I had thought so little about it that I doubt
whether I ever knew its name. But how came I, then, to this
perception of it ? I can answer nothing save this, that on en-
tering that church I was in darkness altogether, and on com-
ing out of it I saw the fullness of the light. I can explain the
change no better than by the simile of a profound sleep or the
analogy of one bom blind who should suddenly open his eyes
to the day. He sees, but cannot define the light which bathes
him and by means of which he sees the objects which excite his
wonder. If we cannot explain physical light, how can we ex-
plain the light which is the truth itself ? And I think I remain
within the limits of veracity when I say that without having any
knowledge of the letter of religious doctrine, I now intuitively
perceived its sense and spirit. Better than if I saw them, I
felt those hidden things ; I felt them by the inexplicable effects
they produced in me. It all happened in my interior mind ;
and those impressions, more rapid than thought, shook my soul,
revolved and turned it, as it were, in another direction, towards
other aims, by other paths. I express myself badly. But do
you wish, Lord, that I should inclose in poor and barren words
sentiments which the heart alone can understand ? "
I might multiply cases almost indefinitely, but these
will suffice to show you how real, definite, and memo-
! rable an event a sudden conversion may be to him who
I has the experience. Throughout the height of it he un-
doubtedly seems to himself a passive spectator or under-
goer of an astounding process performed upon him from
above. There is too much evidence of this for any doubt
of it to be possible. Theology, combining this fact with
the doctrines of election and grace, has concluded that
CONVERSION 227
the spirit of God is with us at these dramatic moments
in a peculiarly miracidous way, unUke what happens at
any other juncture of our lives. At that moment^ it be-
lieves, an absolutely new nature is breathed into us^ and
we become partakers of the very substance of the Deity.
That the conversion should be instantaneous seems
called for on this view, and the Moravian Protestants ap-
pear to have been the first to see this logical consequence.
The Methodists soon followed suit, practically if not dog-
matically, and a short time ere his death, John Wesley
wrote : —
^' In London alone I found 652 members of oiur Society who
were exceeding clear in their experience, and whose testimony
I could see no reason to doubt. And every one of these (with-
out a single exception) has declared that his deliverance from
sin was instantaneous ; that the change was wrought in a mo-
ment. Had half of these, or one third, or one in twenty, de-
clared it was gradually wrought in them^ I should have believed
this, with regard to them^ and thought that some were gradually
sanctified and some instantaneously. But as I have not found,
in so long a space of time, a single person speaking thus, I can-
not but believe that sanctification is commonly, if not always,
an instantaneous work." Tyerman's Life of Wesley, i. 463.
All this while the more usual sects of Protestantism
have set no such store by instantaneous conversion. For
them as for the Catholic Church, Christ's blood, the
sacraments, and the individual's ordinary reUgious duties
are practically supposed to suffice to his salvation, even
though no acute crisis of self -despair and surrender fol-
lowed by relief should be experienced. For Methodism,
on the contrary, unless there have been a crisisjQ£.thi8
sort^ salvation is only offered^ not effectively receivedi^apd
Christ's sacrifice in so far forth is incomplete. Methodism
surely here follows^ if not the healthier-minded, yet on
228 TH£ yABI£TI£S OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
the whole the profounder spiritual instinct^ The indi-
vidual models which it has set up as typical and worthy of
imitation are not only the more interesting dramatically^
but psychologically they have been the more complete.
In the fully evolved Revivalism of Great Britain and
America we have, so to speak, the codified and stereo-
typed procedure to which this w^ay of thinking has led.
In spite of the unquestionable fact that saints of the
once-born type exist, that there may be a gradual growth
in holiness without a cataclysm ; in spite of the obvious
leakage (as one may say) of much mere natural goodness
into the scheme of salvation ; revivalism has always as-
sumed that only its own type of religious experience can
be perfect ; you must first be nailed on the cross of
natural despair and agony, and then in the twinkling
of an eye be miraculously released.
It is natural that those who personally have traversed
such an experience should carry away a feeling of its
being a miracle rather than a natural process. Voices
are often heard, lights seen, or visions witnessed ; auto-
matic motor phenomena occur ; and it always seems, after
the surrender of the personal will, as if an extraneous
higher power had flooded in and taken possession. More-
over the sense of renovation, safety, cleanness, rightness,
can be so marvelous and jubilant as well to warrant
one's belief in a radically new substantial nature.
I " Conversion," writes the New England Puritan, Joseph Al-
/ leine, *' is not the putting in a patch of holiness ; but with the
I true convert holiness is woven into all his powers, principles,
j and practice. The sincere Christian is quite a new fabric, from
I the foundation to the top-stone. He is a new man, a new
creature."
And Jonathan Edwards says in the same strain: *^ Those
gracious influences which are the effects of the Spirit of God
CONVERSION 229
are altogether supernatural — are quite different from anything
that unregenerate men experience. They are what no improve-
ment, or composition of natural qualifications or principles will
ever produce ; because they not only differ from what is natu-
ral, and from everything that natural men experience in degree
and circumstances, but also in kind, and are of a nature far
more excellent. From hence it follows that in gracious affec-
tions there are [also] new perceptions and sensations entirely
different in their nature and kind from anything experienced
by the [same] saints before they were sanctified. . . . The con-
ceptions which the saints have of the loveliness of God, and
that kind of delight which they experience in it, are quite pe-
culiar, and entirely different from anything which a natural
man can possess, or of which he can form any proper notion."
And that such a glorious transformation as this ought
of necessity to be preceded by despair is shown by Ed-
wards in another passage.
*' Surely it cannot be unreasonable," he saysr^ that before
God delivers us from a state of sin and liability to everlast-
ing woe, he should give us some considerable sense of the evil
from which he delivers us, in order that we may know and feel
the importance of salvation, and be enabled to appreciate the
value of what God is pleased to do for us. As those who are
saved are successively in two extremely different states — first
in a state of condemnation and then in a state of justification
and blessedness — and as God, in the salvation of men, deals
with them as rational and intelligent creatures, it appears
agreeable to this wisdom, that those who are saved should be
made sensible of their Being, in those two different states. In
the first place, that they should be made sensible of their state
of condemnation ; and afterwards, of their state of deliverance
and happiness."
Such quotations express sufficiently well for our pur-
pose the doctrinal interpretation of these changes. What-
ever part suggestion and imitation may have played in
producing them in men and women in excited assemblies.
230 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
they have at any rate been in countless individual in-
stances an original and unborrowed experience. Were
we writing the story of the mind from the purely natural-
history point of view, with no religious interest whatever,
we should still have to write down man's liability to sud-
den and complete conversion as one of his most curious
peculiarities.
What, now, must we ourselves think of this question ?
Is an instantaneous conversion a miracle in which God is
present as he is present in no change of heart less strik-
ingly abrupt ? Are there two classes of human beings,
even among the apparently regenerate, of which the one
class really partakes of Christ's nature while the other
merely seems to do so ? Or, on the contrary, may the
whole phenomenon of regeneration^ even in these star-
tling instantaneous examples, possibly be a strictly natural
process, divine in its fruits, of course, but in one case
more and in another less so, and neither more nor less di-
vine in its mere causation and mechanism than any other
process, high or low, of man's interior life ?
Before proceeding to answer this question, I must ask
you to listen to some more psychological remarks. At
our last lecture, I explained the shifting of men's centres
of personal energy within them and the lighting up of
new crises of emotion. I explained the phenomena as
partly due to explicitly conscious processes of thought
and will, but as due largely also to the subconscious incu-
bation and maturing of motives deposited by the experi-
ences of life. When ripe, the results hatch out, or burst
into flower. I have now to speak of the subconscious
region, in which such processes of flowering may occur,
in a somewhat less vague way. I only regret that my
limits of time here force me to be so short
CONVERSION 231
The expression Afield of consciousness' has but re-
cently come into vogue in the psychology books. Until
quite lately the unit of mental life which figured most
was the single ^ idea/ supposed to be a definitely out-
lined thing. But at present psychologists are tending,
first, to admit that the actual unit is more probably the
total mental state, the entire wave of consciousness or
field of objects present to the thought at any time; and,
second, to see that it is impossible to outline this wave,
this field, with any definiteness.
As our mental fields succeed one another, each has its
centre of inteiest, around which the objects of which we
are less and less attentively conscious fade to a margin so
faint that its limits are unassignable. Some fields are
narrow fields and some are wide fields. Usually when
we have a wide field we rejoice, for we then see masses
of truth together, and often get glimpses of relations
which we divine rather than see, for they shoot beyond
the field into still remoter regions of objectivity, regions
which we seem rather to be about to perceive than to per-
ceive actually. At other times, of drowsiness, illness, or
fatigue, our fields may narrow almost to a point, and we
find ourselves correspondingly oppressed and contracted.
Different individuals present constitutional differences
in this matter of width of field. Your great organizing
geniuses are men with habitually vast fields of mental
vision, in which a whole programme of future operations
will appear dotted out at once, the rays shooting far
ahead into definite directions of advance. In common
people there is never this magnificent inclusive view of a
topic. They stumble along, feeling their way, as it were,
from point to point, and often stop entirely. In certain
diseased conditions consciousness is a mere spark, without
memory of the past or thought of the future, and with the
232 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
present narrowed down to some one simple emotion or
sensation of the body.
The important fact which this Afield' formula com-
memorates is the indetermination of the margin. Inat-
tentively realized as is the matter which the margin con-
tains, it is nevertheless there, and helps both to guide our
behavior and to determine the next movement of our at-
tention. It lies around us like a ^ magnetic field/ inside
of which our centre of energy turns like a compass-needle,
as the present phase of consciousness alters into its suc-
cessor. Our whole past store of memories floats beyond
this margin, ready at a touch to come in ; and the entire
mass of residual powers, impulses, and knowledges that
constitute our empirical self stretches continuously be-
yond it. So vaguely drawn are the outlines between
what is actual and what is only potential at any moment
of our conscious life, that it is always hard to say of
certain mental elements whether we are conscious of
them or not.
The ordinary psychology, admitting fully the difficulty
of tracing the marginal outline, has nevertheless taken
fpr granted, first, that all the consciousness the person
now has, be the same focal or marginal, inattentive or at-
tentive, is there in the ^ field ' of the moment, all dim and
impossible to assign as the latter's outline may be ; and,
second, that what is absolutely extra-marginal is abso-
lutely non-existent, and cannot be a fact of consciousness
at all.
And having reached this point, I must now ask you
to recall what I said in my last lecture about the subcon-
scious life. I said, as you may recollect, that those who
first laid stress upon these phenomena could not know
the facts as we now know them. My first duty now is to
tell you what I meant by such a statement.
CONVERSION 233
I cannot but think that the most important step for-
ward that has occurred in psychology since I have been
a student of that science is the discovery^ first made in
1886, that, in certain subjects at least, there is not only
the consciousness of the ordinary field, with its usual
centre and margin, but an addition thereto in the shape
of a set of memories, thoughts, and feelings which are
extra-marginal and outside of the primary consciousness
altogether, but yet must be classed as conscious facts of
some sort, able to reveal their presence by unmistakable
signs. I call this the most important step forward because,
unlike the other advances which psychology has made, this
discovery has revealed to us an entirely unsuspected pe-
culiarity in the constitution of human nature. No other
step forward which psychology has made can proffer any
such claim as this.
In particular this discovery of a consciousness existing
beyond the field, or subliminally as Mr. Myers terms it,
casts Ught on many phenomena of religious biography.
That is why I have to advert to it now, although it is
naturally impossible for me in this place to give you any
account of the evidence on which the admission of such
a consciousness is based. You will find it set forth in
many recent books, Binet's Alterations of Personality^
being perhaps as good a one as any to recommend.
The himian material on which the demonstration has
been made has so far been rather limited and, in part at
least, eccentric, consisting of unusually suggestible hyp-
notic subjects, and of hysteric patients. Yet the elemen-
tary mechanisms of our life are presumably so uniform
that what is shown to be true in a marked degree of some
persons is probably true in some degree of all, and may
in a few be true in an extraordinarily high degree.
^ Published in the lutemational Scientific Series.
234 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
The most important consequence of having a strongly
developed ultra-marginal life of this sort is that onelr
ordinary fields of consciousness are liable to incursions
from it of which the subject does not guess the source,
and which, therefore, take for him the form of unaccount-
able impulses to act, or inhibitions of action, of obsessive
ideas, or even of hallucinations of sight or hearing. The
impulses may take the direction of automatic speech or
writing, the meaning of which the subject himself may
not understand even while he utters it ; and generalizing
this phenomenon, Mr. Myers has given the name of aii-
tomatmn^ sensory or motor, emotional or intellectual, to
this whole sphere of effects, due to ^ uprushes ' into the
ordinary consciousness of energies originating in the sub-
liminal parts of the mind.
The simplest instance of an automatism is the phenom-
enon of post-hypnotic suggestion, so-called. You give to
a hypnotized subject, adequately susceptible, an order to
perform some designated act — usual or eccentric, it
makes no difference — after he wakes from his hypnotic
sleep. Punctually, when the signal comes or the time
elapses upon which you have told him that the act must
ensue, he performs it ; — but in so doing he has no recol-
lection of your suggestion, and he always trumps up an
improvised pretext for his behavior if the act be of an
eccentric kind. It may even be suggested to a subject to
have a vision or to hear a voice at a certain interval after
waking, and when the time comes the vision is seen or
the voice heard, with no inkling on the subject's part
of its source. In the wonderful explorations by Binet,
Janet, Breuer, Freud, Mason, Prince, and others, of the
subliminal consciousness of patients with hysteria, we
have revealed to us whole systems of underground life,
in the shape of memories of a painful sort which lead a
CONVERSION 235
parasitic existence, buried outside of the primary fields of
consciousness, and making irruptions thereinto with hallu-
cinations, pains, convulsions, paralyses of feeling and of
motion, and the whole procession of symptoms of hysteric
disease of body and of mind. Alter or abolish by sug-
gestion these subconscious memories, and the patient im-
mediately gets well. His symptoms were automatisms, in
Mr. Myers's sense of the word. These clinical records
sound like fairy-tales when one first reads them, yet it is
impossible to doubt their accuracy ; and, the path having
been once opened by these first observers, similar obser-
vations have been made elsewhere. They throw, as I
said, a wholly new light upon our natural constitution.
And it seems to me that they make a farther step inev-
itabl.. Ineerpretbg th. «n Jown ^ter the anigy of
the known, it seems to me that hereafter, wherever we
meet with a phenomenon of automatism, be it motor
impulses, or obsessive idea, or unaccountable caprice, or
delusion, or hallucination, we are bound first of all to
make search whether it be not an explosion, into the
fields of ordinary consciousness, of ideas elaborated outside
of those fields in subliminal regions of the mind. We
should look, therefore, for its source in the Subject's sub-
conscious life. In the hypnotic cases, we ourselves create
the source by our suggestion, so we know it directly. In
the hysteric cases, the lost memories which are the source
have to be extracted from the patient's Subliminal by a
number of ingenious methods, for an account of which
you must consult the books. In other pathological cases,
insiEuie delusions, for example, or psychopathic obsessions,
the source is yet to seek, but by analogy it also should
be in subliminal regions which improvements in our
methods may yet conceivably put on tap. There lies the
mechanism logicaUy to be assumed, - but the assumption
236 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
involves a vast program of work to be done in the wjaj^
of verification, in which the religious experiences of man
must play their part.^
And thus I return to our own specific subject of in-
stantaneous conversions. You remember the cases of
Alline, Bradley, Brainerd, and the graduate of Oxford
converted at three in the afternoon. Similar occurrences
abound, some with and some without luminous visions,
all with a sense of astonished happiness, and of being
wrought on by a higher control. If, abstracting alto-
gether from the question of their value for the future
spiritual life of the individual, we take them on their psy-
^ The reader will here please notice that in my exclosive reliance in the
last lecture on the subconscious * incubation' of motives deposited by a
growing experience, I followed the method of employing accepted princi-
ples of explanation as far as one can. The subliminal region, whatever ebe
it may be, is at any rate a place now admitted by psychologists to exist for
the accumulation of vestiges of sensible experience (whether inattentively
or attentively registered), and for their elaboration according to ordinary
psychological or logical laws into results that end by attaining such a ' ten-
sion ' that they may at times enter consciousness with something like a barati
It thus is ' scientific ' to interpret all otherwise unaccountable invasive altera-
tions of consciousness as results of the tension of subliminal memories reach-
ing the bursting-point. But candor obliges me to confess that there are
occasional bursts into consciousness of results of which it b not easy to
demonstrate any prolonged subconscious incubation. Some, of the cases I
used to illustrate the sense of presence of the unseen in Lecture III were of
this order (compare pages 59, 61, 62, 67) ; and we shall see other experiences
of the kind when we come to the subject of mysticism. The case of Mr.
Bradley, that of M. Ratisbonne, possibly that of Colonel Gardiner, possibly
that of Saint Paul, might not be so easily explained in this simple way.
The result, then, would have to be ascribed either to a merely physiological
nerve storm, a ' discharging lesion ' like that of epilepsy ; or, in case it
were useful and rational, as in the two latter cases named, to some more
mystical or theological hypothesis. I make this remark in order that the
reader may realize that the subject is really complex. But I shall keep
myself as far as possible at present to the more 'scientific ' view; and only
as the plot thickens in subsequent lectures shall I consider the question of
its absolute sufficiency as an explanation of all the facts. That subocmscioiu
incubation explains a great number of them, there can be no doubt.
CONVEBSION 237
chological side exclusively, so many peculiarities in them
remind us of what we find outside of conversion that we
are tempted to class them along with other automatisms,
and to suspect that what makes the difference between a
sudden and a gradual convert is not necessarily the pre-
sence of divine miracle in the case of one and of some-
thing less divine in that of the other, but rather a simple
psychological peculiarity, the fact, namely, that in the re-
cipient of the more instantaneous grace we have one of
those Subjects who are in possession of a large region in
which mental work can go on subliminally, and from
which invasive experiences, abruptly upsetting the equiUb-
rium of the primary consciousness, may come.
I do not see why Methodists need object to such a
view. Pray go back and recollect one of the conclusions
to which I sought to lead you in my very first lecture.
You may remember how I there argued against the no-
tion that the^vfrorth of a thing can be decided by its
origin. Our spiritual judgment, I said, (our opinion of
the significance and value of a human event or condition,
must be decided on empirical grounds exclusively. If
the fruits for life of the state of conversion are good,
we ought to idealize and venerate it, even though it be
a piece of natural psychology ; if not, we ought to make
short work with it, no matter what supernatural being
may have infused it.J
Well, how is it with these fruits ? If we except the
class of preeminent saints of whom the names illumine
history, and consider only the usual run of ^ saints,' the
shopkeeping church-members and ordinary youthful or
middle-aged recipients of instantaneous conversion,
whether at revivals or in the spontaneous course of meth-
odistic growth, you will probably agree that no splendor
worthy of a wholly supernatural creature fulgurates from
/
238 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
them, or sets them apart from the mortals who have never
experienced that favor. Were it true that a suddenly
converted man as sach is, as Edwards says/ of an en-
tirely different kind from a natural man, partaking as he
does directly of Christ's substance, there surely ought to
be some exquisite class-mark, some distinctive radiance
attaching even to the lowliest specimen of this genus, to
which no one of us could remain insensible, and which,
so far as it went, would prove him more excellent than
ever the most highly gifted among mere natural men.
But notoriously there is no such radiance. Converted
men as a class are indistinguishable from natural men ;
some natural men even excel some converted men in
their fruits ; and no one ignorant of doctrinal theology
could guess by mere every-day inspection of the ' acci-
dents ' of the two groups of persons before him, that
their substance differed as much as divine differs from
human substance.
The believers in the non-natural character of sudden
conversion have had practically to admit that there is no
unmistakable class-mark distinctive of all true converts.
The super-normal incidents, such as voices and visions
and overpowering impressions of the meaning of sud-
denly presented scripture texts, the melting emotions and
tumultuous affections connected with the crisis of change,
may all come by way of nature, or worse still, be counter-
feited by Satan. The real witness of the spirit to the
second birth is to be found only in the disposition of
the genuine child of God, the permanently patient heart,
the love of self eradicated. And this, it has to be ad-
^ Edwards says elsewhere : " I am bold to say that the work of God in
the conversion of one soul, considered together with the source, foundation,
and purchase of it, and also the benefit, end, and eternal issue of it, is a
more giorioos work of Grod than the creation of the whole material oni^
verse."
CONVERSION 239
mitted, is also found in those who pass no crisis, and may
even be found outside of Christdanitj altogether.
Throughout Jonathan Edwards's admirably rich and
delicate description of the supernaturally infused condi-
tion, in his Treatise on Religious Affections, there is not
one decisive trait, not one mark, that unmistakably parts
it off from what may possibly be only an exceptionally
high degree of natural goodness. In fact, one could
hardly read a clearer argument than this book unwit-
tingly offers in favor of the thesis that no chasm exists
between the orders of human excellence, but that here as
elsewhere, nature shows continuous differences, and gen-
eration and regeneration are matters of degree.
All which denial of two objective classes of human
beings separated by a chasm must not leave us blind to
the extraordinary momentousness of the fact of his con-
version to the individual Himself who gets converted.
There are higher and lower limits of possibility set to
each personal life. If a flood but goes above one's head,
its absolute elevation becomes a matter of small impor-
tance ; and when we touch our own upper limit and live
in our own highest centre of energy, we may call our-
selves saved, no matter how much higher some one else's
centre may be. A small man's salvation will always be
a great salvation and the greatest of all facts for hiniy
and we should remember this when the fruits of our ordi-
nary evangelicism look discouraging. Who knows how
much less ideal still the lives of these spiritual grubs and
earthworms, these Crumps and Stigginses, might have
been, if such poor grace as they have received had never
touched them at all ? ^
^ Emerson writes : " When we see a sonl whose acts are regal, graceful,
and pleasant as roses, we must thank God that such things can be and are,
and not turn sourly on the angel and say : Crump is a better man, with his
grunting resistance to aU his natiye derils." True enough. Yet Crump
240 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
If we roughly arrange human beings in classes, each
class standing for a grade of spiritual excellence, I be-
lieve we shall find natural men and converts both sud-
den and gradual in all the classes. The forms which
regenerative change effects have, then, no general spirit-
ual significance, but only a psychological significance.
We have seen how Starbuck's laborious statistical studies
tend to assimilate conversion to ordinary spiritual growth.
Another American psychologist. Professor A. Coe,* has
analyzed the cases of seventy-seven converts or ex-can-
didates for conversion, known to him, and the results
strikingly confirm the view that sudden conversion is
connected with the possession of an active subliminal self.
Examining his subjects with reference to their hypnotic
sensibility and to such automatisms as hypnagogic hallu-
cinations, odd impulses, religious dreams about the time
of their conversion, etc., he found these relatively much
more frequent in the group of converts whose transforma-
tion had been ^ striking,' ^ striking ' transformation being
defined as a change which, though not necessarily in-
stantaneous, seems to the subject of it to be distinctly
different from a process of growth, however rapid." ^
Candidates for conversion at revivals are, as you know,
often disappointed : they experience nothing striking.
Professor Coe had a number of persons of thi3 class among
his seventy-seven subjects, and they almost all, when tested
by hypnotism, proved to belong to a subclass which he
may really be the better Crump, for his inner discords and second birth ;
and your once-born * regal ' character, though indeed always better than
poor Cnunp, may fall far short of what he individually might be had he
only some Crump-like capacity for compunction over his own peculiar
diabolisms, graceful and pleasant and invariably gentlemanly as these
may be.
1 In his book, The Spiritual Life, New York, 1900.
« Op. cit., p. 112.
CONVEESION 241
calls ^ spontaneous/ that is, fertile in self-suggestions, as
distinguished from a ^ passive ' subclass, to which most of
the subjects of striking transformation belonged. His
inference is that self-suggestion of impossibility had pre-
vented the influence upon these persons of an environ-
ment which, on the more ^ passive ' subjects, had easily
brought forth the effects they looked for. Sharp distinc-
tions are difficult in these regions, and Professor Coe's
numbers are small. But his methods were careful, and
the results tally with what one might expect ; and they
seem, on the whole, to justify his practical conclusion,
which is that if you should expose to a converting influ-
ence a subject in whom three factors unite : first, pro-
nounced emotional sensibility ; second, tendency to auto-
matisms ; and third, suggestibility of the passive type ;
you might then safely predict the result : there would be
a sudden conversion, a transformation of the striking kind.
Does this temperamental ongin diminish the signifi-
cance of the sudden conversion when it has occurred ?
Not in the least, as Professor Coe well says ; for ^^ the
ultimate test of reUgious values is nothing psychologi-
cal, nothing definable in terms of how it happens^ but
something ethical, definable only in terms of what is
attained^ *
As we proceed farther in our inquiry we shall see that
what is attained is often an altogether new level of spii^
itual vitality, a relatively heroic level, in which impos-
sible things have become possible, and new energies and
endurances are shown. The personality is changed,
the man is born anew, whether or not his psychological
idiosyncrasies are what give the particular shape to his
metamorphosis. ^ Sanctification ' is the technical name
of this result \ and erelong examples of it shall be brought
^ Op. cit, p. 144.
242 TH£ YABIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
before you. In this lecture I have still only to add a few
remarks on the assurance and peace which fill the hour of
change itself.
One word more, though, before proceeding to that
point, lest the final purpose of my explanation of sudden-
ness by subliminal activity be misunderstood. I do in-
deed believe that if the Subject have no liability to such
subconscious activity, or if his conscious fields have a
hard rind of a margin that resists incursions from be-
yond it, his conversion must be gradual if it occur, and
must resemble any simple growth into new habits. His
possession of a developed subliminal self, and of a leaky
or pervious margin, is thus a conditio sine qua non of
the Subject's becoming converted in the instantaneous
way. But if you, being orthodox Christians, ask me as
a psychologist whether the reference of a phenomenon
to a subliminal self does not exclude the notion of the
direct presence of the Deity altogether, I have to say
frankly that as a psychologist I do not see why it neces-
sarily should. The lower manifestations of the Sub-
liminal, indeed, fall within the resources of the personal
subject : his ordinary sense-material, inattentively taken
in and subconsciously remembered and combined, will
account for all his usual automatisms. But just as our
primary wide-awake consciousness throws open our senses
to the touch of things material, so it is logically con-
ceivable that if there he higher spiritual agencies that can
directly touch us, the psychological condition of their
doing so might he our possession of a subconscious region
which alone should yield access to them. The hubbub of
the waking life might close a door which in the dreamy
Subliminal might remain ajar or open.
Thus that perception of external control which is so
CONVERSION 243
essential a feature in conversion might, in some cases at
any rate, be interpreted as the orthodox interpret it :
forces transcending the finite individual might impress
him, on condition of his being what we may call a sub-
liminal human specimen. But in any case the vali^ of
these forces would have to 1^ determined by their effects,
and the mere fact of their transcendency would of itself
estabhsh no presumption that they were more divine than
diabolical.
I confess that this is the way in which I should rather
see the topic left lying in your minds until I come to
a much later lecture, when I hope once more to gather
these dropped threads together into more definitive con-
elusions. The notion of a subconscious self certainly
ought not at this point of our inquiry to be held to
exclude all notion of a higher penetration. If there be
higher powers able to impress us, they may get access to us
only through the subliminal door. (See below, p. 515 ff.)
Let us turn now to the feeUngs which immediately fiU
the hour of the conversion experience. The first one to
be noted is just this sense of higher control. It is not
always, but it is very often present. We saw examples of
it in AUine, Bradley, Brainerd, and elsewhere. The need
of such a higher controlling agency is well expressed in
the short reference which the eminent French Protestant
Adolphe Monod makes to the crisis of his own con-
version. It was at Naples in his early manhood, in the
summer of 1827.
^* My sadness," he says, " was without limit, and having got
entire possession of me, it filled my life from the most indiffer-
ent external acts to the most secret thoughts, and corrupted at
their sonrce my feelings, my judgment, and my happiness. It
was then that I saw that to expect to put a stop to this disorder
244 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
by my reason and my will, which were themselves diseased,
would be to act like a blind man who should pretend to correct
one of his eyes by the aid of the other equally blind one. I had
then no resource save in some iri/ltience from without. I re-
membered the promise of the Holy Ghost ; and what the positive
declarations of the Gospel had never succeeded in bringing
home to me, I learned at last from necessity, and believed, for
the first time in my life, in this promise, in the only sense in
which it answered the needs of my soul, in that, namely, of a
real external supernatural action, capable of giving me thoughts,
and taking them away from me, and exerted on me by a God
as truly master of my heart as he is of the rest of nature. Re-
nouncing then all merit, all strength, abandoning all my per-
sonal resources, and acknowledging no other title to his mercy
than my own utter misery, I went home and threw myself on
my knees, and prayed as I never yet prayed in my life. From
this day onwards a new interior life began for me : not that
my melancholy had disappeared, but it had lost its sting.
Hope had entered into my heart, and once entered on the path,
the God of Jesus Christ, to whom I then had learned to give
myself up, little by little did the rest." ^
It is needless to remind you once more of the admira-
ble congruity of Protestant theology with the structure
of the mind as shown in such experiences. In the ex-
treme of melancholy the self that consciously is can do
absolutely nothing. It is completely bankrupt and with-
out resource, and no works it can accomplish will avail.
Bedemption from such subjective conditions must be a
free gift or nothing, and grace through Christ's accom-
plished sacrifice is such a gift.
^^ God,'' says Luther, '^ is the God of the humble, the miser-
able, the oppressed, and the desperate, and of those that are
brought even to nothing ; and his nature is to give sight to the
^ I piece together a quotation made by W. Monod, in his book la Vie,
and a letter printed in the work : Adolphe Monod : I., Sonvenirs de sa Vie,
1885, p. 433.
CONy£BSION 245
blind, to comfort the broken-hearted, to justify sinners, to save
the very desperate and damned. Now that pernicious and^
j)e8tilent opinion of m^'s.p.wn. righteousness, which will not be
a sinner, unclean, miserable, and damnable, bnt rigfateons and
holy, suffereth not God to come to .hi9 .own patural and proper
^li^L. Therefore God must take this maul in hand (the law, I
mean) to beat in pieces and bring to nothing this beast with
her vain confidence, that she may so learn at length by her own
misery that she is utterly forlorn and damned. But here lieth
the difficulty, that when a man is terrified and cast down, he is
so little able to raise himself up again and say, * Now I am
bruised and afflicted enough; now is the time of grace ; now is
the time to hear Christ.' The foolishness of man's heart is so
great that then he rather seeketh to himself more laws to satisfy
his conscience. *' If I live,' saith he, *' I will amend my life : I
will do this, I will do that.' But here, except thou do the quite
contrary, except ihou send Moses away with his law, and in
these terrors and this anguish lay hold upon Christ who died
for thy sins, look for no salvation. Thy cowl, thy shaven
crown, thy chastity, thy obedience, thy poverty, thy works, thy
merits? what shall all these do? what shall die law of Moses
avail? If I, wretehed and damnable sinner, through works
or merits could have loved the Son of God, and so come to
him, what needed he to deliver himself for me? If I, being a
wreteh and damned sinner, could be redeemed by any other
price, what needed the Son of God to be given ? But because
there was no other price, therefore he delivered neither sheep,
ox, gold, nor silver, but even God himself, entirely and wholly
* for me,' even * for me,' I say, a miserable, wretehed sinner.
Now, therefore, I take comfort and apply this to myself. And
this manner of applying is the very true force and power
of faith. For he died not to justify the righteous, but the
tt9»-righteous, and to make them the children of God." ^
That is, the more literally lost you are, the more liter-
ally you are the very being whom Christ's sacrifice has
already saved. Nothing in Catholic theology, I imagine,
1 Commentary on Galaiians, oh. iii. vene 19, and ch. ii. verse 20, abridged.
246 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
has ever spoken to sick souls as straight as this message
from Luther's personal experience. As Protestants are
not all sick souls, of course reliance on what Luther ex-
ults in calling the dung of one's merits, the filthy pud-
dle of one's own righteousness, has come to the &ont
again in their religion ; but the adequacy of his view of
Christianity to the deeper parts of our human mental
structure is shown by its wildfire contagiousness when it
was a new and quickening thing.
Faith that Christ has genuinely done his work was
part of what Luther meant by faith, which so far is &ith
in a fact intellectually conceived of. But this is only
one part of Luther's faith, the other part being far more
vital. This other part is something not intellectual but
immediate and intuitive, the assurance, namely, that I,
this individual I, just as I stand, without one plea, etc.,
am saved now and forever.*
Professor Leuba is undoubtedly right in contending
that the conceptual belief about Christ's work, although
so often efficacious and antecedent, is really accessory and
non-essential, and that the ^ joyous conviction ' can also
^ In some convenions, both steps are distinct ; in this one, for ezam^
pie : —
" Whilst I was reading the evangelical treatise, I was soon struck by an
expression : ' the finished work of Christ.' * Why,' I asked of myself, * does
the author use these terms ? Why does he not say ** the atoning work ** ? '
Then these words, * It is finished/ presented themselves to my mind. * What
is it that is finished ? ' I asked, and in an instant my mind replied : * A per-
fect expiation for sin ; entire satisfaction has been given ; the debt has
been paid by the Substitute. Christ has died for our sins ; not for ours
only, but for those of all men. If, then, the entire work is finished, all the
debt paid, what remains for me to do ? ' In another instant the light was
shed through my mind by the Holy Ghost, and the joyous conviction was
given me that nothing more was to be done, save to fall on my knees,
to accept this Saviour and his love, to praise God forever." Autobiogra-
phy of Hudson Taylor. I translate back into English from the French
translation of Challand (Geneva, no date), the original not being acces-
sible.
CONVERSION 247
come by far other channels than this conception. It is to
the joyous conviction itself, the assurance that all is well
with ,one, that he would give the name of faith par
excellence.
**When the sense of estrangement," he writes, ^^ fencing
man about in a narrowly limited ego, breaks down, the individ-
ual finds himself ^ at one with all creation.' He lives in the
universal life ; he and man, he and nature, he and God, are
one. That state of confidence, trust, union with all things,
following upon the achievement of moral unity, is the Faith'
state. Various dogmatic beliefs suddenly, on the advent of
the faitb-state, acquire a character of certainty, assume a new
reality, become an object of faith. As the ground of assurance
here is not rational, argumentation is irrelevant. But such
conviction being a mere casual offshoot of the faith-state, it is a
gross error to imagine that the chief practical value of the faith-
state is its power to stamp with the seal of reality certain par-
ticular theological conceptions.^ On the contrary, its value
lies solely in the fact that it is the psychic correlate of a biolo-
gical growth reducing contending desires to one direction ; a
g^wth which expresses itself in new affective states and new
reactions ; in larger, nobler, more Christ-like activities. The
ground of the specific assurance in religious dogmas is then an
affective experience. The objects of faith may even be prepos-
terous ; the affective stream will float them along, and invest
them with unshakable certitude. The more startling the af-
fective experience, the less explicable it seems, the easier it is
to make it the carrier of unsubstantiated notions.'' ^
The characteristics of the affective experience which,
to avoid ambiguity, should, I think, be called the state of
assurance rather than the faith-state, can be easily enu-
merated, though it is probably di£Gicult to realize their
^ Tolstoy's case was a good comment on those words. There was almost
no theology in his conversion. His faith-state was the sense come back that
life was infinite in its moral significance.
* American Journal of Psychology, viL 345-347, abridged.
248 TH£ VAfilETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
intensity, unless one have been through the experience
one's self.
/i ( The central one is the loss of all the worry, the sense
! that all is ultimately well with one, the peace, the har-
! mony, the willingness to &6, even though the outer con-
; ditions should remain the same. The certainty of Grod'a
' * grace,* of ^justification,* ^salvation,' is an objective be-
; lief that usually accompanies the change in Christians ;
but this may be entirely lacking and yet the affective
peace remain the same — you will recollect the case of
the Oxford graduate : and many might be given where
the assurance of personal salvation was only a later
result. A passion of willingness, of acquiescence, of
1/ ^ admiration, is the glowing centre of this state of mind.
The second feature is the sense of perceiving truths
not known before. The mysteries of life become lucid, as
Professor Leuba says ; and often, nay usually, the solution
is more or less unutterable in words. But these more
intellectual phenomena may be postponed until we treat
of mysticism.
^ A third peculiarity of the assurance state is the objec-
y ^ ; tive change which the world often appears to undergo.
^ An appearance of newness beautifies every object,' tiie
: precise opposite of that other sort of newness, that dread-
ful unreality and strangeness in the appearance of the
world, which is experienced by melancholy patients, and of
which you may recall my relating some examples.^ This
sense of clean and beautiful newness within and without
is one of the commonest entries in conversion records.
Jonathan Edwards thus describes it in himself : —
^^ After this my sense of divine things gradually increased,
and became more and more lively, and had more of that inward
sweetness. The appearance of everything was altered ; there
^ Aboye, p. 152.
CONVERSION 249
seemed to be, as it were, a calm, sweet cast, or appearance of
divine glory, in almost everything. God's excellency, his wis-
dom, his parity and love, seemed to appear in everything ; in
the sun, moon, and stars ; in the clouds and blue sky ; in the
grass, flowers, and trees ; in the water and all nature ; which
used greatly to fix my mind. And scarce anything, among all
the works of nature, was so sweet to me as thunder and light-
ning ; formerly nothing had been so terrible to me. Before, I
used to be uncommonly terrified with thunder, and to be struck
with terror when I saw a thunderstorm rising ; but now, on the
contrary, it rejoices me." ^
Billy Bray, an excellent little illiterate English evan-
gelist, records his sense of newness thus : —
^ I said to the Lord : *• Thou hast said, they that ask shall
receive, they that seek shall find, and to them that knock the
door shall be opened, and I have faith to believe it.' In an
instant the Lord made me so happy that I cannot express what
I felt. I shouted for joy. I praised God with my whole heart.
... I think this was in November, 1823, but what day of the
month I do not know. I remember this, that everything looked
new to me, the people, the fields, the cattle, the trees. I was
like a new man in a new world. I spent the greater part of my
time in praising the Lord." ^
Starbuck and Leuba both illustrate this sense of new-
ness by quotations. I take the two following from Star-
buck's manuscript collection. One, a woman, says : —
^^ I was taken to a camp-meeting, mother and religious friends
seeking and praying for my conversion. My emotional nature
was stirred to its depths ; confessions of depravity and pleading
with God for salvation from sin made me oblivious of all sur-
roundings. I plead for mercy, and had a vivid realization of
forgiveness and renewal of my nature. When rising from my
knees I exclaimed, *' Old things have passed away, all things
^ DwiOHT : Life of Edwards, New York, 1830, p. 61, abridg^.
* W. F. BouRNB : Tbe King's Son, a Memoir of Billy Bray, London,
Hamilton, Adams & Co., 1887, p. 9.
250 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
haye become new.' It was like entering another world, a new
state of existence. Natural objects were glorified, my spiritual
Yision was so clarified that I saw beauty in every material ob-
ject in the universe, the woods were vocal with heavenly music ;
my soul exulted in the love of God, and I wanted everybody to
share in my joy."
The next ease is that of a man : —
*^ I know not how I got back into the encampment, but found
myself staggering up to Kev. 's Holiness tent — and as it
was full of seekers and a terrible noise inside, some groaning,
some laughing, and some shouting, and by a large oak, ten feet
from the tent, I fell on my face by a bench, and tried to pray,
and every time I would call on God, something like a man's hand
would strangle me by choking. I don't know whether there
were any one around or near me or not. I thought I should
surely die if I did not get help, but just as often as I would
pray, that unseen hand was felt on my throat and my breath
squeezed off. Finally something said : * Venture on the atone-
ment, for you will die anyway if you don't.' So I made one final
struggle to call on God for mercy, with the same choking and
strangling, determined to finish the sentence of prayer for
Mercy, if I did strangle and die, and the last I remember that
time was falling back on the ground with the same unseen hand
on my throat. I don't know how long I lay there or what was
going on. None of my folks were present. When I came to
myself, there were a crowd around me praising God. The very
heavens seemed to open and pour down rays of light and glory.
Not for a moment only, but all day and night, floods of light
and glory seemed to pour through my soul, and oh, how I was
changed, and everything became new. My horses and hogs
and even everybody seemed changed."
This man's case introduces the feature of automatisms,
which in suggestible subjects have been so startling a
feature at revivals since, in Edwards's, Wesley's, and
Whitfield's time, these became a regular means of gospel-
propagation. They were at first supposed to be semi-
CONVERSION 251
miraculous proofs of ^ power ' on the part of the Holy
Ghost; but great divergence of opinion quickly arose
concerning them. Edwards, in his Thoughts on the Re-
vival of Religion in New England, has to defend them
against their critics ; and their value has long been mat-
ter of debate even within the revivalistic denominations.^
They undoubtedly have no essential spiritual significance,
and although their presence makes his conversion more
memorable to the convert, it has never been proved that
converts who show them are more persevering or fertile
in good fruits than those whose change of heart has
had less violent accompaniments. On the whole, uncon-
sciousness, convulsions, visions, involuntary vocal utter-
ances, and suffocation, must be simply ascribed to the
subject's having a large subliminal region, involving
nervous instabiUty. This is often the subject's own view
of the matter afterwards. One of Starbuck's correspond-
ents writes, for instance : —
^^ I have been through the experience which is known as con-
version. My explanation of it is this : the subject works his
emotions up to the breaking point, at the same time resisting
their physical manifestations, such as quickened pulse, etc., and
then suddenly lets them have their full sway over his body.
The relief is something wonderful, and the pleasurable effects
of the emotions are experienced to the highest degree."
There is one form of sensory automatism which possi-
bly deserves special notice on account of its frequency.
I refer to hallucinatory or pseudo-hallucinatory luminous
phenomena, photismsy to use the term of the psycholo-
g^ts. Saint Paul's blinding heavenly vision seems to
have been a phenomen of this sort ; so does Constantino's
^ Consult William B. Spraoux : Lectures on Reyiyals of ReligioD, New
York, 1832, in the long Appendix to which the opinions of a large number
of mimsters are given.
252 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
cross in the sky. The last case but one which I quoted
mentions floods of Ught and glory. Henry Alline men-
tions a lights about whose externality he seems uncertain.
Colonel Gardiner sees a blazing light. President Finney
writes: —
*^ All at once the glory of God shone upon and round about
me in a manner almost marvelous. ... A light perfectly inef-
fable shone in my soul, that almost prostrated me on the ground.
. . . This light seemed like the brightness of the sun in every
direction. It was too intense for the eyes. ... I think I knew
something then, by actual experience, of that light that pros-
trated Paul on the way to Damascus. It was surely a light
such as I could not have endured long.'' ^
Such reports of photisms are indeed far from uncom-
mon. Here is another from Starbuck's collection, where
the light appeared evidently external : —
*^ I had attended a series of revival services for about two
weeks off and on. Had been invited to the altar several times,
all the time becoming more deeply impressed, when finally I
decided I must do this, or I shoiUd be lost. Realization of
conversion was very vivid, like a ton's weight being lifted from
my heart ; a strange light which seemed to light up the whole
room (for it was dark) ; a conscious supreme bliss which caused
me to repeat ^ Glory to God ' for a long time. Decided to be
God*s child for life, and to give up my pet ambition, wealth and
social position. My former habits of life hindered my g^wth
somewhat, but I set about overcoming these systematically, and
in one year my whole nature was changed, i. e., my ambitions
were of a different order."
Here is another one of Starbuck's cases, involving a
luminous element : —
" I had been clearly converted twenty-three years before, or
rather reclaimed. My experience in regeneration was then
dear and spiritual, and I had not backslidden. But I expe-
^ Memoirs, p. 31.
CONVERSION 253
rienced entire sanctification on the 15th day of March, 1893,
about eleven o'clock in the morning. The particular accom-
paniments of the experience were entirely unexpected. I was
quietly sitting at home singing selections out of Pentecostal
Hymns. Suddenly there seemed to be a something sweeping
into me and inflating my entire being — such a sensation as I
had never experienced before. When this experience came, I
seemed to be conducted around a large, capacious, well-lighted
room. As I walked with my invisible conductor and looked
around, a clear thought was coined in my mind, *• They are not
here, they are gone.' As soon as the thought was definitely
formed in my mind, though no word was spoken, the Holy
Spirit impressed me that I was surveying my own soul. Then,
for the first time in all my life, did I know that I was cleansed
from all sin, and filled with the fullness of God."
Leuba quotes the ease of a Mr. Peek, where the lumi-
nous affection reminds one of the chromatic hallucinations
produced by the intoxicant cactus buds called mescal by
the Mexicans : —
^^ When I went in the morning into the fields to work, the
glory of God appeared in all his visible creation. I well re-
member we reaped oats, and how every straw and head of the
oats seemed, as it were, arrayed in a Idnd of rainbow glory, or
to glow, if I may so express it, in the glory of God." ^
^ These leports of sensorial photism shade off into what are evidently
only metaphorical accounts of the sense of new spiritual illumination, as, for
instance, in Brainerd*s statement : *' As I was walking in a thick grove, nn-
speakable glory seemed to open to the apprehension of my soul. I do not
mean any external brightness, for I saw no such thing, nor any imagination
of a body of light in the third heavens, or anything of that nature, but it
was a new inward apprehension or view that I had of God."
In a case like this next one from Starbuck's manuscript collection, the
lighting up of the darkness b probably also metaphorical : —
** One Sunday night, I resolved that when I got home to the ranch where
I was working, I would offer myself with my faculties and all to God to be
nsed only by and for him. ... It was raining and the roads were muddy ;
but this desire grew so strong that I kneeled down by the side of the road
and told God all abont it, intending then to get up and go on. Such a
thing as any special answer to my prayer never entered my mind, having
254 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
The most characteristic of all the elements of the con-
version crisis, and the last one of which I shall speak, is
the ecstasy of happiness produced. We have already
heard several accounts of it, but I will add a couple
more. President Finney's is so vivid that I give it at
length : —
^* All my feelings seemed to rise and flow out ; and the ut-
terance of my heart was, * I want to pour my. whole soul out to
God.' The rising of my soul was so great that I rushed into
the back room of the front office, to pray. There was no fire
and no light in the room ; nevertheless it appeared to me as if
it were perfectly light. As I went in and shut the door after
me, it seemed as if I met the Lord Jesus Christ face to face.
It did not occur to me then, nor did it for some time afterwards,
that it was wholly a mental state. On the contrary, it seemed
to me that I saw him as I would see any other man. He said
nothing, but looked at me in such a manner as to break me
been converted by faith, bnt stiU being most undoubtedly saved. Well,
while I was praying, I remember holding out my hands to Grod and telling
him they should work for him, my feet walk for him, my tongue speak for
him, etc., etc., if he would only use me as his instrument and give me a satisfy-
ing experience — when suddenly the darkness of the night seemed lit up —
I felt, realized, knew, that God heard and answered my prayer. Deep hap-
piness came over me ; I felt I was accepted into the inner circle of God's
loved ones."
In the following case also the flash of light is metaphorical : —
*< A prayer meeting had been called for at close of evening service. The
minister supposed me impressed by his discourse (a mistake — he was dull).
He came and, placing his hand upon my shoulder, said : ' Do you dot
want to g^ve your heart to God ? ' I replied in the affirmative. Then said
he, * Come to the front seat.' They sang and prayed and talked with me. I
experienced nothing but unaccountable wretchedness. They declared* that
the reason why I did not * obtain peace ' was because I was not willing to
give up all to God. After about two hours the minister said we would go
home. As usual, on retiring, I prayed. In great distress, I at this time
simply said, * Lord, I have done all I can, I leave the whole matter with
thee.' Immediately, like a flash of light, there came to me a g^at peace,
and I arose and went into my parents' bedroom and said, ' I do feel so won-
derfully happy.' This I regard as the hour of conversion. It was the
hour in which I became assured of divine acceptance and favor. So far as
my life was concerned, it made little immediate change."
CONVEBSION 256
right down at his feet. I liave always since regarded this as a
most remarkable state of mind ; for it seemed to me a reality
that he stood before me, and I fell down at his feet and poured
out my soul to him. I wept aloud like a child, and made such
confessions as I could with my choked utterance. It seemed
to me that I bathed his feet with my tears ; and yet I had no
distinct impression that I touched him, that I recollect I
must have continued in this state for a good while ; but my
mind was too much absorbed with the interview to recollect
anything that I said. But I know, as soon as my mind became
calm enough to break off from the interview, I returned to the
front office, and found that the fire that I had made of large
wood was nearly burned out. But as I turned and was about
to take a seat by the fire, I received a mighty baptism of the
Holy Ghost. Without any expectation of it, without ever hav-
ing the thought in my mind that there was any such thing for
me, without any recollection that I had ever heard the thing
mentioned by any person in the world, the Holy Spirit de-
scended upon me in a manner that seemed to go through me,
body and souL I could feel the impression, like a wave of
electricity, going through and through me. Indeed, it seemed
to come in waves and waves of liquid love ; for I could not
express it in any other way. It seemed like the very breath
of God. I can recollect distinctly that it seemed to fan me,
like immense wings.
^^No words can express the wonderful love that was shed
abroad in my heart. I wept aloud with joy and love ; and I
do not know but I should say I literally bellowed out the un-
utterable g^shings of my heart. These waves came over me,
and over me, and over me, one after the other, until I recollect
I cried out, * I shall die if these waves continue to pass over
me.' I said, ^ Lord, I cannot bear any more ; ' yet I had no fear
of death.
^^ How long I continued in this state, with this baptism con-
tinuing to roll over me and go through me, I do not know.
But I know it was late in the evening when a member of my
choir — for I was the leader of the choir — came into the office
to see me. . He was a member of the church. He found me
256 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
in this state of loud weeping, and said to me, ^ Mr. Finney,
what ails you ? ' I could nudce him no answer for some time.
He then said, * Are you in pain ? ' I gathered myself up as
best I oould, and replied, ^No, but so happy that I cannot
Uve.' '•
I just now quoted Billy Bray ; I cannot do better than
give his own brief account of his postrconversion feel-
ings:—
^^ I can't help praising the Lord. As I go along the street,
lift up one foot, and it seems to say ^ Glory ' ; and I lift up
le other, and it seems to say ^ Amen ' ; and so they keep up
^ that all the time I am walking." ^
Oiie word, before I close this lecture, on the question
of the transiency or permanence of these abrupt conver-
sions. Some of you, I feel siure, knowing that numerous
^ I add in a note a few more records : —
'' One morning, being in deep distress, fearing everj moment I should
drop into hell, I was constrained to cry in earnest for mercy, and the Lord
came to my relief, and delivered my soul from the burden and guilt of sin.
My whole frame was in a tremor from head to foot, and my soul enjoyed
sweet peace. The pleasure I then felt was indescribable. The happiness
lasted about three days, during which time I never spoke to any person
about my feelings." Autobiography of Dan Young, edited by W. P.
Strickland, New York, 1860.
" In an instant there rose up in me such a sense of God's taking care
of those who put their trust in him that for an hour all the world was
crystalline, the heavens were lucid, and I sprang to my feet and began to
cry and laugh." H. W. Beecher, quoted by Leuba.
** My tears of sorrow changed to joy, and I lay there praising God in
such ecstasy of joy as only the soul who experiences it can realize." —
** I cannot express how I felt. It was as if I had been in a dark dungeon
and lifted into the light of the sun. I shouted and I sang praise unto him
who loved me and washed me from my sins. I was forced to retire into a
secret place, for the tears did flow, and I did not wish my shopmates to see
me, and yet I could not keep it a secret." — *'I experienced joy almost
to weeping." — **1 felt my face must have shone like that of Moses. I
had a general feeling of buoyancy. It was the greatest joy it was ever my
lot to experience." — **1 wept and laughed alternately. I was as light as
if walking on air. I felt as if I had gained greater peace and happiness
than I had ever expected to experience." Starblxk's correspondents.
CONVERSION 257
backslidings and relapses take place, make of these their
appereeiving mass for interpreting the whole subject, and.
dismiss it with a pitying smile^at so much ' hysterics.'
Psychologically, as well as religiously, however, this is
shallow. It misses the point of serious interest, which is
not so much the duration as the nature and quaUty of
these shiftings of character to higher levels. Men lapse
from .every level — we need no statistics to tell us that.
Love is, for instance, well known not to be irrevocable,
yet, constant or inconstant, it reveals new flights and
reaches of ideality while it lasts. These revelations form
its significance to men and women, whatever be its dura-
tion. So with the conversion experience : that it should
for even a short time show a human being what the high-
water mark of his spiritual capacity is, this is what con*
stitutes its importance, — an importance which backslid-
ing cannot diminish, although persistence might increase
it. As a matter of fact, all the more striking instances
of conversion, all those, for instance, which I have quoted,
have been permanent. The case of which there might
be most doubt, on account of its suggesting so strongly
an epileptoid seizure, was the case of M. Ratisbonne.
Yet I am informed that Ratisbonne's whole future was
shaped by those few minutes. He gave up his project of
marriage, became a priest, founded at Jerusalem, where
he went to dwell, a mission of nuns for the conversion of
the Jews, showed no tendency to use for egotistic pur^
poses the notoriety given him by the peculiar circum-
stances of his conversion, — which, for the rest, he could
seldom refer to without tears, — and in short remained
an exemplary son of the Church until he died, late in the
80*s, if I remember rightly.
The only statistics I know of, on the subject of the
duration of conversions, are those collected for Professor
858 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
Starbuck by Miss Johnston. They embrace only a hun-
dred persons, evangelical church-members, more than
half being Methodists. ^According to the statement of
the subjects themselves, there had been backsliding of
some sort in nearly all the cases, 93 per cent, of the wo-
men, 77 per cent, of the men. Discussing the returns
more minutely, Starbuck finds that only 6 per cent, are
relapses from the religious faith which the conversion
confirmed, and that the backsliding complained of is in
most only a fluctuation in the ardor of sentiment. Only
six of the hundred cases report a change of faith. Star-
buck's conclusion is that the effect of conversion is to
bring with it ^^ a changed attitude towards life, which is
fairly constant and permanent, although the feelings
fluctuate. ... In other words, the persons who have
passed through conversion, having once taken a stand
for the religious life, tend to feel themselves identified
with it, no matter how much their religious enthusiasm
decliaes." ^
> Psychology of Religion, pp. 360^ 357.
LECTURES XI, XII, AND XIII
SAINTLINESS
THE last lecture left us in a state of expectancy.
What may the practical fruits for life have been, of
such movingly happy conversions as those we heard of ?
With this question the really important part of our task
opens, for you remember that we began all this empiri-
cal inquiry not merely to open a curious chapter in
the phenomenology of human consciousness, but rather
to attain a spiritual judgment as to the total value and
positive meaning of all the religious trouble and happi-
ness which we have seen. We must, therefore, first
describe the fruits of the religious life, and then we must
judge them. This divides our inquiry into two distinct
parts. Let us without further preamble proceed to the
descriptive task.
It ought to be the pleasantest portion of our business
in these lectures. Some small pieces of it, it is true,
may be painful, or may show human nature in a pathetic
light, but it will be mainly pleasant, because the best
fruits of religious experience are the best things that his-
tory has to show. They have always been esteemed so ;
here if anywhere is the genuinely strenuous life ; and to
call to mind a succession of such examples as I have
lately had to wander through, though it has been only in
the reading of them, is to feel encouraged and uplifted
and washed in better moral air.
The highest flights of charity, devotion, trust, patience,
bravery to which the wings of human nature have spread
260 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
themselves have been flown for religious ideals. I can
do no better than quote, as to this, some remarks which
Sainte-Beuve in his History of Port-Royal makes on the
results of conversion or the state of grace.
" Even from the purely human point of view," Sainte-
Beuve says, ^^ the phenomenon of grace must still appear
sufficiently extraordinary, eminent, and rare, both in its
nature and in its effects, to deserve a closer study. For
the soul arrives thereby at a certain fixed and invincible
state, a state which is genuinely heroic, and from out of
which the greatest deeds which it ever performs are exe-
cuted. Through all the different forms of communion,
and all the diversity of the means which help to produce
this state, whether it be reached by a jubilee, by a gen-
eral confession, by a solitary prayer and effusion, what-
ever in short be the place and the occasion, it is easy to
recognize that it is fundamentally one state in spirit and
in fruits. Penetrate a little beneath the diversity of cir-
cumstances, and it becomes evident that in Christians
of different epochs it is always one and the same modifi-
cation by which they are affected : there is veritably a
single fundamental and identical spirit of piety and
charity, common to those who have received grace ; an
inner state which before all things is one of love and
humility, of infinite confidence in God, and of severity
for one's self, accompanied with tenderness for others.
The fruits peculiar to this condition of the soul have the
same savor in all, under distant suns and in different
surroundings, in Saint Teresa of Avila just as in any
Moravian brother of Herrnhut." ^
Sainte-Beuve has here only the more eminent instances
of regeneration in mind, and these are of course the
instructive ones for us also to consider. These devotees
1 Sainte-Beuve : Port-Royal, vol. i. pp. d5 and 106, abridged.
SAINTLINESS 261
have often laid their course so differently from other
men that, judging them by worldly law, we might be
tempted to call them monstrous aberrations from the path
of nature. I begin, therefore, by asking a general psycho-
logical question as to what the inner conditions are which
may nmke one human character differ so ertremely from
another.
I reply at once that where the character, as something
distinguished from the intellect, is concerned, the causes
of human diversity lie chiefly in our differing suscepti-
bilities of emotional excitement^ and in the different im-
pulses and inhibitions which these bring in their train.
Let me make this more clear.
Speaking generally, our moral and practical attitude,
at any given time, is always a resultant of two sets of
forces within us, impulses pushing us one way and ob-
structions and inhibitions holding us back. *^ Yes I
yes ! " say the impulses ; ^' No ! no ! " say the inhibitions.
Few people who have not expressly reflected on the matter
realize how constantly this factor of inhibition is upon
us, how it contains and moulds us by its restrictive pres-
sure almost as if we were fluids pent within the cavity
of a jar. The influence is so incessant that it becomes
subconscious. All of you, for example, sit here with a
certain constraint at this moment, and entirely without
express consciousness of the fact, because of the influ-
ence of the occasion. If left alone in the room, each of
you would probably involuntarily rearrange himself, and
make his attitude more ^ free and easy.' But proprieties
and their inhibitions snap like cobwebs if any great emo-
tional excitement supervenes. I have seen a dandy ap-
pear in the street with his face covered with shaving-
lather because a house across the way was on fire ; and
a woman will run among strangers in her nightgown if
262 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
it be a question of saving her baby's life or her own.
Take a self-induk:ent woman's life in s^eneral. She will
yield to every ^bition set by her dLgreeable sensa-
tions, lie late in bed, live upon tea or bromides, keep
indoors from the cold. Every difficulty finds her obch
dient to its ^ no.' But make a mother of her, and what
have you ? Possessed by maternal excitement, she now
confronts wakefulness, weariness, and toil without an
instant of hesitation or a word of complaint. The in-
hibitive power of pain over her is extinguished wherever
the baby's interests are at stake. The inconveniences
which this creature occasions have become, as James Hin-
ton says, the glowing heart of a great joy, and indeed
are now the very conditions whereby the joy becomes most
deep.
This is an example of what you have already heard of
as the ^ expulsive power of a higher affection.' But be
the affection high or low, it makes no difference, so long
as the excitement it brings be strong enough. In one of
Henry Drummond's discourses he tells of an inundation
in India where an eminence with a bungalow upon it
remained unsubmerged, and became the refuge of a
number of wild animals and reptiles in addition to the
human beings who were there. At a certain moment a
royal Bengal tiger appeared swimming towards it, reached
it, and lay panting like a dog upon the ground in the
midst of the people, still possessed by such an agony of
terror that one of the Englishmen could calmly step up
with a rifle and blow out its brains. The tiger's habitual
ferocity was temporarily quelled by the emotion of fear,
which became sovereign, and formed a new centre for his
character.
Sometimes no emotional state is sovereign, but many
contrary ones are mixed together. In that case one hears
SAINTLINESS 263
both ^ yeses ' and ^ noes/ and the ^ will ' is called on then
to solve the conflict. Take a soldier, for example, with his
dread of cowardice impelling him to advance, his fears im-
pelling him to run, and his propensities to imitation push-
ing him towards various courses if his comrades offer
various examples. His person becomes the seat of a mass
of interferences; and he may for a time simply waver,
because no one emotion prevails. There is a pitch of
intensity, though, which, if any emotion reach it, en-
thrones that one as alone effective and sweeps its antag-
onists and all their inhibitions away. The fury of his
comrades' charge, once entered on, will give this pitch of
courage to the soldier ; the panic of their rout will give
this pitch of fear. In these sovereign excitements, things
ordinarily impossible grow natural because the inhibitions
are annulled. Their ^ no I no I ' not only is not heard, it
does not exist. Obstacles are then like tissue-paper hoops
to the circus rider — no impediment ; the flood is higher
than the dam they make. ^^ Lass sie betteln gehn wenn
sie hungrig sind ! " cries the grenadier, frantic over his
Emperor's capture, when his wife and babes are suggested ;
and men pent into a burning theatre have been known
to cut their way through the crowd with knives.^
1 <( < Love would not be love/ says Bourget, ' unless it could carry one to
crime.' And so one may say that no passion would be a veritable passion
unless it could carry one to crime/' (Siohele : Psychologic des Sectes,
p. 136.) In other words, great passions annul the ordinary inhibitions set by
* conscience.' And conversely, of all the criminal human beings, the false,
cowardly, sensual, or cruel persons who actually live, there is perhaps not
one whose criminal impulse may not be at some moment overpowered by the
presence of some other emotion to ^ Lis character is also potentially
liable, provided that other emotion be only made intense enough. Fear is
usually the most available emotion for this result in this particular class of
persons. It stands for conscience, and may here be classed appropriately as
a ' higher affection.' If we are soon to die, or if we believe a day of judg-
ment to be near at hand, how quickly do we put our moral house in order
— we do not fee how sin can evermore exert temptation over us 1 Old-
264 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE .
One mode of emotional excitability is exceedingly im-
portant in the composition of the energetic ch^racter^
from its peculiarly destructive power over inhibitions. I
mean what in its lower form is mere irascibility, suscepti-
bility to wrath, the fighting temper ; and what in subtler
ways manifests itself as impatience, grimness, earnest-
ness, severity of character. Earnestness means willing-
ness to live with energy, though energy bring pain. The
pain may be pain to other people or pain to one's self —
it makes little difference ; for when the strenuous mood
is on one, the aim is to break something, no matter whose
or what. Nothing annihilates an inhibition as irresist-
ibly as anger does it; for, as Moltke says of war, de-
struction pure and simple is its essence. This is what
makes it so invaluable an ally of every other passion.
The sweetest delights are trampled on with a ferocious
pleasure the moment they offer themselves as checks to
a cause by which our higher indignations are elicited.
It costs, then, nothing to drop friendships, to renounce
long-rooted privileges and possessions, to break with
social ties. Rather do we take a stem joy in the astrin-
gency and desolation ; and what is called weakness of
character seems in most cases to consist in the inaptitude
for these sacrificial moods, of which one's own inferior
self and its pet softnesses must often be the targets and
the victims.*
fashioned hell-fire Christianitj well knew how to extract from fear its full
equivalent in the way of fruits for repentance, and its full conversion value.
^ Example : Benjamin Constant was often marveled at as an extraordi-
nary instance of superior intelligence with inferior character. He writes
(Journal, Paris, 1895, p. 56), " I am tossed and dragged about by my miser-
able weakness. Never was anything so ridiculous as my indecision. Now
marriage, now solitude ; now Grermany, now France, hesitation upon hesita-
tion, and all because at bottom I am unable to give up anything** He can't
* get mad ' at any of his alternatives ; and the career of a man beset by
sach an aU-round amiability is hopeless.
SAINTLINESS 265
So far I have spoken of temporary alterations produced
by shifting excitements in the same person. But the rela-
tively fixed differences of character of different persons
are explained in a precisely similar way. In a man with
a liability to a special sort of emotion, whole ranges of
inhibition habitually vanish, which in other men remain
effective, and other sorts of inhibition take their place.
When a person has an inborn genius for certain emo-
tions, his life differs strangely from that of ordinary peo-
ple, for none of their usual deterrents check him. Your
mere aspirant to a type of character, on the contrary,
only shows, when your natural lover, fighter, or reformer,
with whom the passion is a gift of nature, comes along,
the hopeless inferiority of volimtary to instinctive action.
He has dehberately to overcome his inhibitions; the
genius with the inborn passion seems not to feel them at
all; he is free of all that inner friction and nervous
waste. To a Fox, a Garibaldi, a General Booth, a John
Brown, a Louise Michel, a Bradlaugh, the obstacles om-
nipotent over those around them are as if non-existent.
Could the rest of us so disregard them, there might be
many such heroes, for many have the wish to live for
similar ideals, and only the adequate degree of inhibition-
quenching fury is lacking.^
^ The g^at thing which the higher ezcitabilities give is courage ; and
the addition or subtraction of a certain amount of this quality makes a
different man, a different life. Various excitements let the courage loose.
Trustful hope will do it ; inspiring example will do it ; love will do it ;
wrath will do it. In some people it is natively so high that the mere touch
of danger does it, though danger is for most men the great inhibitor of
action. 'Love of adventure' becomes in such persons a ruling passion.
** I believe," says Greneral Skobeleff, *' that my bravery is simply the pas-
sion and at the same time the contempt of danger. The risk of life fills me
with an exaggerated rapture. The fewer there are to share it, the more I
like it The participation of my body in the event is required to furnish
me an adequate excitement. Everything intellectual appears to me to be
reflex ; but a meeting of man to man, a duel, a danger into which I can
266 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
The difference between willing and merely wishing,
between having ideals that are creative and ideals that
are but pinings and regrets, thus depends solely either
on the amount of steam-pressure chronically driving the
character in the ideal direction, or on the amount of
ideal excitement transiently acquired. Given a certain
amoimt of love, indignation, generosity, magnanimity,
admiration, loyalty, or enthusiasm of self-surrender, the
result is always the same. That whole raft of cowardly
obstructions, which in tame persons and dull moods are
sovereign impediments to action, sinks away at once.
Our conventionality,^ our shyness, laziness, and stingi-
ness, our demands for precedent and permission, for guar-
antee and surety, our small suspicions, timidities, despairs,
where are they now ? Severed like cobwebs, broken like
bubbles in the sun —
« Wo Bind die Sorge nan and Noth
Die mich noch gestem woUt' enchaffen ?
loh Bohftm' mioh dcss' im Morgenroth."
The flood we are borne on rolls them so lightly under
that their very contact is unfelt. Set free of them, we
float and soar and sing. This auroral openness and
throw n^yself headforemost, attracts me, moves me, intoxicates me. I am
crazy for it, I love it, I adore it. I run after danger as one rans after
women ; I wish it never to stop. Were it always the same, it would
always bring me a new pleasure. When I throw myself into an adventure
in which I hope to find it, my heart palpitates with the uncertainty ; I
could wish at once to have it appear and yet to delay. A sort of painful
and delicious shiver shakes me ; my entire nature runs to meet the peril
with an impetus that my will would in vain try to resist.'' (Juliette Adam :
Le (i^ndral Skobele£f, Nouvelle Revue, 1886, abridged.) Skobeleff seems
to have been a cruel egoist ; but the disinterested Garibaldi, if one may
judge by his * Meroorie,' lived in an unflagging emotion of similar danger-
seeking excitement.
' See the case on p. 70, above, where the writer describes his experiences
of communion with the Divine as consisting ** merely in the temporary Mii^
eration of the corwerUumalitie$ which usually cover my life."
SAINTLINESS 267
uplift gives to all creative ideal levels a bright and carol-
ing quality, which is nowhere more marked than where
the controlling emotion is religious. '^ The true monk/'
writes an It^Uan mystic, ^^ takes nothing with him but
his lyre."
We may now turn from these psychological general-
ities to those fruits of the religious state which form the
special subject of our present lecture. The man who
lives in his religious centre of personal energy, and is
actuated by spiritual enthusiasms, differs from his previ-
ous carnal self in perfectly definite ways. The new ardor
which bums in his breast consumes in its glow the lower
' noes ' which formerly beset him, and keeps him immune
against infection from the entire groveling portion of
his nature. Magnanimities once impossible are now easy ;
paltry conventionaUties and mean incentives once tyran-
nical hold no sway. The stone wall inside of him has
fallen, the hardness in his heart has broken down. The
rest of us can, I think, imagine this by recalling our
state of feeling in those temporary ^ melting moods '
into which either the trials of real life, or the theatre,
or a novel sometimes throw us. Especially if we weep !
For it is then as if our tears broke through an inveterate
inner dam, and let all sorts of ancient peccancies and
moral stagnancies drain away, leaving us now washed
and soft of heart and open to every nobler leading.
With most of us the customary hardness quickly returns,
but not so with saintly persons. Many saints, even as
energetic ones as Teresa and Loyola, have possessed what
the church traditionally reveres as a special grace, the
so-called gift of tears. In these persons the melting
mood seems to have held almost uninterrupted control.
And as it is with tears and melting moods, so it is with
268 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
other exalted affections. Their reign may come by
gradual growth or by a cnsis ; but in either case it may
have * come to stay/
At the end of the last lecture we saw this permanence
to be true of the general paramountcy of the higher
insight, even though in the ebbs of emotional excitement
meaner motives might temporarily prevail and backsliding
might occur. But that lower temptations may remain
completely annulled, apart from transient emotion and
as if by alteration of the man's habitual nature, is also
proved by documentary evidence in certain cases. Be-
fore embarking on the general natural history of the
regenerate character, let me convince you of this curi-
ous fact by one or two examples. The most numerous
are those of reformed drunkards. You recollect the case
of Mr. Hadley in the last lecture ; the Jerry McAuley
Water Street Mission abounds in similar instances.^ You
also remember the graduate of Oxford, converted at three
in the afternoon, and getting drunk in the hay-field the
next day, but after that permanently cured of his appe-
tite. ^* From that hour drink has had no terrors for me :
I never touch it, never want it. The same thing occurred
with my pipe, . . . the desire for it went at once and has
never returned. So with every known sin, the deliver-
ance in each case being permanent and complete. I have
had no temptations since conversion."
Here is an analogous case from Starbuck's manuscript
collection : —
'^ I went into the old Adelphi Theatre, where there was a
Holiness meeting, . . . and I began saying, ^Lord, Lord, I
must have this blessing.' Then what was to me an audible
voice said: 'Are you willing to give up everything to the
^ Above, p. 201. *< The only radical remedy I know for dipsomania ia
religiomania," is a saying I have heard quoted from some medic^ man.
SAINTLINESS 209
Lord ? ' and question after question kept coming up, to all of
which I said : ' Yes, Lord ; yes, Lord ! ' until this came : ^ Why
do you not accept it now ? ' and I said : *• I do, Lord.' — I felt no
particular joy, only a trust. Just then the meeting closed, and,
as I went out on the street, I met a gentleman smoking a fine
cigar, and a cloud of smoke came into my face, and I took a
long, deep breath of it, and praise the Lord, all my appetite for
it was gone. Then as I walked along the street, passing saloons
where the fumes of liquor came out, I found that all my taste
and longing for that accursed stuff was gone. Glory to God I
. . . [But] for ten or eleven long years [after that] I was in
the wilderness with its ups and downs. My appetite for liquor
never came back."
The classic case of Colonel Gardiner is that of a man
cured of sexual temptation in a single hour. To Mr.
Spears the colonel said, '^ I was effectually cured of all
inclination to that sin I was so strongly addicted to that
I thought nothing but shooting me through the head
could have cured me of it ; and all desire and inclination
to it was removed, as entirely as if I had been a suck-
ing child ; nor did the temptation return to this day."
Mr. Webster's words on the same subject are these :
" One thing I have heard the colonel frequently say, that
he was much addicted to impurity before his acquaint-
ance with religion ; but that, so soon as he was enlight-
ened from above, he felt the power of the Holy Ghost
changing his nature so wonderfully that his sanctifica-
tion in this respect seemed more remarkable than in any
other." ^
Such rapid abolition of ancient impulses and propensi-
ties reminds us so strongly of what has been observed as
the result of hypnotic suggestion that it is difficult not
to believe that subliminal influences play the decisive
^ Doddridge's Life of Colonel James Grardiner, London Religions Tract
Society, pp. 23^2.
270 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
part in these abrupt changes of heart, just as they do in
hypnotism/ Suggestive therapeutics abound in records of
cure, after a few sittings, of inveterate bad habits with
which the patient, left to ordinary moral and physical in-
fluences, had struggled in vain. Both drunkenness and
sexual vice have been cured in this way, action through
the subliminal seeming thus in many individuals to have
the prerogative of inducing relatively stable change.
If the grace of God miraculously operates, it probably
operates through the subliminal door, then. But just
how anything operates in this region is still unexplained,
and we shall do well now to say good-by to the process of
transformation altogether, — leaving it, if you like, a
good deal of a psychological or theological mystery, —
and to turn our attention to the fruits of the religious
condition, no matter in what way they may have been
produced.^
^ Here, for example, is a case, from Starbuck's book, in whicb a ' sensory
automatism' brought about quickly what prayers and resolves had been
unable to e£fect. The subject is a woman. She writes : —
<* When I was about forty I tried to quit smoking, but the desire was on
me, and had me in its power. I cried and prayed and promised Grod to
quit, but could not. I had smoked for fifteen years. When I was fifty*
three, as I sat by the fire one day smoking, a voice came to me. I did not
hear it with my ears, but more as a dream or sort of double think. It
said, < Louisa, lay down smoking.' At once I replied, * Will you take the
desire away ? ' But it only kept saying : * Louisa, lay down smoking.'
Then I got up, laid my pipe on the mantel-shelf, and never smoked again
or had any desire to. The desire was goue as though I had never known
it or touched tobacco. The sight of others smoking and the smell of smoke
never gave me the least wbh to touch it agaiu." The Psychology of
Religion, p. 142.
^ Professor Starbuck expresses the radical destruction of old influences
physiologically, as a cutting off of the connection between higher and lower
cerebral centres. *<This condition," he says, ''in which the association-
centres connected with the spiritual life are cut off from the lower, is often
reflected in the way correspondents describe their experiences. . . . For
example : ' Temptations from without still assail me, but there is nothing
wiihin to respond to them.' The ego [here] is wholly identified with the
SAINTLINESS 271
The collective name for the ripe fruits of religion in
a character is Saintliness.^ The saintly character is the
character for which spiritual emotions are the habitual
centre of the personal energy ; and there is a certain com-
posite photograph of universal saintliness^ the same in all
religions, of which the features can easily be traced.'
higher centres, whose quality of feeling is that of withinness. Another
of the respondents says : * Since then, although Satan tempts me, there
is as it were a wall of brass around me, so that his darts cannot touch
me.' " — Unquestionably, functional exclusions of this sort must occur in
the cerebral organ. But on the side accessible to introspection, their causal
condition is nothing but the deg^e of spiritual excitement, getting at last
80 high and strong as to be sovereign ; and it must be frankly confessed
that we do not know just why or how such sovereignty comes about in one
person and not in another. We can only give our imagination a certain
delusive help by mechanical analogies.
If we should conceive, for example, that the human mind, with its differ-
ent possibilities of equilibrium, might be like a many-sided solid with dif-
ferent surfaces on which it could lie flat, we might liken mental revolutions
to the spatial revolutions of such a body. As it is pried up, say by a lever,
from a position in which it lies on surface A, for instance, it will linger for
a time unstably halfway up, and if the lever cease to urge it, it will tumble
back or * relapse * under the continued pull of gravity. But if at last it
rotate far enough for its centre of gravity to pass beyond surface A alto-
gether, the body will fall over, on surface B, say, and abide there perma-
nently. The pulls of gravity towards A have vanished, and may now be
disregarded. The polyhedron has become immune against farther attrac-
tion from their direction.
In this fig^ure of speech the lever may correspond to the emotional influ-
ences making for a new life, and the initial pull of gravity to the ancient
drawbacks and inhibitions. So long as the emotional influence fails to reach
a certain pitch of efficacy, the changes it produces are unstable, and the
man relapses into his original attitude. But when a certain intensity is
attained by the new emotion, a critical point is passed, and there then en-
sues an irreversible revolution, equivalent to the production of a new nature.
^ I use this word in spite of a certain flavor of ' sanctimoniousness '
which sometimes clings to it, because no other word suggests as well the
exact combination of affections which the text goes on to describe.
' '^ It will be found," says Dr. W. R. Inge (in his lectures on Christian
Mysticism, London, 1899, p. 326), ** that men of preeminent saintliness agree
very closely in what they tell us. They tell us that they have arrived at an
unshakable conviction, not based on inference but on immediate experi-
enoe, that Grod is a spirit with whom the human spirit can hold intercourse ;
272 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
They are these : —
1. A feeUng of being in a wider life than that of this
world's selfish little interests ; and a conviction, not merely
intellectual, but as it were sensible, of the existence of an
Ideal Power. In Christian saintliness this power is always
personified as God; but abstract moral ideals, civic or
patriotic Utopias, or inner visions of holiness or right may
also be felt as the true lords and enlargers of our life, in
ways which I described in the lecture on the Reality of
the Unseen.^
that in him meet all that they can imagine of goodness, truth, and beaaty ;
that they can see his footprints everywhere in nature, and feel his pre-
sence within them as the very life of their life, so that in proportion as Uiey
oome to themselves they come to him. They teU us what separates us from
him and from happiness is, first, self-seeking in all its forms ; and, sec-
ondly, sensuality in all its forms ; that these are the ways of darkness and
death, which hide from us the face of God ; while the path of the just is
like a shining light, which shineth more and more unto the perfect day."
^ The * enthusiasm of humanity * may lead to a life which coalesces in
many respects with that of Christian saintliness. Take the following rules
proposed to members of the Union pour I'Action morale, in the BuUetin de
rUnion, April 1-15, 1894. See, also. Revue Bleue, August 13, 18d2.
" We would make known in our own persons the usefulness of rule, of
discipline, of resigfnation and renunciation ; we would teach the necessary
perpetuity of suffering, and explain the creative part which it plays. We
would wage war upon false optimism ; on the base hope of happiness coming
to us ready made ; on the notion of a salvation by knowledge alone, or by
material civilization alone, vain symbol as this is of civilization, precarious
external arrangement, ill-fitted to replace the intimate union and consent of
souls. We would wage war also on bad morals, whether in public or in pri-
vate life ; on luxury, fastidiousness, and over-refinement ; on aU that tends
to increase the painful, immoral, and anti-social multiplication of our wants ;
on all that excites envy and dislike in the soul of the common people, and
confirms the notion that the chief end of life is freedom to enjoy. We
would preach by our example the respect of superiors and equals, the respect
of all men ; affectionate simplicity in our relations with inferiors and insig-
nificant persons ; indulgence where our own claims only are concerned, but
firmness in our demands where they relate to duties towards others or to-
wards the public.
*< For the common people are what we help them to become ; their vices
are our vices, gazed upon, envied, and imitated ; and if they come back with
aU their weight upon us, it is but just.
SAINTLINESS 278
2. A sense of the friendly continuity of the ideal
power with our own life^ and a willing self-surrender to
its control.
3. An immense elation and freedom, as the outlines of
the confining selfhood melt down.
4. A shifting of the emotional centre towards loving
and harmonious affections, towards ^ yes, yes/ and away
from ^ no/ where the claims of the non-ego are concerned.
These fundamental inner conditions have character-
istic practical consequences, as follows : —
a. Asceticism. — The self-surrender may become so
passionate as to turn into self-immolation. It may then
L overrule the ordinaiy mhibitions of the flesh that the
saint finds positive pleasure in sacrifice and asceticism,
measuring and expressing as they do the degree of his
loyalty to the higher power.
6. Strength of Soul. — The sense of enlargement of
life may be so uplifting that personal motives and inhibi-
tions, commonly omnipotent, become too insignificant for
notice, and new reaches of patience and fortitude open
out. Fears and anxieties go, and blissful equanimity
takes their place. Come heaven, come hell, it makes no
difference now !
** We forbid oarselyes all seeking after popularity, all ambition to appear
important. We pledge oarselyes to abstain from falsehood, in all its de-
grees. We promise not to create or encourage illusions as to what is pos-
sible, by what we say or write. We promise to one another active sincerity,
which strives to see truth .dearly, and which never fears to declare what it
sees.
*' We promise deliberate resistance to the tidal waves of fashion, to the
' booms ' and panics of the public mind, to all the forms of weakness and of
fear.
'* We forbid ourselves the use of sarcasm. Of serious things we will speak
seriously and unsmilingly, without banter and without the appearance of
banter ; — and even so of all things, for there are serious ways of being light
of heart.
<' We will put ourselves forward always for what we are, simply and with-
out false hamility, as well as without pedantry, affeotationi or pzide."
274 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
c. Purity. — The shifting of the emotional centre
brings with it, first, increase of purity. The sensitive-
ness to spiritual discords is enhanced, and the cleansing
of existence from brutal and sensual elements becomes
imperative. Occasions of contact with such elements are
avoided : the saintly life must deepen its spiritual con-
sistency and keep unspotted from the world. In some
temperaments this need of purity of spirit takes an ascetic
turn, and weaknesses of the flesh are treated with relent-
less severity.
d. Charity. — The shifting of the emotional centre
brings, secondly, increase of charity, tenderness for fel-
low-creatures. The ordinary motives to antipathy, which
usually set such close bounds to tenderness among human
beings, are inhibited. The saint loves his enemies, and
treats loathsome beggars as his brothers.
I now have to give some concrete illustrations of these
fruits of the spiritual tree. The only difBculty is to
choose, for they are so abundant.
Since the sense of Presence of a higher and friendly
Power seems to be the fundamental feature in the spir-
itual life, I will begin with that.
In our narratives of conversion we saw how the world
might look shining and transfigured to the convert,^ and,
apart from anything acutely religious, we all have mo-
ments when the universal life seems to wrap us round
with friendliness. In youth and health, in summer, in
the woods or on the mountains, there come days when the
weather seems all whispering with peace, hours when the
goodness and beauty of existence enfold us like a dry
warm climate, or chime through us as if our inner ears
were subtly ringing with the world's security. Thoreau
writes : —
^ Aboye, pp. 248 ff.
!
I SAINTLINESS 276
^^ Once, a few weeks after I came to the woods, for an hour I
doubted whether the near neighborhood of man was not essen-
A... tial to a serene and healthy life. To be alone was somewhat
unpleasant. But, in the midst of a gentle rain, while these
thoughts prevailed, I was suddenly sensible of such sweet and
beneficent society in Nature, in the very pattering of the drops,
and in every sight and sound around my house, an infinite and
unaccountable friendliness all at once, like an atmosphere, sus-
taining me, as made the fancied advantages of human neigh-
borhood insignificant, and I have never thought of them since.
Every little pine-needle expanded and swelled with sympathy
and befriended me. I was so distinctly made aware of the
presence of something kindred to me, that I thought no place
could ever be strange to me again." ^
In the Christian consciousness this sense of the en-
veloping friendliness becomes most personal and definite.
" The compensation," writes a German author^ " for the
loss of that sense of personal independence which man
so unwillingly gives up, is the disappearance of all fear
from one's life, the quite indescribable and inexplicable
feeling of an inner security y which one can only experi-
ence, but which, once it has been experienced, one can
never forget." ^
I find an excellent description of this state of mind in
a sermon by Mr. Voysey : —
^* It is the experience of myriads of trustful souls, that this
sense of God's unfailing presence with them in their going out
and in their coming in, and by night and day, is a source of
absolute repose and confident calmness. It drives away all fear
of what may befall them. That nearness of God is a constant
security against terror and anxiety. It is not that they are at
all assured of physical safety, or deem themselves protected by
a love which is denied to others, but that they are in a state of
mind equally ready to be safe or to meet with injury. If injury
^ H. Thoreau : Walden, Riverside edition, p. 206, abridged.
* C. H. HiLTY : Glttok, vol i. p. 85.
f
276 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
befall them, they will be content to bear it because the Lord is '
their keeper, and nothing can befall them without his will. If * |
it be his vnll, then injury is for them a blessing and no calam- j
ity at all. Thus and thus only is the trustful man protected
and shielded from harm. And I for one — by no means a thick-
skinned or hard-nerved man — am absolutely satisfied with this
arrangement, and do not wish for any other kind of immunity
from danger and catastrophe. Quite as sensitive to pain as the
most highly strung organism, I yet feel that the worst of it is
conquered, and the sting taken out of it altogether, by the
thought that God is our loving and sleepless keeper, and that
nothing can hurt us without his will." ^
More excited expressions of this condition are abun-
dant in religious literature. I could easily weary you with
their monotony. Here is an account from Mrs. Jonathan
Edwards : —
^^ Last night," Mrs. Edwards writes, ^^ was the sweetest night
I ever had in my life. I never before, for so long a time
together, enjoyed so much of the light and rest and sweetness
of heaven in my soul, but vnthout the least agitation of body
during the whole time. Part of the night I lay awake, some-
times asleep, and sometimes between sleeping and waking. But
all night I continued in a constant, clear, and lively sense of
the heavenly sweetness of Christ^s excellent love, of his near-
ness to me, and of my deamess to him ; with an inexpressibly
sweet calmness of soul in an entire rest in him. I seemed to
myself to perceive a glow of divine love come down from the
heart of Christ in heaven into my heart in a constant stream,
like a stream or pencil of sweet light. At the same time my
heart and soul all flowed out in love to Christ, so that there
seemed to be a constant flowing and reflowing of heavenly love,
and I appeared to myself to float or swim, in these bright, sweet
beams, like the motes swimming in the beams of the sun, or the
streams of his light which come in at the window. I think that
what I felt each minute was worth more than all the outward
comfort and pleasure which I had enjoyed in my whole life put
1 The Mystery of Fain and Death, London, 1892, p. 258.
SAINTLINESS 277
together. It was pleasure, without the least sting, or any inter-
ruption. It was a sweetness, which my soul was lost in ; it
seemed to be all that my feeble frame could sustain. There was
but little difference, whether I was asleep or awake, but if there
was any difference, the sweetness was greatest while I was
asleep.^ As I awoke early the next morning, it seemed to me
that I had entirely done with myself. I felt that the opinions
of the world concerning me were nothing, and that I had no
more to do with any outward interest of my own than with that
of a person whom I never saw. The glory of God seemed to
swallow up every wish and desire of my heart. . . . After retir-
ing to rest and sleeping a little while, I awoke, and was led to
reflect on God's mercy to me, in giving me, for many years, a
willingness to die ; and after that, in making me willing to
live, that I might do and suffer whatever he called me to here.
I also thought how God had graciously g^ven me an entire
resignation to his will, with respect to the kind and manner of
death that I should die ; having been made willing to die on
the rack, or at the stake, and if it were God's will, to die in
darkness. But now it occurred to me, I used to think of living
no longer than to the ordinary age of man. Upon this I was
led to ask myself, whether I was not willing to be kept out of
heaven even longer ; and my whole heart seemed immediately
to reply : Yes, a thousand years, and a thousand in horror, if
it be most for the honor of God, the torment of my body being
so great, awful, and overwhelming that none could bear to live
in the country where the spectacle was seen, and the torment of
my mind being vastly greater. And it seemed to me that I
found a perfect willingness, quietness, and alacrity of soul in
^ Compare Madame Gayon : ** It was my practice to arise at midnight for
purposes of devotion. ... It seemed to me that Grod came at the precise
time and woke me from sleep in order that I might enjoy him. When I
was out of health or greatly fatigued, he did not awake me, but at such
times I felt, even in my sleep, a singular possession of Grod. He loved me
so much that he seemed to pervade my being, at a time when I could be
only imperfectly conscious of his presence. My sleep is sometimes broken,
— a sort of half sleep ; but my soul seems to be awake enough to know
God, when it is hardly capable of knowing anything else.*' T. C. Upham :
The Life and Religious Experiences of Madame de la Mothe Guyon, New
York, 1877, vol L p. aoa
278 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
consenting that it should be so, if* it were most for the glory of
God, so that there was no hesitation, doubt, or darkness in my
mind. The glory of God seemed to overcome me and swal-
low me up, and every conceivable suffering, and everything
that was terrible to my nature, seemed to shrink to nothing
before it. This resignation continued in its clearness and
brightness tlie rest of the night, and all the next day, and the
night following, and on Monday in the forenoon, without inter-
ruption or abatement." ^
The annals of Catholic saintship abound in records as
ecstatic or more ecstatic than this. ^^ Often the assaults
of the divine love/' it is said of the Sister S^raphique de
la Martini^re, ^^ reduced her almost to the point of death.
She used tenderly to complain of this to God. ^ I cannot
support it/ she used to say. ^ Bear gently with my weak-
ness, or I shall expire under the violence of your love.' " ^
Let me pass next to the Charity and Brotherly Love
which are a usual fruit of saintliness, and have always
been reckoned essential theological virtues, however lim-
ited may have been the kinds of service which the par-
ticular theology enjoined. Brotherly love would follow
logically from the assurance of God's friendly presence,
the notion of our brotherhood as men being an immediate
inference from that of God's fatherhood of us all. When
Christ utters the precepts : " Love your enemies, bless
them that curse you, do good to them that hate yon, and
pray for them which despitef uUy use you, and persecute
you," he gives for a reason : " That ye may be the chil-
dren of your Father which is in heaven : for he maketh his
sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain
on the just and on the unjust." One might therefore
^ I have considerably abridged tbe words of tbe original, wbiob is given
in Edwards's Narrative of the Revival in New England.
' BouGAUD : Hist de la Bienbeureuse Marguerite Marie, 1S94, p. 125.
SAINTUNESS 279
be tempted to explain both the humility as to one's self
and the charity towards others which characterize spir-
itual excitement^ as results of the all-leveling character of
theistic belief. But these affections are certainly not mere
derivatives of theism. We find them in Stoicism, in Hin-
duism^ and in Buddhism in the highest possible degree.
They harmonize with paternal theism beautifully ; but
they harmonize with all reflection whatever upon the de-
pendence of mankind on general causes ; and we must, I
think, consider them not subordinate but coordinate parts
of that great complex excitement in the study of which
we are engaged. Religious rapture, moral enthusiasm,
ontological wonder, cosmic emotion, are all unifying states
of mind, in which the sand and grit of the selfhood in-
cline to disappear, and tenderness to rule. The best thing
is to describe the condition integrally as a characteristic
affection to which our nature is liable, a region in which
we find ourselves at home, a sea in which we swim ; but
not to pretend to explain its parts by deriving them too
cleverly from one another. Like love or fear, the faith-
state is a natural psychic complex, and carries charity
with it by organic consequence. Jubilation is an expan-
sive affection, and all expansive affections are self-forget-
ful and kindly so long as they endure.
We find this the case even when they are pathological
in origin. In his instructive work, la Tristesse et la Joie,^
M. Georges Dumas compares together the melancholy and
the joyous phase of circular insanity, and shows that,
while selfishness characterizes the one, the other is marked
by altruistic impulses. No human being so stingy and
useless as was Marie in her melancholy period ! But the
moment the happy period begins, ^^ sympathy and kind-
ness become her characteristic sentiments. She displays
1 Paris, 1900.
280 THE VABIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
a universal goodwill, not only of intention, but in act.
• • • She becomes solicitous of the health of other pa-
tients, interested in getting them out, desirous to procure
wool to knit socks for some of them. Never since she
has been under my observation have I heard her in her
joyous period utter any but charitable opinions." ^ And
later. Dr. Dumas says of all such joyous conditions that
^^ unselfish sentiments and tender emotions are the only
affective states to be found in them. The subject's mind
is closed against envy, hatred, and vindictiveness, and
wholly transformed into benevolence, indulgence, and
mercy.
There is thus an organic affinity between joyousness
and tenderness, and their companionship in the saintly
life need in no way occasion surprise. Along with the
happiness, this increase of tenderness is often noted in
narratives of conversion. " I began to work for others " ;
— "I had more tender feeling for my family and friends " ;
— "I spoke at once to a person with whom I had been
angry " ; — "I felt for every one, and loved my friends
better " ; — "I felt every one to be my friend " ; — these
are so many expressions from the records collected by
Professor Starbuck.^
" When," says Mrs. Edwards, continuing the narrative from
which I made quotation a moment ago, ^^ I arose on the morn-
ing of the Sabbath, I felt a love to all mankind, wholly peculiar
in its strength and sweetness, far beyond all that I had ever
felt before. The power of that love seemed inexpressible. I
thought, if I were surrounded by enemies, who were venting
their malice and cruelty upon me, in tormenting me, it would
still be impossible that I should cherish any feelings towards
them but those of love, and pity, and ardent desires for their
happiness. I never before felt so far from a disposition to judge
and censure others, as I did that morning. I realized also, in
1 Page 130. « Page 167. « Op. cit., p. 127.
SAINTLINESS 281
an iinui^ual and very lively manner, how great a part of Chris-
tianity lies in the performance of our social and relative duties
to one another. The same joyful sense continued throughout
the day — a sweet love to God and all mankind."
Whatever be the explanation of the charity, it may
efface all usual human barriers.^
Here, for instance, is an example of Christian non-resist-
ance from Richard Weaver's autobiography. Weaver was
a collier, a semi-professional pugilist in his younger days,
who became a much beloved evangelist. Fighting, after
drinking, seems to have been the sin to which he origi-
nally felt his flesh most perversely inclined. After his
first conversion he had a backsliding, which consisted in
pounding a man who had insulted a girl. Feeling that,
having once fallen, he might as well be hanged for a
sheep as for a lamb, he got drunk and went and broke
the jaw of another man who had lately challenged him
to fight and taunted him with cowardice for refusing as
a Christian man ; — I mention these incidents to show
how genuine a change of heart is implied in the later con-
duct which he describes as follows : —
^ The barrier between men and animals also. We read of Towianski,
an eminent Polish patriot and mystic, that "one day one of his friends
met him in the rain, caressing a big dog which was jumping upon him
and covering him horribly with mud. On being asked why he permitted
the animal thus to dirty his clothes, Towianski replied : ' This dog, whom
I am now meeting for the first time, has shown a great fellow-feeling for
me, and a great joy in my recognition and acceptance of his greetings.
Were I to drive him off, I should wound his feelings and do him a moral
injury. It would be an offense not only to him, but to all the spirits of the
other worid who are on the same level with him. The damage which he
does to my coat is as nothing in comparison with the wrong which I should
inflict upon him, in case I were to remain indifferent to the manifestations
of his friendship. We ought,' he added, * both to lighten the condition of
animals, whenever we can, and at the same time to facilitate in ourselves
that union of the world of all spirits, which the sacrifice of Christ has made
possible.'" Andr^ Towianski, Traduction de I'ltalien, Turin, 1897 (pri-
vately printed). I owe my knowledge of this book and of Towianski to my
friend Professor W. Luto^wski, anther of * PUio's Logic'
282 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
^^ I went down the drift and found the boy eiying because
a fellow-workman was trying to take the wagon from him by
force. I said to him : —
" * Tom, you must n't take that wagon.'
^' He swore at me, and called me a Methodist devil. I told
him that God did not tell me to let him rob me. He cursed
again, and said he would push the wagon over me.
^^ * Well,' I said, * let us see whether the devil and thee are
stronger than the Lord and me.'
*^ And the Lord and I proving stronger than the devil and
he, he had to get out of the way, or the wagon would have
gone over him. So I gave the wagon to the boy. Then said
Tom: —
*^ * I 've a good mind to smack thee on the face.'
" * Well,' I said, * if that will do thee any good, thou canst
do it.' So he struck me on the face.
*^ I turned the other cheek to him, and said, * Strike again.'
^^ He struck again and again, till he had struck me five times.
I turned my cheek for the sixth stroke ; but he turned away
cursing. I shouted after him : * The Lord forgive thee, for I
do, and the Lord save thee.'
*^ This was on a Saturday ; and when I went home from the
coal-pit my wife saw my face was swollen, and asked what was
the matter with it. I said : ' I 've been fighting, and I 've
given a man a good thrashing.'
*^ She burst out weeping, and said, * O Richard, what made
you fight ? ' Then I told her all about it ; and she thanked the
Lord I had not struck back.
^^ But the Lord had struck, and his blows have more effect
than man's. Monday came. The devil began to tempt me,
saying : ^ The other men will laugh at thee for allowing Tom
to treat thee as he did on Saturday.' I cried, ^ Get thee behind
me, Satan ; ' — and went on my way to the coal-pit.
^' Tom was the first man I saw. I said ^ Good-morning,' but
got no reply.
" He went down first. When I got down, I was surprised to
see him sitting on the wagon-road waiting for me. When I
came to him he burst into tears and said : * Richard, will you
forgive me for striking you? '
SAINTLINESS 288
^ * I have forgiven thee,' said I ; ^ ask God to forgive thee.
The Lord bless thee.' I gave him my hand, and we went each
to his work." ^
^ Love your enemies ! ' Mark you, not simply those who
happen not to be your friends, but your enemieSy your
positive and active enemies. Either this is a mere Ori-
ental hyperbole, a bit of verbal extravagance, meaning
only that we should, as far as we can, abate our animos-
ities, or else it is sincere and literal. Outside of certain
cases of intimate individual relation, it seldom has been
taken literally. Yet it makes one ask the question : Can
there in general be a level of emotion so unifying, so ob-
literative of differences between man and man, that even
enmity may come to be an irrelevant circumstance and fail
to inhibit the friendlier interests aroused ? If positive well-
wishing could attain so supreme a degree of excitement,
those who were swayed by it might well seem superhuman
beings. Their life would be morally discrete from the
life of other men, and there is no saying, in the absence
of positive experience of an authentic kind, — for there
are few active examples in our scriptures, and the Bud-
dhistic examples are legendary,^ — what the effects might
be : they might conceivably transform the world.
Psychologically and in principle, the precept * Love
your enemies ' is not self -contradictory. It is merely the
extreme limit of a kind of magnanimity with which, in
the shape of pitying tolerance of our oppressors, we are
fairly familiar. Yet if radically followed, it would in-
volve such a breach with our instinctive springs of action
as a whole, and with the present world's arrangements,
^ J. Patterson's Life of Richard Weaver, pp. 66-^, abridged.
' Aa where the fatnre Buddha, incarnated as a hare, jumps into the fire
to cook himself for a meal for a beggar — having previously shaken him-
self three times, so that none of the insects in his fur should perish with
him.
284 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
that a critical point would practically be passed^ and we
should be bom into another kingdom of being. Reli-
gious emotion makes us feel that other kingdom to be
close at hand, within our reach.
The inhibition of instinctive repugnance is proved not
only by the showing of love to enemies, but by the show-
ing of it to any one who is personally loathsome. In the
annals of saintliness we find a curious mixture of motives
impelUng in this direction. Asceticism plays its part ; and
along with charity pure and simple, we find humility or
the desire to disclaim distinction and to grovel on the
common level before God. Certainly all three principles
were at work when Francis of Assisi and Ignatius Loyola
exchanged their garments with those of filthy beggars.
All three are at work when religious persons consecrate
their lives to the care of leprosy or other peculiarly un-
pleasant diseases. The nursing of the sick is a function
to which the religious seem strongly drawn, even apart
from the fact that church traditions set that way. But in
the annals of this sort of charity we find fantastic excesses
of devotion recorded which are only explicable by the
frenzy of self-immolation simultaneously aroused. Francis
of Assisi kisses his lepers ; Margaret Mary Alacoque, Fran-
cis Xavier, St. John of God, and others are said to have
cleansed the sores and ulcers of their patients with their
respective tongues ; and the lives of such saints as Eliza-
beth of Hungary and Madame de Chantal are full of a
sort of reveling in hospital purulence, disagreeable to
read of, and which makes us admire and shudder at the
same time.
So much for the human love aroused by the faith-
state. Let me next speak of the Equanimity, Resignation,
Fortitude, and Patience which it brings.
SAINTLINESS 285
^ A paradise of inward tranquillity ' seems to be faith's
usual result ; and it is easy, even without being religious
one's self 9 to understand this. A moment back, in treat-
ing of the sense of God's presence, I spoke of the unac*
countable feeling of safety which one may then have.
And, indeed, how can it possibly fail to steady the nerves,
to cool the fever, and appease the fret, if one be sensibly
conscious that, no matter what one's difficulties for the
moment may appear to be, one's life as a whole is in
the keeping of a power whom one can absolutely trust ?
In deeply reUgious men the abandonment of self to this
power is passionate. Whoever not only says, but feeUy
^ God's will be done,' is mailed against every weakness ;
and the whole historic array of martyrs, missionaries, and
religious reformers is there to prove the tranquil-minded-
ness, under naturally agitating or distressing circum-
stances, which self -surrender brings.
The temper of the tranquil-mindedness differs, of
course, according as the person is of a constitutionally
sombre or of a constitutionally cheerful cast of mind.
In the sombre it partakes more of resignation and sub-
mission ; in the cheerful it is a joyous consent. As an
example of the former temper, I quote part of a letter
from Professor Lagneau, a venerated teacher of philosophy
who lately died, a great invalid, at Paris : —
** My life, for the success of which you send good wishes,
will be what it is able to be. I ask nothing from it, I expect
nothing from it. For long years now I exist, think, and act,
and am worth what I am worth, only through the despair which
is my sole strength and my sole foundation. May it preserve for
me, even in these last trials to which I am coming, the courage
to do without the desire of deliverance. I ask nothing more
from the Source whence all strength cometh, and if that is
granted, your wishes will have been accomplished." ^
^ BuUetin de rUnion poar 1' Action Morale, September, 1891.
286 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
Tbere is something pathetic and fatalistic about th
but the power of such a tone as a protection against o|
ward shocks is manifest. Pascal is another Frenchml
of pessimistic natural temperament. He expresses slill
more amply the temper of self-surrendering submissi\9-
ness : —
" Deliver me, Lord," he writes in his prayers, " from the sal-
ness at my proper suffering which self-love might g^ve, but pi^
into me a sadness like your own. Let my sufferings appeae
your choler. Make them an occasion for my conversion and
salvation. I ask you neither for health nor for sickness, for
life nor for death ; but that you may dispose of my health and
my sickness, my life and my death, for your glory, for my sal-
vation, and for the use of the Church and of your saints, of
whom I would by your grace be one. You alone know what is
expedient for me ; you are the sovereign master ; do with me
according to your will. Give to me, or take away from me, only
conform my will to yours. I know but one thing. Lord, that
it is good to follow you, and bad to offend you. Apart from
that, I know not what is good or bad in anything. I know not
which is most profitable to me, health or sickness, wealth or
poverty, nor anything else in the world. That discernment is
beyond the power of men or angels, and is hidden among the
secrets of your Providence, which I adore, but do not seek to
fathom." 1
When we reach more optimistic temperaments, the
resignation grows less passive. Examples are sown so
broadcast throughout history that I might well pass on
without citation. As it is, I snatch at the first that oc-
curs to my mind. Madame Guyon, a frail creature phy-
sically, was yet of a happy native disposition. She went
through many perils with admirable serenity of soul.
After being sent to prison for heresy, —
" Some of my friends," she writes, " wept bitterly at the
hearing of it, but such was my state of acquiescence and resig-
^ B. Pascal : Fri^eB poar les Maladies, §§ ziii., xiv., abridged.
SAINTLINESS 287
nation that it failed to draw any tears from me. • . . There
appeared to be in me then, as I find it to be in me now, such
an entire loss of what regards myself, that any of my own
interests gave me little pain or pleasure ; ever wanting to will
or wish for myself only the very thing which God does." In
another place she writes : ^' We all of ns came near perishing
in a river which we found it necessary to pass. The carriage
sank in the quicksand. Others who were with us threw them-
selves out in excessive fright. But I found my thoughts so
much taken up with God that I had no distinct sense of danger.
It is true that the thought of being drowned passed across my
mind, but it cost no other sensation or reflection in me than
this — that I felt quite contented and willing it were so, if it
were my heavenly Father's choice." Sailing from Nice to
Genoa, a storm keeps her eleven days at sea. ** As the irritated
waves dashed round us," she writes, ^^ I could not help experi-
encing a certain degree of satisfaction in my mind. I pleased
myself with thinking that those mutinous billows, under the
command of Him who does all things rightly, might probably
furnish me with a watery grave. Perhaps I carried the point
too far, in the pleasure which I took in thus seeing myself
beaten and bandied by the swelling waters. Those who were
with me took notice of my intrepidity." ^
The contempt of danger which religious enthusiasm pro-
duces may be even more buoyant still. I take an example
from that charming recent autobiography, " With Christ
at Sea," by Frank Bullen. A couple of days after he
went through the conversion on shipboard of which he
there gives an account, —
" It was blowing stiffly," he writes, " and we were carrying
a press of canvas to get north out of the bad weather. Shortly
after four bells we hauled down the flying-jib, and I sprang
out astride the boom to furl it. I was sitting astride the boom
when suddenly it gave way with me. The sail slipped through
my fingers, and I fell backwards, hanging head downwards
^ From Thomas C. Upham*8 Life and Religious Opinions and Experiences
of Madame de la Mothe Guyon, New York, 1877, ii. 48, i. 141, 413, abridged.
288 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
over the seething tumult of shining foam under the ship's bowS|
suspended by one foot. But I felt only high exultation in my
certainty of eternal life. Although death was divided from
me by a hair*s breadth, and I was acutely conscious of the fact,
it gave me no sensation but joy. I suppose I could have hung
there no longer than five seconds, but in that time I lived a
whole age of delight. But my body asserted itself, and with a
desperate gymnastic effort I regained the boom. How I furled
the sail I don't know, but I sang at the utmost pitch of my
voice praises to God that went pealing out over the dark waste
of waters." ^
The annals of martyrdom are of course the signal field
of triumph for religious imperturbability. Let me cite
as an example the statement of a humble sufferer^ perse-
cuted as a Huguenot under Louis XIV. : —
^^ They shut all the doors," Blanche Gamond writes, ^^ and I
saw six women, each with a bunch of willow rods as thick as
the hand could hold, and a yard long. He gave me the order,
*' Undress yourself,' which I did. He said, *' You are leaving on
your shift ; you must take it off.' They had so little patience
that they took it off themselves, and I was naked from the
waist up. They brought a cord with which they tied me to a
beam in the kitchen. They drew the cord tight with all their
strength and asked me, ^ Does it hurt you? ' and then they dis-
charged their fury upon me, exclaiming as they struck me,
* Pray now to your God.' It was the Roulette woman who held
this language. But at this moment I received the greatest con-
solation that I can ever receive in my life, since I had the
honor of being whipped for the name of Christ, and in addition
of being crowned with his mercy and his consolations. Why
can I not write down the inconceivable influences, consolations,
and peace which I felt interiorly ? To understand them one
must have passed by the same trial ; they were so great that I
was ravislied, for there where afflictions abound grace is given
superabundantly. In vain the women cried, ^ We must double
our blows ; she does not feel them, for she neither speaks nor
^ Op. oit, London, 1901, p. 130.
SAINTIJNESS 289
cries.' And how should I have cried, since I was swooning
with happiness within ? " ^
The transition from tenseness, self-responsibility, and
worry, to equanimity, receptivity, and peace, is the most
wonderful of all those shiftings of inner equilibrium,
those changes of the personal centre of energy, which I
have analyzed so often ; and the chief wonder of it is
that it so often comes about, not by doing, but by simply
relaxing and throwing the burden down. This abandon-
ment of self-responsibility seems to be the fundamental
act in specifically religious, as distinguished from moral
practice. It antedates theologies and is independent of
philosophies. Mind-cure, theosophy, stoicism, ordinary
neurological hygiene, insist on it as emphatically as
Christianity does, and it is capable of entering into closest
marriage with every speculative creed.^ Christians who
have it strongly live in what is caUed ^ recollection,' and
are never anxious about the future, nor worry over the
outcome of the day. Of Saint Catharine of Genoa it is
said that ^^ she took cog^nizance of things, only as they
were presented to her in succession, moment by mx)menty
To her holy soul, ^^ the divine moment was the present
moment, . . . and when the present moment was esti-
mated in itself and in its relations, and when the duty
that was involved in it was accomplished, it was permitted
to pass away as if it had never been, and to give way to
the facts and duties of the moment which came after." ^
^ Clapar^e et GoTT : Deax Heroines de la Foi, Paris, 1880, p. 112.
* Compare these three different statements of it : A. P. Call : As a Mat-
ter of Coarse, Boston, 1894 ; H. W. Dresser : Living hy the Spirit, New
York and London, 1900 ; H. W. Smfth : The Christian's Secret of a Happy
Life, published by the Willard Tract Repository, and now in thousands of
hands.
* T. C. Upham: Life of Madame Catharine Adoma, 8d ed., New York,
18H PP- 158, 172-174.
290 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
Hinduism, mind-cure, and theosophy all lay great em-
phasis upon this concentration of the consciousness upon
the moment at hand.
The next religious symptom which I will note is what
I have called Purity of Life. The saintly person becomes
exceedingly sensitive to inner inconsistency or discord,
and mixture and confusion grow intolerable. All the
mind's objects and occupations must be ordered with
reference to the special spiritual excitement which is now
its keynote. Whatever is unspiritual taints the pure
water of the soul and is repugnant. Mixed with this
exaltation of the moral sensibilities there is also an ardor
of sacrifice, for the beloved deity's sake, of everything
unworthy of him. Sometimes the spiritual ardor is so
sovereign that purity is achieved at a stroke — we have
seen examples. Usually it is a more gradual conquest.
Billy Bray's account of his abandonment of tobacco is a
good example of the latter form of achievement.
** I had been a smoker as well as a drunkard, and I used to
love my tobacco as much as I loved my meat, and I would rather
go down into the mine without my dinner than without my pipe.
In the days of old, the Lord spoke by the mouths of his ser-
vants, the prophets ; now he speaks to us by the spirit of his Son.
I had not only the feeling part of religion, but I could hear the
small, still voice within speaking to me. When I took the pipe
to smoke, it would be applied within, * It is an idol, a lust ; wor-
ship the Lord with clean lips.' So, I felt it was not right to
smoke. The Lord also sent a woman to convince me. I was
one day in a house, and I took out my pipe to light it at the fire,
and Mary Hawke — for that was the woman's name — said,
'Do you not feel it is wrong to smoke?' I said that I felt
something inside telling me that it was an idol, a lust, and she
said that was the Lord. Then I said, ' Now, I must give it up,
for the Lord is telling me of it inside, and the woman outside,
SAINTLINESS 291
80 the tobacco must go, love it as I may.' There and then I
took the tobacco out of my pocket, and threw it into the fire,
and put the pipe under my foot, ^ ashes to ashes, dust to dust.'
And I have not smoked since. I found it hard to break off
old habits, but I cried to the Lord for help, and he gave me
strength, for he has said, *' Call upon me in the day of trouble,
and I will deliver thee.' The day after I gave up smoking I
had the toothache so bad that I did not know what to do. I
thought this was owing to giving up the pipe, but I said I would
never smoke again, if I lost every tooth in my head. I said,
^ Lord, thou hast told us My yoke is easy and my burden is
light,' and when I said that, all the pain left me. Sometimes
the thought of the pipe would come back to me very strong ; but
the Lord strengthened me against the habit, and, bless his
name, I have not smoked since."
Bray's biographer writes that after he had given up smok-
ing, he thought that he would chew a little, but he conquered
this dirty habit, too. ** On one occasion," Bray said, '^ when at
a prayer-meeting at Hicks Mill, I heard the Lord say to me,
^ Worship me with clean lips.' So, when we got up from our
knees, I took the quid out of my mouth and ^ whipped 'en *
[threw it] under the form. But, when we got on our knees
again, I put another quid into my mouth. Then the Lord said
to me again, *' Worship me with clean lips.' So I took the quid
out of my mouth, and whipped 'en under the form again, and
said, *' Yes, Lord, I will.' From that time I gave up chewing
as well as smoking, and have been a free man."
The ascetic forms which the impulse for veracity and
purity of life may take are often pathetic enough. The
early Quakers, for example, had hard battles to wage
against the worldliness and insincerity of the ecclesiasti-
cal Christianity of their time. Yet the battle that cost
them most wounds was probably that which they fought
in defense of their own right to social veracity and sincer-
ity in their thee-ing and thou-ing, in not doffing the hat
or giving titles of respect. It was laid on George Fox
292 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
that these conveutional customs were a lie and a sham,
and the whole body of his followers thereupon renounced
them, as a sacrifice to truth, and so that their acts and
the spirit they professed might be more in accord.
'^ When the Lord sent me into the world," says Fox in his
Journal, ^^ he forbade me to put off my hat to any, high or low :
and I was required to ^ thee ' and ^ thou ' all men and women,
without any respect to rich or poor, great or small. And as I
traveled up and down, I was not to bid people Good-morning,
or Good-evening, neither might I bow or scrape with my leg to
any one. This made the sects and professions rage. Oh ! the
rage that was in the priests, magistrates, professors, and people
of all sorts : and especially in priests and professors : for though
^ thou ' to a single person was according to their accidence and
grammar rules, and according to the Bible, yet they could not
bear to hear it : and because I could not put off my hat to them,
it set them all into a rage. . . . Oh ! the scorn, heat, and fury
that arose ! Oh ! the blows, punchings, beatings, and imprison-
ments that we underwent for not putting off our hats to men !
Some had their hats violently plucked off and thrown away, so
that they quite lost them. The bad language and evil usage
we received on this account is hard to be expressed, besides the
danger we were sometimes in of losing our lives for this mat-
ter, and that by the great professors of Christianity, who thereby
discovered they were not true believers. And though it was
but a small thing in the eye of man, yet a wonderful confusion
it brought among all professors and priests : but, blessed be
the Lord, many came to see the vanity of that custom of put-
ting off hats to men, and felt the weight of Truth's testimony
against it."
In the autobiography of Thomas Mwood, an early
Quaker, who at one time was secretary to John Milton, we
find an exquisitely quaint and candid account of the trials
he underwent both at home and abroad, in following
Fox's canons of sincerity. The anecdotes are too lengthy
for citation ; but Elwood sets down his manner of feeling
SAINTLINESS 2d3
about these things in a shorter passage, which I will
quote as a characteristic utterance of spiritual sensibil-
ity:—
^*By this divine light, then,'' says Elwood, ^^I saw that
though I had not the evil of the common undeanliness, debauch-
ery, prof aneness, and pollutions of the world to put away, be-
cause I had, through the great goodness of God and a civil edu-
cation, been preserved out of those grosser evils, yet I had many
other evils to put away and to cease from ; some of which were
not by the world, which lies in wickedness (1 John v. 19), ac-
counted evils, but by the light of Christ were made manifest to
me to be evils, and as such condemned in me.
^^ As particularly those fruits and effects of pride that dis-
cover themselves in the vanity and superfluity of apparel ; which
I took too much delight in. This evil of my doings I was
required to put away and cease from ; and judgment lay upon
me till I did so.
^^ I took off from my apparel those unnecessary trimmings
of lace, ribbons, and useless buttons, which had no real service,
but were set on only for that which was by mistake called
ornament ; and I ceased to wear ring^.
^^ Again, the giving of flattering titles to men between whom
and me there was not any relation to which such titles could be
pretended to belong. This was an evil I had been much
addicted to, and was accounted a ready artist in ; therefore
this evil also was I required to put away and cease from. So
that thenceforward I durst not say, Sir, Master, My Lord,
Madam (or My Dame) ; or say Your Servant to any one to
whom I did not stand in the real relation of a servant, which I
had never done to any.
^* Again, respect of persons, in uncovering the head and bow-
ing the knee or body in salutation, was a practice I had been
much in the use of ; and this, being one of the vain customs of
the world, introduced by the spirit of the world, instead of the
true honor which this is a false representation of, and used in
deceit as a token of respect by persons one to another, who
bear no real respect one to another ; and besides this, being a
294 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
type and a proper emblem of that divine honor which all ought
to pay to Almighty God, and which all of all sorts, who take
upon them the Christian name, appear in when they ofiFer their
prayers to him, and therefore should not be given to men ; — I
found this to be one of those evils which I had been too long
doing ; therefore I was now required to put it away and oease
from it.
^^ Again, the corrupt and unsound form of speaking in the
plural number to a single person, you to one, instead of thou^
contrary to the pure, plain, and single language of truth, thou
to one, and you to more than one, which had always been used
by God to men, and men to God, as well as one to another,
from the oldest record of time till corrupt men, for corrupt
ends, in later and corrupt times, to flatter, fawn, and work
upon the corrupt nature in men, brought in that false and
senseless way of speaking you to one, which has since corrupted
the modem languages, and hath greatly debased the spirits and
depraved the manners of men ; — this evil custom I had been
as forward in as others, and this I was now called out of and
required to cease from.
*^ These and many more evil customs which had sprung up
in the night of darkness and general apostasy from the truth
and true religion were now, by the inshining of this pure ray
of divine light in my conscience, gradually discovered to me to
be what I ought to cease from, shun, and stand a witness
against." ^
These early Quakers were Puritans indeed. The slight-
est incoDsisteney between profession and deed jarred some
of them to active protest. John Woolman writes in his
diary: —
^^ In these journeys I have been where much cloth hath been
dyed; and have at sundry times walked over ground where
much of their dyestuffs has drained away. This hath produced
a longing in my mind that people might come into cleanness
of spirit, cleanness of person, and cleanness about their houses
^ The History of Thomas Elwood, written by Himself, London, 1885,
pp. 32-^
SAINTLINESS 295
and garments. Dyes being invented partly to please the eye,
and partly to hide dirt, I have felt in this weak state, when
traveling in dirtiness, and affected with unwholesome scents, a
strong desire that the nature of dyeing cloth to hide dirt may
be more fully considered.
^* Washing our garments to keep them sweet is cleanly, but
it is' the opposite to real cleanliness to hide dirt in them.
Through giving way to hiding dirt in our garments a spirit
which would conceal that which is disagreeable is strengthened.
Real cleanliness becometh a holy people ; but hiding that which
is not clean by coloring our garments seems contrary to the
sweetness of sincerity. Through some sorts of dyes cloth is
rendered less useful. And if the value of dyestuffs, and ex-
pense of dyeing, and the damage done to cloth, were all added
together, and that cost applied to keeping all sweet and clean,
how much more would real cleanliness prevail
*^ Thinking often on these things, the use of hats and gar-
ments dyed with a dye hurtful to them, and wearing more
clothes in summer than are useful, grew more uneasy to me ;
believing them to be customs which have not their foundation
in pure wisdom. The apprehension of being singular from my
beloved friends was a strait upon me ; and thus I continued in
the use of some things, c(Mitrary to my judgment, about nine
months. Then I thought of getting a hat the natural color of
the fur, but the apprehension of being looked upon as one affect-
ing singularity felt uneasy to me. On this account I was under
close exercise of mind in the time of our general spring meet-
ing in 1762, g^reatly desiring to be rightly directed ; when, being
deeply bowed in spirit before the Lord, I was made willing to
submit to what I apprehended was required of me ; and when
I returned home, got a hat of the natural color of the fur.
'^ In attending meetings, this singularity was a trial to me,
and more especially at this time, as white hats were used by
some who were fond of following the changeable modes of
dress, and as some friends, who knew not from what motives I
wore it, grew shy of me, I felt my way for a time shut up in
the exercise of the ministry. Some friends were apprehensive
that my wearing such a hat savored of an affected singularity :
296 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
those who spoke with me in a friendly way, I generally informed
in a few words, that I believed my wearing it was not in my
own will."
When the craving for moral consistency and purity is
developed to this degree, the subject may well find the
outer world too full of shocks to dwell in, and can unify
his life and keep his soul unspotted only by withdrawing
from it. That law which impels the artist to achieve
harmony in his composition by simply dropping out what-
ever jars, or suggests a discord, rules also in the spiritual
life. To omit, says Stevenson, is the one art in litera-
ture : ^^ If I knew how to omit, I should ask no other
knowledge." And life, when full of disorder and slack-
ness and vague superfluity, can no more have what we
call character than literature can have it under similar
conditions. So monasteries and communities of sympa-
thetic devotees open their doors, and in their changeless
order, characterized by omissions quite as much as con-
stituted of actions, the holy-minded person finds that
inner smoothness and cleanness which it is torture to
him to feel violated at every turn by the discordancy
and brutality of secular existence.
That the scrupulosity of purity may be carried to a
fantastic extreme must be admitted. In this it resembles
Asceticism, to which further symptom of saintliness we
had better turn next. The adjective * ascetic * is applied
to conduct originating on diverse psychological levels,
which I might as well begin by distinguishing from one
another.
1. Asceticism may be a mere expression of organic
hardihood, disgusted with too much ease.
2. Temperance in meat and drink, simplicity of ap-
SAINTLINESS 297
parel, chastity^ and non-pampering of the body generally^
may be fruits of the love of purity, shocked by whatever
savors of the sensual.
3. They may also be fruits of love, that is, they may
appeal to the subject in the light of sacrifices which he
is happy in making to the Deity whom he acknowledges.
4. Again, ascetic mortifications and torments may be
due to pessimistic feelings about the self, combined with
theological beliefs concerning expiation. The devotee
may feel that he is buying himself free, or escaping
worse sufferings hereafter, by doing penance now.
5. In psychopathic persons, mortifications may be
entered on irrationally, by a sort of obsession or fixed
idea which comes as a challenge and must be worked
off, because only thus does the subject get his interior
consciousness feeling right again.
6. Finally, ascetic exercises may in rarer instances be
prompted by genuine perversions of the bodily sensibility,
in consequence of which normally pain-giving stimuli are
actually felt as pleasures.
I will try to g^ve an instance under each of these heads
in turn ; but it is not easy to get them pure, for in cases
pronounced enough to be immediately classed as ascetic,
several of the assigned motives usually work together.
Moreover, before citing any examples at all, I must in-
vite you to some general psychological considerations
which apply to all of them alike.
A strange moral transformation has within the past
century swept over our Western world. We no longer
think that we are called on to face physical pain with
equanimity. It is not expected of a man that he should
either endure it or inflict much of it, and to Usten to
the recital of cases of it makes our flesh creep morally
as well as physically. The way in which our ancestors
&98 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
looked upon pain as an eternal ingredient of the world's
order, and both caused and suffered it as a matter-of-
course portion of their day's work, fills us with amaze-
ment. We wonder that any human beings could have
been so callous. The result of this historic alteration is
that even in the Mother Church herself, where ascetic
discipline has such a fixed traditional prestige as a factor
of merit, it has largely come into desuetude, if not dis-
credit. A believer who flagellates or ^ macerates ' him-
self to-day arouses more wonder and fear than emulation.
Many Catholic writers who admit that the times have
changed in this respect do so resignedly ; and even add
that perhaps it is as well not to waste feelings in regret-
ting the matter, for to return to the heroic corporeal
discipline of ancient days might be an extravagance.
Where to seek the easy and the pleasant seems instinc-
tive — and instinctive it appears to be in man ; any de-
liberate tendency to pursue the hard and painful as such
and for their own sakes might well strike one as purely
abnormal. Nevertheless, in moderate degrees it is natural
and even usual to human nature to court the arduous. It
is only the extreme manifestations of the tendency that
can be regarded as a paradox.
The psychological reasons for this lie near the surface.
When we drop abstractions and take what we call our
will in the act, we see that it is a very complex function.
It involves both stimulations and inhibitions ; it follows
generalized habits ; it is escorted by reflective criticisms ;
and it leaves a good or a bad taste of itself behind,
according to the manner of the performance. The result
is that, quite apart from the immediate pleasure which
any sensible experience may give us, our own general
moral attitude in procuring or undergoing the experience
brings with it a secondary satisfaction or distaste. Some
SAINTLINESS 299
men and women, indeed, there are who can live on smiles
and the word ^yes' forever. But for others (indeed for
most), this is too tepid and relaxed a moral climate. Pas-
sive happiness is slack and insipid, and soon grows mawk-
ish and intolerable. Some austerity and wintry negativity,
some roughness, danger, stringency, and effort, some
^ no I no ! ' must be mixed in, to produce the sense of an
existence with character and texture and power. The
range of individual differences in this respect is enor-
mous ; but whatever the mixture of yeses and noes may
be, the person is infallibly aware when he has struck it
in the right proportion for him. This, he feels, is my
proper vocation, this is the optimum^ the law, the life for
me to live. Here I find the degree of equilibrium, safety,
calm, and leisure which I need, or here I find the chal-
lenge, passion, fight, and hardship without which my
soul's energy expires.
Every individual soul, in short, like every individual
machine or organism, has its own best conditions of effi-
ciency. A given machine will run best under a certain
steam-pressure, a certain amperage ; an organism under a
certain diet, weight, or exercise. You seem to do best,
I heard a doctor say to a patient, at about 140 milli-
meters of arterial tension. And it is just so with our
sundry souls : some are happiest in calm weather ; some
need the sense of tension, of strong volition, to make
them feel alive and well. For these latter souls, whatever
is gained from day to day must be paid for by sacrifice
and inhibition, or else it comes too cheap and has no zest.
Now when characters of this latter sort become reli-
gious, they are apt to turn the edge of their need of effort
and negativity against their natural self; and the ascetic
life gets evolved as a consequence.
When Professor Tyndall in one of his lectures tells us
300 THE VARIETIES OF REUGIOUS EXPERIENCE
that Thomas Carlyle put him into his bath-tub every
morning of a freezing Berlin winter, he proclaimed one
of the lowest grades of asceticism. Even without Car-
lyle, most of us find it necessary to our soul's health to
start the day with a rather cool immersion. A little far-
ther along the scale we get such statements as this, from
one of my correspondents, an agnostic : —
^^ Often at night in my warm bed I would feel ashamed to
depend so on the warmth, and whenever the thought would
come over me I would have to get up, no matter what time of
night it was, and stand for a minute in the cold, just so as to
prove my manhood."
Such cases as these belong simply to our head 1. In
the next case we probably have a mixture of heads 2
and 3 — the asceticism becomes far more systematic and
pronounced. The writer is a Protestant, whose sense of
moral energy could doubtless be gratified on no lower
terms, and I take his case from Starbuck's manuscript
collection.
^^ I practiced fasting and mortification of the flesh. I secretly
made burlap shirts, and put the burrs next the skin, and wore
pebbles in my shoes. I would spend nights flat on my back on
the floor without any covering."
The Roman Church has organized and codified all this
sort of thing, and given it a market-value in the shape of
^ merit.' But we see the cultivation of hardship cropping
out under every sky and in every faith, as a spontaneous
need of character. Thus we read of Channing, when
first settled as a Unitarian minister, that —
^^ He was now more simple than ever, and seemed to have
become incapable of any form of self-indulgence. He took the
smallest room in the house for his study, though he might easily
have commanded one more light, airy, and in every way more
suitable ; and chose for his sleeping chamber an attic which he
SAINTLIN£SS 301
shared with a younger brother. The furniture of the latter
might have answered for the cell of an anchorite, and consisted
of a hard mattress on a cot-bedstead, plain wooden chairs and
table, with matting on the floor. It was without fire, and to
cold he was throughout life extremely sensitive ; but he never
complained or appeared in any way to be conscious of incon-
venience. ^ I recollect,' says his brother, ^ after one most severe
night, that in the morning he sportively thus alluded to his
suffering : ^^ If my bed were my country, I should be somewhat
like Bonaparte : I have no control except over the part which
I occupy; the instant I move, frost takes possession."' In
sickness only would he change for the time his apartment
and accept a few comforts. The dress too that he habituaUy
adopted was of most inferior quality ; and garments were con-
stantly worn which the world would call mean, though an almost
feminine neatness preserved him from the least appearanoe
of neglect." ^
Channing's asceticism, such as it was, was evidently a
compound of hardihood and love of purity. The demo-
cracy which is an offshoot of the enthusiasm of humanity,
and of which I will speak later under the head of the
cult of poverty, doubtless bore also a share. Certainly
there was no pessimistic element in his case. In the next
case we have a strongly pessimistic element, so that it
belongs under head 4. John Gennick was Methodism's
first lay preacher. In 1735 he was convicted of sin,
while walking in Cheapside, —
^^ And at once left off song-singing, card-playing, and attend-
ing theatres. Sometimes he wished to go to a popish monastery,
to spend his life in devout retirement. At other times he longed
to live in a cave, sleeping on fallen leaves, and feeding on
forest fruits. He fasted long and often, and prayed nine times
a day. . . . Fancying dry bread too great an indulgence for so
great a sinner as himself, he began to feed on potatoes, acorns,
crabs, and grass ; and often wished that he could live on roots
^ Memoirs of W. £. Channing, BoBton, 1840, L 196.
802 THE VABIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
and herbs. At length, in 1737, he found peace with God, and
went on his way rejoicing." ^
In this poor man we have morbid melancholy and f ear^
and the sacrifices made are to purge out sin^ and to buy
safety. The hopelessness of Christian theology in respect
of tlie flesh and the natural man generally has, in sys-
tematizing fear, made of it one tremendous incentive to
self-mortification. It would be quite unfair, however, in
spite of the fact that this incentive has often been worked
in a mercenary way for hortatory purposes, to call it a
mercenary incentive. The impulse to expiate and do
penance is, in its first intention, far too immediate and
spontaneous an expression of self-despair and anxiety to
be obnoxious to any such reproach. In the form of lov-
ing sacrifice, of spending all we have to show our devo-
tion, ascetic discipline of the severest sort may be the
fruit of highly optimistic religious feeling.
M. Yianney, the cur^ of Ars, was a French country
priest, whose holiness was exemplary. We read in his
life the following account of his inner need of sacri-
fice: —
^^ ^ On this path/ M. Yianney said, * it is only the first step
that costs. There is in mortification a balm and a savor with-
out which one cannot live when once one has made their ac-
quaintance. There is but one way in which to give one's self
to God, — that is, to give one's self entirely, and to keep nothing
for one's self. The little that one keeps is only good to trouble
one and make one suffer.' Accordingly he imposed it on him-
self that he should never smell a flower, never drink when
parched with thirst, never drive away a fly, never show disgust
before a repugnant object, never complain of anything that had
to do with his personal comfort, never sit down, never lean
upon his elbows when he was kneeling. The Cur^ of Ars was
very sensitive to cold, but he would never take means to pro-
1 L. Tterman : The life and Times of the Rev. John Weslej, L 274.
^ SAINTLINESS 303
tect himself against it. During a very severe winter, one of his
missionaries contrived a false floor to his confessional and placed
a metal case of hot water beneath. The trick succeeded, and
the Saint was deceived : * God is very good/ he said with
emotion. * This year, through all the cold, my feet have always
been warm.' " ^
In this case the spontaneous impulse to make sacrifices
for the pure love of God was probably the uppermost
conscious motive. We may class it^ then, under our head
3. Some authors think that the impulse to sacrifice is
the main religious phenomenon. It is a prominent^ a
universal phenomenon certainly, and Ues deeper than
any special creed. Here, for instance, is what seems to
be a spontaneous example of it, simply expressing what
seemed right at the time between the individual and his
Maker. Cotton Mather, the New England Puritan divine,
is generally reputed a rather grotesque pedant ; yet what
is more touchingly simple than his relation of what hap-
pened when his wife came to die?
** When I saw to what a point of resignation I was now
called of the Lord," he says, ^^ I resolved, with his help, therein
to glorify him. So, two hours before my lovely consort expired,
I kneeled by her bedside, and I took into my two bands a dear
hand, the dearest in the world. With her thus in my hands,
I solemnly and sincerely gave her up unto the Lord : and
in token of my real Resignation^ I gently put her out of my
hands, and laid away a most lovely hand, resolving that I would
never touch it more. This was the hardest, and perhaps the
bravest action that ever I did. She . . . told me that she
signed and sealed my act of resignation. And though before
that she called for me continuaUy, she after this never asked
for me any more." ^
> A. MouNiN : Le Cnr^ d'Ars, Vie de M. J. B. M. Tiannej, 1864, p. 545,
abridged.
' B. Wkndell : Cotton Matheri New York, no date, p. 198.
304 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
Father Yianney's asceticism taken in its totality was
simply the result of a permanent flood of high spiritual
enthusiasm, longing to make proof of itself. The Roman
Church has, in its incomparable fashion, collected all the
motives towards asceticism together, and so codified them
that any one wishing to pursue Christian perfection may
find a practical system mapped out for him in any one
of a number of ready-made manuals.^ The dominant
Church notion of perfection is of course the negative
one of avoidance of sin. Sin proceeds from concupiscence,
and concupiscence from our carnal passions and tempta-
tions, chief of which are pride, sensuality in all its forms,
and the loves of worldly excitement and possession. All
these sources of sin must be resisted ; and discipline and
austerities are a most efficacious mode of meeting them.
Hence there are always in these books chapters on self-
mortification. But whenever a procedure is codified, the
more delicate spirit of it evaporates, and if we wish the
undiluted ascetic spirit, — the passion of self-contempt
wreaking itself on the poor flesh, the divine irrationality
of devotion making a sacrificial gift of all it has (its sen-
sibilities, namely) to the object of its adoration, — we must
go to autobiographies, or other individual documents.
Saint John of the Cross, a Spanish mystic who flour^
ished — or rather who existed, for there was little that
suggested flourishing about him — in the sixteenth cen-
tury, will supply a passage suitable for our purpose.
" First of all, carefully excite in yourself an habitual affec-
tionate will in all things to imitate Jesus Christ. If anything
agreeable offers itself to your senses, yet does not at the same
* That of the earlier Jesuit, Rodrigxtez, which has been transUtted into
all languages, is one of the best known. A oonyenient modem manual, very
well put together, is L'Asc^tique Chr^tienne, by M. J. Ribbt, Paris, Pous-
sielgue, nouvelle ^tion, 1898.
SAINTLINESS 305
time tend purely to the honor and glory of God, renounce it and
separate yourself from it for the love of Christ, who all his life
long had no other taste or wish than to do the will of his Father
whom he called his meat and nourishment. For example, you
take satisfaction in hearing of things in which the glory of God
bears no part. Deny yourself this satisfaction, mortify your
wish to listen. You take pleasure in seeing objects which do
not raise your mind to God : refuse yourself this pleasure, and
turn away your eyes. The same with conversations and all
other things. Act similarly, so far as you are able, with all the
operations of the senses, striving to make yourself free from
their yokes.
^^ The radical remedy lies in the mortification of the four
great natural passions, joy, hope, fear, and grief. You must
seek to deprive these of every satisfaction and leave them as it
were in darkness and the void. Let your soul therefore turn
always :
^' Not to what is most easy, but to what is hardest ;
** Not to what tastes best, but to what is most distasteful ;
** Not to what most pleases, but to what disgusts ;
*^ Not to matter of consolation, but to matter for desolation
rather ;
*^ Not to rest, but to labor ;
** Not to desire the more, but the less ;
*^ Not to aspire to what is highest and most precious, but to
what is lowest and most contemptible ;
^^ Not to will anything, but to will nothing ;
^^ Not to seek the best in everything, but to seek the worst, so
that you may enter for the love of Christ into a complete desti-
tution, a perfect poverty of spirit, and an absolute renunciation
of everything in this world.
^^ Embrace these practices with all the energy of your soul
and you will find in a short time great delights and unspeakable
consolations.
^^ Despise yourself, and wish that others should despise you.
^^ Speak to your own disadvantage, and desire others to do the
same;
*^ Conceive a low opinion of yourself, and find it good when
others hold the same ;
306 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
*^ To enjoy the taste of all things, have no taste for anything.
** To know all things, learn to know nothing.
*^ To possess all things, resolve to possess nothing.
*^ To be all things, be willing to be nothing.
*^ To get to where you have no taste for anything, go throagh
whatever experiences you have no taste for.
^^ To learn to know nothing, go whither you are ignorant.
*^ To reach what you possess not, go whithersoever you own
nothing.
*^ To be what you are not, experience what you are not.*'
These later verses play with that vertigo of self-contra-
diction which is so dear to mysticism. Those that come
next are completely mystical, for in them Saint John
passes from God to the more metaphysical notion of the
AIL
^^ When you stop at one thing, you cease to open yourself to
the All.
^* For to come to the All you must give up the All.
^^ And if you should attain to owning the All, you must own
it, desiring Nothing.
^'In this spoliation, the soul finds its tranquillity and rest.
Profoundly established in the centre of its own nothingness, it
can be assailed by naught that comes from below ; and since
it no longer desires anything, what comes from above cannot
depress it; for its desires alone are the causes of its woes." ^
And now, as a more concrete example of heads 4 and
5, in fact of all our heads together, and of the irrational
extreme to which a psychopathic individual may go in the
line of bodily austerity, I will quote the sincere Suso's
account of his own self-tortures. Suso, you will remem-
ber, was one of the fourteenth century German mystics ;
his autobiography, written in the third person, is a classic
religious document.
^ Saint Jean de la Croec, Vie et (Eayies, Paris, 1893, IL 04, 99,
abridged.
SAINTLINESS 907
** He was in his youth of a temperament full of fire and life ;
and when this began to make itself felt, it was very grievous to
him ; and he sought by many devices how he might bring his
body into subjection. He wore for a long time a hair shirt and
an iron chain, until the blood ran from him, so that he was
obliged to leave them off. He secretly caused an undergarment
to be made for him ; and in the undergarment he had strips of
leather fixed, into which a hundred and fifty brass nails, pointed
and filed sharp, were driven, and the points of the nails were
always turned towards the flesh. He had this garment made
very tight, and so arranged as to go round him and fasten in
front, in order that it might fit the closer to his body, and the
pointed nails might be driven into his flesh ; and it was high
enough to reach upwards to his naveL In this he used to sleep
at night Now in summer, when it was hot, and he was very
tired and ill from his joumeyings, or when he held the office of
lecturer, he would sometimes, as he lay thus in bonds, and
oppressed with toil, and tormented also by noxious insects, cry
aloud and give way to f retf ulness, and twist round and round in
agony, as a worm does when run through with a pointed needle.
It often seemed to him as if he were lying upon an ant-hill,
from the torture caused by the insects; for if he wished to
sleep, or when he had fallen asleep, they vied with one another.^
Sometimes he cried to Almighty Gt>d in the fullness of his
heart : Alas I Gentle God, what a dying is this ! When a
man is killed by murderers or strong beasts of prey it is soon
over ; but I lie dying here under the cruel insects, and yet can-
not die. The nights in winter were never so long, nor was the
summer so hot, as to make him leave off this exercise. On the
contrary, he devised something farther — two leathern loops into
which he put his hands, and fastened one on each side his throat,
and made the fastenings so secure that even if his cell had been
^ ' Inseott,' i. e. Hoe, were an anfailing token of medisBTal sainthood. We
read of Francis of Assisi's sheepskin that ** often a companion of the saint
would take it to the fire to clean and dispediculate it, doing so, as he said,
because the seraphic father himself was no enemj of pedocchiy but on the
contrary kept them on him (le portaya adosso), and held it for an honor and
a glory to wear these celestial pearls in his habit." Quoted by P. Saba-
TIEB : Speculum Perfectionis, etc., PariS| 1898| p. 231, note.
308 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
on fire about him, he could not have helped himself. This he
continued until his hands and arms had become almost tremu-
lous with the strain, and then he devised something else : two
leather gloves ; and he caused a brazier to fit them all over with
sharp-pointed brass tacks, and be used to put them on at night,
in order that if he should try while asleep to throw off the hair
imdergarment, or relieve himself from the gnawings of the vile
insects, the tacks might then stick into his body. And so it
came to pass. If ever he sought to help himself with his hands
in bis sleep, he drove the sharp tacks into his breast, and tore
himself, so that his flesh festered. When after many weeks
the wounds had healed, he tore himself again and made fresh
wounds.
^^He continued this tormenting exercise for about sixteen
years. At the end of this time, when his blood was now chilled,
and the fire of his temperament destroyed, there appeared to
him in a vision on Whitsunday, a messenger from heaven, who
told him that God required this of him no longer. Whereupon
he discontinued it, and threw all these things away into a run-
ning stream."
Suso then tells how, to emulate the sorrows of his crucified
Lord, he made himself a cross with thirty protruding iron
needles and nails. This he bore on his bare back between his
shoulders day and night. ^^ The first time that he stretched out
this cross upon his back his tender frame was struck with terror
at it, and blunted the sharp nails slightly against a stone. But
soon, repenting of this womanly cowardice, he pointed them all
again with a file, and placed once more the cross upon him. It
made his back, where the bones are, bloody and seared. When-
ever he sat down or stood up, it was as if a hedgehog-skin were
on him. If any one touched him unawares, or pushed against
his clothes, it tore him."
Suso next tells of his penitences by means of striking this
cross and forcing the nails deeper into the flesh, and likewise
of his self-seourgings, — a dreadful story, — and then goes on
as follows : " At this same period the Servitor procured an
old castaway door, and be used to lie upon it at night without
any bedclothes to make him comfortable, except that he took off
SAINTLINESS 309
his shoes and wrapped a thick cloak round him. He thus se-
cured for himself a most miserable bed ; for hard pea-stalks lay
in humps under his head, the cross with the sharp nails stuck
into his back, his arms were looked fast in bonds, the horsehair
undergarment was round his loins, and the cloak too was heavy
and the door hard. Thus he lay in wretchedness, afraid to stir,
just like a log, and he would send up many a sigh to God.
**In winter he suffered very much from the frost. If he
stretched out his feet they lay bare on the floor and froze, if he
gathered them up the blood became all on fire in his legs, and
this was great pain. His feet were full of sores, his legs drop-
sical, his knees bloody and seared, his loins covered with scars
from the horsehair, his body wasted, his mouth parched with
intense thirst, and his hands tremulous from weakness. Amid
these torments he spent his nights and days ; and he endured
them all out of the greatness of the love which he bore in
his heart to the Divine and Eternal Wisdom, our Lord Jesus
Christ, whose agonizing sufferings he sought to imitate. After
a time he gave up this penitential exercise of the door, and in-
stead of it he took up his abode in a very small cell, and used
the bench, which was so narrow and short that he could not
stretch himself upon it, as his bed. In this hole, or upon the
door, he lay at night in his usual bonds, for about eight years.
It was also his custom, during the space of twenty-five years,
provided he was staying in the convent, never to go after com-
pline in winter into any warm room, or to the convent stove to
warm himself, no matter how cold it might be, unless he was
obliged to do so for other reasons. Throughout all these years
he never took a bath, either a water or a sweating bath ; and
this he did in order to mortify his comfort-seeking body. He
practiced during a long time such rigid poverty that be would
neither receive nor touch a penny, either with leave or without
it. For a considerable time he strove to attain such a high
degree of purity that he would neither scratch nor touch any
part of his body, save only his hands and feet" ^
^ The Life of the Blessed Henrt Suso, bj Himself, translated by T. F.
Kvox, London, 1865, pp. 56-80, abridged.
310 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
I spare you the recital of poor Suso's self-inflicted tor-
tures from thirst. It is pleasant to know that after his
fortieth year, God showed him by a series of visions that
he had sufficiently broken down the natural man, and
that he mi^t leave these exercises off. His case is dis-
tinctly pathological, but he does not seem to have had
the alleviation, which some ascetics have enjoyed, of an
alteration of sensibility capable of actually turning tor-
ment into a perverse kind of pleasure. Of the founder
of the Sacred Heart order, for example, we read that
*^Her love of pain and suffering was insatiable. . . . She
said that she could cheerfully live till the day of judgment, pro-
vided she might always have matter for suffering for God ; but
that to live a single day without suffering would be intolerable.
She said again that she was devoured with two unassuageable
fevers, one for the holy communion, the other for suffering,
humiliation, and annihilation. * Notliing but pain,' she continu-
ally said in her letters, * makes my life supportable.' " ^
So much for the phenomena to which the ascetic im-
pulse will in certain persons give rise. In the ecclesias-
tically consecrated character three minor branches of
self-mortification have been recognized as indispensable
pathways to perfection. I refer to the chastity, obedi-
ence, and poverty which the monk vows to observe ; and
upon the heads of obedience and poverty I will make a
few remarks.
First, of Obedience. The secular life of our twentieth
century opens with this virtue held in no high esteem.
The duty of the individual to determine his own conduct
and profit or suffer by the consequences seems, on the
1 BouGAUD : Hist, de la bienhenreiise Marguerite Marie, Paris, 1894,
pp. 265, 171. Compare, abo, pp. 386, 387.
SAINTLINESS 311
contrary, to be one of our best rooted contemporary Pro-
testant social ideab. So much so that it is difficult even
imaginatively to comprehend how men possessed of an
inner life of their own could ever have come to think
the subjection of its will to that of other finite creatures
recommendable. I confess that to myself it seems some-
thing of a mystery. Yet it evidently corresponds to a
profound interior need of many persons, and we must do
our best to understand it.
On the lowest possible plane, one sees how the expe-
diency of obedience in a firm ecclesiastical organization
must have led to its being viewed as meritorious. Next,
experience shows that there are times in every one's life
when one can be better counseled by others than by
one's self. Inability to decide is one of the commonest
symptoms of fatigued nerves ; friends who see our
troubles more broadly, often see them more wisely than
we do ; so it is frequently an act of excellent virtue to
consult and obey a doctor, a partner, or a wife. But,
leaving these lower prudential regions, we find, io the
nature of some of the spiritual excitements which we
have been studying, good reasons for idealizing obedi-
ence. Obedienqp may spring from the general reUgious
phenomenon of inner softening and self-surrender and
throwing one's self on higher powers. So saving are
these attitudes felt to be that in themselves, apart from
utility, they become ideally consecrated ; and in obeying
a man whose fallibility we see through thoroughly, we,
nevertheless, may feel much as we do when we resign our
will to that of infinite wisdom. Add self-despair and the
passion of self-crucifixion to this, and obedience becomes
an ascetic sacrifice, agreeable quite irrespective of what-
ever prudential uses it might have.
It is as a sacrifice, a mode of ' mortification/ that
312 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
obedience is primarily conceived by Catholic writers^ a
^^ sacrifice which man offers to God, and of which he is
himself both the priest and the victim. By poverty he
immolates his exterior possessions ; by chastity he immo-
lates his body ; by obedience he completes the sacrifice,
and gives to God all that he yet holds as his own, his two
most precious goods, his intellect and bis will. The sac-
rifice is then complete and unreserved, a genuine holo-
caust, for the entire victim is now consumed for the
honor of God." ' Accordingly, in CathoUc discipKne, we
obey our superior not as mere man, but as the representr
ative of Christ. Obeying God in him by our intention^
obedience is easy. But when the text-book theologians
marshal collectively all their reasons for recommending
it, the mixture sounds to our ears rather odd.
'' One of the great consolations of the monastic life," says a
Jesuit authority, *^ is the assurance we have that in obeying we
can commit no fault. The Superior may commit a fault in
commanding you to do this thing or that, but you are certain
that you commit no fault so long as you obey, because God will
only ask you if you have duly performed what orders you re-
ceived, and if you can furnish a clear account in that respect,
you are absolved entirely. Whether the thingps you did were
opportune, or whether there were not something better that
might have been done, these are questions not asked of you, but
rather of your Superior. The moment what you did was done
obediently, God wipes it out of your account, and charges it to
the Superior. So that Saint Jerome well exclaimed, in cele-
brating the advantages of obedience, ^Oh, sovereign liberty!
Oh, holy and blessed security by which one becomes almost
impeccable 1 '
'' Saint John Climachus is of the same sentiment when he
calls obedience an excuse before God. In fact, when God asks
why you have done this or that, and you reply, it is because I
^ Lejeuxe : Introduction k la Vic Mystiqae, 1899, p. 277. The holocaiut
simile goes back at least as far as Ignatius Loyol9»
SAINTLINESS 313
was so ordered by my Superiors, God wiU ask for no other
excuse. As a passenger in a good vessel with a good pilot
need give himself no farther concern, but may go to sleep in
peace, because the pilot has charge over all, and *' watches for
him ' ; so a religious person who lives under the yoke of obedi-
ence goes to heaven as if while sleeping, that is, while leaning
entirely on the conduct of his Superiors, who are the pilots of
his vessel, and keep watch for him continually. It is no small
thing, of a truth, to be able to cross the stormy sea of life on
the shoulders and in the arms of another, yet that is just the
grace which God accords to those who live under the yoke of
obedience. Their Superior bears all their burdens. ... A
certain g^ve doctor said that he would rather spend his life in
picking up straws by obedience, than by his own responsible
choice busy himself with the loftiest works of charity, because
one is certain of following the will of God in whatever one may
do from obedience, but never certain in the same degree of
anything which we may do of our own proper movement." ^
One should read the letters in which Ignatius Loyola
recommends obedience as the backbone of his order, if
one would gain insight into the full spirit of its cult.^
They are too long to quote ; but Ignatius's belief is so
vividly expressed in a couple of sayings reported by com-
panions that, though they have been so often cited, I
will ask your permission to copy them once more : —
*^ I ought,'' an early biogprapher reports him as saying, ^* on en-
tering religion, and thereafter, to place myself entirely in the
hands of God, and of him who takes His place by His authority.
I ought to desire that my Superior should oblige me to give up
my own judgment, and conquer my own mind. I ought to set
up no difference between one Superior and another, • . • but
recognize them all as equal before God, whose place they filL
For if I distinguish persons, I weaken the spirit of obedience.
> Alfonso Rodriguez, S. J.: Pratiqae de la Perfection Chrtftienne, Part
iii.y Treatise v., eh. x.
* Letters li. aod czz. of the oollection translated into French by Bouix,
ParU, 1870.
314 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
In the hands of my Superior, I must be a soft wax, a thing, from
which he is to require whatever pleases him, be it to write or
receive letters, to speak or not to speak to such a person, or the
like ; and I must put all my fervor in executing zealously and
exactly what I am ordered. I must consider myself as a corpse
which has neither intelligence nor will ; be like a mass of matter
which without resistance lets itself be placed wherever it may
please any one ; like a stick in the hand of an old man, who
uses it according to his needs and places it where it suits him.
So must I be under the hands of the Order, to serve it in the
way it judges most useful.
^^ I must never ask of the Superior to be sent to a particular
place, to be employed in a particular duty. ... I must consider
nothing as belonging to me personally, and as regards the
things I use, be like a statue which lets itself be stripped and
never opposes resistance.'* ^
The other saying is reported by Rodriguez in the chap-
ter from which I a moment ago made quotations. When
speaking of the Pope's authority, Rodriguez writes : —
^^ Saint Ignatius said, when general of his company, that if
the Holy Father were to order him to set sail in the first bark
which he might find in the port of Ostia, near Rome, and to
abandon himself to the sea, without a mast, without sails, with-
out oars or rudder or any of the thingps that are needful for
navigation or subsistence, he would obey not only with alacrity,
but without anxiety or repugnance, and even with a great in-
ternal satisfaction." ^
With a solitary concrete example of the extravagance
to which the virtue we are considering has been carried,
I will pass to the topic next in order.
" Sister Marie Claire [of Port Royal] had been greatly im-
bued with the holiness and excellence of M. de Langres. This
prelate, soon after he came to Port Royal, said to her one day,
seeing her so tenderly attached to Mother Ang^lique, that it
1 Bartou-Michel, ii. 13.
* Rodriguez : Op. cit.. Part iii., Treatise v.| oh. vL
SAINTLINESS 315
would perhaps be better not to speak to ber again. Marie
Claire, greedy of obedience, took this inconsiderate word for an
oracle of God, and from that day forward remained for several
years without once speaking to her sister." ^
Our next topic shall be Poverty, felt at all times and
under all creeds as one adornment of a saintly life. Since
the instinct of ownership is fundamental in man's nature,
this is one more example of the ascetic paradox. Yet it
appears no paradox at all, but perfectly reasonable, the
moment one recollects how easily higher excitements hold
lower cupidities in check. Having just quoted the Jesuit
Rodriguez on the subject of obedience, I will, to give
immediately a concrete turn to our discussion of pov-
erty, also read you a page from his chapter on this latter
virtue. You must remember that he is writing instruc-
tions for monks of his own order, and bases them all on
the text, ^^ Blessed are the poor in spirit."
** If any one of yoa," he says, ** will know whether or not he is
really poor in spirit, let him consider whether he loves the ordi-
nary consequences and effects of poverty, which are hunger,
thirst, cold, fatigue, and the denudation of all conveniences.
See if you are glad to wear a worn-out habit full of patches.
See if you are glad when something is lacking to your meal,
when you are p'assed by in serving it, when what you receive is
distasteful to you, when your cell is out of repair. If you are not
glad of these things, if instead of loving them you avoid them,
then there is proof that you have not attained the perfection of
poverty of spirit." Rodriguez then goes on to describe the prac-
tice of poverty in more detail. ^^ The first point is that which
Saint Ignatius proposes in his constitutions, when he says, ^ Let
no one use anything as if it were his private possession.' * A
religious person,' he says, * ought in respect to all the things that
he uses, to be like a statue which one may drape with clothing,
but which feels no griet and makes no resistance when one
1 Sainte-Beuvb : Histoire de Port Royal, L 346.
316 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
strips it again. It is in this way that you should feel towards
your clothes, your books, your cell, and everything else that
you make use of ; if ordered to quit them, or to exchange them
for others, have no more sorrow than if you were a statue being
uncovered. In this way you will avoid using them as if they
were your private possession. But if, when you give up your
cell, or yield possession of this or that object or exchange it for
another, you feel repugnance and are not like a statue, that
shows that you view these things as if they were your private
property.'
^^ And this is why our holy founder wished the superiors to
test their monks somewhat as God tested Abraham, and to put
their poverty and their obedience to trial, that by this means
they may become acquainted with the degree of their virtue,
and gain a chance to make ever farther progress in perfection,
. . . making the one move out of his room when he finds it
comfortable and is attached to it ; taking away from another a
book of which he is fond ; or obliging a third to exchange his
garment for a worse one. Otherwise we should end by acquir-
ing a species of property in all these several objects, and little
by little the wall of poverty that surrounds us and constitutes
our principal defense would be thrown down. The ancient
fathers of the desert used often thus to treat their companions.
. • . Saint Dositheus, being sick-nurse, desired a certain knife,
and asked Saint Dorotheus for it, not for his private use, but
for employment in the infirmary of which he had charge.
Whereupon Saint Dorotheus answered him : ' Ha I Dositheus,
so that knife pleases you so much ! Will you be the slave of a
knife or the slave of Jesus Christ? Do you not blush with
shame at wishing that a knife should be your master? I will
not let you touch it.' Which reproach and refusal had such
an effect upon the holy disciple that since that time he never
touched the knife again." . . .
*^ Therefore, in our rooms," Father Rodriguez continues,
*' there must be no other furniture than a bed, a table, a bench,
and a candlestick, things purely necessary, and nothing more.
It is not allowed among us that our cells should be ornamented
with pictures or aught else, neither armchairs, carpets, curtains,
SAINTLINESS 317
nor any sort of cabinet or boreau of any elegance. Neither
is it allowed us to keep anything to eat, either for ourselves or
for those who may come to visit us. We must ask permission
to go to the refectory even for a glass of water ; and finally we
may not keep a book in which we can write a line, or which we
may take away with us. One cannot deny that thus we are in
great poverty. But this poverty is at the same time a great
repose and a great perfection. For it would be inevitable, in
case a religious person were allowed to own superfluous posses-
sions, that these things would greatly occupy his mind, be it to
acquire them, to preserve them, or to increase them ; so that in
not permitting us at all to ovm them, all these inconveniences
are remedied. Among the various good reasons why the com-
pany forbids secular persons to enter our cells, the principal
one is that thus we may the easier be kept in poverty. After
all, we are all men, and if we were to receive people of the
world ioto our rooms, we should not have the strength to re-
main within the bounds prescribed, but should at least wish to
adorn them with some books to give the visitors a better opin-
ion of our scholarship." ^
Since Hindu fakirs, Buddhist monks, and Moham-
medan dervishes unite with Jesuits and Franciscans in
idealizing poverty as the loftiest individual state, it is
worth while to examine into the spiritual grounds for
such a seemingly unnatural opinion. And first, of those
which lie closest to conmion human nature.
The opposition between the men who have and the
men who are is immemorial. Though the gentleman, in
the old-fashioned sense of the man who is well bom, has
usually in point of fact been predaceous and reveled in
lands and goods, yet he has never identified his essence
with these possessions, but rather with the personal su-
periorities, the courage, generosity, and pride supposed
to be his birthright. To certain huckstering kinds of
^ Rodriguez : Op. oit., Part iii.. Treatise liL, oliaps. vL, viL
318 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
consideration he thanked God he was forever inaccessi-
ble, and if in life's vicissitudes he should become des-
titute through their lack, he was glad to think that
with his sheer valor he was all the freer to work out
his salvation. ^^Wer nur selbst was hatte/' says Les-
sing's Tempelherr, in Nathan the Wise, " mein Gott, mein
Gott, ich habe niehts ! " This ideal of the well-bom man
without possessions was embodied in knight-errantry and
templardom ; and, hideously corrupted as it has always
been, it still dominates sentimentally, if not practically,
the military and aristocratic view of life. We glorify
the soldier as the man absolutely unincumbered. Own-
ing nothing but his bare Ufe, and willing to toss that up
at any moment when the cause commands him, he is the
representative of unhampered freedom in ideal directions.
The laborer who pays with his person day by day, and
has no rights invested in the future, offers also much of
this ideal detachment. Like the savage, he may make
his bed wherever his right arm can support him, and
from his simple and athletic attitude of observation, the
property-owner seems buried and smothered in ignoble
externalities and trammels, ^^ wading in straw and rub-
bish to his knees." The claims which things make are
corrupters of manhood, mortgages on the soul, and a
drag anchor on our progress towards the empyrean.
"Everything I meet with," writes Whitefield, "seems to
carry this voice with it, — ^ Go thou and preach the Gospel ;
be a pilgrim on earth ; have no party or certain dwelling place.'
My heart echoes back, ^ Lord Jesus, help me to do or suffer thy
will. When thou seest me in danger of nestling j — in pity —
in tender pity, — put a thorm in my nest to prevent me from
it.' " 1
1 R. Pmup : The Life and Times of George Wbitefield, London, 1842,
p. 366.
SAINTLINESS 819
The loathing of 'capital' with which our laboring
classes to-day are growing more and more infected seems
largely composed of this sound sentiment of antipathy
for lives based on mere having. As an anarchist poet
writes : —
^^ Not by accumulatiDg riches, but by giving away that which
you have,
*^ Shall you become beautiful ;
^^ You must undo the wrappings, not case yourself in fresh
ones;
*^ Not by multiplying clothes shall you make your body sound
and healthy, but rather by discarding them . . .
^^ For a soldier who is going on a campaign does not seek what
fresh furniture he can carry on his back, but rather what he
can leave behind ;
^^ Knowing well that every additional thing which he cannot
freely use and handle is an impediment." ^
In shorty lives based on having are less free than lives
based either on doing or on being, and in the interest of
action people subject to spiritual excitement throw away
possessions as so many clogs. Only those who have no
private interests can follow an ideal straight away. Sloth
and cowardice creep in with every dollar or guinea we
have to guard. When a brother novice came to Saint
Francis, saying : '^ Father, it would be a great consola-
tion to me to own a psalter, but even supposing that our
general should concede to me this indulgence, still I
should like also to have your consent," Francis put him
off with the examples of Charlemagne, Roland, and Oliver,
pursuing the infidels in sweat and labor, and finally dying
on the field of battle. " So care not," he said, ** for own-
ing books and knowledge, but care rather for works of
goodness." And when some weeks later the novice came
^ Edwabd Carpenter : TowarcLi Democracy, p. 362, abridged.
320 THE YAEIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
again to talk of his craving for the psalter, Francis said :
" After you have got your psalter you will crave a brevi-
ary ; and after you have got your breviary you will sit
in your stall like a grand prelate, and will say to your
brother : * Hand me my breviary/ . . . And thencefor-
ward he denied all such requests, saying: A man pos-
sesses of learning only so much as comes out of him in
action, and a monk is a good preacher only so far as his
deeds proclaim him such, for every tree is known by its
fruits." '
But beyond this more worthily athletic attitude in-
volved in doing and being, there is, in the desire of not
having, something profounder still, something related
to that fundamental mystery of religious experience, the
satisfaction found in absolute surrender to the larger
power. So long as any secular safeguard is retained, so
long as any residual prudential guarantee is clung to, so
long the surrender is incomplete, the vital crisis is not
passed, fear still stands sentinel, and mistrust of the
divine obtains : we hold by two anchors, looking to God,
it is true, after a fashion, but also holding by our proper
machinations. In certain medical experiences we have
the same critical point to overcome. A drunkard, or a
morphine or cocaine maniac, offers himself to be cured.
He appeals to the doctor to wean him from his enemy,
but he dares not face blank abstinence. The tyrannical
drug is still an anchor to windward : he hides supplies
of it among his clothing; arranges secretly to have it
smuggled in in case of need. Even so an incompletely
regenerate man still trusts in his own expedients. His
money is like the sleeping potion which tiie chronically
wakeful patient keeps beside his bed ; he throws himself
on God, but if he should need the other help, there it
^ Speculum PerfectioniB, ed. P. Sabatter, Paris, 1S98, pp. 10, 13.
SAINTLINfiSS d21
will be also. Every one knows cases of this incomplete
and ineffective desire for reform, — drunkards whom,
with all their self-reproaches and resolves, one perceives
to be quite unwilling seriously to contemplate never being
drunk again ! Really to give up anything on which we
have relied, to give it up definitively, * for good and all *
and forever, signifies one of those radical alterations of
character which came under our notice in the lectures on
conversion. In it the inner man rolls over into an entirely
different position of equilibriiun, lives in a new centre
of energy from this time on, and the turning-point and
hinge of all such operations seems usually to involve the
sincere acceptance of certain nakednesses and destitutions.
Accordingly, throughout the annals of the saintly life,
we find this ever-recurring note: Fling yourself upon
God's providence without making any reserve whatever,
— take no thought for the morrow, — sell all you have
and give it to the poor, — only when the sacrifice is
ruthless and reckless will the higher safety really arrive.
As a concrete example let me read a pas^e from the
biography of AntoineL Bourignon, a good woman, much
persecuted in her day by both Protestants and Catholics,
because she would not take her religion at second hand.
When a young girl, in her father's house, —
^^ She spent whole nights in prayer, oft repeating : Lord^ what
fjoUt thou have me to do ? And being one night in a most pro-
found penitence, she said from the bottom of her heart: ^O
my Lord ! What must I do to please thee ? For I have no-
body to teach me. Speak to my soul and it will hear thee.'
At that instant she heard, as if another had spoke within her :
Forsake all earthly things. Separate thy self from the love of the
creatures. Deny thyself She was quite astonished, not under-
standing this language, and mused long on these three points,
thinking how she could fulfill them. She thought she could
not live without earthly things, nor without loving the creatures,
322 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
nor without loving herself. Yet she said, * By thy Grace I will
do it, Lord I ' But when she would perform her promise, she
knew not where to begin. Having thought on the religious in
monasteries, that they forsook all earthly things by being shut
up in a cloister, and the love of themselves by subjecting of
their wills, she asked leave of her father to enter into a cloister
of the barefoot Carmelites, but he would not permit it, saying
he would rather see her laid in her grave. This seemed to her
a great cruelty, for she thought to find in the cloister the true
Christians she had been seeking, but she found afterwards that
he knew the cloisters better than she ; for after he had for-
bidden her, and told her he would never permit her to be a
religious, nor give her any money to enter there, yet she went
to Father Liaurens, the Director, and offered to serve in the
monastery and work hard for her bread, and be content with
little, if he would receive her. At which he smiled and said :
Tfiat cannot he. We must have money to build ; we take no
maids without money ; you must find the way to get it, else
there is no entry here.
*^ This astonished her greatly, and she was thereby undeceived
as to the cloisters, resolving to forsake all company and live
alone till it should please God to show her what she ought to
do and whither to go. She asked always earnestly, ^ When
shall I be perfectly thine, O my God?' And she thought he
still answered her. When thou shalt no longer possess any^
thing, and shalt die to thyself. ^ And where shsJl I do that,
Lord ? ' He answered her. In the desert. This made so strong
an impression on her soul that she aspired after this ; but being
a maid of eighteen years only, she was afraid of unlucky chances,
and was never used to travel, and knew no way. She laid aside
all these doubts and said, ^ Lord, thou wilt guide me how and
where it shall please thee. It is for thee that I do it. I will
lay aside my habit of a maid, and will take that of a hermit
that I may pass unknown.' Having then secretly made ready
this habit, while her parents thought to have married her, her
father having promised her to a rich French merchant, she pre-
vented the time, and on Easter evening, having cut her hair,
put on the habit, and slept a little, she went out of her chamber
SAINTLINESS 323
about four in the morning, taking nothing but one penny to
buy bread for that day. And it being said to her in the going
out, Where is thy faith f in a penny ? she threw it away,
begging pardon of God for her fault, and saying, ^ No, Lord,
my faith is not in a penny, but in thee alone.' Thus she went
away wholly delivered from the heavy burthen of the cares and
good things of this world, and found her soul so satisfied that
she no longer wished for anything upon earth, resting entirely
upon God, with this only fear lest she should be discovered and
be obliged to return home ; for she felt already more content in
this poverty than she had done for all her life in all the delights
of the world." ^
The penny was a small financial saf eguard, but an effec-
tive spiritual obstacle. Not till it was thrown away could
the character settle into the new equilibrium completely.
Over and above the mystery of self-surrender, there are
in the cult of poverty other religious mysteries. There is
^ An Apology for M. Antonia Boarignon, London, 1G99, pp. 269, 270,
abridged.
Another example from Starbuck's MS. collection : —
** At a meeting held at six the next morning, I heard a man relate his
experience. He said : The Lord asked him if he would confess Christ
among the qnarrymen with whom he worked, and he said he would. Then
he asked him if he would give up to be used of the Lord the four hundred
dollars he had laid up, and he said he would, and thus the Lord saved him.
The thought came to me at once that I had neyer made a real consecration
either of myself or of my property to the Lord, but had always tried to
serve the Lord in my way. Now the Lord asked me if I would serve him
in his way, and go out alone and penniless if he so ordered. The question
was pressed home, and I must decide : To forsake all and have him, or have
all and lose him ! I soon decided to take him ; and the blessed assurance
came, that he had taken me for his own, and my joy was full. I returned
heme from the meeting with feelings as simple as a child. I thought all
would be glad to hear of the jojr of the Lord that possessed me, and so I
began to tell the simple story. But to my great surprise, the pastors (for
I attended meetings in three churches) opposed the experience and said it
was fanaticism, and one told the members of his church to shun those that
professed it, and I soon found that my foes were those of my own honse-
hold."
324 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
the mystery of veracity : " Naked came I into the world,"
etc., — whoever first said that, possessed this mystery.
My own bare entity must fight the battle — shams can-
not save me. There is also the mystery of democracy,
or sentiment of the equality before God of all his crea-
tures. This sentiment (which seems in general to have
been more widespread in Mohammedan than in Christian
lands) tends to nuUify man's usual acquisitiveness. Those
who have it spurn dignities and honors, privileges and
advantages, preferring, as I said in a former lecture, to
grovel on the common level before the face of God. It
is not exactly the sentiment of humility, though it comes
so close to it in practice. It is humanity j rather, refusing
to enjoy anything that others do not share. A profound
moralist, writing of Christ's saying, ^ Sell all thou hast
and follow me,' proceeds as follows : —
^^ Christ may have meant : If you love mankind absolutely
you will as a result not care for any possessions whatever, and
this seems a very likely proposition. But it is one thing to
believe that a proposition is probably true ; it is another thing
to see it as a fact. If you loved mankind as Christ loved them,
you would see his conclusion as a fact. It would be obvious.
You would sell your goods, and they would be no loss to you.
These truths, while literal to Christ, and to any mind that has
Christ's love for mankind, become parables to lesser natures.
There are in every generation people who, beginning innocently,
with no predetermined intention of becoming saints, find them-
selves drawn into the vortex by their interest in helping man-
kind, and by the understanding that comes from actually doing
it. The abandonment of their old mode of life is like dust in
the balance. It is done gradually, incidentally, imperceptibly.
Thus the whole question of the abandonment of luxury is no
question at all, but a mere incident to another question, namely,
the degree to which we abandon ourselves to the remorseless
logic of our love for others." ^
' J. J. Chapman, in the Political Nursery, voL iv. p. 4| Aprils 1900^
abridged.
SAINTLINESS 325
But in all these matters of sentiment one must have
' been there ' one's self in order to understand them. No
American can ever attain to understanding the loyalty
of a Briton towards his king, of a German towards bis
emperor ; nor can a Briton or German ever understand
the peace of heart of an American in having no king,
no Kaiser, no spurious nonsense, between him and the
common God of all. If sentiments as simple as these
are mysteries which one must receive as gifts of birth,
how much more is this the case with those subtler reli-
gious sentiments which we have been considering ! One
can never fathom an emotion or divine its dictates by
standing outside of it. In the glowing hour of excite-
ment, however, all incomprehensibilities are solved, and
what was so enigmatical from without becomes transpar-
ently obvious. Each emotion obeys a logic of its own,
and makes deductions which no other logic can draw.
Piety and charity live in a different universe from worldly
lusts and fears, and form another centre of energy alto-
gether. As in a supreme sorrow lesser vexations may
become a consolation ; as a supreme love may turn minor
sacrifices into gain ; so a supreme trust may render com-
mon safeguards odious, and in certain glows of unselfish
excitement it may appear unspeakably mean to retain
one's hold of personal possessions. The only sound plan,
if we are ourselves outside the pale of such emotions, is
to observe as well as we are able those who feel them,
and to record faithfully what we observe; and this, I
need hardly say, is what I have striven to do in these
last two descriptive lectures, which I now hope will have
covered the ground sufBciently for our present needs.
LECTURES XIV AND XV
THE VALUE OF SAINTUNESS
WE have now passed in review the more important
of the phenomena which are regarded as fruits of
genuine religion and characteristics of men who are de-
vout. To-day we have to change our attitude from that
of description to that of appreciation; we have to ask
whether the fruits in question can help us to judge the
absolute value of what religion adds to human Ufe. Were
I to parody Kant, I should say that a ^ Critique of pure
SaintUness ' must be our theme.
Jiy in turning to this theme, we could descend upon
y our subject from above like Catholic theologians, with
our fixed definitions of man and man's perfection and our
positive dogmas about Grod, we should have an easy time
of it. Man's perfection would be the fulfillment of his
end ; and his end would be union with his Maker. That
union could be pursued by him along three paths, active,
purgative, and contemplative, respectively ; and progress
along either path would be a simple matter to measure by
the application of a Umited number of theological and
moral conceptions and definitions. The absolute signifi-
cance and value of any bit of religious experience we
might hear of would thus be given almost mathematically
into our hands.
If convenience were everything, we ought now to grieve
at finding ourselves cut off from so admirably convenient
a method as this. But we did cut ourselves off from it
deliberately in those remarks which you remember we
THE VALUE OF SAINTUNESS 327
made, in our first lecture, about the empirical method ;
and it must be confessed that after that act of renun-
ciation we can never hope for clean-cut and scholastic
results. We cannot divide man sharply into an animal
and a rational part. We cannot distinguish natural from
supernatural effects ; nor among the latter know which
are favors of God, and which are counterfeit operations
of the demon. We have merely to collect things together /
without any special a priori theological system, and out
of an aggregate of piecemeal judgments as to the value
of this and that experience — judgments in which our
general philosophic prejudices, our instincts, and our
common sense are our only guides — decide that on the
whole one type of religion is approved by its fruits, and
another type condemned. * On the whole,* — I fear we
shall never escape complicity with that qualification, so
dear to your practical man, so repugnant to your system-
atizer !
I also fear that as I make this frank confession, I may
seem to some of you to throw our compass overboard, and
to adopt caprice as our pilot. Skepticism or wayward
choice, you may think, can be the only results of such
a formless method as I have taken up. A few remarks
in deprecation of such an opinion, and in farther expla-
nation of the empiricist principles which I profess, may
therefore appear at this point to be in place.
Abstractly, it would seem illogical to try to measure
the worth of a religion's fruits in merely human terms
of value. How can you measure their worth without
considering whether the God really exists who is sup-
posed to inspire them ? If he really exists, then all the
conduct instituted by men to meet his wants must neces-
sarily be a reasonable fruit of his religion, — it would be
828 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
unreasonable only in ease he did not exist. If , for in-
stance, you were to condemn a religion of human or
animal sacrifices by virtue of your subjective sentiments,
and if all the while a deity were really there demanding
such sacrifices^ you would be making a theoretical mistake
by tacitly assuming that the deity must be non-existent ;
you would be setting up a theology of your own as much
as if you were a scholastic philosopher.
To this extent, to the extent of disbelieving peremp-
torily in certain types of deity, I frankly confess that
we must be theologians. If disbeliefs can be said to
constitute a theology, then the prejudices, instincts, and
common sense which I chose as our guides make theo*
logical partisans of us whenever they make certain beUefs
abhorrent.
But such common-sense prejudices and instincts are
themselves the fruit of an empirical evolution. Nothing
is more striking than the secular alteration that goes on
in the moral and religious tone of men, as their insight
into nature and their social arrangements progressively
develop. After an interval of a few generations the
mental climate proves unfavorable to notions of the deity
which at an earlier date were perfectly satisfactory : the
older gods have fallen below the common secular level,
and can no longer be believed in. To-day a deity who
should require bleeding sacrifices to placate him would
be too sanguinary to be taken seriously. Even if power-
ful historical credentials were put forward in his favor,
we would not look at them. Once, on the contrary,
his cruel appetites were of themselves credentials. They
positively recommended him to men's imaginations in
ages when such coarse signs of power were respected
and no others could be understood. Such deities then
were worshiped because such fruits were relished.
THE VALU£ OF SAIKTUNESS 329
Doubtless historic accidents always played some later
part, but the original factor in fixing the figure of the
gods must always have been psychological. The deity
to whom the prophets, seers, and devotees who founded
the particular cult bore witness was worth something to
them personally. They could use him. He guided their
imagination, warranted their hopes, and controlled their
will, — or else they required him as a safeguard against
the demon and a curber of other people's crimes. In
any case, they chose him for the value of the fruits he
seemed to them to yield. So soon as the fruits began
to seem quite worthless ; so soon as they conflicted with
indispensable human ideals, or thwarted too extensively
other values ; so soon as they appeared childish, contempt-
ible, or immoral^ when reflected on, the deity grew dis-
credited, and was erelong neglected and forgotten. It
was in this way that the Greek and Roman gods ceased
to be believed in by educated pagans ; it is thus that we
ourselves judge of the Hindu, Buddhist, and Mohamme-
dan theologies ; Protestants have so dealt with the Catho-
lic notions of deity, and liberal Protestants with older
Protestant notions; it is thus that Chinamen judge of
us, and that all of us now living will be judged by our
descendants. When we cease to admire or approve what
the definition of a deity implies, we end by deeming that
deity incredible.
Few historic changes are more curious than these mu-
tations of theological opinion. The monarchical type of
sovereignty was, for example, so ineradicably planted in
the mind of our own forefathers that a dose of cruelty and
arbitrariness in their deity seems positively to have been
required by their imagination. They called the cruelty
* retributive justice,' and a God without it would cer^
tainly have struck them as not ^ sovereign ' enough. But
330 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
to-day we abhor the very notion of eternal suffering in-
flicted; and that arbitrary dealing-out of salvation and
damnation to selected individuals, of which Jonathan
Edwards could persuade himself that he had not only a
conviction, but a ^ delightful conviction/ as of a doctrine
^ exceeding pleasant, bright, and sweet,' appears to us, if
sovereignly anything, sovereignly irrational and mean.
Not only the cruelty, but the paltriness of character of
the gods believed in by earlier centuries also strikes later
centuries with surprise. We shall see examples of it from
the annals of Catholic saintship which make us rub our
Protestant eyes. Ritual worship in general appears to the
modern transcendentalist, as well as to the ultra-puritanic
type of mind, as if addressed to a deity of an almost ab-
surdly childish character, taking delight in toy-shop f ur^
niture, tapers and tinsel, costume and mumbling and mum-
mery, and finding his ^ glory ' incomprehensibly enhanced
thereby; — just as on the other hand the formless spa-
ciousness of pantheism appears quite empty to ritualistic
natures, and the gaunt theism of evangelical sects seems
intolerably bald and chalky and bleak. Luther^ says
Emerson, would have cut off his right hand rather than
nail his theses to the door at Wittenberg, if he had sup-
posed that they were destined to lead to the pale nega-
tions of Boston Unitarianism.
So far, then, although we are compelled, whatever may
be our pretensions to empiricism, to employ some sort of
a standard of theological probability of our own whenever
we assume to estimate the fruits of other men's religion,
yet this very standard has been begotten out of the drift
of common hfe. It is the voice of human experience
within us, judging and condemning all gods that stand
athwart the pathway along which it feels itself to be ad-
vancing. Experience, if we take it in the largest sense^ is
THE VALUE OF SAINTLINESS 331
thus the parent of those disbeliefs which^ it was charged,
were inconsistent with the experiential method. The
inconsistency, you see, is immaterial, and the charge may
be neglected.
If we pass from disbeliefs to positive beliefs, it seems
to me that there is not even a formal inconsistency to be
laid against our method. The gods we stand by are the
gods we need and can use, the gods whose demands on us
are reinforcements of our demands on ourselves and on
one another. What I then propose to do is, briefly
stated, to test saintliness by common sense, to use human
standards to help us decide how far the religious life
commends itself as an ideal kind of human activity.
If it commends itself, then any theological beliefs that
may inspire it, in so far forth will stand accredited. If
not, then they will be discredited, and all without refer-
ence to anything but human working principles. It is
but the elimination of the humanly unfit, and the survival
of the humanly fittest, applied to religious beliefs; and
if we look at history candidly and without prejudice, we
have to admit that no religion has ever in the long run
established or proved itself in any other way. Religions
have approved themselves ; they have ministered to sun-
dry vital needs which they found reigning. When they
violated other needs too strongly, or when other faiths
came which served the same needs better, the first reli-
gions were supplanted.
The needs were always many, and the tests were never
d«n>. So the reproJh of 4gu™-. "i -bjectivi^
and ^ on the whole *-ness, which can with perfect legiti-
macy be addressed to the empirical method as we are
forced to use it, is after all a reproach to which the entire
life of man in dealing with these matters is obnoxious.
No religion has ever yet owed its prevalence to ^ apodictic
332 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
certainty.' In a later lecture I will ask whether objec-
tive certainty can ever be added by theological reasoning
to a religion that already empirically prevails.
One word, also, aboat the reproach that in following
this sort of an empirical method we are handing ourselves
over to systematic skepticism.
Since it is impossible to deny secular alterations in our
sentiments and needs, it would be absurd to affirm that
one's own age of the world can be beyond correction by
the next age. Skepticism cannot, therefore, be ruled out
by any set of thinkers as a possibility against which their
conclusions are secure ; and no empiricist ought to claim
exemption from this universal liabihty. But to admit
one's liabihty to correction is one thing, and to embark
upon a sea of wanton doubt is another. Of willfully
playing into the hands of skepticism we cannot be ac-
cused. He who acknowledges the imperfectness of his
instrument, and makes allowance for it in discussing his
observations, is in a much better position for gaining
truth than if he claimed his instrument to be infaUible.
Or is dogmatic or scholastic theology less doubted in
point of fact for claiming, as it does, to be in point of
right undoubtable? And if not, what command over
truth would this kind of theology really lose if, instead
of absolute certainty, she only claimed reasonable proba-
bility for her conclusions? If we claim only reasona-
ble probability, it will be as much as men who love
the truth can ever at any given moment hope to have
within their grasp. Pretty surely it will be more than we
could have had, if we were unconscious of our liabihty
to err.
Nevertheless, dogmatism will doubtless continue to con-
demn us for this confession. The mere outward form of
THE VALUE OF SAINTLINESS 333
inalterable certainty is so precious to some minds that to
renounce it explicitly is for them out of the question.
They will claim it even where the facts most patently
pronounce its folly. But the safe thing is surely to recog-
nize that all the insights of creatures of a day like our-
selves must be provisional. The wisest of critics is an
altering being, subject to the better insight of the mor-
row, and right at any moment, only ^ up to date ' and
^ on the whole.' When larger ranges of truth open, it
is surely best to be able to open ourselves to their recep-
tion, unfettered by our previous pretensions. ^^ Heartily
know, when half-gods go, the gods arrive."
The fact of diverse judgments about religious phenom-
ena is therefore entirely unescapable, whatever may be
one's own desire to attain the irreversible. But apart
from that fact, a more fundamental question awaits us,
the question whether men's opinions ought to be ex-
pected to be absolutely uniform in this field. Ought all
men to have the same religion ? Ought they to approve
the same fruits and follow the same leadings ? Are they
so like in their inner needs that, for hard and soft, for
proud and humble, for strenuous and lazy, for healthy-
minded and despairing, exactly the same religious incen-
tives are required? Or are different functions in the
organism of humanity allotted to different types of man,
so that some may really be the better for a religion of
consolation and reassurance, whilst others are better for
one of terror and reproof ? It might conceivably be so ;
and we shall, I think, more and more suspect it to be so
as we go on. And if it be so, how can any possible
judge or critic help being biased in favor of the religion
by which his own needs are best met ? He aspires to im-
partiality ; but he is too close to the struggle not to be
to some degree a participant, and he is sure to approve
3d4 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
most warmly those fruits of piety in others which taste
most good and prove most nourishing to him.
I am well aware of how anarchic much of what I
say may sound. Expressing myself thus abstractly and
briefly, I may seem to despair of the very notion of
truth. But I beseech you to reserve your judgment until
we see it applied to the details which lie before us. I do
indeed disbelieve that we or any other mortal men can
attain on a given day to absolutely incorrigible and unim-
provable truth about such matters of fact as those with
which religions deal. But I reject this dogmatic ideal
not out of a perverse deUght in intellectual instability. I
am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do
I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already
wholly. That we can gain more and more of it by mov-
ing always in the right direction, I believe as much as
any one, and I hope to bring you all to my way of think-
ing before the termination of these lectures. Till then^
do not, I pray you, harden your minds irrevocably against
the empuicism which I profess.
I will waste no more words, then, in abstract justifica-
tion of my method, but seek immediately to use it upon
the facts.
In critically judging of the value of religious phe-
nomena, it is very important to insist on the distinction
between religion as an individual personal function, and
religion as an institutional, corporate, or tribal product.
I drew this distinction, you may remember, in my second
lecture. The word ^ religion,' as ordinarily used, is equivo-
cal. A survey of history shows us that, as a rule, reli-
gious geniuses attract disciples, and produce groups of
sympathizers. When these groups get strong enough to
^ organize ' themselves, they become ecclesiastical institu-
THE VALUE OF SAINTLINESS 835
tions with corporate ambitions of their own. The spirit
of politics and the lust of dogmatic rule are then apt to
enter and to contaminate the originally innocent thing ;
so that when we hear the word ^ religion ' nowadays^ we
think inevitably of some ^ church ' or ' other ; and to some
persons the word ^ church ' suggests so much hypocrisy
and tyranny and meanness and tenacity of superstition
that in a wholesale undisceming way they glory in say-
ing that they are ^ down ' on religion altogether. Even
we who belong to churches do not exempt other churches
than our own from the general condemnation.
But in this course of lectures ecclesiastical institutions
hardly concern us at all. The religious experience which
we are studjring is that which lives itself out within the
private breast. First-hand individual experience of this
kind has always appeared as a heretical sort of innova-
tion to those who witnessed its birth. Naked comes it
into the world and lonely ; and it has always, for a time
at least, driven him who had it into the wilderness, often
into the literal wilderness out of doors, where the Bud-
dha, Jesus, Mohammed, St. Francis, George Fox, and so
many others had to go. Geor^^ Fox expresses well this
isolation ; and I can do no better at this point than read
to you a page from his Journal, referring to the period
of his youth when religion began to ferment within him
seriously.
^* I fasted much," Fox says, ** walked abroad in solitary places
many days, and often took my Bible, and sat in hollow trees
and lonesofhe places until night came on; and frequently in
the night walked moamfuUy about by myself; for I was a
man of s6rrows in the time of the first workings of the Lord
in me.
** During all this time I was never joined in profession of
religion w'ith any, but gave up myself to the Lord, having for-
336 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
saken all evil company, taking leave of father and mother, and
all other relations, and traveled up and down as a stranger on
the earth, which way the Lord inclined my heart ; taking a
chamber to myself in the town where I came, and tarrying
sometimes more, sometimes less in a place : for I durst not stay
long in a place, being afraid both of professor and profane, lest,
being a tender young man, I should be hurt by conversing much
with either. For which reason I kept much as a stranger, seek-
ing heavenly wisdom and getting knowledge from the Lord ;
and was brought off from outward things, to rely on the Lord
alone. As I had forsaken the priests, so I left the separate
preachers also, and those called the most experienced people ;
for I saw there was none among them all that could speak to my
condition. And when all my hopes in them and in all men were
gone so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could tell
what to do ; then, oh then, I heard a voice which said, * There
is one, even Jesus Christ, that can speak to thy condition.'
When I heard it, my heart did leap for joy. Then the Lord
let me see why there was none upon the earth that could speak
to my condition. I had not fellowship with any people, priests,
nor professors, nor any sort of separated people. I was afraid
of all carnal talk and talkers, for I could see nothing but cor-
ruptions. When I was in the deep, under all shut up, I could
not believe that I should ever overcome ; my troubles, my sor-
rows, and my temptations ^ere so great that I often thought I
should have despaired, I war so tempted. But when Christ
opened to me how he was temptcMi by the same devil, and had
overcome him, and had bruised his head ; and that through him
and his power, life, grace, and spirit, I <*hould overcome also, I
had confidence in him. If I had had a king's diet, palace, and
attendance, all would have been as nothing ; f o? nothing gave
me comfort but the Lord by his power. I saw professors,
priests, and people were whole and at ease in th>t condition
which was my misery, and they loved that which I Tould have
been rid of. But the Lord did stay my desires up(U himself,
and my care was cast upon him alone." ^
1 George Fox : Journal, Philadelphia, 1800, pp. 59-61, anidged.
THE VALUE OF SAINTLINESS p37
A genuine first-hand religious experience like this is
bound to be a heterodoxy to its witnesses^ the prophet
appearing as a mere lonely madman. If his doctrine
prove contagious enough to spread to any others, it be-
comes a definite and labeled heresy. But if it then still
prove contagious enough to triumph over persecution, it
becomes itself an orthodoxy ; and when a religion has
become an orthodoxy, its day of inwardness is over : the
spring is dry ; the faithful live at second hand exclusively
and stone the prophets in their turn. The new church,
in spite of whatever human goodness it may foster, can
be henceforth counted on as a ' staunch ally in every at-
tempt to stifle the spontaneous religious spirit, and to stop
all later bubblings of the fountain from which in purer
days it drew its own supply of inspiration. Unless, in-
deed, by adopting new movements of the spirit it can
make capital out of them and use them for its selfish
corporate designs! Of protective action of this politic
sort, promptly or tardily decided on, the dealings of the
Boman ecclesiasticism with many individual saints and
prophets yield examples enough for our instruction.
The plain fact is that men's minds are built, as has been
often said, in water-tight compartments. Religious after a
fashion, they yet have many other things in them beside
their religion, and unholy entanglements and associations
inevitably obtain. The basenesses so commonly charged
to religion's account are thus, almost all of them, not
chargeable at all to religion proper, but rather to reli-
gion's wicked practical partner, the spirit of corporate
dominion. And the bigotries are most of them in their
turn chargeable to religion's wicked intellectual partner,
the spirit of dogmatic dominion, the passion for laying
down the law in the form of an absolutely closed-in theo-
retic system. The ecclesiastical spirit in general is the
338 THE VABIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
sum of these two spirits of dominion; and I beseech
you never to confound the phenomena of mere tribal
or corporate psychology which it presents with those
manifestations of the purely interior life which are the
exclusive object of our. study. The baiting of Jews^
the hunting of Albigenses and Waldenses, the stoning
of Quakers and ducking of Methodists, the murdering
of Mormons and the massacring of Armenians, express
much rather that aboriginal human neophobia, that pug-
nacity of which we all share the vestiges, and that inborn
hatred of the alien and of eccentric and non-conforming
men as aliens, than they express the positive piety of the
various perpetrators. Piety is the mask, the inner force
is tribal instinct. You beUeve as little as I do, in spite
of the Christian unction with which the German emperor
addressed his troops upon their way to China, that the
conduct which he suggested, and in which other Christian
armies went beyond them, had anything whatever to do
with the interior religious life of those concerned in the
performance.
Well, no more for past atrocities than for this atrocity
should we make piety responsible. At most we may
lUme pi.^ for -of a^g'to cheek our n.tu«l p«ri„„^
and sometimes for supplying them with hypocritical pre-
texts. But hypocrisy also imposes obligations, and with
the pretext usually couples some restriction ; and when
the passion gust is over, the piety may bring a reaction
of repentance which the irreligious natural man would
not have shown.
For many of the historic aberrations which have been
laid to her charge, religion as such, then, is not to blame.
Yet of the charge that over-zealousness or fanaticism is
one of her liabilities we cannot wholly acquit her, so I
will next make a remark upon that point. But I will
THE VALUE OF SAINTLINESS 339
preface it by a preliminary remark which connects itself
with much that follows.
Our survey of the phenomena of saintliness has un-
questionably produced in your minds an impression of
extravagance. Is it necessary, some of you have asked,
as one example after another came before us, to be quite
so fantastically good as that ? We who have no vocation
for the extremer ranges of sanctity will surely be let off
at the last day if our humility, asceticism, and devout-
ness prove of a less convulsive sort. This practically
amounts to saying that much that it is legitimate to ad-
mire in this field need nevertheless not be imitated, and
that religious phenomena, like all other human phenom-
ena, are subject to the law of the golden mean. Political
reformers accomplish their successive tasks in the his-
tory of nations by being blind for the time to other
causes. Great schools of art work out the effects which
it is their mission to reveal, at the cost of a one-sidedness
for which other schools must make amends. We accept a
John Howard, a Mazzini, a Botticelli, a Michael Angelo,
with a kind of indulgence. We are glad they existed to
show us that way, but we are glad there are also other
ways of seeing and taking life. So of many of the
saints whom we have looked at. We are proud of a
human nature that could be so passionately extreme, but
we shrink from advising others to follow the example.
The conduct we blame ourselves for not following lies
nearer to the middle line of human effort. It is less
dependent on particular beliefs and doctrines. It is
such as wears well in different ages, such as under differ-
ent skies all judges are able to commend.
The fruits of religion, in other words, are, like all
human products, liable to corruption by excess. Common
840 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
sense must judge them. It need not blame the votary ;
but it may be able to praise him only conditionally^ as
one who acts faithfully according to his lights. He
shows us heroism in one way, but the unconditionally
good way is that for which no indulgence need be asked.
We find that error by excess is exemplified by every
saintly virtue. Excess, in human faculties, means usually
one-sidedness or want of balance ; for it is hard to im-
agine an essential faculty too strong, if only other facul-
ties equally strong be there to cooperate with it in action.
Strong affections need a strong will ; strong active pow-
ers need a strong intellect ; strong intellect needs strong
sympathies, to keep life steady. If the balance exist, no
one faculty can possibly be too strong — we only get the
stronger all-round character. In the life of saints, tech-
nically so called, the spiritual faculties are strong, but
what gives the impression of extravagance proves usually,
on examination, to be a relative deficiency of intellect.
Spiritual excitement takes pathological forms whenever
other interests are too few and the intellect too narrow.
We find this exemplified by all the saintly attributes in
turn — devout love of God, purity, charity, asceticism, aU
may lead astray. I will run over these virtues in succes-
sion.
First of all let us take Devoutness. When unbalanced,
one of its vices is called Fanaticism. Fanaticism (when
not a mere expression of ecclesiastical ambition) is only
loyalty carried to a convulsive extreme. When an in-
tensely loyal and narrow mind is once grasped by the
feeling that a certain superhimian person is worthy of its
exclusive devotion, one of the first things that happens
is that it idealizes the devotion itself. To adequately
realize the merits of the idol gets to be considered the
THE VALUE OF SAIKTLINESS ^1
one great merit of the worshiper ; and the sacrifices and
serviUties by which savage tribesmen have from time
immemorial exhibited their faithfuhiess to chieftains are
now outbid in favor of the deity. Vocabularies are ex-
hausted and languages altered in the attempt to praise
him enough ; death is looked on as gain if it attract his
grateful notice ; and the personal attitude of being his
devotee becomes what one might almost call a new and
exalted kind of professional specialty within the tribe.^
The legends that gather round the Uves of holy persons
are fruits of this impulse to celebrate and glorify. The
Buddha^ and Mohammed^ and their companions and
many Christian saints are incrusted with a heavy jewelry
^ Christian saints have had their specialties of devotion, Saint Francis to
Christ's wounds ; Saint Anthony of Padua to Christ's childhood ; Saint
Bernard to his hunmnitj ; Saint Teresa to Saint Joseph, etc. The Shi-ite
Mohammedans venerate Ali, the Prophet's son-in-law, instead of Abu-bekr,
his brother-in-law. Yamb^ry describes a dervish whom he met in Persia,
" who had solemnly vowed, thirty years before, that he would never em-
ploy his organs of speech otherwise but in uttering, everlastingly, the name
of his favorite, Alij AIL He thus wished to signify to the world that he
was the most devoted partisan of that Ali who had been dead a thousand
years. In his own home, speaking with his wife, children, and friends, no
other word but ' Ali I ' ever passed his lips. If he wanted food or drink or
anything else, he expressed his wants still by repeating ' Ali ! ' Begging or
buying at the bazaar, it was always ' Ali I ' Treated ill or generously, he
would still harp on his monotonous ' Ali ! ' Latterly his zeal assumed such
tremendous proportions that, like a madman, he would race, the whole day,
up and down the streets of the town, throwing his stick high up into the
air, and shriek out, all the while, at the top of his voice, ' Ali I ' This der-
vish was venerated by everybody as a saint, and received everywhere with
the greatest distinction." Arboniub Yambi^bt, his Life and Adventures,
written by Himself, London, 1889, p. 69. On the anniversary of the death
of Hussein, Ali's son, the Shi-ite Moslems still make the air resound with
cries of his name and Ali's.
* Compare H. C. Wabbek : Buddhism in IWudation, Cambridge, U. S.,
1898, passim.
* Compare J. L. Mbrrick : The Life and Religion of Mohammed, as
contained io the Sheeah traditions of the Hyat-ul-Kuloob, Boston, 1850,
342 THE VABIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
of anecdotes which are meant to be honorific, but are
simply abgeschmackt and silly, and form a touching
expression of man's misguided propensity to praise.
An immediate consequence of this condition of mind
is jealousy for the deity's honor. How can the devotee
show his loyalty better than by sensitiveness in this re-
gard ? The slightest affront or neglect must be resented,
the deity's enemies must be put to shame. In exceed-
ingly narrow minds and active wills, such a care may
become an engrossing preoccupation ; and crusades have
been preached and massacres instigated for no other rea-
son than to remove a fancied slight upon the God.
Theologies representing the gods as mindful of their
glory, and churches with imperialistic policies, have con-
spired to fan this temper to a glow, so that intoler-
ance and persecution have come to be vices associated
by some of us inseparably with the saintly mind. They
are unquestionably its besetting sins. The saintly tem-
per is a moral temper, and a moral temper has often
to be cruel. It is a partisan temper, and that is cruel.
Between his own and Jehovah's enemies a David knows
no difference ; a Catherine of Siena, panting to stop the
warfare among Christians which was the scandal of her
epoch, can think of no better method of union among
them than a crusade to massacre the Turks ; Luther
finds no word of protest or regret over the atrocious tor-
tures with which the Anabaptist leaders were put to
death ; and a Cromwell praises the Lord for delivering
his enemies into his hands for ^ execution.' Politics
come in in all such cases ; but piety finds the partnership
not quite unnatural. So, when ^ freethinkers ' tell us that
religion and fanaticism are twins, we cannot make an
unqualified denial of the charge.
Fanaticism must then be inscribed on the wrong side
THE VALUE OF SAINTLINESS U3
of religion's account; so long as the religious person's
intellect is on the stage which the despotic kind of God
satisfies. But as soon as the God is represented as less
intent on his own honor and glory^ it ceases to be a
danger.
Fanaticism is found only where the character is mas-
terful and aggressive. In gentle characters^ where de-
Youtness is intense and the intellect feeble, we have
an imaginative absorption in the love of God to the
exclusion of all practical human interests, which, though
innocent enough, is too one-sided to be admirable. A
mind too narrow has room but for one kind of affection.
When the love of God takes possession of such a mind,
it expels all human loves and human uses. There is no
English name for such a sweet excess of devotion, so I
will refer to it as a theopathic condition.
The blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque may serve as an
example.
** To be loved here upon the earth," her recent biographer
exclaims : ** to be loved by a noble, elevated, distinguished
being; to be loved with fidelity, with devotion, — what en-
chantment I But to be loved by God I and loved by him to
distraction [aim^ jusqii'a la folie] I — Margaret melted away
with love at the thought of such a thing. Like Saint Philip
of Neri in former times, or like Saint Francis Xavier, she said
to God : * Hold back, O my God, these torrents which over-
whelm me, or else enlarge my capacity for their reception.' " ^
The most signal proofs of God*s love which Margaret Mary
received were her hallucinations of sight, touch, and hearing,
and the most signal in turn of these were the revelations of
Christ's sacred heart, *' surrounded with rays more brilliant
than the Sun, and transparent like a crystal. The wound
which he received on the cross visibly appeared upon it. There
^ BouOAUD : Hist, de la bienheoreiisa Marguerite Marie, Paris, 1894|
p. 145.
344 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
was a crown of thorns round about this divme Heart, and a
cross above it." At the same time Christ's voice told her that,
unable longer to contain the flames of his love for mankind, he
had chosen her by a miracle to spread the knowledge of them.
He thereupon took out her mortal heart, placed it inside of his
own and inflamed it, and then replaced it in her breast, adding :
*^ Hitherto thou hast taken the name of my slave, hereafter
thou shalt be called the well-beloved disciple of my Sacred
Heart."
In a later vision the Saviour revealed to her in detail the
* great design ' which he wished to establish through her instru-
mentality. ^^ I ask of thee to bring it about that every first
Friday after the week of holy Sacrament shall be made into
a special holy day for honoring my Heart by a general com-
munion and by services intended to make honorable amends for
the indignities which it has received. And I promise thee that
my Heart will dilate to shed with abundance the influences of
its love upon all those who pay to it these honors, or who
bring it about that others do the same."
"This revelation," says Mgr. Bougaud, "is unques-
tionably the most important of all the revelations which
have illumined the Church since that of the Incarnation
and of the Lord's Supper. . . . After the Eucharist, the
supreme effort of the Sacred Heart." ^ Well, what were
its good fruits for Margaret Mary's life? Apparently
little else but sufferings and prayers and absences of
mind and swoons and ecstasies. She became increas-
ingly useless about the convent, her absorption in Christ's
love, —
^^ which grew upon her daily, rendering her more and more in-
capable of attending to external duties. They tried her in the
infirmary, but without much success, although her kindness, zeal,
and devotion were without bounds, and her charity rose to acts
of such a heroism that our readers would not bear the recital
^ BouoAUD : Hist, de la bienheurease Marguerite Marie, Ftoia, 1894,
pp. 365, 241.
THE VALUE OF SAINTLINESS 345
of them. They tried her in the kitchen, but were forced to give
it up as hopeless — everything dropped out of her hands. The
admirable humility with which she made amends for her clum-
siness could not prevent this from being prejudicial to the
order and regularity which must always reign in a community.
They put her in the school, where the little girls cherished her,
and cut pieces out of her clothes [for relics] as if she were
already a saint, but where she was too absorbed inwardly to
pay the necessary attention. Poor dear sister, even less after
her visions than before them was she a denizen of earth, and
they had to leave her in her heaven." ^
Poor dear sister, indeed ! Amiable and good, but so
feeble of intellectual outlook that it would be too much
to ask of us, with our Protestant and modem education,
to feel anything but indulgent pity for the kind of saint-
ship which she embodies. A lower example still of theo-
pathic saintliness is that of Saint Gertrude, a Benedic-
tine nun of the thirteenth century, whose ^ Revelations,'
a well-known mystical authority, consist mainly of proofs
of Christ's partiality for her undeserving person. Assur-
ances of his love, intimacies and caresses and compli-
ments of the most absurd and puerile sort, addressed by
Christ to Gertrude as an individual, form the tissue of
this paltry-minded recital.^ In reading such a narrative,
* BouOAXTD : Op. cit., p. 267.
* Ezamples : ** Suffering from a headache, she sought, for the glory of
God, to relieve herself by holding certain odoriferous substances in her
mouth, when the Lord appeared to her to lean over towards her lovingly,
and to find comfort Himself in these odors. After having gently breathed
them in, He arose, and said with a gratified air to the Saints, as if contented
with what He had done : ' See the new present which my betrothed has
given Me I '
** One day, at chapel, she heard snpematurally sung the words, ' Sanctus,
Sanctiu, Sancttu,* The Son of God leaning towards her like a sweet lover,
and giving to her soul the softest kiss, said to her at the second Sanctus :
' In this Sanctus addressed to my person, receive with this kiss all the sanc-
tity of my divinity and of my humanity, and let it be to thee a sufficient
preparation for approaching the communion table.' And the next follow-
S46 THE VAKIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
we realize the gap between the thirteenth and the twen-
tieth century, and we feel that saintliness of character
may yield almost absolutely worthless fruits if it be aa-
Bociated with such inferior intellectual sympathies. What
with science, idealism, and democracy, our own imagi-
nation has grown to need a God of an entirely different
temperament from that Being interested exclusively in
deaUng out personal favors, with whom our ancestors
were so contented. Smitten as we are with the vision
of social righteousness, a God indifferent to everything
but adulation, and full of partiality for his individual
favorites, lacks an essential element of largeness; and
even the best professional sainthood of former centuries,
pent in as it is to such a conception, seems to us curiously
shallow and unedifying.
Take Saint Teresa, for example, one of the ablest
women, in many respects, of whose life we have the
record. She had a powerful intellect of the practical
order. She wrote admirable descriptive psychology, pos-
sessed a wiU equal to any emergency, great talent for
politics and business, a buoyant disposition, and a first-
«te m^rj .>jU. She wi> te» Jously spiring, «,d
put her whole life at the service of her religious ideals.
Yet so paltry were these, according to our present way
of thinking, that (although I know that others have been
moved differently) I confess that my only feeling in
ing Sunday, while she was thanking God for this favor, behold the Son of
Grod, more beauteous than thousands of angels, takes her in His arms as if
He were proud of her, and presents her to God the Father, in that perfection
of sanctity with which He had dowered her. And the Father took such
delight in this soul thus presented by His only Son, that, as if unable longer
to restrain Himself, He gave her, and the Holy Ghost gave her also, the
Sanctity attributed to each by His own Sanctus — and thus she remained
endowed with the plenary fullness of the blessing of Sanctityy bestowed on
her by Omnipotence, by Wisdom, and by Love." Revelations de Sainte
Gertrude, Paris, 1898, i. 44, 186.
THE VALUE OF SAINTLINESS 347
reading her has been pity that so much vitality of soul
should have found such poor employment.
In spite of the sufferings which she endured, there is
a curious flavor of superficiality about her genius. A
Birmingham anthropologist, Dr. Jordan, has divided the
human race into two types, whom he calls ^ shrews ' and
* non-shrews ' respectively.^ The shrew-type is defined as
possessing an ^active unimpassioned temperament.' In
other words, shrews are the ^ motors,' rather than the
^ sensories,' ^ and their expressions are as a rule more
energetic than the feelings which appear to prompt them.
Saint Teresa, paradoxical as such a judgment may sound,
was a typical shrew, in this sense of the term. The
bustle of her style, as well as of her life, proves it. Not
only must she receive unheard-of personal favors and
spiritual graces from her Saviour, but she must immedi-
ately write about them and exploiter them professionaUy,
and use her expertness to give instruction to those less
privileged. Her voluble egotism ; her sense, not of radi-
cal bad being, as the really contrite have it, but of her
^ faults ' and ^ imperfections ' in the plural ; her stereo-
typed humility and return upon herself, as covered with
' confusion ' at each new manifestation of God's singular
partiality for a person so unworthy, are typical of shrew-
dom : a paramountly feeling nature would be objec-
tively lost in gratitude, and silent. She had some public
instincts, it is true ; she hated the Lutherans, and longed
for tlie church's triumph over them ; but in the main her
idea of religion seems to have been that of an endless
amatory flirtation — if one may say so without irrever-
1 William Furneaux Jordan : Character in Birth and Parentage, first
edition. Later editions change the nomenclature.
* As to this distinction, see the admirably practical account in J. M.
Baldwin's little book, The Story of the Mind, 1808.
348 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
ence — between the devotee and the deity; and apart
from helping younger nuns to go in this direction by the
inspiration of her example and instruction^ there is abso-
lutely no human use in her, or sign of any general human
interest. Yet the spirit of her age, far from rebuking
her, exalted her as superhuman.
We have to pass a similar judgment on the whole
notion of saintship based on merits. Any God who, on
the one hand, can care to keep a pedantically minute
account of individual shortcomings, and on the other can
feel such partialities, and load particular creatures with
such insipid marks of favor, is too small-minded a God
for our credence. When Luther, in his immense manly
way, swept off by a stroke of his hand the very notion of
a debit and credit account kept with individuals by the
Almighty, he stretched the soul's imagination and saved
theology from puerility.
So much for mere devotion, divorced from the intel-
lectual conceptions which might guide it towards bearing
useful human fruit.
The next saintly virtue in which we find excess is
Purity. In theopathic characters, like those whom we
have just considered, the love of God must not be mixed
with any other love. Father and mother, sisters, brothers,
and friends are felt as interfering distractions ; for sen-
sitiveness and narrowness, when they occur together, as
they often do, require above all things a simplified world
to dwell in. Variety and confusion are too much for their
powers of comfortable adaptation. But whereas your ag-
gressive pietist reaches his unity objectively, by forcibly
stamping disorder and divergence out, your retiring pie-
tist reaches his subjectively, leaving disorder in the world
at large, but making a smaller world in which he dwells
THE VALUE OF SAINTLINESS 349
himself and from which he eliminates it altogether. Thus,
alongside of the church militant with its prisons, dragon-
nades, and inquisition methods, we have the church
ftigienty as one might call it, with its hermitages, monas-
teries, and sectarian organizations, hoth churches pursu-
ing the same object — to unify the life,* and simpltf y the
spectacle presented to the souL A mind extremely sensi-
tive to inner discords will drop one external relation after
another, as interfering with the absorption of conscious-
ness in spiritual things. Amusements must go first, then
conventional ^ society,' then business, then family duties,
until at last seclusion, with a subdivision of the day into
hours for stated religious acts, is the only thing that can
be borne. The lives of saints are a history of successive
renunciations of compUcation, one form of contact with
the outer life being dropped after another, to save the
purity of inner tone.^ ^^ Is it not better,'* a young sister
1 On this snbjeot I refer to the work of M. Murisier (Les Maladies da
Sentiment Religienz, Paris, 1901), who makes inner unifioation the main-
spring of the whole religions life. But cUl strongly ideal interests, religions
or irreligions, nnify the mind and tend to subordinate everything to them-
selves. One would infer from M. Murisier's pages that this formal condition
was peculiarly characteristic of religion, and that one might in comparison
almost neglect material content, in studying the latter. I trust that the pre-
sent work will convince the reader that religion has plenty of material
content which is characteristic, and which is more important by far tlian
any general psychological form. In spite of this criticism, I find M. Muri-
sier's book highly instructive.
* Example : ** At the first beginning of the Servitor's [Suso's] interior
life, after he had purified his soul properly by confession, he marked out
for himself, in thought, three circles, within which he shut himself up, as in
a spiritual intrenchment. The first circle was his cell, his chapel, and the
choir. When he was within this circle, he seemed to himself in complete
security. The second circle was the whole monastery as far as the outer gate.
The third and outermost circle was the gate itself, and here it was necessary
for him to stand well upon his guard. When he went ontside these circles,
it seemed to him that he was in the plight of some wild animal which is
ontside its hole, and surrounded by the hunt, and therefore in need of all
its canning and watchfulness." The Life of the Blessed Henry Snso, by
Himaelfy translated by Kkox, London, 18d5, p. 168.
360 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
asks her Superior, ^^ that I should not speak at all during
the hour of recreation, so as not to run the risk, by
speaking, of falling into some sin of which I might not
be conscious ? " ^ If the life remains a social one at all,
those who take part in it must follow one identical rule.
Embosomed in this monotony, the zealot for purity feels
clean and free once more. The minuteness of uniformity
maintained in certain sectarian communities, whether
monastic or not, is something almost inconceivable to a
man of the world. Costume, phraseology, hours, and
habits are absolutely stereotyped, and there is no doubt
that some persons are so made as to find in this stabiUty
an incomparable kind of mental rest.
We have no time to multiply examples, so I will let
the case of Saint Louis of Gonzaga serve as a type of
excess in purification. I think you will agree that this
youth carried the elimination of the external and dis-
cordant to a point which we cannot unreservedly admire.
At the age of ten, his biographer says : —
*' The inspiration came to him to consecrate to the Mother of
God his own virginity — that being to her the most agreeable
of possible presents. Without delay, then, and with all the
fervor there was in him, joyous of heart, and burning with love,
he made his vow of perpetual chastity. Mary accepted the
offering of his innocent heart, and obtained for him from God,
as a recompense, the extraordinary grace of never feeling dur-
ing his entire life the slightest touch of temptation against the
virtue of purity. This was an altogether exceptional favor,
rarely accorded even to Saints themselves, and all the more
marvelous in that Louis dwelt always in courts and among
great folks, where danger and opportunity are so unusually
frequent. It is true that Louis from his earliest childhood had
shown a natural repugnance for whatever might be impure or
^ Vie des premieres Religienses Dominicaines de la Congregation de St
Dominiqaey k Nancy ; Nanoy, 1896, p. 129.
THE VALUE OF SAINTLINES8 861
nnvirginal, and even for relations of any sort whatever between
persons of opposite sex. But this made it all the more surpris-
ing that he should, especially since this vow, feel it necessary
to have recourse to such a number of expedients for protect-
ing against even the shadow of danger the virginity which he
had thus consecrated. One might suppose that if any one
could have contented himself with the ordinary precautions,
prescribed for all Christians, it would assuredly have been he.
But no I In the use of preservatives and means of defense, in
flight from the most insignificant occasions, from every possi-
bility of peril, just as in the mortification of his flesh, he went
farther than the majority of saints. He, who by an extraordi-
nary protection of 6od*s grace was never tempted, measured
all his steps as if he were threatened on every side by particu-
lar dangers. Thenceforward he never raised his eyes, either
when walking in the streets, or when in society. Not only did
he avoid all business with females even more scrupulously than
before, but he renounced all conversation and every kind of
social recreation with them, although his father tried to make
him take part ; and he commenced only too early to deliver his
innocent body to austerities of every kind." ^
At the age of twelve^ we read of this young man that
^^ if by chance his mother sent one of her maids of honor
to him with a message^ he never allowed her to come in,
but listened to her through the barely opened door, and
dismissed her immediately. He did not like to be alone
with his own mother, whether at table or in conversation ;
and when the rest of the company withdrew, he nought
also a pretext for retiring. . • . Several great ladies, rela-
tives of his, he avoided learning to know even by sight ;
and he made a sort of treaty with his father, engaging
promptly and readily to accede to all his wishes, if he
might only be excused from all visits to ladies." (Ibid.,
p. 71.)
^ Mkbchler's Life of Saint Louis of Gonzaga, French translation by
LEBB^uncB, 1891, p. 40.
862 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
When he was seventeen years old Louis joined the
Jesuit order/ against his father's passionate entreaties, for
he was heir of a princely house ; and when a year later the
father died, he took the loss as a ^ particular attention '
to himself on God's part, and wrote letters of stilted
good advice, as from a spiritual superior, to his grieving
mother. He soon became so good a monk that if any
one asked him the number of his brothers and sisters,
he had to reflect and count them over before replying.
A Father asked him one day if he were never troubled
by the thought of his family, to which, " I never think
of them except when praying for them," was his only
answer. Never was he seen to hold in his hand a flower
or anything perfumed, that he might take pleasure in
it. On the contrary, in the hospital, he used to seek
for whatever was most disgusting, and eagerly snatch the
bandages of ulcers, etc., from the hands of his com-
panions. He avoided worldly talk, and immediately tried
to turn every conversation on to pious subjects, or else he
remained silent. He systematically refused to notice his
surroundings. Being ordered one day to bring a book
from the rector's seat in the refectory, he had to ask
where the rector sat, for in the three months he had
eaten bread there, so carefully did he guard his eyes that
he had not noticed the place. One day, during recess,
having looked by chance on one of his companions, he
reproached himself as for a grave sin against modesty.
He cultivated silence, as preserving from sins of the
tongue ; and his greatest penance was the Hmit which his
superiors set to his bodily penances. He sought after
^ In his boyish note-book he praises the monastic life for its freedom
from sin, and for the imperishable treasures, which it enables as to store up,
** of merit in Grod*s eyes which makes of Him our debtor for aU Eternity."
Loc. cit, p. 62.
THE VALUE OF SAINTLINESS 353
false accusations and unjust reprimands as opportunities
of humility ; and such was his obedience that, when a
room-mate, having no more paper, asked him for a sheet,
he did not feel free to give it to him without first obtain-
ing the permission of the superior, who, as such, stood in
the place of God, and transmitted his orders.
I can find no other sorts of fruit than these of Louis's
saintship. He died in 1591, in his twenty-ninth year,
and is known in the Church as the patron of all young
people. On his festival, the altar in the chapel devoted
to him in a certain church in Rome ^^ is embosomed in
flowers, arranged with exquisite taste; and a pile of
letters may be seen at its foot, written to the Saint
by young men and women, and directed to ^ Paradiso/
They are supposed to be burnt unread except by San
Luigi, who must find singular petitions in these pretty
little missives, tied up now with a g^een ribbon, expres-
sive of hope, now with a red one, emblematic of love,"
etc.^
^ Mademoiselle Mori, a novel quoted in Hare's Walks in Rome, 1900,
1.55.
I cannot resist the temptation to quote from Starbnck's book, p. 388,
another ease of purification by elimination. It runs as follows : —
" The signs of abnormality which sanctified persons show are of frequent
oecarrence. They get out of tune with other people ; often they will have
nothing to do with churches, which they regard as worldly ; they become
hypercritical towards others ; they grow careless of their social, political,
and financial obligations. As an instance of this type may be mentioned a
woman of sixty-eight of whom the writer made a special study. She had
been a member of one of the most active and progressive churches in a
busy part of a large city. Her pastor described her as having reached the
oensorions stage. She had grown more and more out of sympathy with the
ehnreh ; her connection with it finally consisted simply in attendance at
prayer-meeting, at which her only message was that of reproof and con-
denmation of the others for living on a low plane. At last she withdrew
from fellowship with any church. The writer found her living alone in a
little room on the top story of a cheap boarding-house, quite out of touch
with all human relations, but apparently happy in the enjoyment of her
864 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE ^
Our final judgment of the worth of such a life as xhis
will depend largely on our conception of God, and of the
sort of conduct he is best pleased with in his creatures.
The Catholicism of the sixteenth century paid little heed
to social righteousness; and to leave the world to the
devil whilst saving one's own soul was then accounted no
discreditable scheme. To-day, rightly or wrongly, help-
fulness in general human affairs is, in consequence of
one of those secular mutations in moral sentiment of
which I spoke, deemed an essential element of worth in
character; and to be of some public or private use is
also reckoned as a species of divine service. Other early
Jesuits, especially the missionaries among them, the
Xaviers, Br^beufs, Jogues, were objective minds, and
fought in their way for the world's welfare; so their
lives to-day inspire us. But when the intellect, as in this
Louis, is originally no larger than a pin's head, and
cherishes ideas of God of corresponding smallness, the
result, notwithstanding the heroism put forth, is on the
whole repulsive. Purity, we see in the object-lesson, is
not the one thing needful ; and it is better that a life
should contract many a dirt-mark, than forfeit useful-
ness in its efforts to remain unspotted.
own spiritual blessings. Her time was occupied in writing booklets on
sanctification — p&ge after page of dreamy rbapsody. She proved to be one
of a small group of persons who claim that entire salvation involves three
steps instead of two ; not only must there be conversion and sanctification,
but a third, which they call ' crucifixion ' or ' perfect redemption,* and
which seems to bear the same relation to sanctification that thia bears to
conversion. She related how the Spirit had said to her, ' Stop g^ing to
church. Stop going to holiness meeting^. Go to your ovm room and I
will teach you.' She professes to care nothing for colleges, or preachers,
or churches, but only cares to listen to what Grod says to her. Her descrip-
tion of her experience seemed entirely consistent ; she is happy and con-
tented, and her life is entirely satisfactory to herself. While listening to
her own story, one was tempted to forget that it was from the life of a
person who could not live by it in conjunction with her fellows."
THE VALUE OF SAINTLINESS 366
Procc&eding onwards in our search of religious extrava-
gance, we next come upon excesses of Tenderness and
Charity'. Here saintliness has to face the charge of pre-
serving the unfit, and breeding parasites and beggars.
^ Resist not evil/ ^ Love your enemies/ these are saintly
maxims of which men of this world find it hard to speak
without impatience. Are the men of this world right,
or are the saints in possession of the deeper range of
truth?
No simple answer is possible. Here, if anywhere,
one feels the complexity of the moral life, and the
mysteriousness of the way in which facts and ideals are
interwoven.
Perfect conduct is a relation between three terms :
the actor, the objects for which he acts, and the recip-
ients of the action. In order that conduct should be
abstractly perfect, all three terms, intention, execution,
and reception, should be suited to one another. The best
intention will fail if it either work by false means or
address itself to the wrong recipient. Thus no critic or
estimator of the value of conduct can confine himself
to the actor's animus alone, apart from the other ele-
ments of the performance. As there is no worse lie than
a truth misunderstood by those who hear it, so reason-
able arguments, challenges to magnanimity, and appeals to
sympathy or justice, are folly when we are dealing with
human crocodiles and boa-constrictors. The saint may
simply give the universe into the hands of the enemy by
his trustfulness. He may by non-resistance cut off his
own survival.
Herbert Spencer tells us that the perfect man's con-
duct will appear perfect only when the environment is
perfect : to no inferior environment is it suitably adapted.
We may paraphrase this by cordially admitting that
866 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCjE
saintly conduct would be the most perfect condVict con-
ceivable in an environment where all were saints ^Uready ;
but by adding that in an environment where Itew are
saints, and many the exact reverse of saints, it Inust be
ill adapted. We must frankly confess, then, using our
empirical common sense and ordinary practical preju-
dices, that in the world that actually is, the virtues of
sympathy, charity, and non-resistance may be, and often
have been, manifested in excess. The powers of darkness
have systematically taken advantage of them. The whole
modern scientific organization of charity is a consequence
of the failure of simply giving alms. The whole history
of constitutional government is a commentary on the ex-
cellence of resisting evil, and when one cheek is smitten,
of smiting back and not turning the other cheek also.
You will agree to this in general, for in spite of the
Gospel, in spite of Quakerism, in spite of Tolstoi, you
beheve in fighting fire with fire, in shooting down usurp-
ers, locking up thieves, and freezing out vagabonds and
swindlers.
And yet you are sure, as I am sure, that were the
world confined to these hard-headed, hard-hearted, and
hard-fisted methods exclusively, were there no one prompt
to help a brother first, and find out afterwards whether
he were worthy ; no one willing to drown his private
wrongs in pity for the wronger's person ; no one ready to
be duped many a time rather than live always on suspi-
cion ; no one glad to treat individuals passionately and
impulsively rather than by general rules of prudence ; the
world would be an infinitely worse place than it is now to
live in. The tender grace, not of a day that is dead, but
of a day yet to be born somehow, with the golden rule
grown natural, would be cut out from the perspective of
our imaginations.
THE VALUE OF SAINTLINESS 367
The saints^ existing in this way, niay, with their ex-
travagances of human tenderness, be prophetic. Nay,
innumerable times they have proved themselves pro-
phetic. Treating those whom they met, in spite of the
past, in spite of all appearances, as worthy, they have
stimulated them to he worthy, miraculously transformed
them by their radiant example and by the challenge of
their expectation.
From this point of view we may admit the human
charity which we find in all saints, and the great excess
of it which we find in some saints, to be a genuinely
creative social force, tending to make real a degree of
virtue which it alone is ready to assume as possible.
The saints are authors, auctoreSf increasers, of good-
ness. The potentiaUties of development in human souls
are unfathomable. So many who seemed irretrievably
hardened have in point of fact been softened, converted,
regenerated, in ways that amazed the subjects even more
than they surprised the spectators, that we never can be
sure in advance of any man that his salvation by the
way of love is hopeless. We have no right to speak of
human crocodiles and boa-constrictors as of fiixedly incur-
able beings. We know not the complexities of person-
ality, the smouldering emotional fires, the other facets of
the character-polyhedron, the resources of the subliminal
region. St. Paul long ago made our ancestors familiar
with the idea that every soul is virtually sacred. Since
Christ died for us all without exception, St. Paul said, we
must despair of no one. This belief in the essential
sacredness of every one expresses itself to-day in all sorts
of humane customs and reformatory institutions, and in
a growing aversion to the death penalty and to brutality
in punishment. The saints, with their extravagance of
human tenderness, are the great torch-bearers of this
d58 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
belief^ the tip of the wedge, the clearers of the darkness,
like the single drops which sparkle in the sun as they
are flung far ahead of the advancing edge of a wave-
crest or of a flood, they show the way and are forerun-
ners. The world is not yet with them, so they often
seem in the midst of the world's affairs to be preposter-
ous. Yet they are impregnators of the world, vivifiers
and animaters of potentialities of goodness which but for
them would lie forever dormant. It is not possible to be
quite as mean as we naturally are, when they have passed
before us. One fire kindles another ; and without that
over-trust in human worth which they show, the rest of
us would lie in spiritual stagnancy.
Momentarily considered, then, the saint may waste
his tenderness and be the dupe and victim of his char-
itable fever, but the general function of his charity in
social evolution is vital and essential. If things are ever
to move upward, some one must be ready to take the
first step, and assume the risk of it. No one who is not
willing to try charity, to try non-resistance as the saint
is always willing, can tell whether these methods will or
will not succeed. When they do succeed, they are far
more powerfully successful tlian force or worldly pru-
dence. Force destroys enemies ; and the best that can
be said of prudence is that it keeps what we already have
in safety. But non-resistance, when successful, turns
enemies into friends ; and charity regenerates its objects.
These saintly methods are, as I said, creative energies ;
and genuine saints find in the elevated excitement with
which their faith endows them an authority and impres-
siveness which makes them irresistible in situations where
men of shallower nature cannot get on at all without
the use of worldly prudence. This practical proof that
worldly wisdom may be safely transcended is the saint's
THE VALUE OF SAINTLINESS 359
magic gift to mankind.^ Not only does his vision of a
better world console us for the generally prevailing prose
^ The belt miuionarj lives abound in the yiotorious combination of non-
resistanoe with personal authority. John 6. Paton, for example, in the
New Hebrides, among bratish Melanesian cannibals, preserves a charmed
life by dint of it When it comes to the point, no one ever dares actually
to strike him. Native converts, inspired by him, showed analogous virtue.
** One of our chiefs, full of the Christ-kindled desire to seek and to save,
sent a message to an inland chief, that he and four attendants would come
on Sabbath and tell them the gospel of Jehovah God. The reply came back
sternly forbidding their visit, and threatening with death any Christian
that approached their village. Our chief sent in response a loving message,
telling them that Jehovah had taught the Christians to return good for
evil, and that they would come unarmed to tell them the story of how the
Son of God came into the world and died in order to bless and save his
enemies. The heathen chief sent back a stem and prompt reply once
more : ' If you come, you will be killed.' On Sabbath mom the Christian
chief and his four companions were met outside the village by the heathen
chief, who implored and threatened them once more. But the former
said : —
** * We come to yon without weapons of war I We come only to tell you
about Jesus. We believe that He will protect us to-day.'
** As they pressed steadily forward towards the village, spears began to be
thrown at them. Some they evaded, being all except one dexterous war-
riors ; and others they literally received with their bare hands, and turned
them aside in an incredible manner. The heathen, apparently thunderstruck
at these men thus approaching them without weapons of war, and not even
flinging back their own spears which they had caught, after having thrown
what the old chief called ' a shower of spears,' desisted from mere su>
prise. Our Christian chief called out, as he and his companions drew up in
the midst of them on the village public ground : —
** * Jehovah thus protects us. He has g^ven us all your spears f Once we
would have thrown them back at you and killed yon. But now we come,
not to fight but to tell you about Jesus. He has changed our dark hearts.
He asks you now to lay down all these your other weapons of war, and to
hear what we can tell you about the love of God, our great Father, the
only living God.'
'' The heathen were perfectly overawed. They manifestly looked on these
Christians as protected by some Invisible One. They listened for the first
time to the story of the Gospel and of the Cross. We lived to see that
chief and all his tribe sitting in the school of Christ And there is perhaps
not an island in these southern seas, amongst all those won for Christ,
where similar acts of heroism on the part of converts cannot be recited."
John G. Paton, Missionary to the New Hebrides, An Autobiography,
second part, London, 1890, p. 243.
360 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
and barrenness ; but even when on the whole we have to
confess him ill adapted, he makes some converts, and the
environment gets better for his ministry. He is an effec-
tive ferment of goodness, a slow transmuter of the earthly
into a more heavenly order.
In this respect the Utopian dreams of social justice in
which many contemporary socialists and anarchists indulge
are, in spite of their impracticability and non-adaptation
to present environmental conditions, analogous to the
saint's belief in an existent kingdom of heaven. They
help to break the edge of the general reign of hardness,
V . and are slow leavens of a better order.
The next topic in order is Asceticism, which I fancy
you are all ready to consider without argument a virtue
liable to extravagance and excess. The optimism and
refinement of the modern imagination has, as I have
already said elsewhere, changed the attitude of the church
towards corporeal mortification, and a Suso or a Saint
Peter of Alcantara^ appear to us to-day rather in the
^ Saint Peter, Saint Teresa tells us in her autobiography (French trans-
lation, p. 333), ** had passed forty years without ever sleeping more than
an hour and a half a day. Of all his mortifications, this was the one that
had cost him the most. To compass it, he kept always on his knees or on
his feet. The little sleep he allowed nature to take was snatched in a sit-
ting posture, his head leaning against a piece of wood fixed in the walL
Even had he wished to lie down, it would have been impossible, because his
cell was only four feet and a half long. In the course of all these years he
never raised his hood, no matter what the ardor of the sun or the rain's
strength. He never put on a shoe. He wore a garment of coarse saek-
cloth, with nothing else upon his skin. This garment was as scant as pos-
sible, and over it a little cloak of the same stufiP. When the cold was great
he took off the cloak and opened for a while the door and little window of
his cell. Then he closed them and resumed the mantle, — his way, as he
told us, of warming himself, and making his body feel a better tempera-
ture. It was a frequent thing with him to eat once only in three days ;
and when I expressed my surprise, he said that it was very easy if one onoe
had acquired the habit One of his companions has assoied me that he has
THE VALUE OF SAINTLINESS 361
light of tragic mountebanks than of sane men inspiring
us with respect. If the inner dispositions are right, we
ask, what need of all this torment, this violation of the
outer nature ? It keeps the outer nature too important.
Any one who is genuinely emancipated from the flesh
will look on pleasures and pains, abundance and priva-
tion, as alike irrelevant and indifferent. He can engage
in actions and experience enjoyments without fear of
corruption or enslavement. As the Bhagavad-Gita says,
only those need renounce worldly actions who are still
inwardly attached thereto. If one be really unattached
to the fruits of action, one may mix in the world with
equanimity. I quoted in a former lecture Saint Augus-
tine's antinomian saying : If you only love God enough,
you may safely follow all your inclinations. ^^ He needs
no devotional practices," is one of Ramakrishna's max-
ims, ^^ whose heart is moved to tears at the mere mention
of the name of Hari." ^ And the Buddha, in pointing
out what he called Hhe middle way' to his disciples,
told them to abstain from both extremes, excessive mor-
tification being as unreal and unworthy as mere desire
and pleasure. The only perfect life, he said, is that of
inner wisdom, which makes one thing as indifferent to
gone sometimes eight days without food. . . . His poverty was extreme ;
and his mortification, even in his youth, was such that he told me he had
passed three years in a house of his order without knowing any of the
monks otherwise than by the sound of their voice, for he never raised his
eyes, and only found his way about by following the others. He showed
this same modesty on public highways. He spent many years without ever
laying eyes upon a woman ; but he confessed to me that at the age he had
reached it was indifferent to him whether he laid eyes on them or not. He
was very old when I first came to know him, and his body so attenuated
that it seemed formed of nothing so much as of so many roots of trees.
With all this sanctity he was very affable. He never spoke unless he was
questioned, but his intellectual right-mindedness and grace gave to all his
words an irresistible charm."
^ F. Max Muller : Ramakrishna, his Life and Sayings, 1899, p. 180.
362 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
US as another, and thus leads to rest, to peace, and to
Nirvana.^
We find accordingly that as ascetic saints have grown
older, and directors of conscience more experienced,
they usually have shown a tendency to lay less stress
on special bodily mortifications. Catholic teachers have
always professed the rule that, since health is needed for
efficiency in God's service, health must not be sacrificed
to mortification. The general optimism and healthy-
mindedness of liberal Protestant circles to-day makes
mortification for mortification's sake repugnant to us.
We can no longer sympathize with cruel deities, and
the notion that God can take dehght in the spectacle of
sufferings self-inflicted in his honor is abhorrent. In
consequence of all these motives you probably are dis-
posed, unless some special utility can be shown in some
individual's discipline, to treat the general tendency to
asceticism as pathological.
Yet I believe that a more careful consideration of the
whole matter, distinguishing between the general good
intention of asceticism and the uselessness of some of the
particular acts of which it may be guilty, ought to re-
habilitate it in our esteem. For in its spiritual meaning
asceticism stands for nothing less than for the essence of
the twice-born philosophy. It symbolizes, lamely enough
no doubt, but sincerely, the belief that there is an ele-
ment of real wrongness in this world, which is neither to
be ignored nor evaded, but which must be squarely met
and overcome by an appeal to the soul's heroic resources,
and neutralized and cleansed away by suffering. As
against this view, the ultra-optimistic form of the once-
born philosophy thinks we may treat evil by the method
of ignoring. Let a man who, by fortunate health and cir-
1 Oldendero: Buddha; translated by W. HoETy London, 1S82, p. 127.
THE VALUE OF SAINTLINESS 363
cumstances; escapes the suffering of any great amount of
evil in his own person^ also close his eyes to it as it exists
in the wider universe outside his private experience, and
he will be quit of it altogether, and can sail through life
happily on a healthy-minded basis. But we saw in our
lectures on melancholy how precarious this attempt neces-
sarily is. Moreover it is but for the individual ; and
leaves the evil outside of him^ unredeemed and unpro-
vided for in his philosophy.
No such attempt can be a general solution of the
problem ; and to minds of sombre tinge, who naturally
feel life as a tragic mystery, such optimism is a shal-
low dodge or mean evasion. It accepts, in lieu of a
real deliverance, what is a lucky personal accident merely,
a cranny to escape by. It leaves the general world un-
helped and still in the clutch of Satan. The real deliver-
ance, the twice-born folk insist, must be of universal
application. Pain and wrong and death must be fairly
met and overcome in higher excitement, or else their
sting remains essentially unbroken. If one has ever
taken the fact of the prevalence of tragic death in this
world's history fairly into his mind, — freezing, drowning,
entombment alive, wild beasts, worse men, and hideous
diseases, — he can with difi&culty, it seems to me, con-
tinue his own career of worldly prosperity without sus-
pecting that he may all the while not be really inside the
game, that he may lack the great initiation.
Well, this is exactly what asceticism thinks; and it
voluntarily takes the initiation. life is neither farce nor
genteel comedy, it says, but something we must sit at in
mourning garments; hoping its bitter taste will purge us
of our folly. The wild and the heroic are indeed such
rooted parts of it that healthy-mindedness pure and sim-
ple, with its sentimental optimism, can hardly be regarded
864 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
by any thinking man as a serious solution. Phrases of
neatness, cosiness, and comfort can never be an answer to
the sphinx's riddle.
In these remarks I am leaning only upon mankind's
common instinct for reality, which in point of fact has
always held the world to be essentially a theatre for
heroism. In heroism^ we feel, life's supreme mysteiy is
hidden. We tolerate no one who has no capacity what-
ever for it in any direction. On the other hand^ no
matter what a man's frailties oAerwise may be, if he be
willing to risk death, and still more if he suffer it hero-
ically, in the service he has chosen^ the fact consecrates
him forever. Inferior to ourselves in this or that way,
if yet we cling to life, and he is able ^ to fling it away
like a flower ' as caring nothing for it, we account him
in the deepest way our bom superior. Each of us in his
own person feels that a high-hearted indifference to life
would expiate all his shortcomings.
The metaphysical mystery, thus recognized by com-
mon sense, that he who feeds on death that feeds on
men possesses life supereminently and excellently, and
meets best the secret demands of the universe, is the
truth of which asceticism has been the faithful champion.
The folly of the cross, so inexplicable by the intellect,
has yet its indestructible vital meaning.
Representatively, then, and symbolically, and apart
from the vagaries into which the unenlightened intellect
of former times may have let it wander, asceticism must, I
beKeve, be acknowledged to go with the profounder way
of handling the gift of existence. Naturalistic optimism is
mere syllabub and flattery and sponge--cake in comparison.
The practical course of action for us, as religious men,
would therefore, it seems to me, not be simply to turn
our backs upon the ascetic impulse^ as most of us to-day
THE VALUE OF SAINTUNESS 365
turn them; but rather to discover some outlet for it of
which the fruits in the way of privation and hardship
might be objectively usef uL The older monastic asceti-
cism occupied itself with pathetic futilities^ or terminated
in the mere egotism of the individual, increasing his own
perfection.^ But is it not possible for us to discard most
of these older forms of mortification, and yet find saner
channels for the heroism which inspired them ?
Does not, for example, the worship of material luxury
and wealth, which constitutes so large a portion of the
^ spirit ' of our age, make somewhat for effeminacy and
unmanliness? Is not the exclusively sympathetic and
facetious way in which most children are brought up to-
day — so different from the education of a hundred years
ago, especially in evangelical circles — in danger, in spite
of its many advantages, of developing a certain trashi-
ness of fibre? Are there not hereabouts some points
of application for a renovated and revised ascetic disci-
pline?
Many of you would recognize such dangers, but would
point to athletics, militarism, and individual and national
enterprise and adventure as the remedies. These con-
temporary ideals are quite as remarkable for the energy
with which they make for heroic standards of life, as
contemporary religion is remarkable for the way in which
it neglects them.^ War and adventure assuredly keep
all who engage in them from treating themselves too
tenderly. They demand such incredible efforts, depth
1 « The vanities of all others may die oat, bat the vanity of a saint as
gards his sainthood is hard indeed to wear away." Ramakrishna, his Life
and Sayings, 1899, p. 172.
' ** When a church has to be run by oysters, ice-cream, and fan," I read
in an American religions paper, " yoa may be sure that it is running away
from Christ." Such, if one may jadge by appearances, is the present plight
of many of our churches.
d66 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
beyond depth of exertion^ both in degree and in dora-
tdon^ that the whole scale of motivation alters. Discom-
fort and annoyance^ hunger and wet^ pain and cold^
squalor and filthy cease to have any deterrent operation
whatever. Death turns into a commonplace matter, and
its usual power to check our action vanishes. With the
annulling of these customary inhibitions, ranges of new
energy are set free, and life seems cast upon a higher
plane of power.
The beauty of war in this respect is that it is so con-
gruous with ordinary human nature. Ancestral evolution
has made us all potential warriors ; so the most insignifi-
cant individual, when thrown into an army in the field, is
weaned from whatever excess of tenderness towards his
precious person he may bring with him, and may easily
develop into a monster of insensibility.
But when we compare the military type of self-severity
with that of the ascetic saint, we find a world-wide differ-
ence in all their spiritual concomitants.
" * Live and let live,* " writes a clear-headed Austrian
ofiBcer, " is no device for an army. Contempt for one's
own comrades, for the troops of the enemy, and, above
all, fierce contempt for one's own person, are what war
demands of every one. Far better is it for an army to
be too savage, too cruel, too barbarous, than to possess
too much sentimentality and human reasonableness. If
the soldier is to be good for anything as a soldier, he
must be exactly the opposite of a reasoning and thinking
man. The measure of goodness in him is his possible
use in war. War, and even peace, require of the soldier
absolutely peculiar standards of morality. The recruit
brings with him common moral notions, of which he
must seek immediately to get rid. For him victory, suc-
cess, must be everything. The most barbaric tendencies
THE VALUE OF SAINTLINESS 367
in men come to life again in war^ and for war's uses they
are incommensurablj good." *
These words are of course literally true. The imme-
diate aim of the soldier's life is, as Moltke said, destruc-
tion, and nothing but destruction; and whatever con-
structions wars result in are remote and non-military.
Consequently the soldier cannot train himself to be too
feelingless to all those usual sympathies and respects,
whether for persons or for things, that make for conser-
vation. Yet the fact remains that war is a school of
strenuous life and heroism ; and, being in the line of
aboriginal instinct, is the only school that as yet is uni-
versally available. But when we gravely ask ourselves
whether this wholesale organization of irrationality and
crime be our only bulwark against effeminacy, we stand
aghast at the thought, and think more kindly of ascetic
religion. One hears of the mechanical equivalent of heat.
What we now need to discover in the social realm is the
moral equivalent of war : something heroic that will
speak to men as universally as war does, and yet will be
as compatible with their spiritual selves as war has proved
itself to be incompatible. I have often thought tiiat in
ihe old monkish poverty-worship, in spite of die pedan-
try which infested it, there might be something like that
moral equivalent of war which we are seeking. May
not voluntarily accepted poverty be * the strenuous life,'
without the need of crushing weaker peoples ?
Poverty indeed is the strenuous life, — without brass
bands or uniforms or hysteric popular applause or lies
or circumlocutions ; and when one sees the way in which
wealth-getting enters as an ideal into the very bone and
marrow of o^ generation, one wonders whether a revival
^ C. y. B. K. : Friedeiuh nnd Kriegs-mond der Ueere. Qaoted by
Hamon : Psjchologie du Militure professional, 1805, p. zlL
368 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
of the belief that poverty is a worthy religious vocation
may not be ^ the transformation of military courage/ and
the spiritual reform which our time stands most in need of.
Among us English-speaking peoples especially do the
praises of poverty need once more to be boldly sung.
We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise
any one who elects to be poor in order to simplify and
save his inner life. If he does not join the general
scramble and pant with the money-making street^ we
deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition. We have
lost the power even of imagining what the ancient ideali-
zation of poverty could have meant : the liberation from
material attachments^ the unbribed soul, the manlier
indifference, the paying our way by what we are or do
and not by what we have, the right to fling away our life
at any moment irresponsibly, — the more athletic trim,
in short, the moral fighting shape. When we of the
so-called better classes are scared as men were never
scared in history at material ugliness and hardship;
when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic,
and quake at the thought of having a child without a
bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for
thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irre-
ligious a state of opinion.
It is true that so far as wealth gives time for ideal
ends and exercise to ideal energies, wealth is better than
poverty and ought to be chosen. But wealth does this
in only a portion of the actual cases. Elsewhere the
desire to gain wealth and the fear to lose it are our chief
breeders of cowardice and propagators of corruption.
There are thousands of conjunctures in which a wealth-
bound man must be a slave, whilst a man for whom
poverty has no terrors becomes a freeman. Think of the
strength which personal indifference to poverty would
THE VALUE OF SAINTUNESS 369
give US if we were devoted to unpopular causes. We
need no longer hold our tongues or fear to vote the
revolutionary or reformatory ticket. Our stocks might
fall, our hopes of promotion vanish, our salaries stop,
our club doors close in our faces ; yet, while we lived, we
would imperturbably bear witness to the spirit, and our
example would help to set free our generation. The
cause would need its funds, but we its servants would be
potent in proportion as we personally were contented with
our poverty.
I recommend this matter to your serious pondering,
for it is certain that the prevalent fear of poverty among
the educated classes is the worst moral disease from
which our civiUzation suffers.
I have now said all that I can usefully say about the
several fruits of religion as they are manifested in saintly
lives, so I will make a brief review and pass to my more
general conclusions.
Our question, you will remember, is as to whether reli-
gion stands approved by its fruits, as these are exhibited
in the saintly type of character. Single attributes of
saintliness may, it is true, be temperamental endowments,
found in non-reUgious individuals. But the whole group
of them forms a combination which, as such, is religious,
for it seems to flow from the sense of the divine as from
its psychological centre. Whoever possesses strongly
this sense comes naturally to think that the smallest
details of this world derive infinite significance from
their relation to an unseen divine order. The thought of
this order yields him a superior denomination of happi-
ness, and a steadfastness of soul with which no other can
compare. In social relations his serviceability is exem-
plary ; he abounds in impulses to help. His help is in-
370 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
ward as well as outward, for his sympathy reaches souls
as well as bodies, and kindles unsuspected faculties therein.
Instead of placing happiness where common men place it,
in comfort, be places it in a higher kind of inner excite-
ment, which converts discomforts into sources of cheer
and annuls unbappiness. So he turns his back upon
no duty, however thankless ; and when we are in need of
assistance, we can count upon the saint lending his hand
with more certainty than we can count upon any other
person. Finally, his humble-mindedness and bis ascetic
tendencies save him from the petty personal pretensions
which so obstruct our ordinary social intercourse, and
his purity gives us in him a clean man for a companion.
Felicity, purity, charity, patience, self-severity, — these
are splendid excellencies, and the saint of all men shows
them in the completest possible measure.
But, ^ we saw, all these things together do not make
saints infallible. When their intellectual outlook is nar-
row, they fall into all sorts of holy excesses, fanaticism
or theopathic absorption, self-torment, prudery, scrupu-
losity, gullibility, and morbid inability to meet the world.
By the very intensity of his fidelity to the paltry ideals
with which an inferior intellect may inspire him^ a saint
can be even more objectionable and damnable than a
superficial carnal man would be in the same situation.
We must judge him not sentimentally only, and not
in isolation, but using our own intellectual standards,
placing him in his environment, and estimating his total
function.
Now in the matter of intellectual standards, we must
bear in mind that it is unfair, where we find narrowness
of mind, always to impute it as a vice to the individual,
for in religious and theological matters he probably ab-
sorbs his narrowness from his generation. Moreover, we
THE VALUE OP SAINTLINESS 371
must not confound the essentials of saintliness, which are
those general passions of which I have spoken^ with its
accidents, which are the special determinations of these
passions at any historical moment. In these determina-
tions the saints will usually be loyal to the temporary
idciB of their tribe. Taking refuge in monasteries was as
much an idol of the tribe in the middle ages, as bearing
a hand in the world's work is to-day. Saint Francis or
Saint Bernard, were they living to-day, would undoubt-
edly be leading consecrated lives of some sort, but quite
as undoubtedly they would not lead them in retirement.
Our animosity to special historic manifestations must not
lead us to give away the saintly impulses in their essential
nature to the tender mercies of inimical critics.
The most inimical critic of the saintly impulses whom I
know is Nietzsche. He contrasts them with the worldly
passions as we find these embodied in the predaceous mili-
tary character, altogether to the advantage of the latter.
Your born saint, it must be confessed, has something
about him which often makes the gorge of a carnal man
rise, so it will be worth while to consider the contrast in
question more fully.
Dislike of the saintly nature seems to be a negative
result of the biologically useful instinct of welcoming
leadership, and glorifying the chief of the tribe. The
chief is the potential, if not the actual tyrant, the mas-
terful, overpowering man of prey. We confess our in-
feriority and grovel before him. We quail under his
glance, and are at the same time proud of owning so
dangerous a lord. Such instinctive and submissive hero-
worship must have been indispensable in primeval tribal
life. In the endless wars of those times, leaders were
absolutely needed for the tribe's survival. If there were
any tribes who owned no leaders, they can have left no
372 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
issue to narrate their doom. The leaders always had
good conscienceSy for conscience in them coalesced with
will, and those who looked on their face were as much
smitten with wonder at their freedom from inner restraint
as with awe at the energy of their outward performances.
Compared with these beaked and taloned graspers of
the world, saints are herbivorous animals, tame and harm-
less barn-yard poultry. There are saints whose beard
you may, if you ever care to, pull with impunity. Such
a man excites no thrills of wonder veiled in terror ; his
conscience is full of scruples and returns ; he stuns us
neither by his inward freedom nor his outward power;
and unless he found within us an altogether different
faculty of admiration to appeal to, we should pass him by
with contempt.
In point of fact, he does appeal to a different faculty.
Reenacted in human nature is the fable of the wind, the
sun, and the traveler. The sexes embody the discrep-
ancy. The woman loves the man the more admiringly
the stormier he shows himself, and the world deifies its
rulers the more for being willful and unaccountable. But
the woman in turn subjugates the man by the mystery of
gentleness in beauty, and the saint has always charmed
the world by something similar. Mankind is susceptible
and suggestible in opposite directions, and the rivalry of
influences is unsleeping. The saintly and the worldly
ideal pursue their feud in literature as much as in real life.
For Nietzsche the saint represents little but sneaking-
ness and slavishness. He is the sophisticated invalid, the
degenerate jpar excellencey the man of insufficient vitality.
His prevalence would put the human type in danger.
^^ The sick are the greatest danger for the well. The weaker,
not the stronger, are the strong's undoing. It is not /ear of
our fellow-man, which we should wish to see diminished ; for
THE VALUE OF SAINTLINESS 373
fear rooses those who are strong to become terrible in turn
themselves, and preserves the hard-earned and successful type of
humanity. What is to be dreaded by us more than any other
doom is not fear, but rather the great disgust, not fear, but
rather the great pity — disgust and pity for our human fellows.
. . . The morbid are our greatest peril — not the 'bad' men,
not the predatory beings. Those bom wrong, the miscarried,
the broken — they it is, the weakest^ who are undermining the
vitality of the race, poisoning our trust in life, and putting hu-
manity in question. Every look of them is a sigh, — ^ Would
I were something other I I am sick and tired of what I
am.' In this swamp-soil of self-contempt, every poisonous
weed flourishes, and all so small, so secret, so dishonest, and so
sweetly rotten. Here swarm the worms of sensitiveness and
resentment ; here the air smells odious with secrecy, with what
is not to be acknowledged ; here is woven endlessly the net of
the meanest of conspiracies, the conspiracy of those who suffer
against those who succeed and are victorious; here the very
aspect of the victorious is hated — as if health, success, strength,
pride, and the sense of power were in themselves things vicious,
for which one ought eventually to make bitter expiation. Oh,
how these people would themselves like to inflict the expiation,
how they thirst to be the hangmen ! And all the while their
duplicity never confesses their hatred to be hatred." ^
Poor Nietzsche's antipathy is itself sickly enough, but
I quote him as expressing forcibly the world-old clash
between the two ideals. The carnivorous-minded ^ strong
man/ the adult male and cannibal^ can see nothing but
mouldiness and morbidness in the saint's gentleness and
self-severity^ and regards him with pure loathing. The
whole feud revolves essentially upon two pivots : Shall
the seen world or the unseen world be our chief sphere
of adaptation ? and must our means of adaptation in this
seen world be aggressiveness or non-resistance ?
^ Zar Grenealogia der Moral, Dritte Abhandlang, § 14. I have abridged,
and in one pkoe transpoeed, a sentence.
374 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
The debate is serious. In some sense and to some
degree both worlds must be acknowledged and taken ac-
count of ; and in the seen world both aggressiveness and
non-resistance are needful. It is a question of emphasis,
of more or less. Is the saint's type or the strong-man's
type the more ideal ?
It has often been supposed, and even now, I think,
it is supposed by most persons, that there can be one
intrinsically ideal type of human character. A certain
kind of man, it is imagined, must be the best man abso-
lutely and apart from the utility of his function, apart
from economical considerations. The saint's type, and
the knight's or gentleman's type, have always been rival
claimants of this absolute ideality ; and in the ideal of
military religious orders both types were in a manner
blended. According to the empirical philosophy, how-
ever, all ideals are matters of relation. It would be
absurd, for example, to ask for a definition of Hhe ideal
horse,' so long as dragging drays and running races,
bearing children, and jogging about with tradesmen's
packages all remain as indispensable difPerentiations of
equine function. You may take what you call a general
all-round animal as a compromise, but he will be inferior
to any horse of a more specialized type, in some one
particular direction. We must not forget this now when,
in discussing saintliness, we ask if it be an ideal type of
manhood. We must test it by its economical relations.
I think that the method which Mr. Spencer uses in his
Data of Ethics will help to fix our opinion. Ideality in
conduct is altogether a matter of adaptation. A society
where all were invariably aggressive would destroy itself
by inner friction, and in a society where some are aggres-
sive, others must be non-resistant, if there is to be any
kind of order. This is the present constitution of soci-
THE VALUE OF SAINTLINESS 376
ety^ and to the mixture we owe many of our blessings.
But the aggressive members of society are always tending
to become bullies^ robbers^ and swindlers; and no one
believes that such a state of things as we now live in is
the millennium. It is meanwhile quite possible to con-
ceive an imaginary society in which there should be no
aggressiveness^ but only sympathy and fairness^ — any
small community of true friends now realizes such a so-
ciety. Abstractly considered^ such a society on a large
scale would be the millennium^ for every good thing
might be realized there with no expense of friction. To
such a millennial society the saint would be entirely
adapted. His peaceful modes of appeal would be efiBca-
cious over his companions, and there would be no one
extant to take advantage of his non-resistance. The
saint is therefore abstractly a higher type of man than
the ' strong man/ because he is adapted to the highest
society conceivable, whether that society ever be con-
cretely possible or not. The strong man would immedi-
ately tend by his presence to make that society deteriorate.
It would become inferior in everything save in a certain
kind of bellicose excitement, dear to men as they now are.
But if we turn from the abstract question to the actual
situation, we find that the individual saint may be well or
ill adapted, according to particular circumstances. There
is, in short, no absoluteness in the excellence of saint-
hood. It must be confessed that as far as this world
goes, any one who makes an out-and-out saint of him-
self does so at his peril. If he is not a large enough
man, he may appear more insignificant and contemptible,
for all his saintship, than if he had remained a world-
ling.^ Accordingly religion has seldom been so radically
1 We aU know daft saints, and they inspire a queer kind of aversion.
Bot in comparing saints with strong men we must choose individoals on
876 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
taken in our Western world that the devotee could not
mix it with some worldly temper. - It has always found
good men who could follow most of its impulses^ but
who stopped short when it came to non-resistance. Christ
himself was fierce upon occasion. Cromwells^ Stonewall
Jacksons, Gordons^ show that Christians can be strong
men also.
How is success to be absolutely measured when there
are so many environments and so many ways of looking
at the adaptation? It cannot be measured absolutely;
the verdict will vary according to the point of view
adopted. From the biological point of view Saint Paul
was a failure, because he was beheaded. Yet he was
magnificently adapted to the larger environment of his-
tory; and so far as any saint's example is a leaven of
righteousness in the world, and draws it in the direction
of more prevalent habits of saintliness, he is a success,
no matter what his immediate bad fortune may be. The
greatest saints, the spiritual heroes whom every one
acknowledges, the Francises, Bernards, Luthers, Loyo-
las, Wesleys, Channings, Moodys, Gratrys, the Phillips
Brookses, the Agnes Joneses, Margaret Hallahans, and
Dora Pattisons, are successes from the outset. They
show themselves, and there is no question ; every one
perceives their strength and stature. Their sense of
mystery in things, their passion, their goodness, irradiate
about them and enlarge their outlines while they soften
them. They are like pictures with an atmosphere and
background ; and, placed alongside of them, the strong
men of this world and no other seem as dry as sticks, as
hard and crude as blocks of stone or brickbats.
the same intellectual level. The under^witted strong man, homologoos
in his sphere with the under^witted saint, is the bully of the slums, the
hooligan or rowdy. Surely on this level also the saint preserves a certain
superiority.
THE VALUE OP SAINTLINESS 377
In a general way, then, and * on the whole/ * our
abandonment of theological criteria, and our testing of
religion by practical common sense and the empirical
method, leave it in possession of its towering place in
history. Economically, the saintly group of qualities is
indispensable to the world's welfare. The great saints
are immediate successes; the smaller ones are at least
heralds and harbingers, and they may be leavens also, of
a better mundane order. Let us be saints, then, if we
can, whether or not we succeed visibly and temporally.
But in our Father's house are many mansions, and each
of us must discover for himself the kind of religion and
the amount of saintship which best comports with what
he beUeves to be his powers and feels to be his truest
mission and vocation. There are no successes to be guar-
anteed and no set orders to be given to individuals, so
long as we follow the methods of empirical philosophy.
This is my conclusion so far. I know that on some
of your minds it leaves a feeling of wonder that such a
method should have been applied to such a subject, and
this in spite of all those remarks about empiricism which
I made at the beginning of Lecture XIII.^ How, you
say, can reUgion, which beUeves in two worlds and an
invisible order, be estimated by the adaptation of its
fruits to this world's order alone ? It is its truthj not
its utihty, you insist, upon which our verdict ought to
depend. If religion is true, its fruits are good fruits,
even though in this world they should prove uniformly
ill adapted and full of naught but pathos. It goes back,
then, after all, to the question of the truth of theology.
The plot inevitably thickens upon us ; we cannot escape
theoretical considerations. I propose, then, that to some
> See above, p. 327. * Aboye, pp. 327-334.
378 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
degree we face the responsibility. Beligioas persons
have often, though not uniformly, professed to see truth
in a special manner. That manner is known as mysti-
cism. I will consequently now proceed to treat at some
length of mystical phenomena, and after that, though
more briefly, I will consider religious philosophy.
LECTURES XVI AND XVII
MYSTICISM
OVER and over again in these lectures I have raised
points and left them open and unfinished until we
should have come to the subject of Mysticism. Some of
you, I fear, may have smiled as you noted my reiterated
postponements. But now the hour has come when mys-
ticism must be faced in good earnest, and those broken
threads wound up together. One may say truly, I think,
that personal religious experience has its root and centre
in mystical states of consciousness; so for us, who in
these lectures are treating personal experience as the
exclusive subject of our study, such states of conscious-
ness ought to form the vital chapter from which the
other chapters get their light. Whether my treatment
of mystical states will shed more light or darkness, I do
not know, for my own constitution shuts me out from
their enjoyment almost entirely, and I can speak of them
only at second hand. But though forced to look upon
the subject so externally, I will be as objective and re-
ceptive as I can ; and I think I shall at least succeed in
convincing you of the reality of the states in question,
and of the paramount importance of their function.
First of all, then, I ask. What does the expression
^mystical states of consciousness' mean? How do we
part off mystical states from other states ?
The words ^ mysticism ' and ^ mystical * are often used
as terms of mere reproach, to throw at any opinion which
we regard as vague and vast and sentimental, and with-
380 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
out a base in either facts or logic. For some writers a
^ mystic ' is any person who believes in thought-transfer^
ence, or spirit-return. Employed in this way the word
has little value : there are too many less ambiguous syn-
onyms. So, to keep it useful by restricting it, I will do
what I did in the case of the word ^ religion/ and simply
propose to you four marks which, when an experience
has them, may justify us in calling it mystical for the
purpose of the present lectures. In this way we shall
save verbal disputation, and the recriminations that gen*
erally go therewith.
1. Ineffahility. — The handiest of the marks by which
I classify a state of mind as mystical is negative. The
subject of it immediately says that it defies expression,
that no adequate report of its contents can be given in
words. It follows from this that its quality must be
directly experienced; it cannot be imparted or trans-
ferred to others, i In this peculiarity mystical states are
more like states of feeling than like states of intellect^
No one can make clear to another who has never had a
certain feeling, in what the quality or worth of it con-
sists. One must have musical ears to know the value of
a symphony ; one must have been in love one's self to
understand a lover's state of mind. Lacking the heart
or ear, we cannot interpret the musician or the lover
justly, and are even likely to consider him weak-minded
or absurd. The mystic finds that most of us accord to
his experiences an equally incompetent treatment.
2. Noetic quality. — Although so similar to states of
feeling, mystical states seem to those who experience
them to be also states of knowledge. They are states of
insight into depths ol truth unplumbed by the discursive
intellect. They are illuminations, revelations, full of sig-
nificance and importance, all inarticulate though they
MYSTICISM 381
remain; and as a rule they* carry with them a curious
sense of authority for after-time.
These two characters will entitle any state to be called
mystical, in the sense in which I use the word. Two
other qualities are less sharply marked, but are usually
found. These are : —
3. Transiency. — Mystical states cannot be sustained
for long. Except in rare instances, half an hour, or at
most an hour or two, seems to be the limit beyond which
they fade into the light of common day. Often, when
faded, their quality can but imperfectly be reproduced in
memory ; but when they recur it is recognized ; and from
one recurrence to another it is susceptible of continuous
development in what is felt as inner richness and impor-
tance.
4. Passivity. — Although the oncoming of mystical
states may be facilitated by preliminary voluntary opera-
tions, as by fixing the attention, or going through certain
bodily performances, or in other ways which manuals of
mysticism prescribe ; yet when the characteristic sort of
consciousness once has set in, the mystic feels as if his
own will were in abeyance, and indeed sometimes as if
he were grasped and held by a superior power. This
latter peculiarity connects mystical states with certain
definite phenomena of secondary or alternative person-
ality, such as prophetic speech, automatic writing, or the
mediumistic trance. When these latter conditions are
well pronounced, however, there may be no recollection
whatever of the phenomenon, and it may have no sig-
nificance for the subject's usual inner life, to which, as
it were, it makes a mere interruption. Mystical states,
strictly so called, are never merely interruptive. Some
memory of their content always remains, and a profound
sense of their importance. They modify the inner life
882 THE VABIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
of the subject between the times of their recurrence.
Sharp divisions in this region are, however, difficult to
make, and we find all sorts of gradations and mixtures.
These four characteristics are sufficient to mark out a
group of states of consciousness peculiar enough to
deserve a special name and to call for careful study.
Let it then be called the mystical group.
Our next step should be to gain acquaintance with
some typical examples. Professional mystics at the height
of their development have often ^borately organized
experiences and a philosophy based ^e(reupon. But you
remember what I said in my first lecture : phenomena are
best understood when placed within their series, studied
in their germ and in their over-ripe decay, and compared
with their exaggerated and degenerated kindred. The
range of mystical experience is very wide, much too wide
for us to cover in the time at our disposal. Yet the
method of serial study is so essential for interpretation
that if we really wish to reach conclusions we must use
it. I will begin, therefore, with phenomena which claim
no special religious significance, and end with those of
which the religious pretensions are extreme.
The simplest rudiment of mystical experience would
seem to be that deepened sense of the significance of a
maxim or formula which occasionally sweeps over one.
** I *ve heard that said all my Uf e," we exclaim, " but I
never realized its full meaning until now." ^^ When a
fellow-monk,'' said Luther, ^^ one day repeated the words
of the Creed : ^ I believe in the forgiveness of sins,' I saw
the Scripture in an entirely new light ; and straightway
I felt as if I were born anew. It was as if I had found
the door of paradise thrown wide open." ^ This sense
' Newman's Securus judicat orbis terrarum is another instanoe.
MTSTICISM 388
of deeper significance is not confined to rational proposi-
tions. Single words/ and conjunctions of words, effects
of light on land and sea, odors and musical sounds, all
bring it when the mind is tuned aright. Most of us can
remember the strangely moving power of passages in cer-
tain poems read when we were young, irrational door-
ways as they were through which the mystery of fact,
the wildness and the pang of life, stole into our hearts
and thrilled them. The words have now perhaps become
mere polished surfaces for us ; but lyric poetry and music
are alive and significant only in proportion as they fetch
these vague vistas of a life continuous with our own,
beckoning and inviting, yet ever eluding our pursuit.
We are alive or dead to the eternal inner message of the
arts according as we have kept or lost this mystical sus-
ceptibility.
A more pronounced step forward on the mystical lad-
der is found in an extremely frequent phenomenon, that
sudden feeling, namely, which sometimes sweeps over us,
of having ^ been here before,' as if at some indefinite past
time, in just this place, with just these people, we were
already saying just these things. As Tennyson writes :
" Moreover, something ia or seems,
That touches me with mystic gleams,
Like glimpses of forgotten dreams —
" Of something felt, like something here ;
Of something done, I know not where ;
Such as no language may declare." '
^ 'Mesopotamia' is the stock comic instance. — An excellent old German
lady, who had done some traveling in her day, used to describe to me her
Sehnmcht that she might yet visit * Philadelphia,' whose wondrous name
had always hmnnted her imagination. Of John Foster it is said that ** single
words (as chalcedony), or the names of ancient heroes, had a mighty fasci-
nation over him. ' At any time the word hermit was enough to transport
him.' The words ux>ods and forests would produce the most powerful emo-
tion." Foster's Life, by Rtland, New York, 1846, p. 3.
* The Two Voices. In a letter to Mr. B. F. Blood, Tennyson reports of
himself as follows : —
384 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
Sir James Crichton-Browne has given the technical name
of ^ dreamy states ' to these sudden invasions of vaguely
reminiscent consciousness.^ They bring a sense of mys-
tery and of the metaphysical duality of things, and the
feeling of an enlargement of perception which seems im-
minent but which never completes itself. In Dr. Crich-
ton-Browne's opinion they connect themselves with the
perplexed and scared disturbances of self-consciousness
which occasionally precede epileptic attacks. I think
that this learned alienist takes a rather absurdly alarmist
view of an intrinsically insignificant phenomenon. He
follows it along the downward ladder, to insanity ; our
path pursues the upward ladder chiefly. 4 The divergence
shows how important it is to neglect no part of a phe*
nomenon's connections, for we make it appear admirable
or dreadful according to the context by which we set
it ofEJ
Somewhat deeper plunges into mystical consciousness
are biet with in yet other dreamy states. Such feelings
** I have never had any revelations through anesthetics, but a kind of
waking trance — this for lack of a better word — I have frequently had,
quite up from boyhood, when I have been all alone. This has come upon
me through repeating my own name to myself silently, tiU aU at once, as it
were out of the intensity of the consciousness of individuality, individuality
itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being, and this not
a confused state but the dearest, the surest of the surest, utterly beyond
words — where death was an almost laughable impossibility — the loss of
personality (if so it were) seeming no extinction, but the only true life. I
am ashamed of my feeble description. Have I not said the state is utterly
beyond words ? "
Professor Tyndall, in a letter, recalls Tennyson saying of this condition :
" By God Almighty ! there is no delusion in tiie matter I It is no nebulous
ecstasy, but a state of transcendent wonder, associated with absolute clear-
ness of mind." Memoirs of Alfred Tennyson, ii. 473.
^ The Lancet, July 6 and 13, 18d5, reprinted as the Cavendish Lecture,
on Dreamy Mental States, London, Baillidre, 1895. They have been a
good deal discussed of late by psychologists. See, for example, Bebnard-
Lerot : L'lllusion de Fausse Reconnaissance, Paris, 1898.
MYSTICISM 386
as these which Charles Kingsley describes are surely far
from being uncommon^ especiaUy in youth : —
^' When I walk the fields, I am oppressed now and then with
an innate feeling that everything I see has a meaning, if I
could but understand it. And this feeling of being surrounded
with truths which I cannot grasp amounts to indescribable awe
sometimes. . . . Have you not felt that your real soul was
imperceptible to your mental vision, except in a few hallowed
moments ? " ^
A much more extreme state of mystical consciousness
is described by J. A. Symonds ; and probably more per-
sons than we suspect could give parallels to it from their
own experience.
** Suddenly," writes Symonds, " at church, or in company, or
when I was reading, and always, I think, when my muscles
were at rest, I felt the approach of the mood. Irresistibly it
took possession of my mind and will, lasted what seemed an
eternity, and disappeared in a series of rapid sensations which
resembled the awakening from ansesthetic influence. One rea-
son why I disliked this kind of trance was that I could not
describe it to myself. I cannot even now find words to render
it intelligible. It consisted in a gradual but swiftly progressive
obliteration of space, time, sensation, and the multitudinous
factors of experience which seem to qualify what we are pleased
to call our Self. In proportion as these conditions of ordinary
consciousness were subtracted, the sense of an underlying or
essential consciousness acquired intensity. At last nothing
remained but a pure, absolute, abstract Self. The universe
became without form and void of content. But Self persisted,
formidable in its vivid keenness, feeling the most poignant
doubt about reality, ready, as it seemed, to find existence break
as breaks a bubble round about it. And what then? The
apprehension of a coming dissolution, the grim conviction that
this state was the last state of the conscious Self, the sense that
^ Charles Kingsley's Life, L 55, quoted by Ikoe : Christian Mysticism,
London, 1899, p. 341.
886 THE VARIETIES OF BELI6I0US EXPERIENCE
I had followed the last thread of being to the verge of the
abyss, and had arrived at demonstration of eternal Majra or
illusion, stirred or seemed to stir me up again. The return to
ordinary conditions of sentient existence began by my first
recovering the power of touch, and then by the gradual though
rapid influx of familiar impressions and diurnal interests. At
last I felt myself once more a human being ; and though the
riddle of what is meant by life remained unsolved, I was thank-
ful for this return from the abyss — this deliverance from so
awful an initiation into the mysteries of skepticism.
^^This trance recurred widi diminishing frequency until I
reached the age of twenty-eight. It served to impress upon my
growing nature the phantasmal unreality of all the circum-
stances which contribute to a merely phenomenal consciousness.
Often have I asked myself with anguish, on waking from that
formless state of denuded, keenly sentient being. Which is the
unreality? — the trance of fiery, vacant, apprehensive, skeptical
Self from which I issue, or these surrounding phenomena and
habits which veil that inner Self and build a self of flesh-and-
blood conventionality? Again, are men the factors of some
dream, the dream-like unsubstantiality of which they compre-
hend at such eventful moments ? What would happen if the
final stage of the trance were reached ? " ^
In a recital like this there is certainly something sug-
gestive of pathology.^ The next step into mystical states
carries us into a realm that public opinion and ethical
philosophy have long since branded as pathological,
though private practice and certain lyric strains of poetry
^ H. F. Brown : J. A. Symonds, a Biography, London, 1895, pp. 29-31,
abridged.
^ Crichton-Browne expressly says that Symonds's '' highest nerve centres
were in some degree enfeebled or damaged by these dreamy mental states
which afflicted him so grievously." Symonds was, however, a perfect
monster of many-sided cerebral efficiency, and his critic g^ves no objective
grounds whatever for his strange opinion, save that Symonds complained
occasionally, as all susceptible and ambitious men complain, of lassitude
and uncertainty as to his life's mission.
MTSTICISM 887
seem still to bear witness to its ideality. I refer to the
consciousness produced by intoxicants and anaesthetics,
especially by alcohol. The sway of alcohol over man-
kind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the
mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to
earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober
hour. Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no ;
drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes. It is in fact
the great exciter of the Tes function in man. It brings
its votary from the chill periphery of things to the radi-
ant core. It makes him for the moment one with truth.
Not through mere perversity do men run after it. To the
poor and the unlettered it stands in the place of symphony
concerts and of literature ; and it is part of the deeper
mystery and tragedy of life that whiffs and gleams of
something that we immediately recognize as excellent
should be vouchsafed to so many of us only in the fleet-
ing earlier phases of what in its totality is so deg^ding
a poisoning. The drunken consciousness is one bit of the
mystic consciousness, and our total opinion of it must
find its place in our opinion of that larger whole.
Nitrous oxide and ether, especially nitrous oxide,
when sufficiently diluted with air, stimulate the mystical
consciousness in an extraordinary degree. Depth beyond
depth of truth seems revealed to the inhaler. This truth
fades out, however, or escapes, at the moment of coming
to ; and if any words remain over in which it seemed to
clothe itself, they prove to be the veriest nonsense. Never-
theless, the sense of a profound meaning having been
there persists ; and I know more than one person who is
persuaded that in the nitrous oxide trance we have a
genuine metaphysical revelation.
Some years ago I myself made some observations on
this aspect of nitrous oxide intoxication, and reported
388 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
them In print. One conclusion was forced upon my mind
at that time; and my impression of its truth has ever
since remained unshaken. Tt \^ ijhfl.t nnr nfynnal wak-
ing consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is
but one special type of consciousness^ whilst all about
itj parted from it by the filmiest ot screens. there"Tie
^otfebtlal forms of consciousness entirely different. We
lilajf go IbiOTIgB li^e without suspecting their existence ;
but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are
there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality
which probably somewhere have their field of application
and adaptation. No account of the universe in its totality
can be final which leaves these other forms of conscious-
ness quite disregarded. How to regard them is the ques-
tion, — for they are so discontinuous with ordinary con-
sciousness. I Yet they may determine attitudes though
they cannot furnish formulas, and open a region though
they fail to give a map. At any rate, they forbid a
premature closing of our accounts with reality. Looking
back on my own experiences, they all CQnvergfi t^^^^^» a
hinf\ tff jnsight to which T n^nnni: hftlp Aflfipbing some
metq.phyg^iffl| aignjjfifiancfi. The keynote of it is invariably
a reconciliation. It is as if the opposites of the world,
whose contradictoriness and conflict make all our difficul-
ties and troubles, were melted into unity. Not only do
they, as contrasted species, belong to one and the same
genus, but one of the species, the nobler and better
one, is itself the genus, and so soaks up and absorbs
its opposite into itself This is a dark saying, I know,
when thus expressed in terms of common logic, but I
cannot wholly escape from its authority. I feel as if it
must mean something, something like what the hegelian
philosophy means, if one could only lay hold of it more
clearly. Those who have ears to hear^ let them hear;
MYSTICISM 389
to me the living sense of its reality only comes in the
artificial mystic state of mind.'
I just now spoke of friends who helieve in the anaes-
thetic revelation. For them too it is a monistic insight^
in which the other in its various forma i^pears absorbed
into the One.
^^ Into this pervading genius," writes one of them, ^^ we pass,
forgr* clfig and forgotten, and thenceforth each is all, in God.
Ther^ is no higher, no deeper, no other, than the life in which
we are founded. ^The One remains, the many change and
pass ; ' and each and every one of us is the One that remains.
. . • This is the ultimatum. ... As sure as being — whence
is all our care — so sure is content, beyond duplexity, antithesis,
or trouble, where I have triumphed in a solitude that God is
not above." ^
^ What reader of Hegel can doubt that that sense of a perfected Being
with all its otherness soaked up into itself, which dominates his whole
philosophy, must have come from the prominence in his consciousness of
mystical moods like this, in most persons kept subliminal ? The notion is
thoroughly characteristic of the mystical level, and the Aufgahe of making it
trticnlate was surely set to Hegel's intellect by mystical feeling.
^ Benjamix Paul Blood : The Ansesthetic Revelation and the Gist of
Philosophy, Amsterdam, N. Y., 1874, pp. 35, 36. Mr. Blood has made
several attempts to adumbrate the ansesthetic revelation, in pamphlets of
rare literary distinction, privately printed and distributed by himself at
Amsterdam. Xenoe Clark, a philosopher, who died young at Amherst in
the 'SO's, much lamented by those who knew him, was also impressed by
the revelation. " In the first place," he once wrote to me, " Mr. Blood and
I agree that the revelation is, if anything, non-emotional. It is utterly flat.
It is, as Mr. Blood says, ' the one sole and sufiBcient insight why, or not
why, but how, the present is pushed on by the past, and sucked forward by
the vacuity of the future. Its inevitableness defeats all attempts at stop-
ping or accounting for it. It is all precedence and presupposition, and
questioning is in regard to it forever too late. It is an initiation of the past*
The real secret would be the formula by Vhich the < now ' keeps exfoliating
out of itself, yet never escapes. What is it, indeed, that keeps existence
exfoliating ? The formal being of anything, the logical definition of it, is
static For mere logic every question contains its own answer — we simply
fiU the hole with the dirt we dug out. Why are twice two four ? Because,
in fact, four is twice two. Thus logic finds in life no propulsion, only a mo-
mentnm. It goes becanse it is a-going. But the revelation adds : it goes
*'*^s-5E'
800 THE YABIEnES^ ^^ RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
«
This has the genuine religious mystic ring! I just
now quoted J. A. Symonds. ' ,^H© also records a mystical
experience with chloroform, as VpUows : —
\
».
because it is and was a-going. Ton walk, as it ^c^re, round yourself in the
revelation. Ordinary philosophy is like a hound J^\iuting his own trail.
The more he hunts the farther he has to go, and his ncse never catches up
with his heels, because it is forever ahead of them. So tiVe present is al-
ready a foregone conclusion, and I am ever too late to nnderst^and it. But
at the moment of recovery from ansesthesis, just then, befitre star^^ on Ufe^
I catch, so to speak, a glimpse of my heels, a glimpse of the eterilkl pro-
cess just in the act of starting. The truth is that we travel on a journey
that was accomplished before we set out ; and the real end of philosophy is
accomplished, not when we arrive at, but when we remain in, our destini^
tion (being already there), — which may occur vicariously in this life when
we cease our intellectual questioning. That is why there is a smile upon
the face of the revelation, as we view it. It tells us that we are forever
half a second too late — that 's all. * You could kiss your own lips, and
have all the fun to yourself,' it says, if you only knew the trick. It would
be perfectly easy if they would just stay there till you got round to them.
Why don't you manage it somehow ? "
Dialectically minded readers of this farrago will at least recognize the
region of thought of which Mr. Clark writes, as familiar. In his latest
pamphlet, * Tennyson's Trances and the Anaesthetic Revelation,' Mr. Blood
describes its value for life as follows : —
'* The AuiBsthetic Revelation is the Initiation of Man into the Immen-«^
rial Mystery of the Open Secret of Being, revealed as the Inevitable / or-
tez of Continuity. Inevitable is the word. Its motive is inherent — it is
what has to be. It is not for any love or hate, nor for joy nor sc/row, nor
good nor ill. End, beginning, or purpose, it knows not of.
** It affords no particular of the multiplicity and variety of things ; but it
fills appreciation of the historical and the sacred with a secular and inti-
mately personal illumination of the nature and motive of existence, which
then seems reminiscent — as if it should have appeared, or shall yet appear,
to every participant thereof.
"Although it is at first startling in its solemnity, it becomes directly
such a matter of course — so old-fashioned, and so akin to proverbs, that it
inspires exultation rather than fear, and a sense of safety, as identified with
the aboriginal and the universal. But no words may express the imposing
certainty of the patient that he is realizing the primordial, Adamio surprise
of Life.
" Repetition of the experience finds it ever the same, and as if it oonld
not possibly be otherwise. The subject resumes his normal coDsoioosness
only to partially and fitfully remember its occurrence, and to try to formu-
late its baffling import, — with only this consolatory afterthought : that he
MTSnCISM 391
^^ After the choking and stifling had passed away, I seemed
at first in a state of utter blankness; then came flashes of
intense light, alternating with blackness, and with a keen vision
of what was going on in the room around me, but no sensation
of touch. I thought that I was near death ; when, suddenly,
my soul became aware of God, who was manifestly dealing with
me, handling me, so to speak, in an intense personal present
reality. I felt him streaming in like light upon me. ... I
cannot describe the ecstasy I felt. Then, as I gradually awoke
from the influence of the anaesthetics, the old sense of my rela-
tion to the world began to return, the new sense of my relation
to Grod began to fade. I suddenly leapt to my feet on the
chair where I was sitting, and shrieked out, ^ It is too horrible,
it is too horrible, it is too horrible,* meaning that I could not
bear this disillusionment. Then I flung myself on the ground,
and at last awoke covered with blood, calling to the two sur-
geons (who were frightened), *' Why did you not kill me ?
Why would you not let me die ? ' Only think of it. To have
felt for that long dateless ecstasy of vision the very God, in all
purity and tenderness and truth and absolute love, and then to
find that I had after all had no revelation, but that I had been
tricked by the abnormal excitement of my brain.
has known the oldest truth, and that he has done with human theories as to
the origin, meaning, or destiny of the race. He is beyond instruction in
* spiritual things.'
*' The lesson is one of central safety : the Kingdom is within. All days are
judgment days : but there can be no climacteric purpose of eternity, nor any
scheme of the whole. The astronomer abridges the row of bewildering
figures by increasing his unit of measurement : so may we reduce the
distracting multiplicity of things to the unity for which each of us stands.
** This has been my moral sustenance since I have known of it. In my
first printed mention of it I declared : ' The world is no more the alien
terror that was taught me. Spuming the cloud-grimed and still sultry
battlements whence so lately Jehovan thunders boomed, my gray gull lifts
her wing against the nightfall^ and takes the dim leagues with a fearless
eye.* And now, after twenty-seven years of this experience, the wing is
grayer, but the eye is fearless still, while I renew and doubly emphasize
that declaration. I know — as having known — the meaning of Existence :
the sane centre of the universe — at once the wonder and the assurance of
the soul — for which the speech of reason has as yet no name but the AnsBS-
thetio Bevelation." — I have considerably abridged the quotation.
392 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
^^Yet, this question remains, Is it possible that the inner
sense of reality which succeeded, when my flesh was dead to
impressions from without, to the ordinary sense of physical
relations, was not a delusion but an actual experience ? Is it
possible that I, in that moment, felt what some of the saints
have said they always felt, the undemonstrable but irrefragable
certainty of God ? " ^
^ Op. cit, pp. 78-80, abridged. I, tubjoin, also abridging it, another
interesting ansesthetic revelation communicated to me in manuscript by a
jbriend in England. The subject, a gifted woman, was taking ether for a
surgical operation.
" I wondered if I was in a prison being tortured, and why I remembered
having heard it said that people ' learn through suffering,' and in view of
what I was seeing, the inadequacy of this saying struck me so much that I
said, aloud, ' to suffer is to learn.'
** With that I became unconscious again, and my last dream immediately
preceded my real coming to. It only lasted a few seconds, and was most
vivid and real to me, though it may not be clear in words.
** A great Being or Power was traveling through the sky, his foot was on
a kind of lightning as a wheel is on a rail, it was his pathway. The light-
ning was made entirely of the spirits of innumerable people close to one
another, and I was one of them. He moved in a straight line, and each part
of the streak or flash came into its short conscious existence only that he
might travel. I seemed to be directly under the foot of God, and I thought
he was grinding his own life up out of my pain. Then I saw that what he
had been trying with all his might to do was to change his course^ to bend the
line of lightning to which he was tied, in the direction in which he wanted
to go. I felt my flexibility and helplessness, and knew that he would suc-
ceed. He bended me, turning his comer by means of my hurt, hurting me
more than I had ever been hurt in my life, and at the acutest point of this,
as he passed, I saw, I understood for a moment things that I have now
forgotten, things that no one could remember while retaining sanity. The
angle was an obtuse angle, and I remember thinking as I woke that had he
made it a right or acute angle, I should have both suffered and * seen ' still
more, and should probably have died.
" He went on and I came to. In that moment the whole of my life
passed before me, including each little meaningless piece of dbtress, and
I understood them. TTiis was what it had all meant, this was the piece of
work it had all been contributing to do. I did not see God's purpose, I
only saw his intentness and his entire relentlessness towards his means.
He thought no more of me than a man thinks of hurting a cork when he is
opening wine, or hurting a cartridge when he is firing. And yet, on wak-
ing, my first feeling was, and it came with tears, ' Domine non sum digna,'
for I had been lifted into a position for which I was too small. I realized
MYSTICISM 303
With this we make connection with religious mysti*
cism pure and simple. Symonds's question takes us back
to those examples which you will remember my quoting
in the lecture on the Reality of the Unseen, of sudden
realization of the immediate presence of God. The
phenomenon in one shape or another is not uncommon.
**' I know," writes Mr. Trine, '^ an officer on our police force
who has told me that many times when off duty, and on his
way home in the evening, there comes to him such a vivid and
vital realization of his oneness with this Infinite Power^ and
this Spirit of Infinite Peace so takes hold of and so fills him,
that in that half hour under ether I had served God more distinctly and
purely than I had ever done in my life before, or than I am capable of
desiring to do. I was the means of his achieving and revealing something,
I know not what or to whom, and that, to the exact extent of my capacity
for suffering.
'* While regaining consciousness, I wondered why, since I had gone so
deep, I had seen nothing of what the saints call the love of God, nothing
but his relentlessness. And then I heard an answer, which I could only
just catch, saying, ' Knowledge and Love are One, and the measure is suf-
fering ' — I give the words as they came to me. With that I came finally
to (into what seemed a dream world compared with the reality of what I
was leaving), and I saw that what would be called the ' cause ' of my expe-
rience was a slight operation under insufficient ether, in a bed pushed up
against a window, a common city window in a common city street. If I
had to formulate a few of the things 1 then caught a glimpse of, they would
run somewhat as follows : —
** The eternal necessity of suffering and its eternal vicariousness. The
veiled and incommunicable nature of the worst sufferings ; — the passivity
of genius, how it is essentiaUy instrumental and defenseless, moved, not
moving, it must do what it does ; — the impossibility of discovery without
its price ; — finally, the excess of what the suffering ' seer ' or genius pays
over what his generation gains. (He seems like one who sweats his life
out to earn enough to save a district from famine, and just as he staggers
back, dying and satisfied, bringing a lac of rupees to buy grain with, God
lifts the lac away, dropping one rupee, and says, * That you may give them.
That you have earned for them. The rest is for ME.') I perceived also in
a way never to be forgotten, the excess of what we see over what we can
demonstrate.
'' And so on I — these things may seem to you delusions, or truisms ; but
for me they are dark truths, and the power to put them into even such
words as these has been given me by an ether dream."
/
894 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERlElfCE
that it seems as if his feet could hardly keep to the pavement,
BO buoyant and so exhilarated does he become by reason of
this inflowing tide." ^
Certain aspects of nature seem to have a peculiar
power of awakening such mystical moods.^ Most of the
striking cases which I have collected have occurred out
of doors. Literature has commemorated this fact in many
passages of great beauty — this extract, for example,
from AmieFs Journal Intime : —
** Shall I ever again have any of those prodigious reveries
which sometimes came to me in former days ? One day, in
1 In Tone with the Infinite, p. 137.
' The larger Grod may then swallow up the smaller one. I take this
from Starbuck's manuscript collection : —
" I never lost the conscioasness of the presence of God until I stood at
the foot of the Horseshoe Falls, Niagara. Then I lost him in the immen-
sity of what I saw. I also lost myself, feeling that I was an atom too small
for the notice of Almighty God."
I subjoin another similar case from Starbuck's collection : —
"In that time the consciousness of Grod's nearness came to me some-
times. I say Grod, to describe what is indescribable. A presence, I might say,
yet that is too suggestive of personality, and the moments of which I speak
did not hold the consciousness of a personality, but something in myself
made me feel myself a part of something bigger than I, that was control-
ling. I felt myself one with the grass, the trees, birds, insects, everything in
Nature. I exulted in the mere fact of existence, of being a part of it all —
the drizzling rain, the shadows of the clouds, the tree-trunks, and so on.
In the years following, such moments continued to come, but I wanted them
constantly. I knew so well the satisfaction of losing self in a perception of
supreme power and love, that I was unhappy because that perception was
not constant" The cases quoted in my third lecture, pp. 66, 67, 70, ar«
still better ones of this type. In her essay. The Iamb of Personality, in The
Atlantic Monthly (vol. Ixxxv. p. 195), Miss Ethel D. Puffer explains that the
vanishing of the sense of self, and the feeling of immediate unity with
the object, is due to the disappearance, in these rapturous experiences, of
the motor adjustments which habitually intermediate between the constant
background of consciousness (whyoh is the Self) and the object in the fore-
ground, whatever it may be. I must refer the reader to the highly instruc-
tive article, which seems to me to throw light upon the psychological con-
ditions, though it fails to account for the rapture or the revelation-value of
the experience in the Subject's eyes.
MYSTICISM 305
youth, at sonrise, sitting in the ruins of the castle of Faucigny ;
and again in the mountains, under the noonday sun, above
Lavey, lying at the foot of a tree and visited by three butter-
flies ; once more at night upon the shingly shore of the Northern
Ocean, my back upon the sand and my vision ranging through
the milky way ; — such grand and spacious, immortal, cosmo-
gonic reveries, when one reaches to the stars, when one owns
the infinite ! Moments divine, ecstatic hours ; in which our
thought flies from world to world, pierces the great enigma,
breathes with a respiration broad, tranquil, and deep as the
respiration of the ocean, serene and limitless as the blue firma-
ment ; . . . instants of irresistible intuition in which one feels
one's self great as the universe, and calm as a god. . . . What
hours, what memofleisi The vestiges they leave behind are
enough to fill us with belief and enthusiasm, as if they were
visits of the Holy Ghost." ^
Here is a similar record from the memoirs of that
interesting German idealist, Malwida von Meysenbug : —
^* I was alone upon the seashore as all these thoughts flowed
over me, liberating and reconciling; and now again, as once
before in distant days in the Alps of Dauphin^, I was impeUed
to kneel down, this time before the illimitable ocean, symbol of
the Infinite. I felt that I prayed as I had never prayed before,
and knew now what prayer really is : to return from the soli-
tude of individuation into the consciousness of unity with all
that is, to kneel down as one that passes away, and to rise up as
one imperishable. Earth, heaven, and sea resounded as in one
vast world-encircling harmony. It was as if the chorus of all
the great who had ever lived were about me. I felt myself
one with them, and it appeared as if I heard their greeting :
* Thou too belongest to the company of those who overcome.' " *
The well-known passage from Walt Whitman is a
classical expression of this sporadic type of mystical ex-
perience.
1 Op. cit., i. 4a-44.
^ Memoiren einer IdealiBtin, 5te Anfiage, 1900, Hi. 166. For yean the
bad been unable to pray, owing to materialistic belief.
N
d96 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
** 1 believe in yon, my Soul . . .
Loaf with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat ; . . •
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valyed voice.
I mind how once we lay, such a transparent summer morning.
Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass
all the argument of the earth.
And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,
And that all the men ever bom are also my brothers and the women my
sisters and lovers.
And that a kelson of the creation is love." ^
I could easily give more instances, but one will suffice.
I take it from the Autobiography of J. Trevor.^
'^ One brilliant Sunday morning, my wife and boys went to
the Unitarian Chapel in Macclesfield. I felt it impossible to
accompany them — as though to leave the sunshine on the hills,
and go down there to the chapel, would be for the time an act
of spiritual suicide. And I felt such need for new inspiration
and expansion in my life. So, very reluctantly and sadly, I left
my wife and boys to go down into the town, while I went
further up into the hills with my stick and my dog. In the
loveliness of the morning, and the beauty of the hiUs and val-
leys, I soon lost my sense of sadness and regret. For nearly
an hour I walked along the road to the ^ Cat and Fiddle,' and
then returned. On the way back, suddenly, without warning, I
felt that I was in Heaven — an inward state of peace and joy
1 Whitman in another place expresses in a quieter way what was prob-
ably with him a chronic mystical perception : " There is," he writes, " apart
from mere intellect, in the make-up of every superior human identity, a
wondrous something that realizes without argument, frequently without
what is called education (though I think it the goal and apex of aU educa^
tion deserving the name), an intuition of the absolute balance, in time
and space, of the whole of this multifariousness, this revel of fools, and
incredible make-believe and general unsettledness, we call the world; a soul-
sight of that divine clue and unseen thread which holds the whole congeries
of things, aU history and time, and all events, however trivial, however mo-
mentous, like a leashed dog in the hand of the hunter. [Of] such soul-sight
and root-centre for the mind mere optimism explains only the surface."
Whitman charges it against Carlyle that he lacked this perception. Speci-
men Days and Collect, Philadelphia, 1882, p. 174.
> My Quest for God, London, 1897, pp. 268, 269, abridged.
MYSTICISM 397
and assurance indescribably intense, accompanied with a sense
of being bathed in a warm glow of light, as though the external
condition had brought about the internal effect — a feeling of
having passed beyond the body, though the scene around me
stood out more clearly and as if nearer to me than before, by
reason of the illumination in the midst of which I seemed to be
placed. This deep emotion lasted, though with decreasing
strength, until I reached home, and for some time after, only
gradually passing away."
The writer adds that having had further experiences of
a similar sort, he now knows them well.
^^ The spiritual life," he writes, ^' justifies itself to those who
live it ; but what can we say to those who do not understand ?
This, at least, we can say, that it is a life whose experiences are
proved real to their possessor, because they remain with him
when brought closest into contact with the objective realities of
life. Dreams cannot stand this test. We wake from them to
find that they are but dreams. Wanderings of an overwrought
brain do not stand this test. These highest experiences that I
have had of God's presence have been rare and brief — flashes
of consciousness which have compelled me to exclaim with sur-
prise — God is here t — or conditions of exaltation and indght,
less intense, and only gradually passing away. I have severely
questioned the worth of these moments. To no soul have I
named them, lest I should be building my life and work on
mere phantasies of the brain. But I find that, after every
questioning and test, they stand out to-day as the most real
experiences of my life, and experiences which have explained
and justified and unified all past experiences and sJl past
growth. Indeed, their reality and their far-reaching signifi-
cance are ever becoming more clear and evident When they
came, I was living the fullest, strongest, sanest, deepest life.
I was not seeking them. What I was seeking, with resolute
determination, was to live more intensely my own life, as
against what I knew would be the adverse judgment of the
world. It was in the most real seasons that the Beal Presence
398 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
came, and I was aware that I was immersed in the infinite
ocean of God." ^
Even the least mystical of you must by this time be
convinced of the existence of mystical moments as states
of consciousness of an entirely specific quality, and of the
deep impression which they make on those who have
them. A Canadian psychiatrist, Dr. R. M. Bucke, gives
to the more distinctly characterized of these phenomena
the name of cosmic consciousness. ^^ Cosmic conscious-
ness in its more striking instances is not/' Dr. Bucke
says, ^^ simply an expansion or extension of the self-con-
scious mind with which we are all familiar, but the su-
peraddition of a function as distinct from any possessed
by the average man as 86Z/-consciousness is distinct from
any function possessed by one of the higher animals."
** The prime characteristic of cosmic consciousness is a con-
sciousness of the cosmos, that is, of the life and order of the
universe. Along with the consciousness of the cosmos there
occurs an inteUectual enlightenment which alone would place
the individual on a new plane of existence — would make him
almost a member of a new species. To this is added a state of
moral exaltation, an indescribable feeling of elevation, elation,
and joyousness, and a quickening of the moral sense, which is
fully as striking, and more important than is the enhanced
intellectual power. With these come what may be called a
sense of immortality, a consciousness of eternal life, not a con-
viction that he shall have this, but the consciousness that he
has it already." ^
It was Dr. Buckets own experience of a typical onset
of cosmic consciousness in his own person which led him
to investigate it in others. He has printed his conclu-
sions in a highly interesting volume, from which I take
the following account of what occurred to him : —
1 Op. cit., pp. 256, 257, abridged.
* Cosmic Consoiousness : a study in the evolution of the human Mind.
Philadelphia, lOOl, p. 2.
MYSTICISM 899
*^ I had spent the e ▼ening in a great city, with two friends,
reading and discussing poetry and philosophy. We parted at
midnight. I had a long drive in a hansom to my lodging.
My mind, deeply under the influence of the ideas, images, and
emotions called up by the reading and talk, was calm and
peaceful. I was in a state of quiet, almost passive enjoyment,
not actually thinking, but letting ideas, images, and emotions
flow of themselves, as it were, through my mind. All at once,
without warning of any kind, I found myself wrapped in a
flame-colored cloud. For an instant I thought of fire, an im-
mense conflagration somewhere close by in that great city ; the
next, I knew that the fire was within myself. Directly after-
ward there came upon me a sense of exultation, of immense
joyousness accompanied or immediately followed by an intellec-
tual illumination impossible to describe. Among other things,
I did not merely come to believe, but I saw that the universe
is not composed of dead matter, but is, on the contrary, a living
Presence ; I became conscious in myself of eternal life. It was
not a conviction that I would have eternal life, but a conscious-
ness that I possessed eternal life then ; I saw that all men are
immortal ; that the cosmic order is such that without any per-
adventure all things work together for the good of each and
all; that the foundation principle of the world, of all the
worlds, is what we caU love, and that the happiness of each and
all is in the long run absolutely certain. The vision lasted a
few seconds and was gone ; but the memory of it and the sense
of the reality of what it taught has remained during the quar-
ter of a century which has since elapsed. I knew that what
the vision showed was true. I had attained to a point of view
from which I saw that it must be true. That view, that con-
viction, I may say that consciousness, has never, even during
periods of the deepest depression, been lost." ^
We have now seen enough of this cosmic or mystic
consciousness, as it comes sporadically. We must next
^ Loc. cit., pp. 7, 8. My quotation follows the privately printed pam-
phlet which preceded Dr. Bncke's larger work, and differs verbally a little
from the text of the latter.
400 THE VARIETIES OF REUGIOUS EXPERIENCE
pass to its methodical cultivation fj& an element of the
religious life. Hindus^ Buddhists, Mohammedans, and
Christians all have cultivated it methodically.
In India, training in mystical insight h^ been known
from time immemorial under the naSe of yoga. Yoga
means the experimental union of the individual with the
divine. It is based on persevering exercise ; and the
diet, posture, breathing, intellectual concentration, and
moral discipline vary slightly in the different systems
which teach it. The yogi, or disciple, who has by these
means overcome the obscurations of his lower nature
sufficiently, enters into the condition termed samadhi,
^^ and comes face to face with facts which no instinct or
reason can ever know." He learns —
*^ That the mind itself has a higher state of existence, beyond
reason, a superconscious state, and that when the mind gets k>
that higher state, then this knowledge beyond reasoning comes.
. . . All the different steps in yoga are intended to bring us
scientifically to the superconscious state or samadhi. . . . Just
as uncoD scions work is beneath consciousness, so there is another
work which is above consciousness, and which, also, is not ac-
companied with the feeling of egoism. . . . There is no feeling
of /, and yet the mind works, desireless, free from restlessness,
objectless, bodiless. Then the Truth shines in its full efful-
gence, and we know ourselves — for Samadhi lies potential in
us all — for what we truly are, free, immortal, omnipotent,
loosed from the finite, and its contrasts of good and evil alto-
gether, and identical with the Atman or Universal Soul." ^
The Vedantists say that one may stumble into super-
consciousness sporadically, without the previous disci-
pline, but it is then impure. Their test of its purity, like
* My qnotatioDs are from Vivekananda, Raja Toga, London, 1896. The
oompletest source of infonnation on Yoga is the work translated by Vi-
HABi Lala Mttra : Yoga Vasishta Maha Ramayana, 4 vols., Calcutta,
1891-99.
MYSTICISM 401
our test of religion's value, is empirical : its fruits must
be good for life. When a man comes out of Samadhi,
they assure us that he remains ^^ enlightened, a sage, a
prophet, a saint, his whole character changed, his life
changed, illumined." ^
The Buddhists use the word ^ samadhi ' as well as the
Hindus; but ^dhyana' is their special word for higher
states of contemplation. There seem to be four stages
recognized in dhyana. The first stage comes through
concentration of the mind upon one point. It excludes
desire, but not discernment or judgment: it is still intel-
lectual. In th^ second stage the intellectual functions
drop off, and the satisfied sense of unity remains. In
the third stage the satisfaction departs, and indifference
begins, along with memory and self-consciousness. In
the fourth stage the indifference, memory, and self-con-
sciousness are perfected. [Just what ^ memory ' and
'self-consciousness' mean in this connection is doubtful.
They cannot be the faculties familiar to us in the lower
life.] Higher stages still of contemplation are men-
tioned — a region where there exists nothing, and where
the meditator says : ^^ There exists absolutely nothing,"
and stops. Then he reaches another region where he
says : ^^ There are neither ideas nor absence of ideas,"
and stops again. Then another region where, " having
reached the end of both idea and perception, he stops
^ A European witness, after carefully comparing the results of Yoga with
those of the hypnotic or dreamy states artificially producible by us, says : *< It
makes of its true disciples good, healthy, and happy men. . . . Through
the mastery which the yogi attains oyer his thoughts and his body, he
grows into a ' character.' By the subjection of his impulses and propen-
sities to his will, and the fixing of the latter upon the ideal of goodness,
he becomes a * personality ' bard to influence by others, and thus almost
the opposite of what we usually imagine a 'medium' so-called, or 'psy-
chic subject ' to be.** Karl Kellner : Yoga : £ine Skizze, Mttnchen, 189iS»
p. 21.
402 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
finally." This would seem to be, not yet Nirvana, but
as close an approach to it as this life affords.^
In the Mohammedan world the Sufi sect and various
dervish bodies are the possessors of the mystical tradi-
tion. The Sufis have existed in Persia from the earliest
times, and as their pantheism is so at variance with the
hot and rigid monotheism of the Arab mind, it has been
suggested that Sufism must have been inoculated into
Islam by Hindu influences. We Christians know little
of Sufism, for its secrets are disclosed only to those initi-
ated. To give its existence a certain liveliness in your
minds, I will quote a Moslem document, and pass away
from the subject.
Al-6hazzali, a Persian philosopher and theologian, who
flourished in the eleventh century, and ranks as one of
the greatest doctors of the Moslem church, has left us one
of the few autobiographies to be found outside of Chris-
tian literature. Strange that a species of book so abun-
dant among ourselves should be so little represented else-
where— the absence of strictly personal confessions is
the chief difficulty to the purely literary student who
would like to become acquainted with the inwardness of
religions other than the Christian.
M. Schmolders has translated a part of Al-GhazzaU's
autobiography into French : ^ —
'^ The Science of the Sufis," says the Moslem author, *^ aims
at detaching the heart from all that is not God, and at giving
to it for sole occupation the meditation of the divine being.
Theory being more easy for me than practice, I read [certain
books] until I understood all that can be learned by study and
^ I follow the account in C. F. Koeppen : Die Religion des Buddha,
Berlin, 1857, i. 585 ff.
> For a full account of him, see D. B. Macdonald : The Life of Al-
Ghazzali, in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, 1899| voL xz.
p. 71.
MTSTICISM 403
hearsay. Then I recognized that what pertains most exclu-
sively to their method is just what no study can grasp, but only
transport, ecstasy, and the transformation of the souL How
great, for example, is the difference between knowing the defini-
tions of health, of satiety, with their causes and conditions, and
being really healthy or filled. How different to know in what
drunkenness consists, — as being a state occasioned by a vapor
that rises from the stomach, — and being drunk effectively.
Without doubt, the drunken man knows neither the definition
of drunkenness nor what makes it interesting for science.
Being drunk, he knows nothing ; whilst the physician, although
not drunk, knows well in what drunkenness consists, and what
are its predisposing conditions. Similarly there is a difference
between knowing the nature of abstinence, and being abstinent
or having one's soul detached from the world. — Thus I had
learned what words could teach of Sufism, but what was left
could be learned neither by study nor through the ears, but
solely by giving one's self up to ecstasy and leading a pious
life.
^^ Reflecting on my situation, I found myself tied down by a
multitude of bonds — temptations on every side. Considering
my teaching, I found it was impure before God. I saw myself
struggling with aU my might to achieve glory and to spread my
name. [Here follows an account of his six months' hesitation
to break away from the conditions of his life at Bagdad, at the
end of which he fell ill with a paralysis of the tongue.] Then,
feeling my own weakness, and having entirely given up my own
will, I repaired to God like a man in distress who has no more
resources. He answered, as he answers the wretch who invokes
him. My heart no longer felt any difficulty in renouncing
glory, wealth, and my children. So I quitted Bagdad, and re-
serving from my fortune only what was indispensable for my
subsistence, I distributed the rest. I went to Syria, where I
remained about two years, with no other occupation than living
in retreat and solitude, conquering my desires, combating my
passions, training myself to purify my soul, to make my char-
acter perfect, to prepare my heart for meditating on God — all
according to the methods of the Sufis, as I had read of them.
L.
404 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
^^ This retreat only increased my desire to live in solitude, and
to complete the purification of my heart and fit it for medita-
tion. But the vicissitudes of the times, the affairs of the famUy,
the need of subsistence, changed in some respects my primitive
resolve, and interfered with my plans for a purely solitary life.
I had never yet found myself completely in ecstasy, save in a
few single hours ; nevertheless, I kept the hope of attaining
this state. Every time that the accidents led me astray, I
sought to return ; and in this situation I spent ten years. Dur-
ing this solitary state things were revealed to me which it is
impossible either to describe or to point out. I recognized for
certain that the Sufis are assuredly walking in the path of God.
Both in their acts and in their inaction, whether internal or
external, they are illumined by the light which proceeds from
the prophetic source. The first condition for a Sufi is to purge
his heart entirely of all that is not God. The next key of the
contemplative life consists in the humble prayers which escape
from the fervent soul, and in the meditations on God in which
the heart is swallowed up entirely. But in reality this is only
the beginning of the Sufi life, the end of Sufism being total
absorption in God. The intuitions and all that precede are, so
to speak, only the threshold for those who enter. From the
beginning, revelations take place in so flagrant a shape that
the Sufis see before them, whilst wide awake, the angels and
the souls of the prophets. They hear their voices and obtain
their favors. Then the transport rises from the perception of
forms and figures to a degree which escapes all expression, and
which no man may seek to give an account of without his words
involving sin.
^^ Whoever has had no experience of the transport knows of
the true nature of prophetism nothing but the name. He may
meanwhile be sure of its existence, both by experience and by
what he hears the Sufis say. As there are men endowed only
with the sensitive faculty who reject what is offered them in the
way of objects of the pure understanding, so there are inteUec-
tual men who reject and avoid the things perceived by the pro-
phetic faculty. A blind man can understand nothing of colors
save what he has learned by ujirratiou and hearsay. Yet God
MYSTICISM 405
has brought prophetism near to men in giving them all a state
analogous to it in its principal characters. This state is sleep.
If you were to teU a man who was himself without experience
of such a phenomenon that there are people who at times swoon
away so as to resemble dead men, and who [in dreams] yet
perceiye things that are hidden, he would deny it [and give his
reasons]. Neyertheless, his arguments would be refuted by
actual experience. Wherefore, just as the understanding is a
stage of human life in which an eye opens to discern various
intellectual objects uncomprehended by sensation; just so in
the prophetic the sight is illumined by a light which uncovers
hidden things and objects which the intellect fails to reach.
The chief properties of prophetism are perceptible only dur-
ing the transport, by those who embrace the Sufi life. The
prophet is endowed with qualities to which you possess nothing
analogous, and which consequently you cannot possibly under-
stand. How should you know their true nature, since one
knows only what one can comprehend? But the transport
which one attains by the method of the Sufis is like an imme-
diate perception, as if one touched the objects with one's
hand." 1
This inconimunicableness of the transport is the key-
note of all mysticism. ^Mystical truth exists for the indi-
vidual who has the transport, but for no one else. In
this, as I have said, it resembles the knowledge given to
us in sensations more than that given by conceptual
thoughtj Thought, with its remoteness and abstractness,
has often enough in the history of philosophy been con-
trasted unfavorably with sensation. It is a commonplace
of metaphysics that God*s knowledge cannot be discur-
sive but must be intuitive, that is, must be constructed
more after the pattern of what in ourselves is called
immediate feeling, than after that of proposition and
judgment. But our immediate feelings have no content
1 A. ScHif6LDEBS : Essai sur' les ^coles philosophiqaet chez les Arabes,
1842y pp. 54r68y abridged.
406 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
but what the five senses supply ; and we have seen and
shall see again that mystics may emphatically deny that
the senses play any part in the very highest type of
knowledge which their transports yield.
In the Christian church there have always been mys-
tics. Although many of them have been viewed with
suspicion^ some have gained favor in the eyes of the
authorities. The experiences of these have been treated
as precedents, and a codified system of mystical theolofinr
has been baid upon them, k which everything legiti-
mate finds its place.^ The basis of the system is ' ori-
son ' or meditation^ the methodical elevation of the soul
towards God. Through the practice of orison the higher
levels of mystical experience may be attained. It is odd
that Protestantism, especially evangelical Protestantism,
should seemingly have abandoned everything methodical
in this line. Apart from what prayer may lead to, Pro-
testant mystical experience appears to have been almost
exclusively sporadic. It has been left to our mind-curers
to reintroduce methodical meditation into our religious
life.
The first thing to be aimed at in orison is the mind's
detachment from outer sensations, for these interfere with
its concentration upon ideal things. Such manuals as
Saint Ignatius's Spiritual Exercises recommend the dis-
ciple to expel sensation by a graduated series of efforts
to imagine holy scenes. The acme of this kind of disci-
pline would be a semi-hallucinatory mono-ideism — an
imaginary figure of Christ, for example, coming fully to
^ G^RREs's Christliche Mystik gives a fuU account of the facts. So does
RiBET*s Mystique Divine, 2 vols., Paris, 1890. A stiU more methodical
modern work is the Mystica Theologia of Yallgorneba, 2 vols., Turin,
1890.
MYSTICISM 407
occupy the mind. Sensorial images of this sort, whether
literal or symbolic, play an enormous part in mysticism.^
But in certain cases imagery may fall away entirely, and
in the very highest raptures it tends to do so. The state
of consciousness becomes then insusceptible of any verbal
description. Mystical teachers are unanimous as to this.
Saint John of the Cross, for instance, one of the best of
them, thus describes the condition called the ^ union of
love,' which, he says, is reached by ^ dark contemplation.'
In this the Deity compenetrates the soul, but in such a
hidden way that the soul —
^^ finds no terms, no means, no comparison whereby to render
the sublimity of the wisdom and the delicacy of the spiritual
feeling with which she is filled. . . . We receive this mystical
knowledge of God clothed in none of the kinds of images, in
none of the sensible representations, which our mind makes use
of in other circumstances. Accordingly in this knowledge,
since the senses and the imagination are not employed, we get
neither form nor impression, nor can we give any account or
furnish any likeness, although the mysterious and sweet-tasting
wisdom comes home so clearly to the inmost parts of our soul.
Fancy a man seeing a certain kind of thing for the first time in
his life. He can understand it, use and enjoy it, but he cannot
apply a name to it, nor communicate any idea of it, even though
all the while it be a mere thing of sense. How much greater
will be his powerlessness when it goes beyond the senses ! This
is the peculiarity of the divine language. The more infused,
intimate, spiritual, and supersensible it is, the more does it
exceed the senses, both inner and outer, and impose silence
upon them. . . . The soul then feels as if placed in a vast and
profound solitude, to which no created thing has access, in an
immense and boundless desert, desert the more delicious the
^ M. RicfJAC, in a recent volnme, makes them essential. Mysticism he
defines as " the tendency to draw near to the Absolute morally, and by the aid
of SjfmboU,** See his Fondements de la Connaissance mystique, Paris, 1S97,
p. 66. Bnt there are nnqnestionably mystical conditions in which sensible
•ymbols play no part
406 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
more solitary it is. There, in this abyss of wisdom, the soul
grows by what it drinks in from the well-springs of the com-
prehension of love, . . • and recognizes, however sublime and
learned may be the terms we employ, how utterly vile, insignifi-
cant, and improper they are, when we seek to discourse of divine
things by their means." ^
I cannot pretend to detail to you the sundry stages of
the Christian mystical life.^ Our time would not suffice,
for one thing ; and moreover, I confess that the subdi-
visions and names which we find in the Catholic books
seem to me to represent nothing objectively distinct. So
many men, so many minds : I imagine that these experi-
ences can be as infinitely varied as are the idiosyncrasies
of individuals.
The cognitive aspects of them, their value in the way
of revelation, is what we are directly concerned vnth, and
it is easy to show by citation how strong an impression
they leave of being revelations of new depths of truth.
Saint Teresa is the expert of experts in describing such
conditions, so I will turn immediately to what she says
of one of the highest of them, the ^ orison of union.'
^^ In the orison of union," says Saint Teresa, ^^ the soul is
fully awake as regards God, but wholly asleep as regards things
of this world and in respect of herself. During the short time
the union lasts, she is as it were deprived of every feeling, and
even if she would, she could not think of any single thing.
^ Saint Jobn of the Cross : The Dark Night of the Soul, book ii. ch.
zyii., in Vie et (Euvres, 3me Edition, Paris, 1893, iii. 428-432. Chapter
xi. of book ii. of Saint John's Ascent of Carmel is devoted to showing the
harmfulness for the mystical life of the use of sensible imagery.
^ In particular I omit mention of visual and auditory hallucinations, ver-
bal and g^phic automatisms, and such marvels as * levitation,' stigmatiza-
tion, and the healing of disease. These phenomena, which mystics have
often presented (or are believed to have presented), have no essential mys-
tical significance, for they occur with no consciousness of illumination what-
ever, when they occur, as they often do, in persons of non-mystical mind.
Consciousness of illumination is for us the essential mark of < mystical ' states.
MYSTICISM 409
Thus she needs to employ no artifice in order to arrest the use
of her understanding : it remains so stricken with inactivity that
she neither knows what she loves, nor in what manner she loves,
nor what she wills. In short, she is utterly dead to the things
of the world and lives solely in God. ... I do not even know
whether in this state she has enpugb life left to breathe. It
seems to me she has not ; or at least that if she does breathe,
she is unaware of it. Her intellect would fain understand
something of what is going on within her, but it has so little
force now that it can act in no way whatsoever. So a person
who falls into a deep faint appears as if dead. . . .
** Thus does God, when he raises a soul to union with him-
self, suspend the natural action of all her faculties. She
neither sees, hears, nor understands, so long as she is united
with God. But this time is always short, and it seems even
shorter than it is. God establishes himself in the interior of
this soul in such a way, that when she returns to herself, it is
wholly impossible for her to doubt that she has been in God,
and God in her. This truth remains so strongly impressed on
her that, even though many years should pass without the con-
dition returning, she can neither forget the favor she received,
nor doubt of its reality. If you, nevertheless, ask how it is
possible that the soul can see and understand that she has been
in God, since during the union she has neither sight nor under-
standing, I reply that she does not see it then, but that she
sees it clearly later, after she has returned to herself, not by
any vision, but by a certitude which abides with her and which
God alone can give her. I knew a person who was ignorant
of the truth that God's mode of being in everything must be
either by presence, by power, or by essence, but who, after hav-
ing received the grace of which I am speaking, believed this
truth in the most unshakable manner. So much so that, having
consulted a half-learned man who was as ignorant on this point
as she had been before she was enlightened, when he replied
that Grod is in us only by ^ grace,' she disbelieved his reply, so
sure she was of the true answer ; and when she came to ask
wiser doctors, they confirmed her in her belief, which much
consoled her. . . .
410 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
^^ But how, you will repeat, can one have such certainty in
respect to what one does not see ? This question, I am power-
less to answer. These are secrets of God's omnipotence which
it does not appertain to me to penetrate. All that I know is
that I tell the truth ; and I shall never believe that any soul
who does not possess this certainty has ever been really united
to God." 1
The kinds of truth communicable in mystical ways,
whether these be sensible or supersensible, are various.
Some of them relate to this world, — visions of the
future, the reading of hearts, the sudden understanding
of texts, the knowledge of distant events, for example ;
but the most important revelations are theological or
metaphysical.
^^ Saint Ignatius confessed one day to Father Laynez that a
single hour of meditation at Manresa had taught him more
truths about heavenly things than all the teachings of all the
doctors put together could have taught him. . . • One day in
orison, on the steps of the choir of the Dominican church, he
saw in a distinct manner the plan of divine wisdom in the crea-
tion of the world. On another occasion, during a procession,
his spirit was ravished in God, and it was given him to con-
template, in a form and images fitted to the weak understand-
ing of a dweller on the earth, the deep mystery of the holy
Trinity. This last vision flooded his heart with such sweet-
ness, that the mere memory of it in after times made him shed
abundant tears." ^
^ The Interior Castle, Fifth Abode, ch. i., in (Envres, translated by
Bouix, iii. 421-424.
' Bartou-Michel : Vie de Saint Ig^naoe de Loyola, i. 34-^. Others
have had illuminations about the created world, Jacob Boehme, for instance.
At the age of twenty-five he was *' surrounded by the divine light, and replen-
ished with the heavenly knowledge ; insomuch as going abroad into the
fields to a g^reen, at Grorlitz, he there sat down, and viewing the herbs and
grass of the field, in his inward light he saw into their essences, use, and
properties, which was discovered to him by their lineaments, figures, and
signatures." Of a later period of experience he writes : ** In one quarter
of an hour I saw and knew more than if I had been many years together at
MYSTICISM 411
Similarly with Saint Teresa. " One day, being in orison,"
she writes, ^^ it was granted me to perceive in one instant how
all things are seen and contained in God. I did ^ot perceive
them in their proper form, and nevertheless the view I had of
them was of a sovereign clearness, and has remained vividly im-
pressed upon my soul. It is one of the most signal of all the
graces which the Lord has granted me. . . . The view was so
subtile and delicate that the understanding cannot grasp it." ^
She goes on to tell how it was as if the Deity were an
enormous and sovereignly limpid diamond, in which all
our actions were contained in such a way that their full
sinfulness appeared evident as never before. On another
day, she relates, while she was reciting the Athanasian
Creed, —
^^ Our Lord made me comprehend in what way it is that one
God can be in three Persons. He made me see it so clearly
an nniyenity. For I saw and knew the being of all things, the Byss and
the Abyss, and the eternal generation of the holy Trinity, the descent and
original of the world and of aU creatures throngh the diyine wisdom. I
knew and saw in myself all the three worlds, the external and visible world
being of a procreation or extern birth from both the internal and spiritual
worlds ; and I saw and knew the whole working essence, in the evil and
in the good, and the mutual original and existence ; and likewise how the
fruitful bearing womb of eternity bronght forth. So that I did not only
greatly wonder at it, but did also exceedingly rejoice, albeit I could very
hardly apprehend the same in my external man and set it down with the
pen. For I had a thorough view of the universe as in a chaos, wherein aU
things are couched and wrapt up, but it was impossible for me to expli-
cate the same." Jacob Behmen's Theosophic Philosophy, etc., by Edward
Taylor, London, 1691, pp. 426, 427, abridged. So George Fox : " I was
come up to the state of Adam in which he was before he fell. The crea-
tion was opened to me ; and it was showed me, how all things had their
names given to them, according to their nature and virtue. I was at a
stand in my mind, whether I should practice physic for the good of mankind,
seeing the nature and virtues of the creatures were so opened to me by the
Lord." Journal, Philadelphia, no date, p. 69. Contemporary * Clairvoy*
ance ' abounds in similar revelations. Andrew Jackson Davis's cosmogonies,
for example, or certain experiences related in the delectable ' Reminiscences
and Memories of Henry Thomas Butterworth,' Lebanon, Ohio, 1886.
1 Vie, pp. 581, 582.
412 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
that I remained as extremely surprised as I was comforted, . • •
and now, when I think of the holy Trinity, or hear It spoken
of, I understand how the three adorable Persons form only one
God and I experience an unspeakable happiness."
On still another occasion^ it was given to Saint Teresa
to see and understand in what wise the Mother of God
had been assumed into her place in Heaven.^
The deliciousness of some of these states seems to be
beyond anything known in ordinary consciousness. It
evidently involves organic sensibilities^ for it is spoken of
as something too extreme to be borne, and as verging on
bodily pain.^ But it is too subtle and piercing a delight
for ordinary words to denote. God's touches, the wounds
of his spear, references to ebriety and to nuptial union
have to figure in the phraseology by which it is shadowed
forth. Intellect and senses both swoon away in these
highest states of ecstasy. ^^ If our understanding com-
prehends/' says Saint Teresa, ^^ it is in a mode which
remains unknown to it, and it can understand nothing of
what it comprehends. For my own part, I do not believe
that it does comprehend, because, as I said, it does not
understand itself to do so. I confess that it is all a mys-
tery in which I am lost." ' In the condition called raptus
or ravishment by theologians, breathing and circulation
are so depressed that it is a question among the doctors
whether the soul be or be not temporarily dissevered
from the body. One must read Saint Teresa's descrip-
tions and the very exact distinctions which she makes, to
^ Loo. cit., p. 574.
' Saint Teresa discriminates between pain in which the body has a part
and pare spiritoal pain (Interior Castle, 6th Abode, ch. zL). As for the
bodily part in these celestial joys, she speaks of it as " penetrating to the
marrow of the bones, whilst earthly pleasures affect only the surface of
the senses. I think," she adds, "that this is a jost description, and I can-
not make it better." Ibid., 5th Abode, oh. i.
» Vie, p. 198.
MYSTICISM 413
persaade one's self that one is dealings not with imagi-
nary experiences^ but with phenomena which^ however
rare^ follow perfectly definite psychological types.
To the medical mind these ecstasies signify nothing
but suggested and imitated hypnoid states^ on an intel-
lectual basis of superstition^ and a corporeal one of de-
generation and hysteria. Undoubtedly these pathological
conditions have existed in many and possibly in all the
cases, but that fact tells us nothing about the value for
knowledge of the consciousness which they induce. To
pass a spiritual judgment upon these states, we must
not content ourselves with superficial medical talk, but
inquire into their fruits for life.
Their fruits appear to have been various. Stupefaction,
for one thing, seems not to have been altogether absent
as a result. You may remember the helplessness in the
kitchen and schoolroom of poor Margaret Mary Alacoque.
Many other ecstatics would have perished but for the
care taken of them by admiring followers. The ^ other-
worldliness' encouraged by the mystical consciousness
makes this over-abstraction from practical life peculiarly
liable to befall mystics in whom the character is naturally
passive and the intellect feeble; but in natively strong
minds and characters we find quite opposite results. The
great Spanish mystics, who carried the habit of ecstasy
as far as it has often been carried, appear for the most
part to have shown indomitable spirit and energy, and
all the more so for the trances in which they indulged.
Saint Ignatius was a mystic, but his mysticism made
him assuredly one of the most powerfully practical hu-
man engines that ever lived. Saint John of the Cross,
writing of the intuitions and ^touches' by which God
reaches the substance of the soul, tells us that —
414 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
*^ They enrich it marvelously. A single one of them may be
sufficient to abolish at a stroke certain imperfections of which
the soul during its whole life had vainly tried to rid itself, and
to leave it adorned with virtues and loaded with supernatural
gifts. A single one of these intoxicating consolations may re-
ward it for all the labors undergone in its life — even were they
numberless. Invested with an invincible courage, filled with an
impassioned desire to suffer for its God, the soul then is seized
with a strange torment — that of not being allowed to suffer
enough." ^
Saint Teresa is as emphatic^ and much more detailed.
You may perhaps remember a passage I quoted from her
in my first lecture.^ There are many similar pages in
her autobiography. Where in literature is a more evi-
dently veracious account of the formation of a new centre
of spiritual energy^ than is given in her description of
the effects of certain ecstasies which in departing leave
the soul upon a higher level of emotional excitement ?
^* Often, infirm and wrought upon with dreadful pains before
the ecstasy, the soul emerges from it full of health and admir-
ably disposed for action ... as if God had willed that the body
itself, already obedient to the soul's desires, should share in the
soul's happiness. . . . The soul after such a favor is animated
with a degree of courage so great that if at that moment its
body should be torn to pieces for the cause of Gt>d, it would
feel nothing but the liveliest comfort. Then it is that promises
and heroic resolutions spring up in profusion in us, soaring
desires, horror of the world, and the clear perception of our
proper nothingness. . . . What empire is comparable to that
of a soul who, from this sublime summit to which God has
raised her, sees all the things of earth beneath her feet, and is
captivated by no one of them ? How ashamed she is of her
former attachments ! How amazed at her blindness ! What
lively pity she feels for those whom she recognizes still shrouded
in the darkness! . . . She groans at having ever been sensi*
1 (EuTies, ii. 320. < Above, p. 21.
MYSTICISM 416
tive to points of honor, at the illusion that made her ever see
as honor what the world calls by that name. Now she sees in
this name nothing mor^ than an immense lie of which the world
remains a victim. She discovers, in the new light from above,
that in genuine honor there is nothing spurious, that to be
faithful to this honor is to give our respect to what deserves to
be respected really, and to consider as nothing, or as less than
nothing, whatsoever perishes and is not agreeable to God. . . •
She laughs when she sees grave persons, persons of orison,
caring for points of honor for which she now feels profoundest
contempt. It is suitable to the dignity of their rank to act
thus, they pretend, and it makes them more useful to others.
But she knows that in despising the dignity of their rank for
the pure love of God they would do more good in a single day
than they would effect in ten years by preserving it. . . . She
laughs at herself that there should ever have been a time in her
life when she made any case of money, when she ever desired
it. . . . Oh! if human beings might only agree together to
regard it as so much useless mud, what harmony would then
reign in the world ! With what friendship we would all treat
each other if our interest in honor and in money could but dis-
appear from earth ! For my own part, I feel as if it would be a
remedy for all our ills." ^
Mystical conditions may, therefore, render the soul
more energetic in the lines which their inspiration favors.
But this could be reckoned an advantage only in case
the inspiration were a true one. If the inspiration were
erroneous, the energy would be all the more mistaken
and misbegotten. So we stand once more before that
problem of truth which confronted us at the end of the
lectures on saintliness. You will remember that we
turned to mysticism precisely to get some light on truth.
Do mystical states establish the truth of those theologi-
cal affections in which the saintly life has its root ?
In spite of their repudiation of articulate self-descrip-
^ Vie, pp. 229, 200, 231-233, 243.
416 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
tion^ mystical states in general assert a pretty distinct
theoretic drift. It is possible to give the outcome of the
majority of them in terms that point in definite philosophi-
cal directions. One of these directions is optimism^ and
the other islnonism. We pass into mystical states from
out of ordinary consciousness as from a less into a more,
as from a smallness into a vastness, and at the same time
as from an unrest to a rest. We feel them as reconciling,
unifying states. They appeal to the yes-function more
than to the no-function in us. In them the unlimited
absorbs the limits and peacefully closes the account.
Their very denial of every adjective you may propose
as applicable to the ultimate truth, — He, the Self, the
Atman, is to be described by ^ No ! no ! ' only, say the
Upanishads,^ — though it seems on the surface to be a
no-function, is a denial made on behalf of a deeper yes.
Whoso calls the Absolute anything in particular, or says
that it is thisy seems implicitly to shut it off from being
that — it is as if he lessened it. So we deny the ^ this,'
negating the negation which it seems to us to imply, in
the interests of the higher affirmative attitude by which
we are possessed. The fountain-head of Christian mys-
ticism is Dionysius the Areopagite. He describes the
absolute truth by negatives exclusively.
*^ The cause of all things is neither soul nor intellect ; nor
has it imagination, opinion, or reason, or intelligence ; nor is it
reason or intelligence; nor is it spoken or thought. It is
neither number, nor order, nor magnitude, nor littleness, nor
equality, nor inequality, nor similarity, nor dissimilarity. It
neither stands, nor moves, nor rests. ... It is neither es-
sence, nor eternity, nor time. Even intellectual contact does
not belong to it. It is neither science nor truth. It is not
even roysdty or wisdom; not one; not unity; not divinity
i Muller's translatioii, part ii. p. 180.
MYSTICISM 417
or goodi|e88; nor even spirit as we know it," etc., ad libi-
But tfiiese qualifications are denied by Dionysius^ not
because I the truth falls short of them, but because it so
infinitelV excels them. It is above them. It is super-
lucent, l«i(p6r-splendent, 8t^j96r-essential, «i(p6r-sublime,
super eyerything that can be named. . Like Hegel in his
logic, mystics journey towards the positive pole of truth
only by the ^ Methode der Absoluten Negativitat.' *
Thus come the paradoxical expressions that so abound
in mystical writings. As when Eckhart tells of the still
desert of the Godhead, ^^ where never was seen difference,
neither Fatlier, Son, nor Holy Ghost, where there is no
one at home, yet where the spark of the soul is more at
peace than in itself." ' As when Boehme writes of the
Primal Love, that '^ it may fitly be compared to Nothing,
for it is deeper than any Thing, and is as nothing with
respect to all things, forasmuch as it is not comprehen-
sible by any of them. And because it is nothing respec-
tively, it is therefore free from all things, and is that
only good, which a man cannot express or utter what it
is, there being nothing to which it may be compared, to
express it by." ^ Or as when Angelus Silesius sings : —
** Gott ist ein lanier Niehts, ihn riihrt kein Nun nooh Hier ;
Je mehr du nach ihm greiffst, je mehr eotwind er dir." ^
To this dialectical use, by the intellect, of negation as
1 T. DAvn>S0M'B translation, in Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 1893,
ToL xxii. p. 399.
' " Deus propter ezcellentiam non immerito Nihil yocatur." Sootus Eri-
gena, quoted by Andrew Seth : Two Lectures on Theism, New York,
1897, p. 65.
* J. RoTCE : Studies in Good and Evil, p. 282.
^ Jacob Behmen's Dialogues on the Supersensnal life, translated by
Bernard Holland, London, 1901, p. 48.
* Cherubinischer Wandersmann, Strophe 25.
418 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCJ
a mode of passage towards a higher kind of affinmationy
there is correlated the subtlest of moral counterparts in
the sphere of the personal wiU. Since denial of t pe finite
self and its wants^ since asceticism of some sort, its found
in religious experience to be the only doorwayl to the
larger and more blessed life, this moral mysterjy inter-
twines and combines with the intellectual mysteify in all
mystical writings.
^^ Love," continues Behmen, is Nothing, for ^^ whenl thou art
gone forth wholly from the Creature and from that I which is
visible, and art become Nothing to all that is JSjttare and
Creature, then thou art in that eternal One, which '/i& God him-
self, and then thou shalt feel within thee the higlioest virtue of
Love. . . • The treasure of treasures for the soul i^i whero she
goeth out of the Somewhat into that Nothing out o:;f which all
things may be made. The soul here saith, / have n\)thing^ for
I am utterly stripped and naked; lean do nothing^ iVor I have
no manner of power, but am as water poured out ; lam ^ nothing^
for all that I am is no more than an image of Being, ajid only
God is to me I AM ; and so, sitting down in my own Nothing-
ness, I give glory to the eternal Being, and vdll nothing of my-
self, that so God may will all in me, being unto me my Gxxi
and all things." ^
In Paul's language, I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth
in me. Only when I become as nothing can God enter
in and no difference between his life and mine remain
outstanding.^
^ Op. oit., pp. 42, 74, abridged.
^ From a French book I take this mystical expression of happiness in
(jod's iudweUing presence : —
'< Jesus has come to take up his abode in my heart It is not so much a
habitation, an association, as a sort of fusion. Oh, new and blessed life !
life which becomes each day more luminous. . . . The wall before me,
dark a few moments since, is splendid at this hour because the sun shines
on it. Wherever its rays fall they light up a conflagration of glory ; the
smallest speck of glass sparkles, each grain of sand emits fire ; even so
there is a royal song of triumph in my heart because the Lord is there. My
MYSTICISM 419
This overcoming of all the usual barriers between the
individual and the Absolute is the great mystic achieve-
ment. In mystic states we both become one with Sie
Absolute and we become aware of our oneness. This is
the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition^ hardly
altered by differences of clime or creed. In Hinduism,
in Neoplatonism, in Sn&m, in Christian mysticism, in
Whitmamsm, we find the same recurring note, so that
there is about mystical utterances an eternal unanimity
which ought to make a critic stop and think, and which
brings it about that the mystical classics have, as has
been said, neither birthday nor native land. Perpetually
telling of the unity of man with God, their speech ante-
dates languages, and they do not grow old.^
^ That art Thou ! ' say the Upanishads, and the V e-
dantists add : ^ Not a part, not a mode of That, but iden-
tically That, that absolute Spirit of the World.' " As
pure water poured into pure water remains the same,
thus, 0 Gautama, is the Self of a thinker who knows.
days succeed each other ; yesterday a blue sky ; to-day a clouded sun ; a
night filled with strange dreams ; bat as soon as the eyes open, and I regain
consciousness and seem to begin life again, it is always the same figure
before me, always the same presence filling my heart. . . . Formerly the
day was dulled by the absence of the Lord. I used to wake invaded by aU
sorts of sad impressions, and I did not find him on my path. To-day he is
with me ; and the light cloudiness which covers things is not an obstacle to
my communion with him. I feel the pressure of his hand, I feel something
else which fills me with a serene joy ; shall I dare to speak it out ? Tes,
for it is the true expression of what I experience. The Holy Spirit is not
merely making me a visit ; it is no mere dazzling apparition which may
from one moment to another spread its wings and leave me in my night, it
is a permanent habitation. He can depart only if he takes me with him.
More than that ; he is not other than myself : he is one with me. It is not
a juxtaposition, it is a penetration, a profound modification of my nature,
a new manner of my being." Quoted from the MS. ' of an old man ' by
Wilfred Monod : II Yit : six m^itations sur le myst^re ohr^tien, pp. 280-
283.
^ Compare M. Maeterlinck : L'Omement des Noces spirituelles de
Ruysbroeck, Brazelles, 1891| Introduction, p.
420 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
Water in water^ fire in fire, ether in ether, no one can
distinguish them ; likewise a man whose mind has entered
into the Self." * " * Every man/ says the Sufi Gulshan-
Baz, ^ whose heart is no longer shaken by any doubt,
knows with certainty that there is no being save only
One. • • • In his divine majesty the mCy the we, the
thouy are not found, for in the One there can be no dis-
tinction. Every being who is annulled and entirely sep-
arated from himself, hears resound outside of him this
voice and this echo : / am God : he has an eternal way
of existing, and is no longer subject to death.' " ^ In
the vision of God, says Flotinus, ^^ what sees is hot bur
reason, but something prior and superior to our reason.
• . . He who thus sees does not properly see, does not
distinguish or imagine two things. He changes, he
ceases to be himself, preserves nothing of himself. Ab-
sorbed in God, he makes but one with him, like a centre
of a circle coinciding with another centre." ' " Here,"
writes Suso, ^^ the spirit dies, and yet is all alive in the
marvels of the Godhead . . . and is lost in the stillness
of the glorious dazzling obscurity and of the naked sim-
ple unity. It is in this modeless where that the highest
bliss is to be found." * " Ich bin so gross als Gott,"
sings Angelus Silesius again, ^^ Er ist als ich so klein ;
Er kann nicht iiber mich, ich unter ihm nicht sein." ^
In mystical literature such self -contradictory phrases as
' dazzling obscurity,* ^ whispering silence,' teeming desert,'
are continually met with. They prove that not conceptual
speech, but music rather, is the element through which we
1 Upanishadsy M. MCller's translation, ii. 17, 334.
* SCHMOLDEBS : Op. cit., p. 210.
^ Enneads, BounxiER's translation, Paris, 1861, iii. 661. Compare pp.
473-477, and vol. i. p. 27.
^ Autobiog^phy, pp. 309, 310.
* Op. cit.. Strophe 10.
MYSTICISM 421
are best spoken to by mystical truth. Many mystical
scriptures are indeed little more than musical compositions.
**He who would hear the voice of Nada, ^the Soundless
Sound/ and comprehend it, he has to learn the nature of Dha-
rana. . . . When to himself his form appears unreal, as do on
waking all the forms he sees in dreams ; when he has ceased
to hear the many, he may discern the ONE — the inner sound
which kills the outer. . . . For then the soul will hear, and
will remember. And then to the inner ear will speak the
VOICE OP THE SILENCE. . . . And now thy Self is lost in SELF,
thyself unto thyself, merged in that self from which thou
first didst radiate. . . . Behold I thou hast become the Light,
thou hast become the Sound, thou art thy Master and thy
God. Thou art thyself the object of thy search : the voice
unbroken, that resounds throughout eternities, exempt from
change, from sin exempt, the seven sounds in one, the voice
OF THE silence. Om tat Sat,'' ^
These words, if they do not awaken laughter as you
receive them, probably stir chords wid^in you which
music and language touch in common. \Music gives us
ontological messages which non-musical criticism is un-
able to contradict, though it may laugh at our foolishness
in minding them. There is a verge of the mind which
these things haunt ; and whispers therefrom mingle with
the operations of our understanding, even as the waters
of the infinite ocean send their waves to break among the
pebbles that lie upon our shores.
** Here begins the sea that ends not till the world's end. Where we stand,
Coald we know the next high sea-mark set beyond these waves that gleam,
We should know what never man hath known, nor eye of man hath
scanned. . . .
Ah, but here man's heart leaps, yearning towards the gloom with venturoas
glee,
From the shore that hath no shore beyond it, set in aU the sea." '
1 H. P. Blavatbkt : The Voice of the Silence.
* SwnrouBinE : On the Verge, in * A Midsummer Vacation.'
422 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
That doctrine^ for example, that eternity is tuneless,
that our ^ immortality/ if we live in the eternal, is not so
much future as already now and here, which we find so
often expressed to-day in certain philosophic circles, finds
its support in a ^ hear, hear ! ' or an ^ amen,' which floats
up from that mysteriously deeper level.^ We recognize
the passwords to the mystical region as we hear them,
hut we cannot use them ourselves ; it alone has the keep-
ing of ^ the password primeval/ ^
I have now sketched with extreme hrevity and insuffi-
ciency, hut as fairly as I am able in the time allowed, the
general traits of the mystic range of consciousness. It
is on the whole pantheistic and optimistic^ or at least
the opposite of pessimistic. It is anti'-nataralistiCy and
harmonizes best with tioice-bomness and so-called other'
worldly states of mind.
My next task is to inquire whether we can invoke it as
authoritative. Does it furnish any warrant for the truth
of the twice-bomness and supematuraUty and pantheism
which it favors? I must give my answer to thiTquestiou
as concisely as I can.
In brief my answer is this, — and I will divide it into
three parts : —
(1) Mystical states, when well developed, usually are,
and have the right to be, absolutely authoritative over
the individuals to whom they come.
(2) No authority emanates from them which should
make it a duty for those who stand outside of them to
accept their revelations uncritically.
^ Compare the extracts from Dr. Bncke, quoted on pp. 398, 399.
^ As serious an attempt as I know to mediate between the mystical region
and the discursive life is contained in an article on Aristotle's Unmoyed
Moyer, by F. C. S. Schhxeb, in Mind, toL iz., 1900.
MYSTICISM 423
(3) They break down the authority of the non-mysr
tical or rationalistic consciousness, based upon the under-
standing and the senses alone. They show it to be only
one kind of consciousness. They open out the possibility
of other orders of truth, in which, so far as anything in
us vitally responds to them, we may freely continue to
have faith.
I will take up these points one by one.
1.
As a matter of psychological fact, mystical states of
a well-pronounced and emphatic sort are usually au-
thoritative over those who have them.^ They have been
^ there,' and know. It is vain for rationalism to grumble
about this. If the mystical truth that comes to a man
proves to be a force that he can live by, what mandate
have we of the majority to order him td live in another
way ? We can throw him into a prison or a madhouse,
but we cannot change his mind — we commonly attach
it only the more stubbornly to its beliefs.^ It mocks
our utmost efforts, as a matter of fact, and in point of
logic it absolutely escapes our jurisdiction. Our own
more ^rational' beliefs are based on evidence exactly
similar in nature to that which mystics quote for theirs.
Our senses, namely, have assured us of certain states of
fact ; but mystical experiences are as direct perceptions
^ I abstract from weaker states, and from those cases of which the books
are fall, where the director (but usually not the subject) remains in doubt
whether the experience may not have proceeded from the demon.
' Example : Mr. John Nelson writes of his imprisonment for preaching
Methodism : '' My soul was as a watered garden, and I could sing praises
to Grod all day long ; for he turned my captivity into joy, and gave me to
rest as well on the boards, as if I had been on a bed of down. Now could
I say, 'God's service is perfect freedom,' and I was carried out much in
prayer that' my enemies might drink of the same river of peace which my
God gave so largely to me." Joomali London, no date, p. 172.
424 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
of fact for those who have them as any sensations ever
were for us. The records show that even though the
five senses be in abeyance in them, they are absolutely
sensational in their epistemological quality, if I may be
pardoned the barbarous expression, — that is, they are
face to face presentations of what seems immediately to
exist.
The mystic is, in short, invulnerable^ and must be left,
whether we relish it or not, in undisturbed enjoyment
of his creed. Faith, says Tolstoy, is that by which men
live. And faith-state and mystic state are practically
convertible terms.
2.
But I now proceed to add that mystics have no right
to claim that we ought to accept the deliverance of
their peculiar experiences, if we are ourselves outsiders
and feel no private call thereto. The utmost tiiey can
ever ask of us in tiiis life is to admit tiiat they establish
. pres^ption. They form . consensu, .nd hL aa na-
equivocal outeome ; and it would be odd, mystics might
say, if such a unanimous type of experience should prove
to be altogether wrong. At bottom, however, this would
only be an appeal to numbers, like the appeal* of rational-
ism the other way; and the appeal to numbers has no
logical force. If we acknowledge it, it is for * sugges-
tive,' not for logical reasons : we follow the majority be-
cause to do so suits our life.
But even this presumption from the unanimity of
mystics is far from being strong. In characterizing
mystic states as pantheistic, optimistic, ete., I am afraid I
over-simplified the truth. I did so for expository reasons,
and to keep the closer to the classic mystical tradition.
The classic religious mysticism, it now must be con-
MYSTICISM 425
fessed, is only a ^privileged ease.' It is an extract^
kept true to type by the selection of the fittest speci-
mens and their preservation in ^schools.' It is carved
out from a much larger mass ; and if we take the larger
mass as seriously as religious mysticism has historically
taken itself, we find that the supposed unanimity largely
disappears. To begin with, even religious mysticism
itself, the kind that accumulates traditions and makes
schools, is much less unanimous than I have aUowed. It
has been both ascetic and antinomianly self-indulgent
within the Christian church.^ It is dualistic in Sankhya,
and monistic in Vedanta philosophy. I called it panthe-
istic ; but the great Spanish mystics are anything but
pantheists. They are with few exceptions non-metaphysi-
cal minds, for whom Hhe category of personality' is
absolute. The ' union ' of man with God is for them
much more like an occasional miracle than like an original
identity.^ How different again, apart from the happiness
common to all, is the mysticism of Walt Whitman, Ed-
ward Carpenter, Richard Jefferies, and other naturalistic
pantheists, from the more distinctively Christian sort.'
The fact is that the mystical feeling of enlargement,
union, and emancipation has no specific intellectual con-
tent whatever of its own. It is capable of forming matri-
monial alliances with material furnished by the most
diverse philosophies and theologies, provided only they
^ RuTSBRORCK, ID the work which Maeterlinck has translated, has a
chapter against the antinomianism of disciples. H. Delacroix's book
(Essai sur le mysticisme sp^ulatif en Allemag^e au XlVine Si^cle, Paris,
1900) is full of antinomian material. Compare also A. Juni>t : Les Amis
de Dieu an XlVme Si^cle, Th^se de Strasbourg, 1S79.
' Compare Paul Roussblot : Les Mystiques Espagnols, Paris, 1809,
ch. zii.
' See Carpenter's Towards Democracy, especially the latter parts, and
Jefferies's wonderful and splendid mystic rhapsody, The Story of my
Heart
426 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
can find a place in their framework for its peculiar emo-
tional mood. We have no rights therefore^ to invoke its
prestige as distinctively in favor of any special belief, such
as that in absolute idealism, or in the absolute monistic
identity, or in the absolute goodness, of the world. It
is only relatively in favor of all these things — it passes
out of common human consciousness in the direction in
which they lie.
So much for religious mysticism proper. But more
remains to be told, for religious mysticism is only one
half of mysticism. The other half has no accumulated
traditions except those which the text-books on insanity
supply. Open any one of these, and you will find abun-
dant cases in which ^ mystical ideas ' are cited as character-
istic symptoms of enfeebled or deluded states of mind.
In delusional insanity, paranoia, as they sometimes call it,
we may have a diabolical mysticism, a sort of religious
mysticism turned upside down. The same sense of in-
effable importance in the smallest events, the same texts
and words coming with new meanings, the same voices
and visions and leadings and missions, the same controlling
by extraneous powers ; only this time the emotion is pes-
simistic : instead of consolations we have desolations ; the
meanings are dreadful ; and the powers are enemies to
life. It is evident that from the point of view of their
psychological mechanism, the classic mysticism and these
lower mysticisms spring from the same mental level, from
that great subliminal or transmarginal region of which
science is beginning to admit the existence, but of which
so little is really known. That region contains every
kind of matter : ^ seraph and snake ' abide there side by
•ide. To come from thence is no infallible credential.
What comes must be sifted and tested, and run the gaunt-
let of confrontation with the total context of experience,
MTSnCISM 427
just like what comes from the outer world of sense. Its
value must be ascertained by empirical methods, so long
as we are not mystics ourselves.
Once more, then, I repeat that non-mystics are under
no obligation to acknowledge in mystical states a superior
authority conferred on them by their intrinsic nature.^
3.
Yet, I repeat once more, the existence of mystical
states absolutely overthrows the pretension of non-mysti-
cal states to be the sole and ultimate dictators of what
we may believe. As a rule, mystical states merely add a
supersensuous meaning to the ordinary outward data of
consciousness. They are excitements like the emotions
of love or ambition, gifts to our spirit by means of which
facts already objectively before us fall into a new expresr
siveness and make a new connection with our active life.
They do not contradict these facts as such, or deny any-
thing that our senses have immediately seized.^ It is the
rationalistic critic rather who plays the part of denier in
^ In chapter i. of book ii. of his work Degeneration, 'Max Nordau'
seeks to nndermine all mysticism by exposing the weakness of the lower
kinds. Mysticism for him means any sudden perception of hidden signifi-
cance in things. He explains such perception by the abundant uncompleted
associations which experiences may arouse in a degenerate brain. These
gire to him who has the experience a vague and vast sense of its leading
further, yet they awaken no definite or useful consequent in his thought.
The explanation is a plausible one for certain sorts of feeling of signifi-
cance ; and other alienists (Wernicke, for example, in his Grundriss der
Psycliiatrie, Theil ii., Leipzig, 1896) have explained ' paranoiac ' conditions
by a laming of the association-organ. But the higher mystical flights, with
their positiveness and abruptness, are surely products of no such merely
negative condition. It seems far more reasonable to ascribe them to inroads
from the snboonsoious life, of the cerebral activity correlative to which
we as yet know nothing.
^ They sometimes add subjective audita et vita to the facts, but as these
are usually interpreted as transmundane, they oblige no alteration in the
facts of sense.
423 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
the controversy, and his denials have no strength, for
there never can be a state of facts to which new meaning
may not truthfully be added, provided the mind ascend to
a more enveloping point of view. It must always remain
an open question whether mystical states may not possi-
bly be such superior points of view, windows through
which the mind looks out upon a more extensive and
inclusive world. The difference of the views seen from
the different mystical windows need not prevent us from
entertainmg this supposition. The wider world woul^ in
that case prove to have a mixed constitution like that of
this world, that is all. It would have its celestial and its
infernal regions, its tempting and its saving moments,
its valid experiences and its counterfeit ones, just as our
world has them ; but it would be a wider world all the
same. We should have to use its experiences by selecting
and subordinating and substituting just as is our custom
in this ordinary naturalistic world ; we should be liable to
error just as we are now ; yet the counting in of that
wider world of meanings, and the serious dealing with
it, might, in spite of all the perplexity, be indispensable
stages in our approach to the final fullness of the truth.
In this shape, I think, we have to leave the subject.
Mystical states indeed wield no authority due simply to
their being mystical states. But the higher ones among
them point in directions to which the religious senti-
ments even of non-mystical men incline. They tell of the
supremacy of the ideal, of vastness, of union, of safety,
and of rest. They offer us hypotheses^ hypotheses which
we may voluntarily ignore, but which as thinkers we can-
not possibly upset. The supematuralism and optimism
to which they would persuade us may, interpreted in one
way or another, be after all the truest of insights into the
meaning of this life.
MYSTICISM 429
^^ Oh, the little more, and how much it is ; and the little
less, and what worlds away ! " It may he that possi-
bility and permission of this sort are sdL that the religious
consciousness requires to live on. In my last lecture I
shall have to try to persuade you that this is the case.
Meanwhile, however, I am sure that for many of my
readers this diet is too slender. If supematuralism and
inner union with the divine are true, you think, then not
so much permission, as compulsion to believe, ought to
be found. Philosophy has always professed to prove
religious truth by coercive argument; and the construe-
tion of philosophies of this kind has always been one
favorite function of the religious life, if we use this term
in the large historic sense. But religious philosophy is
an enormous subject, and in my next lecture I can only
give that brief glance at it which my limits will allow.
LECTURE XVIII
PHILOSOPHY
THE subject of Saintliness left us face to face with
the question, Is the sense of divine presence a
sense of anything objectively true? We turned first to
mysticism for an answer, and found that although mys-
ticism is entirely willing to corroborate religion, it is too
private (and ako too various) in its utterances to be able
to claim a universal authority. But philosophy pub-
lishes results which claim to be universally valid if they
are valid at all, so we now turn with our question to
philosophy. Can philosophy stamp a warrant of veracity
upon the religious man's sense of the divine ?
I imagine that many of you at this point begin to
indulge in guesses at the goal to which I am tending. I
have undermined the authority of mysticism, you say,
and the next thing I shall probably do is to seek to dis-
credit that of philosophy. Religion, you expect to hear
me conclude, is nothing but an affair of faith, based
either on vague sentiment, or on that vivid sense of the
reality of things unseen of which in my second lecture
and in the lecture on Mysticism I gave so many examples.
It is essentially private and individualistic ; it always
exceeds our powers of formulation; and although at-
tempts to pour its contents into a philosophic mould will
probably always go on, men being what they are, yet
these attempts are always secondary processes which in
no way add to the authority, or warrant the veracity, of
the sentiments from which they derive their own stimidus
PHILOSOPHY 431
and borrow whatever glow of conviction they may them-
selves possess. In short, you suspect that I am planning
to defend feeling at the expense of reason, to rehabilitate
the primitive and unreflective, and to dissuade you from
the hope of any Theology worthy of the name.
To a certain extent I have to admit that you guess
rightly. I do believe that feeling is the deeper source of
religion, and that philosophic and theological formulas
are secondary products, like translations of a text into
another tongue. But all such statements are misleading
from their brevity, and it will take the whole hour for
me to explain to you exactly what I mean.
When I call theological formulas secondary products,
I mean that in a world in which no religious feeling had
ever existed, I doubt whether any philosophic theology
could ever have been framed. I doubt if dispassionate
intellectual contemplation of the universe, apart from
inner unhappiness and need of deliverance on the one
hand and mystical emotion on the other, would ever have
resulted in religious philosophies such as we now possess.
Men would have begun with animistic explanations of
natural fact, and criticised these away into scientific
ones, as they actually have done. In the science they
would have left a certain amount of ^ psychical research,'
even as they now will probably have to re-admit a cer-
tain amount. But high-flying speculations like those of
either dogmatic or idealistic theology, these they would
have had no motive to venture on, feeling no need of
commerce with such deities. These speculations must,
it seems to me, be classed as over-beliefs, buildings-out
performed by the intellect into directions of which feel-
ing originally supplied the hint.
But even if religious philosophy had to have its first
hint supplied by feeling, may it not have dealt in a supe-
432 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
nor way with the matter which feeling suggested ? Feel-
ing is private and dumb, and unable to give an account of
itself. It allows that its results are mysteries and enig-
mas, declines to justify them rationally, and on occasion
is willing that they should even pass for paradoxical and
absurd. Philosophy takes just the opposite attitude.
Her aspiration is to reclaim from mystery and paradox
whatever territory she touches. To find an escape from
obscure and wayward personal persuasion to truth objec-
tively valid for all thinking men has ever been the intel-
lect's most cherished ideal. To redeem religion from
unwholesome privacy, and to give public status and uni-
versal right of way to its deUverances, has been reason's
task.
I believe that philosophy will always have opportunity
to labor at this task.^ We are thinking beings, and we
cannot exclude the intellect from participating in any of
our functions. Even in soliloquizing with ourselves, we
construe our feelings intellectually. Both our personal
ideals and our religious and mystical experiences must
be interpreted congruously with the kind of scenery
which our thinking mind inhabits. The philosophic
climate of our time inevitably forces its own clothing on
us. Moreover, we must exchange our feelings with one
another, and in doing so we have to speak, and to use
general and abstract verbal formulas. Conceptions and
constructions are thus a necessary part of our religion ;
and as moderator amid the clash of hypotheses, and
mediator among the criticisms of one man's constructions
by another, philosophy will always have much to do. It
would be strange if I disputed this, when these very lec-
tures which I am giving are (as you will see more clearly
^ Compare Professor W. Wallace's Gifford LeotoreSy in LecturoB and
Essays, Oxford, 1898, pp. 17 ff.
PHILOSOPHY 433
from now onwards) a laborious attempt to extract from
the privacies of religious experience some general facts
which can be defined in formulas upon which everybody
may agree.
Religious experience, in other words, spontaneously
and inevitably engenders myths, superstitions, dogmas,
creeds, and metaphysical theologies, and criticisms of
one set of these by the adherents of another. Of late,
impartial classifications and comparisons have become
possible, alongside of the denunciations and anathemas
by which the commerce between creeds used exclusively
to be carried on. We have the beginnings of a * Science
of Religions,' so-called; and if these lectures could ever
be accounted a crumb-like contribution to such a science,
I should be made very happy.
But all these intellectual operations, whether they
be constructive or comparative and critical, presuppose
immediate experiences as their subject-matter. They
are interpretative and inductive operations, operations
after the fact, consequent upon religious feeling, not
coordinate with it, not independent of what it ascertains.
The intellectualism in religion which I wish to dis-
credit pretends to be something altogether different from
this. It assumes to construct religious objects out of
the resources of logical reason alone, or of logical reason
drawing rigorous inference from non-subjective facts. It
calls its conclusions dogmatic theology, or philosophy of
the absolute, as the case may be ; it does not call them
science of religions. It reaches them in an a priori way,
and warrants their veracity.
Warranted systems have ever been the idols of aspiring
souls. All-inclusive, yet simple ; noble, clean, luminous,
stable, rigorous, true; — what more ideal refuge could
434 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
there be than such a system would offer to spirits vexed
by the muddiness and aceidentality of the world of sensi-
ble things ? Accordingly, we find inculcated in the the-
ological schools of to-day, almost as much as in those
of the fore-time, a disdain for merely possible or prob-
able truth, and of results that only private assurance
can grasp. Scholastics and idealists both express this
disdain. Principal John Caird, for example, writes as
follows in his Introduction to the Philosophy of Reli-
gion: —
^^ Religion must indeed be a thing of the heart ; but in order
to elevate it from the region of subjective caprice and way-
wardness, and to distinguish between that which is true and
false in religion, we must appeal to an objective standard. That
which enters the heart must first be discerned by the intelli-
geuce to be true. It must be seen as having in its own nature
a right to dominate feeling, and as constituting the principle
by which feeling must be judged.^ In estimating the religious
character of individuals, nations, or races, the first question is,
not how they feel, but what they think and believe — not
whether their religion is one which manifests itself in emotions,
more or less vehement and enthusiastic, but what are the con-
cations of God and divine things by which these emotions are
called forth. Feeling is necessary in religion, but it is by the
content or intelligent basis of a religion, and not by feeling,
that its character and worth are to be determined." '
Cardinal Newman, in his work. The Idea of a University,
gives more emphatic expression still to this disdain for
sentiment.' Theology, he says, is a science in the strict-
est sense of the word. I will tell you, he says, what it is
not — not 'physical evidences' for God, not 'natural
religion,' for these are but vague subjective interpreta-
tions : —
1 Op. oit., p. 174, abridged.
* Ibid., p. 186, abridged and italicized.
• Diaoonne IL { 7.
PHILOSOPHY 435
^* If," he oontinues, ^^ the Supreme Being is powerful or skill-
ful, just so far as the telescope shows power, or the microscope
shows skill, if his moral law is to be ascertained simply by the
physical processes of the animal frame, or his will gathered
from the immediate issues of human affairs, if his Essence is
just as high and deep and broad as the universe and no more ;
if this be the fact, then will I confess that there is no specific
science about God, that theology is but a name, and a protest
in its behalf an hypocrisy. Then, pious as it is to think of
Him, while the pageant of experiment or abstract reasoning
passes by, still such piety is nothing more than a poetry of
thought, or an ornament of language, a certain view taken of
Nature which one man has and another has not, which gifted
minds strike out, which others see to be admirable and ingen-
ious, and which all would be the better for adopting. It is but
the theology of Nature, just as we talk of the philosophy or
the romance of history, or the poetry of childhood, or the pic-
turesque or the sentimental or the humorous, or any other ab-
stract quality which the genius or the caprice of the individual,
or the fashion of the day, or the consent of the world, recog-
nizes in any set of objects which are subjected to its contempla-
tion. I do not see much difference between avowing that there
is no God, and implying that nothing definite can be known
for certain about Him."
What I mean by Theology, continues Newman, is none of
these things : ^^ I simply mean the Science of God^ or the truths
we know about God, put into a system, just as we have a sci-
ence of the stars and call it astronomy, or of the crust of the
earth and call it geology."
In both these extracts we have the issue clearly set
before us : Feeling valid only for the individual is pitted
against reason valid universally. The test is a perfectly
plain one of fact. Theology based on pure reason must
in point of fact convince men universally. If it did not,
wherein would its superiority consist ? If it only formed
sects and schools, even as sentiment and mysticism form
them, how would it fulfiU its programme of freeing us
436 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
from personal caprice and waywardness ? This perfectly
definite practical test of the pretensions of philosophy
to found religion on universal reason simplifies my pro-
cedure to-day. I need not discredit philosophy by Labori-
ous criticism of its arguments. It will suffice if I show
that as a matter of history it fails to prove its pretension
to be ^ objectively ' convincing. In fact, philosophy does
80 fail. It does not banish differences ; it founds schools
and sects just as feeling does. I believe, in fact, that
the logical reason of man operates in this field of divinity
exactly as it has always operated in love, or in patriotism,
or in politics, or in any other of the wider affairs of life,
in which our passions or our mystical intuitions fix our
beliefs beforehand. It finds arguments for our convic-
tion, for indeed it has to find them. It amplifies and
defines our faith, and dignifies it and lends it words and
plausibiUty. It hardly ever engenders it ; it cannot now
secure it.^
Lend me your attention while I run through some of
the points of the older systematic theology. You find
them in both Protestant and Catholic manuals, best of all
in the innumerable text-books published since Pope Leo's
Encyclical recommending the study of Saint Thomas.
I glance first at the arguments by which dogmatic the-
' As regards the secondary character of intellectual constructions, and
the primacj of feeling and instinct in founding religious beliefs, see the
striking work of H. Fielding, The Hearts of Men, London, 1902, which
came into mj hands after my text was written. " Creeds," says the author,
** are the grammar of religion, they are to religion what grammar is to
speech. Words are the expression of our wants ; grammar is the theory
formed afterwards. Speech never proceeded from gprammar, but the re-
verse. As speech progresses and changes from unknown causes, gprammar
must follow " (p. 313). The whole book, which keeps unusually close to
concrete facts, is little more than an amplification of this text.
PHILOSOPHY 437
ology establishes God's existence, after that at those by
which it establishes his nature.^
The arguments for God's existence have stood for
hundreds of years with the waves of unbelieving criti-
cism breaking against them, never totally discrediting
them in the ears of the faithful, but on the whole slowly
and surely washing out the mortar from between their
joints. If you have a God already whom you beheve in,
these arguments confirm you. If you are atheistic, they
fail to set you right. The proofs are various. The ' cos-
mological ' one, so-called, reasons from the contingence of
the world to a First Cause which must contain whatever
perfections the world itself contains. The ^argument
from design ' reasons, from the fact that Nature's laws are
mathematical, and her parts benevolently adapted to each
other, that this cause is both intellectual and benevolent.
The ' moral arg^imient ' is that the moral law presupposes a
lawgiver. The ^ argument ex consensu gentium ' is that
the behef in God is so widespread as to be grounded in
the rational nature of man, and should therefore carry
authority with it.
As I just said, I will not discuss these arguments tech-
nically. The bare fact that all idealists since Kant have
felt entitled either to scout or to neglect them shows that
they are not solid enough to serve as religion's all-suffi-
cient foundation. Absolutely impersonal reasons would
be in duty bound to show more general convincingness.
Causation is indeed too obscure a principle to bear the
weight of the whole structure of theology. As for the
1 For conTenience' sake, I follow the order of A. ST<k3KL'8 Lehrbuch der
Philosopbie, 5te Anflage, Mainz, 1881, Band ii. B. Boedder's Natural
Theology, London, 1891, is a handy English Catholic Manual ; but an
almost identical doctrine is given by such Protestant theologians as C.
HoDOE : Systeoiatio Theology, New Ybrk, 1873, or A. il. Strung : Sysie-
matic Theology, 5th edition, New York| 1896.
438 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
argument from design, see how Darwinian ideas have
revolutionized it. Conceived as we now conceive them,
as so many fortunate escapes from ahnost limitless pro-
cesses of destruction, the benevolent adaptations which
we find in Nature suggest a deity very different from the
one who figured in the earlier versions of the argument.^
^ It mast not be forgotten that any form of disorder in the world might,
by the design argument, suggest a God for just that kind of disorder. The
truth is that any state of things whatever that can be named is logically
susceptible of teleological interpretation. The ruins of the earthquake at
Lisbon, for example : the whole of past history had to be planned exactly
as it was to bring about in the fullness of time just that particular arrange-
ment of d^ris of masonry, furniture, and once living bodies. No other
train of causes would have been sufficient. And so of any other arrange-
ment, bad or good, which might as a matter of fact be found resulting any-
where from previous conditions. To avoid such pessimistic consequences
and save its beneficent designer, the design argument accordingly invokes
two other principles, restrictive in their operation. The first is physical :
Nature's forces tend of their own accord only to disorder and destruction,
to heaps of ruins, not to architecture. This principle, though plausible at
first sight, seems, in the light of recent biology, to be more and more im-
probable. The second principle is one of anthropomorphic interpretation.
No arrangement that for us is ' disorderly ' can possibly have been an object
of design at all. This principle is of course a mere assumption in the
interests of anthropomorphic Theism.
When one views the world with no definite theological bias one way or
the other, one sees that order and disorder, as we now recognize them, are
purely human inventions. We are interested in certain types of arrange-
ment, useful, fBsthetio, or moral, — so interested that whenever we find
them realized, the fact emphatically rivets our attention. The result is
that we work over the contents of the world selectively. It is overflowing
with disorderly arrangements from our point of view, but order is the
only thing we care for and look at, and by choosing, one can always find
some sort of orderly arrangement in the midst of any chaos. If I should
throw down a thousand beans at random upon a table, I could doubtless,
by eliminating a sufficient number of them, leave the rest in almost any
geometrical pattern you might propose to me, and you might then say that
that pattern was the thing prefigured beforehand, and that the other beans
were mere irrelevance and packing material. Our dealings with Nature
are just like this. She is a vast plenum in which our attention draws capri-
cious lines in innumerable directions. We count and name whatever lies
upon the special lines we trace, whilst the other things and the untraced lines
are neither named nor counted. There are in reality infinitely more things
PHILOSOPHY 439
The fact is that these arguments do but follow the com-
bined suggestions of the facts and of our feeling. They
prove nothing rigorously. They only corroborate our pre-
existent partialities.
If philosophy can do so little to establish God's exist-
ence, how stands it with her efforts to define his attri-
butes ? It is worth while to look at the attempts of
systematic theology in this direction.
Since God is First Cause, this science of sciences says, he
differs from all his creatures in possessing existence a se.
From this ' a-se-ity ' on God's part, theology deduces by mere
logic most of his other perfections. For instance, he must be
both necessary and absolute^ cannot not be, and cannot in any
way be determined by anything else. This makes Him abso-
lutely unlimited from without, and unlimited also from within ;
for limitation is non-being ; and God is being itself. This un-
limitedness makes God infinitely perfect. Moreover, God is
OnCy and Ordy^^ior the infinitely perfect can admit no peer.
He is Spiritual^ for were He composed of physical parts, some
other power would have to combine them into the total, and
his aseity would thus be contradicted. He is therefore both
simple and non-physical in nature. He is simple metaphysi-
cally also, that is to say, his nature and his existence can-
* nnadapted ' to each other in this world than there are things * adapted ' ;
infinitely more things with irregular relations than with regular relations
between them. But we look for the regular kind of thing exclusively, and
ingeniously discover and preserve it in our memory. It accumulates with
other regular kinds, until the coUection of them fills our encyclopiedias. Yet
all the while between and around them lies an infinite anonymous chaos
of objects that no one ever thought of together, of relations that never yet
attracted our attention.
The facts of order from which the physico-theological argument starts
are thus easily susceptible of interpretation as arbitrary human products.
So long as this is the case, although of course no argument against God fol-
lows, it follows that the argument for him will fail to constitute a knock-
down proof of his existence. It will be convincing only to those who on
other grounds believe in him already.
440 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
not be distinct, as they are in finite substances which share
their formal natures with one another, and are individual only
in their material aspect. Since God is one and only, his esaetir
tia and his ease must be given at one stroke. This excludes
from his being all those distinctions, so familiar in the world
of finite things, between potentiality and actuality, substance
and accidents, being and activity, existence and attributes.
We can talk, it is true, of God's powers, acts, and attributes,
but these discriminations are only ' virtual,' and made from
the human point of view. In God all these points of view fall
into an absolute identity of being.
This absence of all potentiality in God obliges Him to be
immutable. He is actuality, through and through. Were there
anything potential about Him, He would either lose or gain by
its actualization, and either loss or gain would contradict his
perfection. He cannot, therefore, change. Furthermore, He is
immense^ boundless; for could He be outlined in space, He
would be composite, and this would contradict his indivisibility.
He is therefore omnipresent^ indi visibly there, at every point
of space. He is similarly wholly present at every point of time,
— in other words eternal. For if He began in time. He would
need a prior cause, and that would contradict his aseity. If He
ended, it would contradict his necessity. If He went through
any succession, it would contradict his immutability.
He has intelligence and will and every other creature-perfec-
tion, for we have them, and effectus nequit superare causam.
In Him, however, they are absolutely and eternally in act,
and their object^ since God can be bounded by naught that is
external, can primarily be nothing else than God himself.
He knows himself, then, in one eternal indivisible act, and
wills himself with an infinite self-pleasure.^ Since He must
of logical necessity thus love and will himself. He cannot be
called ' free ' ad intra^ with the freedom of contrarieties that
characterizes finite creatures. Ad extra^ however, or with re-
spect to his creation, God is free. He cannot need to create,
being perfect in being and in happiness already. He wills to
create, then, by an absolute freedom.
^ For the scholastics the faculioLs appetendi embraces feeling, desire, and
wiU.
PHILOSOPHY 441
BelDg thus a substance endowed with intellect and will and
freedom, God is a person ; and a limTig person also, for He is
both object and subject of his own activity, and to be this dis-
tinguishes the living from the lifeless. He is thus absolutely
sd/'Sufficient : his self-knowledge and sdf4ove are both of them
infinite and adequate, and need no extraneous conditions to
perfect them.
He is omniscienty for in knowing himself as Cause He knows
all creature things and events by implication. His knowledge
is previsive^ for He is present to all time. Even our free acts
are known beforehand to Him, for otherwise his wisdom would
admit of successive moments of enrichment, and this would
contradict his immutability. He is omnipotent for everything
that does not involve logical contradiction. He can make being
— in other words his power includes creation. If what He
creates were made of his own substance, it would have to be
infinite in essence, as that substance is ; but it is finite ; so it
must be non-divine in substance. If it were made of a sub-
stance, an eternally existing matter, for example, which God
found there to his hand, and to which He simply gave its form,
that would contradict God's definition as First Cause, and make
Him a mere mover of something caused already. The things
he creates, then, He creates ex nihUo^ and gives them absolute
being as so many finite substances additional to himself. The
forms which he imprints upon them have their prototypes in
his ideas. But as in God there is no such thing as multipli-
city, and as these ideas for us are manifold, we must distinguish
the ideas as they are in God and the way in which our minds
externally imitate them. We must attribute them to Him only
in a terminative sense, as differing aspects, from the finite point
of view, of his unique essence.
God of course is holy, good, and just. He can do no evil,
for He is positive being's fullness, and evil is negation. It is
true that He has created physical evil in places, but only as a
means of wider good, for bonum totius prceeminet bonum partis.
Moral evil He cannot will, either as end or means, for that
would contradict his holiness. By creating free beings He
permits it only, neither his justice nor his goodness obliging
442 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
Him to prevent the recipients of freedom from mbusing the
gift
As regards 6od*s purpose in creating, primarily it can only
have been to exercise his absolute freedom by the manifesta-
tion to others of his glory. From this it follows that the others
must be rational beings, capable in the first place of know-
ledge, love, and honor, and in the second place of happiness,
for the knowledge and love of God is the mainspring of felicity.
In so far forth one may say that God's secondary purpose in
creating is love.
I will not weary you by pursuing these metaphysical
determinations farther, into the mysteries of God's Trin-
ity, for example. What I have given will serve as a
specimen of the orthodox philosophical theology of both
Catholics and Protestants. Newman, filled with enthu-
siasm at God's list of perfections, continues the passage
which I began to quote to you by a couple of pages of 'a
rhetoric so magnificent that I can hardly refrain from
adding them, in spite of the inroad they would make
upon our time.^ He first enumerates God's attributes
sonorously, then celebrates his ownership of everything in
earth and Heaven, and the dependence of all that hap-
pens upon his permissive will. He gives us scholastic philo-
sophy ^touched with emotion,' and every philosophy
should be touched with emotion to be rightly understood.
Emotionally, then, dogmatic theology is worth something
to minds of the type of Newman's. It will aid us to
estimate what it is worth intellectually, if at this point I
make a short digression.
What Grod hath joined together, let no man put asun-
der. The Continental schools of philosophy have too
often overlooked the fact that man's thinking is organi-
cally connected with his conduct. It seems to me to be
^ Op. cit., Discourse III. § 7.
PHILOSOPHY 443
the chief glory of English and Scottish thinkers to have
kept the organic connection in view. The guiding prin-
ciple of British philosophy has in fact heen that every
difference must make a difference, every theoretical dif-
ference somewhere issue in a practical difference, and
that the best method of discussing points of theory is
to begin by ascertaining what practical difference would
result from one alternative or the other being true.
What is the particular truth in question known as?
In what facts does it result? What is its cash-value
in terms of particular experience? This is the char-
acteristic English way of taking up a question. In
this way, you remember, Locke takes up the question of
person J identity. What you mean by it is just your
chain of particular memories, says he. That is the only
conc^^tcily verifiable part of its significance. All further
ideas about it, such as the oneness or manyness of the
spiritual substance on which it is based, are therefore
void of intelligible meaning ; and propositions touching
such ideas may be indifferently affirmed or denied. So
Berkeley with his ^ matter.' The cash-value of matter is
our physical sensations. That is what it is known as, all
that we concretely verify of its conception. That, there-
fore, is the whole meaning of the term ^ matter ' — any
other pretended meaning is mere wind of words. Hume
does the same thing with causation. It is known as
habitual antecedence, and as tendency on our part to look
for something definite to come. Apart from this practi-
cal meaning it has no significance whatever, and books
about it may be committed to the flames, says Hume.
Dugald Stewart and Thomas Brown, James Mill, John
Mill, and Professor Bain, have followed more or less
consistently the same method ; and Shadworth Hodgson
has used the principle with full explicitness. When all is
444 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
said and done, it was English and Scotch writers, and
not Kant, who introduced Hhe critical method' into
philosophy, the one method fitted to make philosophy a
study worthy of serious men. For what seriousness can
possibly remain in debating philosophic propositions that
will never make an appreciable difference to us in action ?
And what could it matter, if all propositions were practi-
cally indifferent, which of them we should agree to call
true or which false ?
An American philosopher of eminent originality, Mr.
Charles Sanders Peirce, has rendered thought a service by
disentangUng from the particulars of its application the
principle by which these men were instinctive^ guided,
and by singling it out as fundamental* and giving* to it a
Greek name. He calls jttfifi nrinnjple ot ^ragmaiismy
and he defends it WmewnatasioTlows : * — ' ^^ '
Thought in movement has for its only conceivable
motive the attainment of belief, or thought at rest. Only
when our thought about a subject has found its rest in
belief can our action on the subject firmly and safely
begin. Beliefs, in short, are rules for action ; and the
whole function of thinking is but one step in the pro-
duction of active habits. If there were any part of a
thought that made no difference in the thought's prac-
tical consequences, then that part would be no proper
element of the thought's significance. To develop a
thought's meaning we need therefore only determine
what conduct it is fitted to produce ; that conduct is for
us its sole significance ; and the tangible fact at the root
of all our thought-distinctions is that there is no one of
them so fine as to consist in anything but a possible dif-
ference of practice. To attain perfect clearness in our
^ In an article, How to make our Ideas Clear, in the Popular Science
Monthly for January, 1878, vol. xii. p. 286.
PHILOSOPHY 445
thoughts of an object, we need then only consider what
sensations, immediate or remote, we are conceivably to
expect from it, and what conduct we must prepare in case
the object should be true. Our conception of these prac-
tical consequences is for us the whole of our conception
of the object, so far as that conception has positive sig-
nificance at all.
This is the principle of Peirce, the principle of prag-
matism. Such a principle will help us on this occasion
to decide, among the various attributes set down in the
scholastic inventory of God's perfections, whether some
be not far less significant than others.
If, namely, we apply the principle of pragmatism to
God's metaphysical attributes, strictly so called, as dis-
tinguished from his moral attributes, I think that, even
were we forced by a coercive logic to believe them, we
still should have to confess them to be destitute of all
intelligible significance. Take God's aseity, for example ;
or his necessariness ; his immateriality ; his ^ simplicity '
or superiority to the kind of inner variety and succession
which we find in finite beings, his indivisibility, and lack
of the inner distinctions of being and activity, substance
and accident, potentiaUty and actuality, and the rest;
his repudiation of inclusion in a genus ; his actualized
infinity ; his ^ personality,' apart from the moral quali-
ties which it may comfort; his relations to evil being
permissive and not positive ; his self-sufficiency, self-
love, and absolute f eUcity in himself : — candidly speak-
ing, how do such quaUties as these make any definite
connection with our life ? And if they severally call for
no distinctive adaptations of our conduct, what vital dif-
ference can it possibly make to a man's religion whether
they be true or false ?
For my own part, although I dislike to say aught that
446 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
may grate upon tender associations, I must frankly con-
fess that even though these attributes were faultlessly
deduced, I cannot conceive of its being of the smallest
consequence to us religiously that any one of them
should be true. Pray, what specific act can I perform in
order to adapt myself the better to God's simplicity ? Or
how does it assist me to plan my behavior, to know that
his happiness is anyhow absolutely complete? In the
middle of the century just past, Mayne Reid was the great
writer of books of out-of-door adventure. He was forever
extolling the hunters and field-observers of living ani-
mals' habits, and keeping up a fire of invective against
the ^ closet-naturalists,' as he called them, the collectors
and classifiers, and handlers of skeletons and skins.
When I was a boy, I used to think that a closet-natural-
ist must be the vilest type of wretch under the sun.
But surely the systematic theologians are the closetr
naturalists of the deity, even in Captain Mayne Reid's
sense. What is their deduction of metaphysical attri-
butes but a shufiUng and matching of pedantic diction-
ary-adjectives, aloof from morals, aloof from human
needs, something that might be worked out from the
mere word ^ God ' by one of those logical machines of
wood and brass which recent ingenuity has contrived as
well as by a man of flesh and blood. They have the
trail of the serpent over them. One feels that in the
theologians' hands, they are only a set of titles obtained
by a mechanical manipulation of synonyms; verbality has
stepped into the place of vision, professionalism into that
of life. Instead of bread we have a stone ; instead of a
fish, a serpent. Did such a conglomeration of abstract
terms give really the gist of our knowledge of the deity,
schools of theology might indeed continue to flourish, but
religion, vital religion, would have taken its flight from
PHILOSOPHY 447
this world. What keeps religion going is something else
than abstract definitions and systems of concatenated
adjectives, and something different from faculties of
theology and their professors. All these things are after^
effects, secondary accretions upon those phenomena of
vital conversation with the unseen divine, of which I
have shown you so many instances, renewing themselves
in scecula aceculorum in the Uves of humble private men.
So much for the metaphysical attributes of God !
From the point of view of practical religion, the meta-
physical monster which they offer to our worship is an
absolutely worthless invention of the scholarly mind.
What shall we now say of the attributes called moral ?
Pragmatically, they stand on an entirely different footing.
They positively determine fear and hope and expectation,
and are foundations for the saintly life. It needs but a
glance at them to show how great is their significance.
God's holiness, for example : being holy, God can will
nothing but the good. Being omnipotent, he can secure
its triumph. Being omniscient, he can see us in the
dark. Being just, he can punish us for what he sees.
Being loving, he can pardon too. Being unalterable, we
can count on him securely. These qualities enter into
connection with our life, it is highly important that we
should be informed concerning them. That God's pur-
pose in creation should be the manifestation of his glory
is also an attribute which has definite relations to our
practical life. Among other things it has given a definite
character to worship in all Christian countries. If dog-
matic theology really does prove beyond dispute that a
God with characters like these exists, she may well claim
to give a solid basis to religious sentiment. But verily,
how stands it with her arguments ?
448 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
It stands with them as ill as with the arguments for
his existence. Not only do postrKantian idealists reject
them root and branch, but it is a plain historic fact that
they never have converted any one who has found in the
moral complexion of the world, as he experienced it,
reasons for doubting that a good God can have framed
it. To prove God's goodness by the scholastic argument
that there is no non-being in his essence would sound to
such a witness simply silly.
No! the book of Job went over this whole matter
once for all and definitively. Ratiocination is a relatively
superficial and unreal path to the deity : ^^ I will lay mine
hand upon my mouth ; I have heard of Thee by the
hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee." An
intellect perplexed and baffled, yet a trustful sense of
presence — such is the situation of the man who is sin-
cere with himself and with the facts, but who remains
religious still.^
We must therefore, I think, bid a definitive good-by
to dogmatic theology. In all sincerity our faith must do
without that warrant. Modern idealism, I repeat, has said
good-by to this theology forever. Can modern idealism
give faith a better warrant, or must she still rely on her
poor self for witness ?
The basis of modem idealism is Kant's doctrine of the
^ Pragmatically, the most important attribute of God is his panitive jus-
tice. But who, io the present state of theological opinion on that point, wQl
dare maintain that hell fire or its equivalent in some shape is rendered cer-
tain by pure logic ? Theology herself has largely based this doctrine upon
revelation ; and, in discussing it, has tended more and more to substitute
conventional ideas of criminal law for a priori principles of reason. But
the very notion that this glorious universe, with planets and winds, and
laughing sky and ocean, should have been conceived and had its beams and
rafters laid in technicalities of criminality, is incredible to our modem
imagination. It weakens a religion to hear it argued upon such a
f
PHILOSOPHY 449
Transcendental Ego of Apperception. By this formidable
tenn Kant merely meant the fact that the consciousness
^I think them ' must (potentially or actually) accompany
all our objects. Former skeptics had said as much, but
the ^ I ' in question had remained for them identified with
the personal individual. Kant abstracted and deper-
sonalized it, and made it the most universal of all his
categories, although for Kant himself the Transcendental
Ego had no theological implications.
It was reserved for his successors to convert Kant's
notion of Bewuastsein uherhauptj or abstract conscious-
ness, into an infinite concrete self-consciousness which is
the soul of the world, and in which our sundry personal
self-consciousnesses have their being. It would lead me
into technicalities to show you even briefly how this
transformation was in point of fact effected. Suffice it
to say that in the Hegelian school, which to-day so deeply
influences both British and American thinking, two prin-
ciples have borne the brunt of the operation.
The first of these principles is that the old logic of
identity never gives us more than a post-mortem dissec-
tion of disjecta membra^ and that the fullness of life can
be construed to thought only by recognizing that every
object which our thought may propose to itself involves
the notion of some other object which seems at first to
negate the first one.
The second principle is that to be conscious of a nega-
tion is already virtually to be beyond it. The mere ask-
ing of a question or expression of a dissatisfaction proves
that the answer or the satisfaction is already imminent ;
the finite, realized as such, is already the infinite in
posse.
Applying these principles, we seem to get a propulsive
force into our logic which the ordinary logic of a barOi
450 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
stark self-identity in each thing never attains to. The
objects of our thought now act within our thought, act as
objects act when given in experience. They change and
develop. They introduce something other than them-
selves along with them ; and this other, at first only ideal
or potential, presently proves itself also to be actual. It
supersedes the thing at first supposed, and both verifies
and corrects it, in developing the fullness of its meaning.
The program is excellent; the universe is a place
where things are followed by other things that both cor-
rect and fulfill them ; and a logic which gave us some-
thing like this movement of fact would express truth far
better than the traditional school-logic, which never gets
of its own accord from anything to anything else, and
registers only predictions and subsumptions, or static re-
semblances and differences. Nothing could be more un-
like the methods of dogmatic theology than those of this
new logic. Let me quote in illustration some passages
from the Scottish transcendentalist whom I have already
named.
" How are we to conceive," Principal Caird writes, " of the
reality in which all intelligence rests?" He replies: '^Two
things may without dif&culty be proved, viz., that this reality
is an absolute Spirit, and conversely that it is only in com-
munion with this absolute Spirit or Intelligence that the finite
Spirit can realize itself. It is absolute ; for the faintest move-
ment of human intelligence would be arrested, if it did not
presuppose the absolute reality of intelligence, of thought
itself. Doubt or denial themselves presuppose and indirectly
afiBrm it. When I pronounce anything to be true, I pronounce
it, indeed, to be relative to thought, but not to be relative to
my thought, or to the thought of any other individual mind.
From the existence of all individual minds as such I can ab-
stract ; I can think them away. But that which I cannot think
away is thought or self-consciousness itself, in its independence
PHILOSOPHY 461
and absoluteness, or, in other words, an Absolute Thought or
Self-Consciousness."
Here, you see. Principal Caird makes the transition
which Kant did not make : he converts the omnipre-
sence of consciousness in general as a condition of ^ truth '
being anywhere possible, into an omnipresent universal
consciousness, which he identifies with God in his con-
creteness. He next proceeds to use the principle that
to acknowledge your limits is in essence to be beyond
them ; and makes the transition to the religious experi-
ence of individuals in the following words : —
^^ If [Man] were only a creature of transient sensations and
impulses, of an ever coming and going succession of intuitions,
fancies, feelings, then nothing could ever have for him the char-
acter of objective truth or reality. But it is the prerogative of
man's spiritual nature that he can yield himself up to a thought
and will that are infinitely larger than his own. As a think-
ing, self-conscious being, indeed, he may be said, by his very
nature, to live in the atmosphere of the Universal Life. As a
thinking being, it is possible for me to suppress and quell in
my consciousness every movement of self-assertion, every notion
and opinion that is merely mine, every desire that belongs to
me as this particular Self, and to become the pure medium of a
thought that is universal — in one word, to live no more my
own life, but let my consciousness be possessed and suffused
by the Infinite and Eternal life of spirit. And yet it is just
in this renunciation of self that I truly gain myself, or realize
the highest possibilities of my own nature. For whilst in one
sense we give up self to live the universal and absolute life of
reason, yet that to which we thus surrender ourselves is in
reality our truer self. The life of absolute reason is not a life
that is foreign to us."
Nevertheless, Principal Caird goes on to say, so far as
we are able outwardly to realize this doctrine, the balm
it offers remains incomplete. Whatever we may be in
possCy the very best of us in acta falls very short of
462 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
being absolutely divine. Social morality, love, and self-
sacrifice even, merge our Self only in some other finite
self or selves. They do not quite identify it with the
Infinite. Man's ideal destiny, infinite in abstract logic,
might thus seem in practice forever unrealizable.
^^ Is there, then," our author continues, ^^ no solution of the
contradiction between the ideal and the actual ? We answer,
There is such a solution, but in order to reach it we are carried
beyond the sphere of morality into that of religion. It may be
said to be the essential characteristic of religion as contrasted
with morality, that it changes aspiration into fruition, anticipa-
tion into realization ; that instead of leaving man in the inter-
minable pursuit of a vanishing ideal, it ma^es him the actual
partaker of a divine or infinite life. Whether we view religion
from the human side or the divine — as the surrender of the
soul to God, or as the life of God in the soul — in either aspect
it is of its very essence that the Infinite has ceased to be a far-
ofiE vision, and has become a present reality. The very first
pulsation of the spiritual life, when we, rightly apprehend its
significance, is the indication that the division between the
Spirit and its object has vanished, that the ideal has become
real, that the finite has reached its goal and become suffused
with the presence and life of the Infinite.
^^ Oneness of mind and will with the divine mind and will
is not the future hope and aim of religion, but its very begin-
ning and birth in the souL To enter on the religious life is to
terminate the struggle. In that act which constitutes the be-
ginning of the religious life — call it faith, or trust, or self -sur-
render, or by whatever name you will — there is involved the
identification of the finite with a life which is eternally realized.
It is true indeed that the religious life is progressive; but
understood in the light of the foregoing idea, religious progress
is not progress towards^ but within the sphere of the Infinite.
It is not the vain attempt by endless finite additions or incre-
ments to become possessed of infinite wealth, but it is the
endeavor, by the constant exercise of spiritual activity, to ap-
propriate that infinite inheritance of which we are already in
PHILOSOPHY 453
possession. The whole future of the religious life is given in
its beginning, but it is given implicitly. The position of the
man who has entered on the religious life is that evil, error,
imperfection, do not really belong to him : they are excres-
cences which have no organic relation to his true nature : they
are already virtually, as they will be actually, suppressed and
annulled, and in the very process of being annulled they become
the means of spiritual progress. Though he is not exempt
from temptation and conflict, [yet] in that inner sphere in
which his true life lies, the struggle is over, the victory already
achieved. It is not a finite but an infinite life which the spirit
lives. Every pulse-beat of its [existence] is the expression and
realization of the life of God." ^
You will readily admit that no description of the pheno-
mena of the religious consciousness could be better than
these words of your lamented preacher and philosopher.
They reproduce the very rapture of those crises of con-
version of which we have been hearing ; they utter what
the mystic felt but was unable to communicate ; and the
saint, in hearing them, recognizes his own experience.
It is indeed gratifying to find the content of religion
reported so unanimously. But when all is said and done,
has Principal Caird — and I only use him as an example
of that whole mode of thinking — transcended the sphere
of feeling and of the direct experience of the individual,
and laid the foundations of religion in impartial reason ?
Has he made religion universal by coercive reasoning,
transformed it from a private faith into a public cer-
tainty? Has he rescued its affirmations from obscurity
and mystery ?
I believe that he has done nothing of the kind, but
that he has simply reaffirmed the individual's experiences
in a more generalized vocabulary. And again, I can be
^ John Caird : An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, London
and New York, 1880, pp. 24a-250, and 291-299, much abridged.
4S4 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
excused from proving technically tliat the transcendental-
ist reasonings fail to make religion universal, for I can
point to the plain fact that a majority of scholars, even
religiously disposed ones, stubbornly refuse to treat them
as convincing. The whole of Germany, one may say,
has positively rejected the Hegelian argumentation. As
for Scotland, I need only mention Professor Eraser's and
Professor Pringle-Pattison's memorable criticisms, with
which so many of you are familiar.^ Once more, I ask,
if transcendental idealism were as objectively and abso-
lutely rational as it pretends to be, could it possibly fail
so egregiously to be persuasive ?
What religion reports, you must remember, always pur-
ports to be a fact of experience : the divine is actually
present, religion says, and between it and ourselves rela-
tions of give and take are actual. If definite percep-
tions of fact like this cannot stand upon their own feet,
^ A. C. Phaser : Philosophy of Theism, second edition, Edinburgh and
London, 1899, especiallj part ii. chaps, vii. and yiii. ; A. Sbth [Pringle-
Pattibon] : Hegelianism and Personality, Ibid., 1890, passim.
The most persuasive arguments in favor of a concrete individual Soul of
the world, with which I am acquainted, are those of my colleague, Josiah
Royce, in his Religious Aspect of Philosophy, Boston, 1885 ; in his Con-
ception of God, New York and London, 1897 ; and lately if his Aberdeen
Gifford Lectures, The World and the Individual, 2 vols.. New York and
London, 1901-02. I doubtless seem to some of my readers to evade the
philosophic duty which my thesis in this lecture imposes on me, by not even
attempting to meet Professor Royce's arguments articulately. I admit the
momentary evasion. In the present lectures, which are cast throughout in
a popular mould, there seemed no room for subtle metaphysical discussion,
and for tactical purposes it was sufficient, the contention of philosophy being
what it is (namely, that religion can be transformed into a universally con-
vincing science), to point to the fact that no religious philosophy has actually
convinced the mass of thinkers. Meanwhile let me say that I hope that the
present volume may be followed by another, if I am spared to write it, in
which not only Professor Royce's arguments, but others for monistic abso-
lutism shall be considered with all the technical fullness which their great
importance calls for. At present I resign myself to lying passive under the
reproach of superficiality.
PHILOSOPHY 455
surely abstract reasoning cannot give them the support
they are in need of. Conceptual processes can class f acts^
define them, interpret them; but they do not produce
them, nor can they reproduce their individuaUty. There
is always a plus, a thisnesSf which feeling alone can
answer for. Philosophy in this sphere is thus a secondary
function, unable to warrant faith's veracity, and so I
revert to the thesis which I announced at the beginning
of this lecture.
In all sad sincerity I think we must conclude that the
attempt to demonstrate by purely intellectual processes
the truth of the deliverances of direct religious experience
is absolutely hopeless.
It would be unfair to philosophy, however, to leave
her under this negative sentence. Let me close, then, by
briefly enumerating what she can do for religion. If she
will abandon metaphysics and deduction for criticism and
induction, and frankly transform herself from theology
into science of religions, she can make herself enormously
useful.
The spontaneous intellect of man always defines the
divine which it feels in ways that harmonize with its
temporary intellectual prepossessions. Philosophy can by
comparison eliminate the local and the accidental from
these definitions. Both from dogma and from worship
she can remove historic incrustations. By confronting
the spontaneous religious constructions with the results of
natural science, philosophy can also eliminate doctrines
that are now known to be scientifically absurd or incon-
gruous.
Sifting out in this way unworthy formulations, she can
leave a residuum of conceptions that at least are possible.
With these she can deal as hypotheses, testing them in
456 THE VARIETIES OF KELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
all the manners, whether negative or positive, by which
hypotheses are ever tested. She can reduce their num-
ber, as some are found more open to objection. She can
perhaps become the champion of one which she picks out
as being the most closely verified or verifiable. She can
refine upon the definition of this hypothesis, distinguish-
ing between what is innocent over-belief and symbolism
in the expression of it, and what is to be literally taken.
As a result, she can offer mediation between different
believers, and help to bring about consensus of opinion.
She can do this the more successfully, the better she dis-
criminates the common and essential from the individual
and local elements of the religious beliefs which she com-
pares.
I do not see why a critical Science of Religions of this
sort might not eventually command as general a public
adhesion as is commanded by a physical science. Even
the personally non-religious might accept its conclusions
on trust, much as blind persons now accept the facts of
optics — it might appear as foolish to refuse them. Yet
as the science of optics has to be fed in the first instance,
and continually verified later, by facts experienced by
seeing persons ; so the science of religions would depend
for its original material on facts of personal experience,
and would have to square itself with personal experience
through all its critical reconstructions. It could never get
away from concrete life, or work in a conceptual vacuum.
It would forever have to confess, as every science con-
fesses, that the subtlety of nature flies beyond it, and that
its formulas are but approximations. Philosophy lives in
words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways
that exceed verbal formulation. There is in the living
act of perception always something that glimmers and
twinkles and will not be caught, and for which reflection
PHILOSOPHY 467
comes too late. No one knows this as well as the philo-
sopher. He must fire his volley of new vocables out of
his conceptual shotgun, for his profession condemns him
to this industry, but he secretly knows the hollowness
and irrelevancy. His formulas are like stereoscopic or
kinetoscopic photographs seen outside the instrument;
they lack the depth, the motion, the vitality. In the
rel^ious sphere, in particular, belief that formulas are
true can never wholly take the place of personal expe-
rience.
In my next lecture I will try to complete my rough
description of religious experience ; and in the lecture
after that, which is the last one, I will try my own hand
at formulating conceptually the truth to which it is a
witness.
LECTURE XIX
OTHER CHARACTERISTICS
WE have wound our way back, after our excursion
through mysticism and philosophy, to where we
were before: the uses of religion, its uses to the indi-
vidual who has it, and the uses of the individual himself
to the world, are the best arguments that truth is in it
We return to the empirical philosophy : the true is what
works well, even though the qualification ^ on the whole '
may always have to be added. In this lecture we must
revert to description again, and finish our picture of the
religious consciousness by a word about some of its other
characteristic elements. Then, in a final lecture, we shall
be free to make a general review and draw our independ-
ent conclusions.
The first point I will speak of is the part which the
aesthetic life plays in determining one's choice of a reli-
gion. Men, I said awhile ago, involuntarily intellectu-
alize their religious experience. They need formulas,
just as they need fellowship in worship. I spoke, there-
fore, too contemptuously of the pragmatic uselessness of
the famous scholastic list of attributes of the deity, for
they have one use which I neglected to consider. The
eloquent passage in which Newman enumerates them ^
puts us on the track of it. Intoning them as he would
intone a cathedral service, he shows how high is their
aesthetic value. It enriches our bare piety to carry these
exalted and mysterious verbal additions just as it enriches
^ Idea of a University, Disconne III. § 7.
OTHER CHARACTERISTICS 459
a church to have an organ and old brasses, marbles and
frescoes and stained windows. Epithets lend an atmos-
phere and overtones to our devotion. They are like a
hymn of praise and service of glory, and Jy sound the
more sublime for being incomprehensible. Minds like
Newman's^ grow as jealous of their credit as heathen
priests are of that of the jewelry and ornaments that
blaze upon their idols.
Among the buildings-out of religion which the mind
spontaneously indulges in, the aesthetic motive must never
be forgotten. I promised to say nothing of ecclesiastical
systems in these lectures. I may be allowed, however,
to put in a word at this point on the way in which their
satisfaction of certain aesthetic needs contributes to their
hold on human nature. Although some persons aim
most at intellectual purity and simplification, for others
richness is the supreme imaginative requirement.^ When
one's mind is strongly of this type, an individual religion
will hardly serve the purpose. The inner need is rather
^ Newman's imagination so innately oraved an ecclesiastical system that
he can write : *' From the age of fifteen, dogma has been the fundamental
principle of my religion : I know no other religion ; I cannot enter into the
idea of any other sort of religion." And again, speaking of himself about
the age of thirty, he writes : ^ I loved to act as feeling myself in my
Bishop's sight, as if it were the sight of God." Apologia, 1897, pp. 48, 50.
' llie intellectual difference is quite on a par in practical importance
with the analogous difference in character. We saw, under the head of
Saintliness, how some characters resent confusion and must live in purity,
consistency, simplicity (above, p. 280 ff.). For others, on the contrary,
superabundance, over-pressure, stimulation, lots of superficial relations, are
indispensable. There are men who would suffer a very syncope if you
should pay all their debts, bring it about that their engagements had been
kept, their letters answered, their perplexities relieved, and their duties
fuLQUed, down to one which lay on a clean table under their eyes with
nothing to interfere with its immediate performance. A day stripped so
staringly bare would be for them appalling. So with ease, elegance, trib-
utes of affection, social recognitions — some of us require amounts of these
things which to others would appear a mass of lying and sophistication.
460 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
of something institutional and complex, majestic in the
hierarchic interrelatedness of its parts, with authority de-
scending from stage to stage, and at every stage objects
for adjectives of mystery and splendor, derived in the
last resort from the Godhead who is the fountain and
culmination of the system. One feels then as if in pre-
sence of some vast incrusted work of jewelry or architec-
ture ; one hears the multitudinous liturgical appeal ; one
gets the honorific vibration coming from every quarter.
Compared with such a noble complexity, in which as-
scending and descending movements seem in no way to
jar upon stability, in which no single item, however hum-
ble, is iQsignificant, because so many august institutions
hold it iQ its place, how flat does evangelical Protestant-
ism appear, how bare the atmosphere of those isolated re-
ligious lives whose boast it is that '^ man in the bush with
God may meet." * What a pulverization and leveling of
what a gloriously piled-up structure ! To an imagination
used to the perspectives of dignity and glory, the naked
gospel scheme seems to offer an almshouse for a palace.
It is much like the patriotic sentiment of those brou^t
up in ancient empires. How many emotions must be
frustrated of their object, when one gives up the titles of
dignity, the crimson lights and blare of brass, the gold
embroidery, the plumed troops, the fear and trembling,
and puts up with a president in a black coat who shakes
hands with you, and comes, it may be, from a ^ home '
upon a veldt or prairie with one sitting-room and a Bible
on its centre-table. It pauperizes the monarchical imagi-
nation !
The strength of these aesthetic sentiments makes it
^ In Newman's Lectures on Justification, Lecture YIII. § 6, there is a
splendid passage expressive of this sesthetic way of feeling the Christian
scheme. It is unfortunately too long to quote.
OTHER CHARACTERISTICS 461
rigorously impossible, it seems to me, that Protestantism^
however superior in spiritual profundity it may be to
CathoUeism, should at the present day succeed in making
many converts from the more venerable ecclesiasticism.
The latter offers a so much richer pasturage and shade
to the fancy, has so many cells with so many different
kinds of honey, is so indulgent in its multiform appeals
to himian nature, that Protestantism will always show to
Catholic eyes the almshouse physiognomy. The bitter
negativity of it is to the Catholic mind incomprehensi-
ble. To intellectual Catholics many of the antiquated
beliefs and practices to which the Church gives counte-
nance are, if taken literally, as childish as they are to
Protestants. But they are childish in the pleasing sense
of ^ childlike,' — innocent and amiable, and worthy to be
smiled on in consideration of the undeveloped condition
of the dear people's intellects. To the Protestant, on
the contrary, they are childish in the sense of being
idiotic falsehoods. He must stamp out their delicate and
lovable redundancy, leaving the Cathohc to shudder at
his Uteralness. He appears to the latter as morose as if
he were some hard-eyed, numb, monotonous kind of rep-
tile. The two will never understand each other -^ their
centres of emotional energy are too different. Rigorous
truth and human nature's intricacies are always in need
of a mutual interpreter.^ So much for the aesthetic diver-
sities in the religious consciousness.
^ Compare the informality of Protestantism, where the ' meek lover of
the good/ alone with his Grod, visits the sick, etc., for their own sakes, with
the elaborate ' business ' that goes on in Catholic devotion, and carries with
it the social excitement of all more complex businesses. An essentially
worldly-minded Catholic woman can become a visitor of the sick on purely
coquettish principles, with her confessor and director, her < merit ' storing
op, her patron saints, her privileged relation to the Almighty, drawing his
attention as a professional devote, her definite ' exercises,' and her definitely
recognized social pose in the organization.
462 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
In most books on religion, three things are represented
as its most essential elements. These are Sacrifice, Con-
fession, and Prayer. I must say a word in turn of each
of these elements, though briefly. First of Sacrifice.
Sacrifices to gods are omnipresent in primeval worship ;
but, as cults have grown refined, burnt offerings and
the blood of he-goats have been superseded by sacri-
fices more spiritual in their nature. Judaism, Islam, and
Buddhism get along without ritual sacrifice; so does
Christianity, save in so far as the notion is preserved in
transfigured form in the mystery of Christ's atonement.
These religions substitute offerings of the heart, renun-
ciations of the inner self, for all those vain oblations.
In the ascetic practices which Islam, Buddhism, and the
older Christianity encourage we see how indestructible is
the idea that sacrifice of some sort is a religious exercise.
In lecturing on asceticism I spoke of its significance as
symbolic of the sacrifices which life, whenever it is taken
strenuously, calls for.^ But, as I said my say about
those, and as these lectures expressly avoid earlier reli-
gious usages and questions of derivation, I will pass from
the subject of Sacrifice altogether and turn to that of
Confession.
In regard to Confession I will also be most brief, say-
ing my word about it psychologically, not historically.
Not nearly as widespread as sacrifice, it corresponds to a
more inward and moral stage of sentiment. It is part of
the general system of purgation and cleansing which one
feels one's self in need of, in order to be in right rela-
tions to one's deity. For him who confesses, shams are
over and realities have begun ; he has exteriorized his rot-
tenness. If he has not actually got rid of it, he at least
1 Above, p. 362 ff.
OTHER CHARACTERISTICS 463
no longer smears it over with a hypocritical show of
virtue — he lives at least upon a basis of veracity. The
complete decay of the practice of confession in Anglo-
Saxon communities is a little hard to account for. Re-
action against popery is of course the historic explana-
tion, for in popery confession went with penances and
absolution, and other inadmissible practices. But on the
side of the sinner himself it seems as if the need ought
to have been too great to accept so summary a refusal of
its satisfaction. One would think that in more men the
shell of secrecy would have had to open, the pentrin
abscess to burst and gain relief, even though the ear
that heard the confession were unworthy. The Catholic
church, for obvious utilitarian reasons, has substituted
auricular confession to one priest for the more radical
act of public confession. We English-speaking Protes-
tants, in the general self-reliance and unsociability of our
nature, seem to find it enough if we take God alone into
our confidence.*
The next topic on which I must comment is Prayer, —
and this time it must be less briefly. We have heard
much talk of late against prayer, especially agaiast prayers
for better weather and for the recovery of sick people.
As regards prayers for the sick, if any medical fact can
be considered to stand firm, it is that in certain envi-
ronments prayer may contribute to recovery, and should
be encouraged as a therapeutic measure. Being a nor-
mal factor of moral health in the person, its omission
would be deleterious. The case of the weather is differ-
ent. Notwithstanding the recency of the opposite behef,^
^ A fuller difloassion of oonfettion is contained in the excellent work by
Frank Gramoer : The Soul of a ChriBtian, London, 1900, ch. ziL
* Example : '' The minister at Sadborj, being at the Thoradaj lecture in
464 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
every one now knows that droughts and storms follow
from physical antecedents, and that moral appeals cannot
avert them. But petitional prayer is only one depart-
ment of prayer ; and if we take the word in the wider
sense as meaning every kind of inward communion or
conversation with the power recognized as divine, we can
easily see that scientific criticism leaves it untouched.
Prayer in this wide sense is the very soul and essence
of religion. " Religion," says a liberal French theolo-
gian, ^^ is an intercourse, a conscious and voluntary rela-
tion, entered into by a soul in distress with the mysteri-
ous power upon which it feels itself to depend, and upon
which its fate is contingent. This intercourse with God
is realized by prayer. Prayer is religion in act ; that is,
prayer is real religion. It is prayer that distinguishes
the reUgious phenomenon from such similar or neighbor-
ing phenomena as purely moral or aesthetic sentiment.
Religion is nothing if it be not the vital act by which
the entire mind seeks to save itself by clinging to the
principle from which it draws its life. This act is prayer,
by which term I understand no vain exercise of words,
no mere repetition of certain sacred formulae, but the
very movement itself of the soul, putting itself in a per-
sonal relation of contact with the mysterious power of
which it feels the presence, — it may be even before it
has a name by which to call it. Wherever this interior
prayer is lacking, there is no religion ; wherever, on the
other hand, this prayer rises and stirs the soul, even in
the absence of forms or of doctrines, we have living reli-
gion. One sees from this why * natural religion,' so-
Boston, heard the officiating clergyman praying for rain. As soon as the
service was over, he went to the petitioner and said, * You Boston minis-
ters, as soon as a tulip wilts under your windows, go to church and pray for
rain, until all Concord and Sudbury are under water.'" B. W. £i(EB0ON:
Lectures and Biographical Sketches, p. 363.
OTHER CHARACTERISTICS 465
called, is not properly a religion. It cuts man off from
prayer. It leaves him and God in mutual remoteness,
with no intimate commerce, no interior dialogue, no in-
terchange, no action of God in man, no return of man
to God. At bottom this pretended religion is only a
philosophy. Bom at epochs of rationalism, of critical
investigations, it never was anything but an abstraction.
An artificial and dead creation, it reveals to its examiner
hardly one of the characters proper to religion." ^
It seems to me that the entire series of our lectures
proves the truth of M. Sabatier's contention. The reli-
gious phenomenon, studied as an inner fact, and apart
from ecclesiastical or theological complications, has shown
itself to consist everywhere, and at all its stages, in the
consciousness which individuals have of an intercourse
between themselves and higher powers with which they
feel themselves to be related. This intercourse is re-
alized at the time as being both active and mutual. If it
be not effective ; if it be not a give and take relation ; if
nothing be really transacted while it lasts ; if the world
is in no whit different for its having taken place ; then
prayer, taken in this wide meaning of a sense that some-
thing is transactingy is of course a feeling of what is
illusory, and religion must on the whole be classed, not
simply as containing elements of delusion, — these un-
doubtedly everywhere exist, — but as being rooted in
delusion altogether, just as materialists and atheists have
always said it was. At most there might remain, when
the direct experiences of prayer were ruled out as false
witnesses, some inferential belief that the whole order of
existence must have a divine cause. But this way of
contemplating nature, pleasing as it would doubtless be
^ Augusts Sabatier : Esqaisse d'ane Fhilosophie de la Religion, 2me
6Lt 1897, pp. 24-26, abridged.
466 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
to persons of a pious taste, would leave to them but the
spectators' part at a play, whereas in experimental reli-
gion and the prayerful life, we seem ourselves to be the
actors, not in a play, but in a very serious reality.
The genuineness of religion is thus indissolubly bound
up with the question whether the prayerful conscious-
ness be or be not deceitful. The conviction that some-
thing is genuinely transacted in this consciousness is the
very core of living religion. As to what is transacted,
great differences of opinion have prevailed. The unseen
powers have been supposed, and are yet supposed, to do
things which no enlightened man can nowadays believe in.
It may well prove that the sphere of influence in prayer
is subjective exclusively, and that what is immediately
changed is only the mind of the praying person. But
however our opinion of prayer's effects may come to be
limited by criticism, religion, in the vital sense in which
these lectures study it, must stand or fall by the per-
suasion that effects of some sort genuinely do occur.
Through prayer, religion insists, things which cannot be
realized in any other manner come about : energy which
but for prayer would be bound is by prayer set free and
operates in some part, be it objective or subjective, of
the world of facts.
This postulate is strikingly expressed in a letter written
by the late Frederic W. H. Myers to a friend, who allows
me to quote from it. It shows how independent the
prayei^instinct is of usual doctrinal complications. Mr.
Myers writes : —
** I am glad that yon have asked me aboat prayer, because I
have rather strong ideas on the subject. First consider what
are the facts. There exists around us a spiritual universe, and
that universe is in actual relation with the material. From the
spiritual universe comes the energy which maintains the mat^
OTHER CHAEACTERISTICS 467
rial ; the energy which makes the life of each individual spirit.
Our spirits are supported by a perpetual indrawal of this
energy, and the vigor of that indrawal is perpetually changing,
much as the vigor of our absorption of material nutriment
changes from hour to hour.
^^ I call these ^ facts ' because I think that some scheme of
this kind is the only one consistent with our actual evidence ;
too complex to summarize here. How, then, should we act on
these facts ? Plainly we must endeavor to draw in as much
spiritual life as possible, and we must place our minds in any
attitude which experience shows to be favorable to such in-
drawaL Prayer is the general name for that attitude of open
and earnest expectancy. If we then ask to whom to pray, the
answer (strangely enough) must be that that does not much
matter. The prayer is not indeed a purely subjective thing ; —
it means a real increase in intensity of absorption of spiritual
power or grace ; — but we do not know enough of what takes
place in the spiritual world to know how the prayer operates ;
— loAo is cognizant of it, or through what channel the grace is
given. Better let children pray to Christ, who is at any rate
the highest individual spirit of whom we have any knowledge.
But it would be rash to say that Christ himself hears us ; while
to say that God hears us is merely to restate the first principle,
— that grace flows in from the infinite spiritiial world."
Let us reserve the question of the truth or falsehood
of the belief that power is absorbed until the next lec-
ture, when our dogmatic conclusions, if we have any,
must be reached. Let this lecture still confine itself to
the description of phenomena ; and as a concrete exam-
ple of an extreme sort, of the way in which the prayerful
life may stiU be led, let me take a case with which most
of you must be acquainted, that of George Miiller of
Bristol, who died in 1898. Miiller's prayers were of the
crassest petitional order. Early in life he resolved on
taking certain Bible promises in literal sincerity, and on
letting himself be fed, not by his own worldly foresight,
468 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
but by the Lord's hand. He had an extraordinarily
active and successful career^ among the fruits of which
were the distribution of over two million copies of the
Scripture text, in different languages ; the equipment of
several hundred missionaries; the circulation of more
than a hundred and eleven million of scriptural books,
pamphlets, and tracts ; the building of five large orphan-
ages, and the keeping and educating of thousands of
orphans ; finally, the establishment of schools in which
over a hundred and twenty-one thousand youthful and
adult pupils were taught. In the course of this work
Mr. Miiller received and administered nearly a million
and a half of pounds sterling, and traveled over two hun-
dred thousand miles of sea and land.^ During the sixty-
eight years of his ministry, he never owned any property
except his clothes and furniture, and cash in hand ; and
he left, at the age of eighty-six, an estate worth only a
hundred and sixty pounds.
His method was to let his general wants be publicly known,
bat not to acquaint other people with the details of his tempo-
rary necessities. For the relief of the latter, he prayed directly
to the Lord, believing that sooner or later prayers are always
answered if one have trust enough. . ^^ When I lose such a
thing as a key," he writes, ^^ I ask the Lord to direct me to it,
and I look for an answer to my prayer ; when a person with
whom I have made an appointment does not come, according
to the fixed time, and I begin to be inconvenienced by it, I ask
the Lord to be pleased to hasten him to me, and I look for an
answer ; when I do not understand a passage of the word of
God, I lift up my heart to the Lord that he would be pleased
by his Holy Spirit to instruct me, and I expect to be taught,
though I do not fix the time when, and the manner how it
should be ; when I am going to minister in the Word, I seek
help from the Lord, and . . . am not cast down, but of good
cheer because I look for his assistance."
^ Mj authority for these statistics is the little work on MiiUer, bj Fbxd-
SBio 6. Wabioc, New York, 1898.
OTHER CHARACTERISTICS 469
Miiller's custom was to never run up bills, not even for a
week. ^^ As the Lord deals out to us by the day, . . . the
week's payment might become due and we have no money to
meet it ; and thus those with whom we deal might be incon-
venienced by us, and we be found acting against the command-
ment of the Lord : ^ Owe no man anything.' From this day
and henceforward whilst the Lord gives to us our supplies by
the day, we purpose to pay at once for every article as it is
purchased, and never to buy anything except we can pay for
it at once, however much it may seem to be needed, and how-
ever much those with whom we deal may wish to be paid only
by the week."
The articles needed of which Miiller speaks were the food,
fuel, etc., of his orphanages. Somehow, near as they often
come to going without a meal, they hardly ever seem actually
to have done so. ^^ Greater and more manifest nearness of the
Lord's presence I have never had than when after breakfast
there were no means for dinner for more than a hundred per-
sons ; or when after dinner there were no means for the tea,
and yet the Lord provided the tea ; and all this without one
single human being having been informed about our need. . . •
Through Grace my mind is so fully assured of the faithfulness
of the Lord, that in the midst of the greatest need, I am en-
abled in peace to go about my other work. Indeed, did not
the Lord give me this, which is the result of trusting in him, I
should scarcely be able to work at all ; for it is now compar-
atively a rare thing that a day comes when I am not in need
for one or another part of the work." ^
In building his orphanages simply by prayer and faith,
Miiller affirms that his prime motive was ^' to have something
to point to as a visible proof that our God and Father is the
same faithful God that he ever was, — as willing as ever to
prove himself the living God, in our day as formerly, to all
that put their trust in him." ^ For this reason he refused to
borrow money for any of his enterprises. ^^ How does it work
^ The Life of Trust ; Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings with
George Muller, New American edition, N. Y., Crowell, pp. 228, 194, 219.
s Ibid., p. 126.
470 TU£ VABLBTIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
when we thus anticipate God by going our own way ? We cer-
tainly weaken faith instead of increasing it ; and each time we
work thus a deliverance of our own we find it more and more
difficult to trust in God, till at last we give way entirely to our
natural fallen reason and unbelief prevails. How different if
one is enabled to wait God's own time, and to look alone to
him for help and deliverance ! When at last help comes, after
many seasons of prayer it may be, how sweet it is, and what a
present recompense ! Dear Christian reader, if you have never
walked in this path of obedience before, do so now, and yon
will then know experimentally the sweetness of the joy which
results from it." ^
When the supplies came in but slowly, Miiller always con-
sidered that this was for the trial of his faith and patience.
When his faith and patience had been sufficiently tried, the
Lord would send more means. *^ And thus it has proved," —
I quote from his diary, — '* for to-day was given me the sum of
2050 pounds, of which 2000 are for the building fund [of a
certain house], and 50 for present necessities. It is impossi-
ble to describe my joy in God when I received this donation. I
was neither excited nor surprised ; for I look out for answers
to my prayers. / believe that God hears me. Yet my heart
was so full of joy that I could only sit before God, and admire
him, like David in 2 Samuel vii. At last I cast myself flat
down upon my face and burst forth in thanksgiving to God
and in surrendering my heart afresh to him for his blessed
service. *
George Miiller's is a case extreme in every respect, and
in no respect more so than in the extraordinary narrow-
ness of the man's intellectual horizon. EOus God was, as
he often said, his business partner. He seems to have
been for Miiller little more than a sort of supernatural
clergyman interested in the congregation of tradesmen
and others in Bristol who were his saints, and in the
orphanages and other enterprises, but unpossessed of
^ Op. cit., p. 383, abridged. > Ibid., p. 323.
OTHER CHARACTERISTICS 471
any of those vaster and wilder and more ideal attributes
with which the human imagination elsewhere has in-
vested him. Miiller, in short, was absolutely unphiloso-
phical. His intensely private and practical conception
of his relations with the Deity continued the traditions
of the most primitive human thought.^ When we com-
pare a mind like his with such a mind as, for example,
Emerson's or Phillips Brooks's, we see the range which
the religious consciousness covers.
There is an immense literature relating to answers to
petitional prayer. The evangelical journals are filled
^ I cannot resist the temptation of quoting an expression of an even
more primitive style of religious thought, which I find in Arber's English
Garland, vol. vii. p. 440. Robert Lyde, an English sailor, along with an
English boy, being prisoners on a French ship in 1689, set upon the crew, of
aeven Frenchmen, killed two, made the other fire prisoners, and brought
home the ship. Lyde thus describes how in this feat he found his Grod a
Tery present help in time of trouble : —
** With the assistance of Grod I kept my feet when they three and one
more did strive to throw me down. Feeling the Frenchman which hung
about my middle hang very heavy, I said to the boy, * Go round the bin-
nacle, and knock down that man that hangeth on my back.' So the boy
did strike him one blow on the head which made him fall. . . . Then I
looked about for a marlin spike or anything else to strike them withal. But
seeing nothing, I said, 'Lord! what shall I do?' Then casting up my
eye upon my left side, and seeing a marlin spike hanging, I jerked my right
arm and took hold, and struck the point four times about a quarter of an
inch deep into the skull of that man that had hold of my left arm. [One
of the Frenchmen then hauled the marlin spike away from him.] But
through GrOD's wonderful providence ! it either fell out of his hand, or
else he threw it down, and at this time the Almighty GrOD gave me strength
enough to take one man in one hand, and throw at the other's head : and
looking about again to see anything to strike them withal, but seeing
nothing, I said, * Lord ! what shall I do now ? ' And then it pleased GrOD
to put me in mind of my knife in my pocket. And although two of the men
had hold of my right arm, yet GrOD Almighty strengthened me so that I
put my right hand into my right pocket, drew out the knife and sheath, . . .
put it between my legs and drew it out, and then cut the man's throat with
it that had his back to my breast : and he immediately dropt down, and
scarce ever stirred after." — I have slightly abridged Lyde's narrative.
472 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
with such answers, and books are devoted to the subject/
but for us Miiller's case will suffice.
A less sturdy beggar-like fashion of leading the prayer-
ful life is followed by innumerable other Christians.
Persistence in leaning on the Almighty for support and
guidance will^ such persons say, bring with it proofs,
palpable but much more subtle, of his presence and active
influence. The following description of a * led ' life, by
a German writer whom I have already quoted, would no
doubt appear to countless Christians in every country as
if transcribed from their own personal experience. One
finds in this guided sort of life, says Dr. Hilty, —
^^ That books and words (and sometimes people) come to
one's cognizance just at the very moment in which one needs
them ; that one glides over great dangers as if with shut eyes,
remaining ignorant of what would have terrified one or led one
astray, until the peril is past — this being especially the case
with temptations to vanity and sensuality ; that paths on which
one ought not to wander are, as it were, hedged off with thorns ;
but that on the other side great obstacles are suddenly re-
moved ; that when the time has come for something, one sud-
denly receives a courage that formerly failed, or perceives the
root of a matter that until then was concealed, or discovers
thoughts, talents, yea, even pieces of knowledge and insight,
in one's self, of which it is impossible to say whence they
come ; finally, that persons help us or decline to help us, favor
us or refuse us, as if they had to do so against their will, so
that often those indifferent or even unfriendly to us yield us
the greatest service and furtherance. (God takes often their
worldly goods, from those whom he leads, at just the right
^ As, for instance, In Answer to Prayer, by the Bishop of Ripon and
others, London, 1898 ; Touching Incidents and Remarkable Answers to
Prayer, Harrisburg, Pa., 18d8 (?) ; H. L. Hastings : The Guiding Hand,
or Proyidential Direction, iUustrated by Authentic Instances, Boston,
1898 (?).
OTHER CHARACTERISTICS 473
moment, when they threaten to impede the effort after higher
interests.)
*^ Besides all this, other noteworthy things come to pass, of
which it is not easy to give account. There is no doubt what-
ever that now one walks continually through ^ open doors ' and
on the easiest roads, with as little care and trouble as it is pos-
sible to imagine.
^^ Furthermore one finds one's self settling one's affairs neither
too early nor too late, whereas they were wont to be spoiled by
imtimeliness, even when the preparations had been well laid.
In addition to this, one does them with perfect tranquillity of
mind, almost as if they were matters of no consequence, like
errands done by us for another person, in which case we usually
act more calmly than when we act in our own concerns. Again,
one finds that one can wait for everything patiently, and that
is one of life's great arts. One finds also that each Uiing comes
duly, one thing after the other, so that one gains time to make
one's footing sure before advancing farther. And then every-
thing occurs to us at the right moment, just what we ought to
do, etc., and often in a very striking way, just as if a third per-
son were keeping watch over those things which we are in easy
danger of forgetting.
** Often, too, persons are sent to us at the right time, to offer
or ask for what is needed, and what we should never have had
the courage or resolution to undertake of our own accord.
^^ Through all these experiences one finds that one is kindly
and tolerant of other people, even of such as are repulsive,
negligent, or ill-willed, for they also are instruments of good in
God's hand, and often most efficient ones. Without these
thoughts it would be hard for even the best of us always to
keep our equanimity. But with the consciousness of divine
guidance, one sees many a thing in life quite differently from
what would otherwise be possible.
^^ All these are things that every human being knows^ who
has had experience of them ; and of which the most speaking
examples could be brought forward. The highest resources of
worldly wisdom are unable to attain that which, under divine
leading, comes to us of its own accord." ^
^ C. HiLTT : Glttck, Dritter Theil, 1000, pp. 92 fL
474 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
Such accounts as this shade away into others where
the belief is, not that particular events are tempered more
towardly to us by a superintending providence, as a
reward for our reliance, but that by cultivating the con-
tinuous sense of our connection with the power that
made things as they are, we are tempered more towardly
for their reception. The outward face of nature need
not alter, but the expressions of meaning in it alter. It
was dead and is alive again. It is Uke the difference
between looking on a person without love, or upon the
same person with love. In the latter case intercourse
springs into new vitality. So when one's affections keep
in touch with the divinity of the world's authorship, fear
and egotism fall away ; and in the equanimity that fol-
lows, one finds in the hours, as they succeed each other,
a series of purely benignant opportunities. It is as if all
doors were opened, and all paths freshly smoothed. We
meet a new world when we meet the old world in the
spirit which this kind of prayer infuses.
Such a spirit was that of Marcus Aurelius and Epic-
tetus.^ It is that of mind-curers, of the transcendentalists,
and of the so-called ^ liberal ' Christians. As an expres-
^ « Good Heaven ! " says Epictetas, ** anj one thing in the creation is suf-
ficient to demonstrate a Providence, to a humble and grateful mind. The
mere possibility of producing milk from grass, cheese from milk, and wool
from skins ; who formed and planned it ? Ought we not, whether we dig
or plough or eat, to sing this hymn to Grod ? Great is Grod, who has sup-
plied us with these instruments to till the ground ; great is Grod, who has
given us hands and instruments of digestion ; who has given us to g^w
insensibly and to breathe in sleep. These things we ought forever to cele-
brate. . . . But because the most of yon are blind and insensible, there
must be some one to fill this station, and lead, in behalf of all men, the
hymn to God ; for what else can I do, a lame old man, but sing hymns to
Gk)d ? Were I a nightingale, I would act the part of a nightingale ; were
I a swan, the part of a swan. But since I am a reasonable creature, it is
my duty to praise God . . . and I call on you to join the same song."
Works, book i. ch. xvi., Carter-Higoinson translation, abridged.
OTHER CHARACTERISTICS 476
don of it, I will quote a page from one of Martineau's
sermons : —
^^ The universe, open to the eye to-day, looks as it did a thou-
sand years ago : and the morning hymn of Milton does but tell
the beauty with which our own familiar sun dressed the earliest
fields and gardens of the world. We see what all our fathers
saw. And if we cannot find God in your house or in mine,
upon the roadside or the margin of the sea ; in the bursting
seed or opening flower; in the day duty or the night musing;
in the general laugh and the secret grief ; in the procession of
life, ever entering afresh, and solemnly passing by and drop-
ping off ; I do not think we should discern him any more on
the grass of Eden, or beneath the moonlight of Getlisemane.
Depend upon it, it is not the want of greater miracles, but of
the soul to perceive such as are allowed us still, that makes us
push all the sanctities into the far spaces we cannot reach. The
devout feel that wherever God's hand is, there is miracle : and
it is simply an indevoutness which imagines that only where
miracle is, can there be the real hand of God. The customs of
Heaven ought surely to be more sacred in our eyes than its
anomalies ; the dear old ways, of which the Most High is never
tired, than the strange things which he does not love well
enough ever to repeat. And he who will but discern beneath
the sun, as he rises any morning, the supporting finger of the
Almighty, may recover the sweet and reverent surprise with
which Adam gazed on the first dawn in Paradise. It is no
outward change, no shifting in time or place ; but only the lov-
ing meditation of the pure in heart, that can reawaken the
Eternal from the sleep within our souls : that can render him a
reality again, and reassert for him once more his ancient name
of * the Living God.' " ^
When we see all things in Gx)d, and refer all things to
him, we read in common matters superior expressions of
^ James Martineau : eod of the sermon * Help Thou Mine Unbelief/ in
£ndeaYonn after a Christian Life, 2d series. Compare with this page the
extract from Voysej on p. 275, above, and those from Fascal and Madame
Grnyon on p. 286.
476 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
meaning. The deadness with which custom invests the
familiar vanishes, and existence as a whole appears trans-
figured. The state of a mind thus awakened from tor-
por is well expressed in these words, which I take from a
friend's letter : —
^^ If we occupy ourselves in summing up all the mercies and
bounties we are privileged to have, we are overwhelmed by
their number (so great that we can imagine ourselves unable to
give ourselves time even to begin to review the things we may
imagine we have no(). We sum them and realize that we are
actually hilled with God* 8 kindness ; that we are surrounded
by bounties upon bounties, without which all would fall.
Should we not love it ; should we not feel buoyed up by the
Eternal Arms ? "
Sometimes this realization that facts are of divine send-
ing, instead of being habitual, is casual, like a mystical
experience. Father Gratry gives this instance from his
youthful melancholy period : —
^^ One day I had a moment of consolation, because I met
with something which seemed to me ideally perfect. It was a
poor drummer beating the tattoo in the streets of Paris. I
walked behind him in returning to the school on the evening of
a holiday. His drum gave out the tattoo in such a way that, at
that moment at least, however peevish I were, I could find no
pretext for fault-finding. It was impossible to conceive more
nerve or spirit, better time or measure, more clearness or rich-
ness, than were in this drumming. Ideal desire could go no
farther in that direction. I was enchanted and consoled ; the
perfection of this wretched act did me good. Good is at least
possible, I said, since the ideal can thus sometimes get em-
bodied." 1
In Senancour's novel of Obermann a similar transient
lifting of the veil is recorded. In Paris streets, on a
March day, he comes across a flower in bloom, a jonquil :
^ SouyeniTB de ma Jeunesse, ISG?, p. 122.
OTHEB CHARACTERISTICS 477
^^ It was the strongest expression of desire : it was the first
perfume of the year. I felt all the happiness destined for man.
This unutterable harmony of souls, the phantom of the ideal
world, arose in me complete. I never felt anything so great or
so instantaneous. I know not what shape, what analogy, what
secret of relation it was that made me see in this flower a lim-
itless beauty. ... I shall never inclose in a conception this
power, this immensity that nothing will express ; this form that
nothing will contain; this ideal of a better world which one
feels, but which, it seems, nature has not made actual.'' ^
We heard in previous lectures of the vivified face of
the world as it may appear to converts after their awak-
ening.^ As a rule, religious persons generally assume
that whatever natural facts connect themselves in any
way with their destiny are significant of the divine pur-
poses with them. Through prayer the purpose, often far
from obvious, comes home to them, and if it be ' trial,'
strength to endure the trial is given. Thus at all stages
of the prayerful life we find the persuasion that in the
process of communion energy from on high flows in to
meet demand, and becomes operative within the pheno-
menal world. So long as this operativeness is adbnitted
>vbe real, it makes no essential difference whether its
^mediate effects be subjective or objective. The funda-
mental religious point is that in prayer, spiritual energy,
which otherwise would slumber, does become active, and
spiritual work of some kind is effected really.
So much for Prayer, taken in the wide sense of any
kind of conmiunion. As the core of religion, we must
return to it in the next lecture.
The last aspect of the religious life which remains for
^ Op. cit., Letter XXX.
' Above, p. 248 ff. Compare the withdrawal of ezpression from the
world, in Mehmcholiaos, p. 151.
478 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
me to touch upon is the fact that its manifestations so
frequently connect themselves with the subconscious part
of our existence. You may remember what I said in
my opening lecture * about the prevalence of the psycho-
pathic temperament in religious biography. You will in
point of fact hardly find a religious leader of any kind
in whose life there is no record of automatisms. I speak
not merely of savage priests and prophets, whose follow-
ers regard automatic utterance and action as by itself
tantamount to inspiration, I speak of leaders of thought
and subjects of intellectualized experience. Saint Paul
had his visions, his ecstasies, his gift of tongues, small
as was the importance he attached to the latter. The
whole array of Christian saints and heresiarchs, including
the greatest, the Bernards, the Loyolas, the Luthers, the
Foxes, the Wesleys, had their visions, voices, rapt condi-
tions, guiding impressions, and * openings.' They had
these things, because they had exalted sensibility, and to
such things persons of exalted sensibility are liable. Im
such liability there he, however, consequences for theology.
BeUefs are strengthened wherever automatisms corrob-
orate them. Incursions from beyond the transmarginal
region have a peculiar power to increase conviction. The
inchoate sense of presence is infinitely stronger than con-
ception, but strong as it may be, it is seldom equal to
the evidence of hallucination. Saints who actually see or
hear their Saviour reach the acme of assurance. Motor
automatisms, though rarer, are, if possible, even more
convincing than sensations. The subjects here actually
feel themselves played upon by powers beyond their will.
The evidence is dynamic; the God or spirit moves the
very organs of their body.^
1 Above, pp. 24, 25.
* A friend of mine, a first-rate psychologist, who is a subject of graphic
OTHER CHARACTERISTICS 479
The great field for this sense of being the instrument
of a higher power is of course ^ inspiration.' It is easy
to discriminate between the religious leaders who have
been habitually subject to inspiration and those who have
not. In the teachings of the Buddha, of Jesus, of Saint
Paul (^part from his gift of tongues), of Saint Augustine,
of Huss, of Luther, of Wesley, automatic or semi-auto-
matic composition appears to have been only occasional.
In the Hebrew prophets, on the contrary, in Mohammed,
in some of the Alexandrians, in many minor Catholic
saints, in Fox, in Joseph Smith, something like it appears
to have been frequent, sometimes habitual. We have
distinct professions of being under the direction of a
foreign power, and serving as its mouthpiece. As regards
the Hebrew prophets, it is extraordinary, writes an author
who has made a careful study of them, to see —
'^ How, one after another, the same features are reprodaced
in the prophetic books. The process is always extremely dif-
ferent from what it would be if the prophet arrived at his
insight into spiritual things by the tentative efforts of his own
antomatism, tells me that the appearance of independent actuation in the
moTements of his arm, when he writes automatically, is so distinct that it
obliges him to abandon a psychophysical theory which he had previously
believed in, the theory, namely, that we have no feeling of the discharge
downwards of our voluntary motor-centres. We must normally have such
a feeling, he thinks, or the sense of an absence would not be so striking as it
is in these experiences. Graphic automatism of a fully developed kind is
rare in religious history, so far as my knowledge goes. Such statements
as Antonia Bourignon*s, that " I do nothing but lend my hand and spirit to
another power than mine," is shown by the context to indicate inspiration
rather than directly automatic writing. In some eccentric sects this latter
occurs. The most striking instance of it is probably the bulky volume called^
* Oahspe, a new Bible in the Words of Jehovah and his angel ambassadors,'
Boston and London, 1891, written and illustrated automatically by Db.
Newbrough of New York, whom I understand to be now, or to have been
lately, at the head of the spiritistic community of Shalam in New Mexico.
The latest automatically written book which has come under my notice is
* Zertoulem's Wisdom of the Ages/ by Geoboe A. Fuller, Boston, 1901.
480 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
genius. There is something sharp and sudden about it. He
can lay his finger, so to speak, on the moment when it came.
And it always comes in the form of an overpowering force from
without, against which he struggles, but in vain. Listen, for
instance, [to] the opening of the book of Jeremiah. Bead
through in like manner the first two chapters of the prophecy of
Ezekiel.
*^ It is not, however, only at the beginning of his career that
the prophet passes through a crisis which is clearly not self-
caused. Scattered all through the prophetic writings are ex^
pressions which speak of some strong and irresistible impulse
coming down upon the prophet, determining his attitude to the
events of his time, constraining his utterance, making his words
the vehicle of a higher meaning than their own. For instance,
this of Isaiah's: 'The Lord spake thus to me with a strong
hand,' — an emphatic phrase which denotes the overmastering
nature of the impulse, — ^ and instructed me that I should not
walk in the way of this people.' ... Or passages like this
from Ezekiel : ^ The hand of the Lord God fell upon me,' ^ The
hand of the Lord was strong upon me.' The one standing
characteristic of the prophet is that he speaks with the au-
thority of Jehovah himseU. Hence it is that the prophets one
and all preface their addresses so confidently, ^ The Word of
the Lord,' or ^Thus saith the Lord.' They have even the
audacity to speak in the first person, as if Jehovah himself were
speaking. As in Isaiah : ^ Hearken unto me, O Jacob, and Israel
my called ; I am He, I am the First, I also am the last,' — and so
on. The personality of the prophet sinks entirely into the
background ; he feels himself for the time being the mouths
piece of the Almighty." ^
^^ We need to remember that prophecy was a profession, and
that the prophets formed a professional class. There were
schools of the prophets, in which the gift was regularly culti-
vated. A group of young men would gather round some com-
manding figure — a Samuel or an Elisha — and would not only
record or spread the knowledge of his sayings and doings,
but seek to catch themselves something of his inspiration. It
1 W. Sanday : The Oracles of God, London, 1892, pp. 4^-56, abridged.
OTHER CHAEACTEBISTICS 481
seems that music played its part in their exercises. • . • It
is perfectly clear that by no means all of these Sons of the
prophets ever succeeded in acquiring more than a very small
share in the gift which they sought. It was clearly possible
to ^ counterfeit ' prophecy. Sometimes this was done deliber-
ately. • . . But it by no means follows that in all cases where
a false message was given, the giver of it was altogether con-
scious of what he was doing." ^
Here, to take another Jewish case, is the way in which
Philo of Alexandria describes his inspiration : —
^' Sometimes, when I have come to my work empty, I have
suddenly become full; ideas being in an invisible manner
showered upon me, and implanted in me from on high ; so that
through the influence of divine inspiration, I have become
greatly excited, and have known neither the place in which I
was, nor those who were present, nor myself, nor what I was
saying, nor what I was writing ; for then I have been couscious
of a richness of interpretation, an enjoyment of light, a most
penetrating insight, a most manifest energy in all that was to
be done ; having such effect on my mind as the clearest ocular
demonstration would have on the eyes." ^
If we turn to Islam, we find that Mohammed's revela-
tions all came from the subconscious sphere. To the
question in what way he got them, —
*^ Mohammed is said to have answered that sometimes he
heard a knell as from a bell, and that this had the strongest
effect on him ; and when the angel went away, he had received
the revelation. Sometimes again he held converse with the angel
as with a man, so as easily to understand his words. The later
authorities, however, • • • distinguish still other kinds. In the
Itgan (103) the following are enumerated : 1, revelations with
^ Op. cit., p. 91. This aathor also oites Moses's and Isaiah's commissions,
as given in Exodos, chaps, iii. and It., and Isaiah, chap. vi.
* Quoted hy Augustus Cussold : The Prophetic Spirit in Genins and
Madness, 1870, p. 67. Mr. Clissold is a Swedenhorgian. Swedenborg's
ease is of course the pahnary one of audita et visa, serving as a basis of reli'
gious revelation.
482 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
sound of bell, 2, by inspiration of the holy spirit in M/s heart,
8, by Grabriel in human form, 4, by God immediately, either
when awake (as in his journey to heaven) or in dream. ... In
Almawahib alladuniya the kinds are thus given: 1, Dream,
2, Inspiration of Gabriel in the Prophet's heart, 8, Grabriel
taking Dahya's form, 4, with the bell-sound, etc., 5, Gabriel in
propria persona (only twice), 6, revelation in heaven, 7, God
appearing in person, but veiled, 8, God revealing himself im-
mediately without veil. Others add two other stages, namely :
1, Gabriel in the form of still another man, 2, God showing
himself personally in dream." ^
In none of these cases is the revelation distinctly mo-
tor. In the case of Joseph Smith (who had prophetic
revelations innumerable in addition to the revealed trans-
lation of the gold plates which resulted in the Book of
Mormon), although there may have been a motor element,
the inspiration seems to have been predominantly sen-
sorial. He began his translation by the aid of the ^ peep-
stones ' which he found, or thought or said that he
found, with the gold plates, — apparently a case of * crys-
tal gazing.' For some of the other revelations he used
the peep-stones, but seems generally to have asked the
Lord for more direct instruction.^
^ NoLDEKE, Geschichte des Qorfins, 1860, p. 16. Compare the fuller ao-
oount in Sir William Muir's Life of Mahomet, 3d ed., 1894, ch. iii.
^ The Mormon theocracy has always been governed by direct revelationB
accorded to the President of the Church and its Apostles. From an oblig-
ing letter written to me in 1899 by an eminent Mormon, I quote the follow-
ing extract : —
" It may be very interesting for you to know that the President [Mr.
Snow] of the Mormon Church claims to have had a number of revelations
very recently from heaven. To explain fully what these revelations are,
it is necessary to know that we, as a people, believe that the Church of
Jesus Christ has again been established through messengers sent from
heaven. This Church has at its head a prophet, seer, and revelator, who
g^ves to man God's holy will. Revelation is the means through which the
will of God is declared directly and in fullness to man. These revela-
tions are got through dreams of sleep or in waking visions of the mind, by
OTH£R CHARACTEBISTICS 483
Other revelations are described as ^ openings ' — Fox's^
for example, were evidently of the kind known in spirit-
istic circles of to-day as ^ impressions.' As all effective
initiators of change must needs live to some degree upon
this psychopathic level of sudden perception or convic-
tion of new truth, or of impulse to action so obsessive
that it must be worked off, I will say nothing more
about so very common a phenomenon.
When, in addition to these phenomena of inspiration,
we take religious mysticism into the account, when we
recall the striking and sudden unifications of a discordant
self which we saw in conversion, and when we review
the extravagant obsessions of tenderness, purity, and self-
severity met with in saintliness, we cannot, I think, avoid
the conclusion that in religion we have a department of
human nature with unusually close relations to the trans-
marginal or subliminal region. If the word ^ subliminal '
is offensive to any of you, as smelling too much of psychi-
cal research or other aberrations, call it by any other
name you please, to distinguish it from the level of full
sunlit consciousness. Call this latter the A-region of
personality, if you care to, and call the other the B-region.
The B-region, then, is obviously the larger part of each
of us, for it is the abode of everything that is latent
and the reservoir of everything that passes unrecorded
or unobserved. It contains, for example, such things as
all our momentarily inactive memories, and it harbors the
springs of all our obscurely motived passions, impidses,
likes, dislikes, and prejudices. Our intuitions, hypo-
theses, fancies, superstitions, persuasions, convictions, and
in general all our non-rational operations, come from it.
Toioes without Tisional appearance, or by actual roanifestatioiis of the Holj
Presence before the eye. We belieye that God has come in person and
spoken to our prophet and reyelator."
484 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
It is the source of our dreams, and apparently they may
return to it. In it arise whatever mystical experiences
we may have, and our automatisms, sensory or motor ;
our life in hypnotic and ^ hypnoid ' conditions, if we are
subjects to such conditions; our delusions, fixed ideas,
and hysterical accidents, if we are hysteric subjects ; our
supra-normal cognitions, if such there be, and if we are
telepathic subjects. It is also the fountain-head of much
that feeds our religion. In persons deep in the religious
life, as we have now abundantly seen, — and this is my
conclusion, — the door into this region seems unusually
wide open; at any rate, experiences making their en-
trance through that door have had emphatic influence in
shaping religious history.
With this conclusion I turn back and close the circle
which I opened in my first lecture, terminating thus the
review which I then announced of inner religious pheno-
mena as we find them in developed and articulate human
individuals. I might easily, if the time allowed, multi-
ply both my documents and my discriminations, but a
broad treatment is, I believe, in itself better, and the
most important characteristics of the subject lie, I think,
before us already. In the next lecture, which is also the
last one, we must try to draw the critical conclusions
which so much material may suggest.
LECTURE XX
CONCLUSIONS
rriHE material of our study of human nature is now
JL spread before us ; and in this parting hour^ set free
from the duty of description, we can draw our theoreti-
cal and practical conclusions. In my first lecture, de-
fending the empirical method, I foretold that whatever
conclusions we might come to could be reached by spir-
itual judgments only, appreciations of the significance
for life of religion, taken ^ on the whole.' Our conclu-
sions cannot be as sharp as dogmatic conclusions would
be, but I will formulate them, when the time comes, as
sharply as I can.
Summing up in the broadest possible way the char-
acteristics of the religious life, as we have found them,
it includes the following beliefs : —
1. That the visible world is part of a more spiritual
universe from which it draws its chief significance ;
2. That union or harmonious relation with that higher
universe is our true end ;
3. That prayer or inner communion with the spirit
thereof — be that spirit ^ God * or ^ law ' — is a process
wherein work is really done, and spiritual energy flows
in and produces effects, psychological or material, within
the phenomenal world.
ReUgion includes also the following psychological char-
acteristics : —
4. A new zest which adds itself like a gift to life, and
takes the form either of lyrical enchantment or of appeal
to earnestness and heroism.
486 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPE'MENCE
5. ^An assurance of safety and a temper of peace^ and,
in relation to others, a preponderance of loving affections.
In illustrating these characteristics by documents, we
have been Uterally bathed in sentiment. In re-reading
my manuscript, I am almost appalled at the amount of
emotionality which I find in it. After so much of this,
we can afford to be dryer and less sympathetic in the
rest of the work that lies before us.
The sentimentality of many of my documents is a
consequence of the fact that I sought them among the
extravagances of the subject. If any of yoa are enemies
of what our ancestors used to brand as enthusiasm, and
are, nevertheless, still Ustening to me now, you have
probably felt my selection to have been sometimes almost
perverse, and have wished I might have stuck to soberer
examples. I reply that I took these extremer examples
as yielding the profounder information. To learn the
secrets of any science, we go to expert specialists, even
though they may be eccentric persons, and not to com-
monplace pupils. We combine what they tell us with
the rest of our wisdom, and form our final judgment
independently. Even so with religion. We who have
pursued such radical expressions of it may now be sure
that we know its secrets as authentically as any one can
know them who learns them from another ; and we have
next to answer, each of us for himself, the practical
question : what are the dangers in this element of life ?
and in what proportion may it need to be restrained by
other elements, to give the proper balance ?
But this question suggests another one which I will
answer immediately and get it out of the way, for it has
more than once already vexed us.^ Ought it to be as-
^ For example, on pages 135, 163, 333^ above.
CONCLUSIONS 487
sumed that in all men the mixture of religion with other
elements should be identical ? Ought it, indeed, to be
assumed that the lives of all men should show identical
religious elements ? In other words, is the existence of
80 many religious types and sects and creeds regrettable ?
To these questions I answer ^ No ' emphatically. And
my reason is that I do not see how it is possible that
creatures in such different positions and with such differ-
ent powers as human individuals are, should have exactly
the same functions and the same duties. No two of
us have identical difficulties, nor should we be expected
to work out identical solutions. Each, from his pecul-
iar angle of observation, takes in a certain sphere of
fact and trouble, which each must deal with in a unique
manner. One of us must soften himself, another must
harden himself; one must yield a point, another must
stand firm,— in order the better to defend the position
assigned him. If an Emerson were forced to be a Wes-
ley, or a Moody forced to be a Whitman, the total human
consciousness of the divine would suffer. The divine can
mean no single quality, it must mean a group of quali-
ties, by being champions of which in alternation, different
men may all find worthy missions. Each attitude being
a syllable in human nature's total message, it takes the
whole of us to spell the meaning out completely. So a
^ god of battles ' must be allowed to be the god for one
kind of person, a god of peace and heaven and home, the
god for another. We must frankly recognize the fact
that we live in partial systems, and that parts are not
interchangeable in the spiritual life. If we are peevish
and jealous, destruction of the self must be an element of
our religion ; why need it be one if we are good and
sympathetic from the outset ? If we are sick souls, we
require a religion of deliverance ; but why think so much
488 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
of deliverance^ if we are healthy-minded ? ^ Unquestion-
ably, some men have the completer experience and the
higher vocation, here just as in the social world ; but for
each man to stay in his own experience, whate'er it be,
and for others to tolerate him there, is surely best.
But, you may now ask, would not this one-sidedness
be cured if we should all espouse the science of religions
as our own religion ? In answering this question I must
open again the general relations of the theoretic to the
active life.
Knowledge about a thing is not the thing itself. You
remember what Al-6hazzali told us in the Lecture on
Mysticism, — that to understand the causes of drunken-
ness, as a physician understands them, is not to be drunk.
A science might come to understand everything about
the causes and elements of religion, and might even
^ From this point of yiew, the contrasts between the healthy and the mor-
bid mind, and between the once-born and the twice-born types, of which
I spoke in earlier lectures (see pp. 162-167), cease to be the radical an-
tagonisms which many think them. The twice-born look down upon the
rectilinear consciousness of life of the once-born as being * mere morality,'
and not properly religion. <* Dr. Channing," an orthodox minister is re-
ported to have said, ** is excluded from the highest form of religious life by
the extraordinary rectitude of his character.'' It is indeed true that the
outlook upon life of the twice-born — holding as it does more of the ele-
ment of evil in solution — is the wider and completer. The ' heroic ' or
' solemn ' way in which life comes to them is a ' higher synthesis ' into which
healthy-mindedness and morbidness both enter and combine. Evil is not
evaded, but snblated in the higher religious cheer of these persons (see pp. 47-
52, 362-365). But the final consciousness which each type reaches of union
with the divine has the same practical significance for the individual ; and
individuals may well be allowed to get to it by the channels which lie most
open to their several temperaments. In the cases which were quoted in
Lecture IV, of the mind-cure form of healthy-mindedness, we f onnd abundant
examples of regenerative process. The severity of the crisis in this process
is a matter of degree. How long one shall continue to drink the conscious-
ness of evil, and when one shall begin to short-circuit and get rid of it, are
also matters of amount and degree, so that in many instances it is quite arbi-
trary whether we class the individual as a once-born or a twiee-bom subject.
CONCLUSIONS 489
decide which elements were qualified^ by their general
harmony with other branches of knowledge, to be con-
sidered true ; and yet the best man at this science might
be the man who found it hardest to be personally devout.
Tout savoir c'est tout pardonner. The name of Renan
would doubtless occur to many persons as an example of
the way in which breadth of knowledge may make one
only a dilettante in possibilities, and blunt the acuteness
of one's living faith.^ If religion be a function by which
either God's cause or man's cause is to be really advanced,
then he who lives the life of it, however narrowly, is
a better servant than he who merely knows about it,
however much. Knowledge about life is one thing;
effective occupation of a place in life, with its dynamic
currents passing through your being, is another.
For this reason, the science of religions may not be
an equivalent for living religion ; and if we turn to the
inner difficulties of such a science, we see that a point
comes when she must drop the purely theoretic attitude,
and either let her knots remain uncut, or have them cut
by active faith. To see this, suppose that we have our
science of religions constituted as a matter of fact. Sup-
pose that she has assimilated all the necessary historical
material and distilled out of it as its essence the same con-
clusions which I myself a few moments ago pronounced.
Suppose that she agrees that religion, wherever it is an
active thing, involves a belief in ideal presences, and a
belief that in our prayerful communion with them,^ work
is done, and something real comes to pass. She has now
to exert her critical activity, and to decide how far, in the
light of other sciences and in that of general philosophy,
such beliefs can be considered true.
^ Compare, e. g., the qaotation from Renan on p. 37, aboTe.
' * Prayerful ' taken in the broader sense explained abore on pp. 463 ff.
490 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
Dogmatically to decide this is an impossible task. Not
only are the other sciences and the philosophy still far
from being completed, but in their present state we find
them full of conflicts. The sciences of nature know
nothing of spiritual presences, and on the whole hold no
practical commerce whatever with the idealistic concep-
tions towards which general philosophy incUnes. {The so-
called scientist ia, during his scientific hours at least, so
materialistic that one may well say that on the whole the
influence of science goes against the notion that religion
should be recognized at alhj And this antipathy to religion
finds an echo within the very science of religions itself.
The cultivator of this science has to become acquainted
with so many groveUng and horrible superstitions that a
presumption easily arises in his mind that any belief that
is religious probably is false. In the ^ prayerful com-
munion ' of savages with such mumbo-jumbos of deities
as they acknowledge, it is hard for us to see what genu-
ine spiritual work — even though it were work relative
only to their dark savage obligations — can possibly be
done.
The consequence is that the conclusions of the science
of religions are as likely to be adverse as they are to be
favorable to the claim that the essence of religion is true.
There is a notion in the air about us that religion is
probably only an anachronism, a case of ^ survival,' an
atavistic relapse into a mode of thought which humanity
in its more enlightened examples has outgrown ; and this
notion our religious anthropologists at present do little to
counteract.
This view is so widespread at the present day that I
must consider it with some explicitness before I pass to
my own conclusions. Let me call it the ^ Survival theory,'
for brevity's sake.
CONCLUSIONS 491
The pivot round which the religious life^ as we have
traced it, revolves, is the interest of the individual in his
private personal destiny. Religion, in short, is a monu-
mental chapter in the history of human egotism. The
gods believed in — whether by crude savages or by men'
discipUned intellectually — agree with each other in
recognizing personal calls. Religious thought is carried
on in terms of personality, this being, in the world of
religion, the one fundamental fact. To-day, quite as
much as at any previous age, the religious individual
tells you that the divine meets him on the basis of his
personal concerns.
Science, on the other hand, has ended by utterly repu-
diating the personal point of view. She catalogues her
elements and records her laws indifferent as to what pur-
pose may be shown forth by them, and constructs her
theories quite careless of their bearing on human anxie-
ties and fates. Though the scientist may individually
nourish a reUgion, and be a theist in his irresponsible
hours, the days are over when it could be said that for
Science herself the heavens declare the glory of God and
the firmament showeth his handiwork. Our solar system,
with its harmonies, is seen now as but one passing case
of a certain sort of moving equilibrium in the heavens,
realized by a local accident in an appalling wilderness of
worlds where no life can exist. In a span of time which
as a cosmic interval will count but as an hour, it will have
ceased to be. The Darwinian notion of chance pro-
duction, and subsequent destruction, speedy or deferred,
applies to the largest as well as to the smallest facts. It
is impossible, in the present temper of the scientific
imagination, to find in the driftings of the cosmic atoms,
whether they w(»rk on the universal or on the particular
scale, anything but a kind of aimless weather, doing and
492 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
undoing, achieving no proper history, and leaving no
result. Nature has no one distinguishable ultimate tend-
ency with which it is possible to feel a sympathy. In
the vast rhythm of her processes, as the scientific mind
now follows them, she appears to cancel herself. The
books of natural theology which satisfied the intellects of
our grandfathers seem to us quite grotesque,^ represent-
^ How was it ever conceiyable, we ask, that a man like Chriatiaii Wolff,
in whose dry-as-dust head all the learning of the early eighteenth centnrj
was concentrated, should have preserved such a baby-like faith in the per-
sonal and human character of Nature as to expound her operations as he
did in his work on the uses of natural things ? This, for example, is the
account he gives of the sun and its utility : —
" We see that God has created the sun to keep the changeable conditions
on the earth in such an order that living creatures, men and beasts, may
inhabit its surface. Since men are the most reasonable of creatures, and
able to infer God's invisible being from the contemplation of the world, the
sun in so far forth contributes to the primary purpose of creation : without
it the race of man could not be preserved or continued. . . . The sun
makes daylight, not only on our earth, but also on the other planets ; and
daylight is of the utmost utility to us ; for by its means we can commodi-
ously carry on those occupations which in the night-time would either be
quite impossible, or at any rate impossible without our going to the expense
of artificial light. The beasts of the field can fiud food by day which they
would not be able to fimd at night. Moreover we owe it to the sunlight
that we are able to see everything that is on the earth's surface, not only
near by, but also at a distance, and to recognize both near and far things
according to their species, which again is of manifold use to us not only in
the business necessary to human life, and when we are traveling, but also
for the scientific knowledge of Nature, which knowledge for the most part
depends on observations made with the help of sight, and, without the sun-
shine, would have been impossible. If any one would rightly impress on his
mind the great advantages which he derives from the sun, let him imagine
himself living through only one month, and see how it would be with all
his undertakings, if it were not day but night. He would then be suffi-
ciently convinced out of his own experience, especially if he had much work
to carry on in the street or in the fields. . . . From the sun we learn to recog-
nize when it is midday, and by knowing this point of time exactly, we can
set our clocks right, on which account astronomy owes much to the sun.
... By help of the sun one can find the meridian. . . . But the meridian
is the basis of our sun-dials, and generally speakii g, we should have no
sun-dials if we had no sun." Vemiinftige Gedankcin von den Absichten
der natiirlichen Dinge, 1782, pp. 74-84.
CONCLUSIONS 4d3
ing, as they did, a God who conf onned the largest things
of nature to the paltriest of our private wants. The
Or read the account of God's beneficence in the institution of '< the great
Tarietj throughout the world of men's faces, voices, and handwriting," given
in Derham's Fhysico-theology, a book that had much vogue in the eigh-
teenth century. ** Had Man's body," says Dr. Derham, " been made accord-
ing to any of the Atheistical Schemes, or any other Method than that of
the infinite Lord of the World, this wise Variety would never have been :
but Men's Faces would have been cast in the same, or not a very different
Mould, their Organs of Speech would have sounded the same or not so
great a Variety of Notes ; and the same Structure of Muscles and Nerves
would have given the Hand the same Direction in Writing. And in this
Case, what Confusion, what Disturbance, what Mischiefs would the world
eternally have lain under ! No Security could have been to our persons ;
no Certainty, no Enjoyment of oor Possessions ; no Justice between Man
and Man ; no Distinction between Good and Bad, between Friends and
Foes, between Father and Child, Husband and Wife, Male or Female ; but
aU would have been turned topsy-turvy, by being exposed to the Malice of
the Envious and ill-Natured, to the Fraud and Violence of Knaves and Rob-
bers, to the Forgeries of the crafty Cheat, to the Lusts of the Effeminate
and Debauched, and what not I Our Courts of Justice can abundantly
testify the dire Effects of Mistaking Men's Faces, of counterfeiting their
Hands, and forging Writings. But now as the infinitely wise Creator and
Ruler hath ordered the Matter, every man's Face can distinguish him in
the Light, and his Voice in the Dark ; his Hand-writing can speak for him
though absent, and be his Witness, and secure his Contracts in future
Grenerations. A numifest as well as admirable Lidication of the divine
Superintendence and Management."
A God so careful as to make provision even for the unmistakable signing
of bank checks and deeds was a deity truly after the heart of eighteenth
century Anglicanism.
I subjoin, omitting the capitals, Derham's * Vindication of Grod by the
Institution of Hills and Valleys,' and Wolff's altogether culinary account of
the institution of Water : —
** The uses," says Wolff, ** which water serves in human life are plain to
see and need not be described at length. Water is a universal drink of
man and beasts. Even though men have made themselves drinks that are
artificial, they could not do this without water. Beer is brewed of water
and malt, and it is the water in it which quenches thirst. Wine is prepared
from grapes, which could never have grown without the help of water ; and
the same is true of those drinks which in England and other places they
produce from fruit. . . . Therefore since God so planned the world that
men and beasts should live upon it and find there everything required for
their necessity and convenience, he also made water as one means whereby
404 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS KKPERIENCE
God whom science recognizes must be a God of universal
laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail
business. He cannot accommodate his processes to the
to make the earth into so excellent a dwelling. And this is all the more
manifest when we consider the advantages which we obtain from this same
water for the cleaning of our household utensils, of our clothing, and of
other matters. . . . When one goes into a griuding-mill one sees that the
grindstone must always be kept wet and then one will get a still greater
idea of the use of water."
Of the hills and valleys, Derham, after praising their beauty, discourses
as follows : '' Some constitutions are indeed of so happy a strength, and so
confirmed an health, as to be indifferent to almost any place or temperature
of the air. But then others are so weakly and feeble, as not to be able to
bear one, but can live comfortably in another place. With some the more
subtle and finer air of the hills doth best agree, who are languishing and
dying in the feculent and grosser air of great towns, or even the warmer
and vaporous air of the valleys and waters. But contrariwise, others lan-
guish on the hills, and grow lusty and strong in the warmer air of the
valleys.
** So that this opportunity of shifting our abode from the hills to the
▼ales, is an admirable easement, refreshment, and great benefit to the vale-
tudinarian, feeble part of mankind ; affording those an easy and comfort-
able life, who would otherwise live miserably, languish, and pine away.
'' To this salutary conformation of the earth we may add another great
convenience of the hills, and that is affording commodious places for habi-
tation, serving (as an eminent author wordeth it) as screens to keep off the
cold and nipping blasts of the northern and easterly winds, and reflecting
the benign and cherishing sunbeams, and so rendering our habitations both
more comfortable and more cheerly in winter.
** Lastly, it is to the hilb that the fountains owe their rise and the rivers
their conveyance, and consequently those vast masses and lofty piles are
not, as they are charged, such rude and useless excrescences of our ill-
formed globe ; but the admirable tools of nature, contrived and ordered by
the infinite Creator, to do one of its most nseful works. For, was the sur-
face of the earth even and level, and the middle parts of its islands and
continents not mountainous and high as now it is, it is most certain there
could be no descent for the rivers, no conveyance for the waters ; but,
instead of gliding along those gentle declivities which the higher lands now
afford them quite down to the sea, they would stagnate and perhaps stink,
and also drown large tracts of land.
'' [Thus] the hills and vales, though to a peevish and weary traveler they
may seem incommodious and troublesome, yet are a noble work of the
great Creator, and wisely appointed by him for the good of our sublunary
world."
CONCLUSIONS 4d5
convenience of individuals. The bubbles on the foam
vhich coats a stonny sea are floating episodes, made
and unmade by the forces of the wind and water. Our
private selves are like those bubbles, — epiphenomena,
as Clifford, I believe, ingeniously called them ; their des-
tinies weigh nothing and determine nothing in the world's
irremediable currents of events.
You see how natural it is, from this point of view, to
treat religion as a mere survival, for religion does in fact
perpetuate the traditions of the most primeval thought.
To coerce the spiritual powers, or to square them and get
them on our side, was, during enormous tracts of time,
the one great object in our dealings with the natural
world. For our ancestors, dreams, hallucinations, reve-
lations, and cock-and-bull stories were inextricably mixed
with facts. Up to a comparatively recent date such dis-
tinctions as those between what has been verified and
what is only conjectured, between the impersonal and
the personal aspects of existence, were hardly suspected
or conceived. Whatever you imagined in a lively man-
ner, whatever you thought fit to be true, you affirmed
confidently ; and whatever you affirmed, your comrades
believed. Truth was what had not yet been contradicted,
most things were taken into the mind from the point of
view of their hiunan suggestiveness, and the attention
confined itself exclusively to the aesthetic and dramatic
aspects of events.^
1 Until the seventeenth century this mode of thought prevailed. One
need only recall the dramatic treatment even of mechanical questions by
Aristotle, as, for example, his explanation of the power of the lever to make
a small weight raise a larger one. This is due, according to Aristotle, to
the generally miraculous character of the circle and of all circular move-
ment. The circle is both convex and concave ; it is made by a fixed point
and a moving line, which contradict each other ; and whatever moves in a
circle moves in opposite directions. Nevertheless, movement in a circle is
the most * natural ' movement ; and the long arm of the lever, moving, as
496 THE VARIETIES OP RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
How indeed could it be otherwise ? The extraordinary
value, for explanation and prevision, of those mathemati-
it does, in the larger circle, has the greater axnoont of thia natural motion,
and conaeqaently requires the lesser force. Or recaU the explanation hj
Herodotus of the position of the sun in winter : It moves to the south
because of the cold which drives it into the warm parts of the heavens over
Libya. Or listen to Saint Augustine's speculations : ** Who gave to chaff
such power to freeze that it preserves snow buried under it, and such power
to warm that it ripens green fruit? Who can explain the strange pro-
perties of fire itself, which blackens aU that it bums, though itself bright,
and which, though of the most beautiful colors, discolors almost all that
it touches and feeds upon, and turns blazing fuel into grimy cinders ? . . .
Then what wonderful properties do we find in charcoal, which is so brittle
that a light tap breaks it, and a slight pressure pulverizes it, and yet is so
strong that no moisture rots it, nor any time causes it to decay." City of
God, book xxi. ch. iv.
Such aspects of things as these, their naturalness and unnaturalness, the
sympathies and antipathies of their superficial qualities, their eccentricities,
their brightness and strength and destructiveness, were inevitably the ways
in which they originaUy fastened our attention.
If you open early medical books, you will find sympathetic mag^o invoked
on every page. Take, for example, the famous vulnerary ointment attrib-
uted to Paracelsus. For this there were a variety of receipts, including
usually human fat, the fat of either a bull, a wild boar, or a bear ; powdered
earthworms, the usnia^ or mossy g^wth on the weathered skull of a hanged
criminal, and other materials equally unpleasant — the whole prepared under
the planet Venus if possible, but never under Mars or Saturn. Then, if H
splinter of wood, dipped in the patient's blood, or the bloodstained weapon
that wounded him, be immersed in this ointment, the wound itself being
tightly bound up, the latter infallibly gets well, — I quote now Van Hel-
mont's account, — for the blood on the weapon or splinter, containing in it
the spirit of the wounded man, is roused to active excitement by the con-
tact of the ointment, whence there results to it a full commission or power
to cure its cousin-german, the blood in the patient's body. This it does by
sucking out the dolorous and exotic impression from the wounded part.
But to do this it has to implore the aid of the bull's fat, and other portions
of the unguent. The reason why bull's fat is so powerful is that the bull
at the time of slaughter is full of secret reluctancy and vindictive mur-
murs, and therefore dies with a higher flame of revenge about him than
any other animal. And thus we have made it out, says this author, that
the admirable efficacy of the ointment ought to be imputed, not to any
auxiliary concurrence of Satan, but simply to the energy of the posthtanous
character of Revenge remaining firmly impressed upon the blood and con-
creted fat in the unguent. J. B. Van Helhont : A Ternary of Pan-
CONCLUSIONS 497
cal and mechanical modes of conception which science uses,
was a result that could not possibly have been expected
in advance. Weight, movement, velocity, direction, posi-
tion, what thin, pallid, uninteresting ideas ! How could
the richer animistic aspects of Nature, the peculiarities
and oddities that make phenomena picturesquely striking
or expressive, fail to have been first singled out and fol-
lowed by philosophy as the more promising avenue to
the knowledge of Nature's life ? Well, it is still in these
richer animistic and dramatic aspects that religion de-
dozes, translated by Walter Charleton, London, 1650. — I much abridge
the original in my citations.
The author goes on to proTe by the analogy of many other natural foots
that this sympathetic action between things at a distance is the true ration-
ale of the case. ** If," he says, '* the heart of a horse, slain by a witch,
taken out of the yet reeking carcase, be impaled upon an arrow and roasted,
immediately the whole witch becomes tormented with the insufferable pains
and cruelty of the fire, which could by no means happen unless there pre-
ceded a conjunction of the spirit of the witch with the spirit of the horse.
In the reeking and yet panting heart, the spirit of the witch is kept cap-
tiye, and the retreat of it prevented by the arrow transfixed. Similarly
hath not many a murdered carcase at the coroner's inquest suffered a fresh
hemorrhage or cruentation at the presence of the assassin ? — the blood
being, as in a furious fit of anger, enraged and agitated by the impress of
revenge conceived against the murderer, at the instant of the soul's com-
pulsive exile from the body. So, if you have dropsy, gout, or jaimdice, by
including some of your warm blood in the shell and white of an egg, which,
exposed to a gentle heat, and mixed with a bait of flesh, yon shall give to a
hungry dog or hog, the disease shall instantly pass from yon into the ani-
mal, and leave you entirely. And similarly again, if you bum some of the
milk either of a cow or of a woman, the gland from which it issued will
dry np. A gentleman at Brussels had his nose mowed off in a combat, but
the celebrated surgeon Tagliacozzus digged a new nose for him out of the
skin of the arm of a porter at Bologna. About thirteen months after his
return to his own country, the engrafted nose grew cold, putrefied, and in
a few days dropped off, and it w§8 then discovered that the porter had
expired, near about the same punctilio of time. There are still at Brussels
eye-witnesses of this occurrence," says Van Helmont ; and adds, " I pray
what is there in this of superstition or of exalted imagination ? "
Modem mind-cure literature — the works of Prentice Mnlford, for ex-
ample ^ is full of sympathetic magic
498 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
lights to dwell. It is the terror and beaaty of phenomena,
the ^ promise ' of the dawn and of the rainbow^ the ' voice '
of the thander^ the ^ gentleness ' of the summer rain^ the
^ sublimity ' of the stars, and not the physical laws which
these things follow, by which the religious mind still con-
tinues to be most impressed; and just as of yore^ the
devout man tells you that in the solitude of his room or
of the fields he still feels the divine presence, that inflow-
ings of help come in reply to his prayers, and that sacri-
fices to this unseen reality fill him with security and
peace.
Pure anachronism ! says the survival-theory ; — anach-
ronism for which deanthropomorphization of the imagi-
nation is the remedy required. ^The less we mix the
private with the cosmic, the more we dwell in universal
and impersonal terms, the truer heirs of Science we
become!^
In spite of the appeal which this impersonality of the
scientific attitude makes to a certain magnanimity of tem-
per, I believe it to be shallow, and I can now state my
reason in comparatively few words. That reason is that^
so long as we deal with the cosmic and the general^ we
deal only with the symbols of reality, hutyas soon as we
deal with private and personal phenomena as such, ice
deal toith realities in the completest sense of the term.
I think I can easily make clear what I mean by these
words.^
The world of our experience consists at all times of
two parts, an objective and a subjective part, of which
the former may be incalculably more extensive than the
latter, and yet the latter can never be omitted or sup-
pressed. The objective part is the sum total of what-
soever at any given time we may be thinking of, the
CONCLUSIONS 499
sabjective part is the inner ^ state ' in which the thinking
comes to pass. What we think of may be enormous, —
the cosmic times and spaces, for example, — whereas the
inner state may be the most fugitive difd pahry activity of
mind. Yet the cosmic objects, so far as the experience
yields them, are but ideal pictures of something whose
existence we do not inwardly possess but only point at
outwardly, while the inner state is our very experience
itself ; its reality and that of our experience are one. A
conscious field plus its object as felt or thought of plus
an attitude towards the object plus the sense of a self to
whom the attitude belongs — such a concrete bit of per-
sonal experience may be a small bit, but it is a solid bit
as long as it lasts ; not hollow, not a mere, abstract ele-
ment of experience, such as the ^ object ' is when taken
all alone. It is di^full fact, even though it be an insignifi-
cant fact ; it is of the kind to which all realities whatso-
ever must belong ; the motor currents of the world run
through the like of it ; it is on the line connecting real
events with real events. That unsharable feeling which
each one of us has of the pinch of his individual destiny
as he privately feels it rolling out on fortune's wheel
may be disparaged for its egotism, may be sneered at as
unscientific, but it is the one thing that fills up the mea-
sure of our concrete actuality, and any would-be existent
that should lack such a feeling, or its analogue, would be
a piece of reality only half made up.^
If this be true, it is absurd for science to say that the
egotistic elements of experience should be suppressed.
The axis of reality runs solely through the egotistic
^ Compare Lotze's doctrine that the only meaning we can attach to the
notion of a thing as it is < in itself ' is by conceiving it as it is for itself ;
L e., as a piece of fuU experience with a private sense of * pinch ' or inner
'•ctiYitj of some sort going with it.
600 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
places^ — they are strung upon it like so many beads.
To describe the world with all the various feelings of
the individual pinch of destiny, all the various spiritual
attitudes, left out from the description — they being as
describable as anything else — would be something like
offering a printed bill of fare as the equivalent for a solid
meal. Religion makes no such blunder. The individ-
ual's religion may be egotistic, and those private realities
which it keeps in touch with may be narrow enough;
but at any rate it always remains infinitely less hoUow
and abstract, as far as it goes, than a science which
prides itself on taking no account of anything private at
all.
A bill of fare with one real raisin on it instead of the
word ^raisin,' with one real egg instead of the word
^ egg,' might be an inadequate meal, but it would at least
be a commencement of reality. The contention of the
survival-theory that we ought to stick to non-personal
elements exclusively seems like saying that we ought to
be satisfied forever with reading the naked bill of fare.
I think, therefore, that however particular questions con-
nected with our individual destinies may be aoswered,
it is only by acknowledging them as genuine questions,
and living in the sphere of thought which they open
up, that we become profound. But to live thus is to
be religious ; so I unhesitatingly repudiate the survival-
theory of religion, as being founded on an egregious
mistake. It does not follow, because our ancestors made
so many errors of fact and mixed them with their reli-
gion, that we should therefore leave off being religious
at all.^ By being religious we establish ourselves in
^ Even the errors of fact may possibly turn out not to be as wholesale as
the scientist assumes. We saw in Lecture I V how the religions conception
of the universe seems to many mind-curers * verified ' from day to day by
CONCLUSIONS 501
possession of ultimate reality at the only points at which
reality is given us to guard. Our responsible concern is
with our private destiny, after aU.
You see now why I have been so individualistic
throughout these lectures, and why I have seemed so
bent on rehabilitating the element of feeling in religion
and subordinating its intellectual part. IndividuaUty is
founded in feeUng; and the recesses of feeling, the
darker, blinder strata of character, are the only places in
the world in which we catch real fact in the making, and
their experience of fact. ' Experience of fact ' is a field with bo many
things in it that the sectarian scientist, methodically declining, as he does,
to recognize such * facts * as mind-curers and others like them experience,
otherwise than by such rude heads of classification as 'bosh,' 'rot,' * folly,'
certainly leaves out a mass of raw fact which, save for the industrious
interest of the religious in the more personal aspects of reality, would
never have succeeded in getting itself recorded at all. We know this to
be true already in certain cases; it may, therefore, be true in others as weU.
Miraculous healings have always been part of the supematuralist stock in
trade, and have always been dismissed by the scientist as figments of the
imagination. But the scientist's tardy education in the facts of hypnotism
has recently given him an apperceiving mass for phenomena of this order,
and he consequently now allows that the healings may exist, provided yon
expressly call them effects of * suggestion.' Even the stigmata of the cross
on Saint Francis's hands and feet may on these terms not be a fable.
Similarly, the time-honored phenomenon of diabolical possession is on the
point of being admitted by the scientist as a fact, now that he has the name
of * hystero^emonopathy ' by which to apperceive it. No one can foresee
just how far this legitimation of occultist phenomena under newly found sci-
entist titles may proceed — even * prophecy,' even * levitation,* might creep
into the pale.
Thus the divorce between scientist facts and religions facts may not
necessarily be as eternal as it at first sight seems, nor the personalism and
romanticism of the world, as they appeared to primitive thinking, be mat-
ters so irrevocably outgrown. The final human opinion may, in short, in
some manner now impossible to foresee, revert to the more personal style,
just as any path of progress may follow a spiral rather than a straight
line. If this were so, the rigorously impersonal view of science might one
day appear as having been a temporarily useful eccentricity rather than
the definitively triumphant position which the sectarian scientist at present
•o confidently announces it to be.
602 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
directly perceive how events happen, and how work us
actually done.^ Compared with this world of living indi-
vidualized feelings, the world of generalized objects which
the intellect contemplates is without solidity or life. As
in stereoscopic or kinetoscopic pictures seen outside the
instrument, the third dimension, the movement, the vital
element, are not there. We get a beautiful picture of
an express train supposed to be moving, but where in the
picture, as I have heard a friend say, is the energy or
the fifty miles an hour ? ^
^ Hume's criticism has banished causation from the world of physical
objects, and * Science * is absolutely satisfied to define cause in terms of
concomitant change — read Mach, Pearson, Ostwald. The 'original' of
the notion of causation is in our inner personal experience, and only there
can causes in the old-fashioned sense be directly observed and described.
^ When I read in a religious paper words like these : <* Perhaps the best
thing we can say of God is that he is the Inevitable Inference,** I recognize
the tendency to let religion evaporate in intellectual terms. Would mar-
tyrs have sung in the flames for a mere inference, however inevitable it
might be ? Original religious men, like Saint Francis, Luther, Behmen, have
usually been enemies of the intellect's pretension to meddle with religious
things. Yet the intellect, everywhere invasive, shows everywhere its shal-
lowing effect. See how the ancient spirit of Methodism evaporates under
those wonderfully able rationalistic booklets (which every one should read)
of a philosopher like Professor Bowne (The Christian Revelation, The
Christian Life, The Atonement : Cincinnati and New York, 1S98, 18d9, 1900).
See the positively expulsive purpose of philosophy properly so caUed : —
« Religion," writes M. Vacherot (La Religion, Paris, 1869, pp. 313, 436,
et passim), " answers to a transient state or condition, not to a permanent
determination of human nature, being merely an expression of that stage of
the human mind which is dominated by the imagination. . . . Christianity
has but a single possible final heir to its estate, and that is scientific philo.
sophy."
In a still more radical vein. Professor Ribot (Psycholog^ie des Senti-
ments, p. 310) describes the evaporation of religion. He sums it up in a
single formula — the ever-growing predominance of the rational intellec-
tual element, with the gradual fading out of the emotional element, this
latter tending to enter into the g^up of purely intellectual sentiments.
"Of religious sentiment properly so called, nothing survives at last save
a vague respect for the unknowable x which is a last relic of the fear, and
a certain attraction towards the ideal, which is a relic of the love, that
characterized the earlier periods of religious growth. To state this more
CONCLUSIONS 603
Let US agree, then, that Religion, occupying herself
with personal destinies and keeping thus in contact with
the only absolute realities which we know, must neces-
sarily play an eternal part in human history. The next
thing to decide is what she reveals about those destinies,
or whether indeed she reveals anything distinct enough
to be considered a general message to mankind. We
have done as you see, with our preliminaries, and our
final summing up can now begin.
I am weU aware that after all the palpitating docu-
ments which I have quoted, and all the perspectives of
emotion-inspiring institution and belief that my pre-
vious lectures have opened, the dry analysis to which I
now advance may appear to many of you like an anti-
climax, a tapering-off and flattening out of the subject,
instead of a crescendo of interest and result. I said
awhile ago that the religious attitude of Protestants ap-
pears poverty-stricken to the Catholic imagination. Still
more poverty-stricken, I fear, may my final summing up
of the subject appear at first to some of you. On which
account I pray you now to bear this point in mind,
that in the present part of it I am expressly trying to
reduce religion to its lowest admissible terms, to that
minimum, free from individualistic excrescences, which all
religions contain as their nucleus, and on which it may
be hoped that all religious persons may agree. That
•imply, religion tends to turn into religious philosophy, — These are psychologi-
caUy entirely different things, the one being a theoretic construction of ratio-
cination, whereas the other is the living work of a g^up of persons, or of a
great inspired leader, calling into play the entire thinking and feeling organ-
ism of man."
I find the same failare to recognize that the stronghold of religion lies in
individuality in attempts like those of Professor Baldwin (Mental Develop-
ment, Social and Ethical Interpretations, ch. z.) and Mr. H. R. Marshall
(Instinct and Reason, chaps, viii. to zii.) to make it a purely * conservative
social force.'
604 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
established, we should have a result which might be
small, but would at least be soUd ; and on it and round
it the ruddier additional beUefs on which the different
individuals make their venture might be gifted, and
flourish as richly as you please. I shall add my own
over-beUef (which will be, I confess, of a somewhat pal-
lid kind, as befits a critical philosopher), and you will,
I hope, also add your over-beUefs, and we shall soon be
in the varied world of concrete religious constructions
once more. For the moment, let me dryly pursue the
analytic part of the task.
Both thought and feeling are determinants of conduct,
and the same conduct may be determined either by feel-
ing or by thought. When we survey the whole field of
religion, we find a great variety in the thoughts that have
prevailed there ; but the feelings on the one hand and
the conduct on the other are almost always the same, for
Stoic, Christian, and Buddhist saints are practically indis-
tinguishable in their Kves. The theories which Religion
generates, being thus variable, are secondary ; and if you
wish to grasp her essence, you must look to the feelings
and the conduct as being the more constant elements.
It is between these two elements that the short circuit
exists on which she carries on her principal business,
while the ideas and symbols and other institutions form
loop-lines which may be perfections and improvements,
and may even some day all be imited into one harmoni-
ous system, but which are not to be regarded as organs
with an indispensable function, necessary at all times for
religious Ufe to go on. This seems to me the first con-
clusion which we are entitled to draw from the phenomena
we have passed in review.
The next step is to characterize the feelings. To what
psychological order do they belong ?
CONCLUSIONS 605
The resultant outcome of them is in any case what
Kant calls a ^ sthenic ' affection^ an excitement of the
cheerful; expansive, ^ dynamogenic ' order which, like any
tonic, freshens our vital powers. In almost every lec-
ture, but especially in the lectures on Conversion and on
Saintliness, we have seen how this emotion overcomes tem-
peramental melancholy and imparts endurance to the Sub-
ject, or a zest, or a meaning, or an enchantment and glory
to the common objects of life.^ The name of ^ faith-
state,' by which Professor Leuba designates it, is a good
one.^ It is a biological as well as a psychological con-
dition, and Tolstoy is absolutely accurate in classing
faith among the forces by which men live? The total
absence of it, anhedonia,^ means collapse.
The faith-state may hold a very minimum of intel-
lectual content. We saw examples of this in those sud-
den raptures of the divine presence, or in such mystical
seizures as Dr. Bucke described.^ It may be a mere
vague entKusiasm, half spiritual, half vital, a courage,
and a feeling that great and wondrous things are in the
air.*
^ Compare, for iDstanoe, pages 203, 219, 223, 226, 249 to 256, 275 to
278.
' American Journal of Psychology, viL 345.
' Above, p. 184.
^ Above, p. 145.
* Above, p. 400.
• Example : Henri Perrey ve writes to Gratry : " I do not know how to
deal with the happiness which you aroused in me this rooming. It over-
whelms me ; I want to do something, yet I can do nothing and am fit for
nothing. ... I would fain do great things,** Again, after an inspiring
interview, he writes : " I went homewards, intoxicated with joy, hope, and
strength. I wanted to feed upon my happiness in solitude, far from aU
men. It was late ; but, unheeding that, I took a mountain path and went
on like a madman, looking at the heavens, regardless of earth. Suddenly
an instinct made me draw hastily back — I was on the very edge of a
precipice, one step more and I must have fallen. I took fright and gave op
606 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
When, however^ a positive intellectual content is asso-
ciated with a faith-state^ it gets invincibly stamped in
upon belief/ and this explains the passionate loyalty of
religious persons everywhere to the minutest details of
their so widely differing creeds. Taking creeds and
faith-state together^ as forming ^ religions/ and treating
these as purely subjective phenomena, without regard to
the question of their * truth/ we are obliged, on account of
their extraordinary influence upon action and endurance,
to class them amongst the most important biological
functions of mankind. Their stimulant and anaesthetic
effect is so great that Professor Leuba, in a recent
article,^ goes so far as to say that so long as men can use
their God, they care very little who he is, or even whether
he is at all. " The truth of the matter can be put," says
Leuba, " in this way : God is not knowrij he is not under-
stood ; he is used — sometimes as meat-purveyor, some-
times as moral support, sometimes as friend, sometimes as
an object of love. If he proves himself useful, the re-
mj Doctiirual promenade." A. Gratrt : Henri Perreyve, London, 1S72,
pp. 92, 89.
This primacy, in the faith-state, of vague expansive impulse over direc-
tion is weU expressed in Walt Whitman's lines (Leaves of Grass, 1872,
p. 190) : —
** O to confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rehnflFs, as the trees and
animals do. . . .
Dear Camerado ! I confess I have urged yon onward with me, and stiU uige
you, without the least idea what is our destination,
Or whether we shall he victorious, or utterly quelled and defeated."
This readiness for g^at things, and this sense that the world by its
importance, wonderfulness, etc., is apt for their production, wonld seem to
be the undifferentiated germ of all the higher faiths. Trust in oar own
dreams of ambition, or in our country's expansive destinies, and faith in the
providence of God, all have their source in that onrush of our sang^uine im-
pulses, and in that sense of the exceedingness of the possible over the real.
1 Compare Leuba : Loc. cit., pp. 346-349.
^ The Contents of Religions Consciousness, in The Monist, zL 536, Jiily»
1901.
CONCLUSIONS 607
Ilgious c.ODsciousness asks for no more than that. Does
God really exist ? How does he exist ? What is he ?
are so ' many irrelevant questions. Not God, but life,
more life, a larger, richer, more satisfying life, is, in the
last analysis, the end of religion. The love of life, at
any and every level of development, is the religious im-
pulse." '
At this purely subjective rating, therefore, Religion
must be considered vindicated in a certain way from the
attacks* of her critics. It would seem that she cannot
be a mere anachronism and survival, but must exert a
permanent function, whether she be with or without
intellectual content, and whether, if she have any, it be
true or false.
We must next pass beyond the point of view of merely
subjective utility, and make inquiry into the intellectual
content itself.
First, is there, under all the discrepancies of the creeds,
a common nucleus to which they bear their testimony
unanimously ?
And second, ought we to consider the testimony true ?
I will take up the first question first, and answer it
immediately in the affirmative. The warring gods and
' Loc. cit.» pp. 571, 572, abridged. See, also, this writer's extraordinarily
true criticism of the notion that religion primarily seeks to solve the intel-
lectual mystery of the world. Compare what W. Bender says (in his
Wesen der Religion, Bonn, 18S8, pp. S5, 38) : '' Not the question about God,
and not the inquiry into the origin and purpose of the world is religion, but
the question about Man. All religious views of life are anthropocentrio."
" Religion is that activity of the human impulse towards self-preservation
by means of which Man seeks to carry his essential vital purposes through
against the adverse pressore of the world by raising himself freely towards
the world's ordering and governing powers when the limits of his own
strength are reached." The whole book is little more than a development
of these words.
I
608 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENlCE
formulas of the various religions do indeed canlcel each
other, but there is a certain uniform deliverance i^ which
religions all appear to meet. It consists of two p^rts : —
1. An uneasiness ; and
2. Its solution.
1. The uneasiness, reduced to its simplest terms, is a
sense that there is something wrong about us as we
naturally stand.
2. The solution is a sense that we are saved from the
wrongness by making proper connection with the higher
powers.
In those more developed minds which alone we are
studying, the wrongness takes a moral character, and the
salvation takes a mystical tinge. I think we shall keep
well within the limits of what is common to all such
minds if we formulate the essence of their religious ex-
perience in terms like these : —
The individual, so far as he suffers from his wrongness
and criticises it, is to that extent consciously beyond it,
and in at least possible touch with something higher, if
anything higher exist. Along with the wrong part there
is thus a better part of him, even though it may be but a
most helpless germ. With which part he should identify
his real being is by no means obvious at this stage ; but
when stage 2 (the stage of solution or salvation) arrives,^
the man identifies his real being with the germinal higher
part of himself ; and does so in the following way. He
becomes conscious that this higher part is conterminous
and continuous with a more of the same quality, which
is operative in the universe outside of him, and which he
can keep in working touch with, and in a fashion get on
board of and save himself when all his lower being has
gone to pieces in the wreck.
^ Remember that for gome men it arriyes suddenly, for others gradoalljt
whilst others again practically enjoy it all their life.
CONCLUSIONS 609
It seems to me that all the phenomena are accurately
describable in these very simple general terms.^ They
allow for the divided self and the struggle ; they involve
the change of- personal centre and the surrender of the
lower self; they express the appearance of exteriority
of the helping power and yet account for our sense of
union with it ; ^ and they fully justify our feelings of
security and joy. There is probably no autobiographic
document, among all those which I have quoted, to
which the description will not well apply. One need
only add such specific details as will adapt it to various
theologies and various personal temperaments, and one
will then have the various experiences reconstructed in
their individual forms.
So far, however, as this analysis goes, the experiences
are only psychological phenomena. They possess, it is
true, enormous biological worth. Spiritual strength really
increases in the subject when he has them, a new life
opens for him, and they seem to him a place of conflux
where the forces of two universes meet; and yet this
may be nothing but his subjective way of feeling things,
a mood of his own fancy, in spite of the effects pro-
duced. I now turn to my second question : What is the
objective * truth * of their content ? ^
The part of the content concerning which the question
^ The practical difiBculties are : 1, to ' realize the reality ' of one's higher
]>art ; 2, to identify one's self with it exdusiyely; and 3, to identify it with
all the rest of ideid being.
^ ** When mystical activity is at its height, we find conscionsncss possessed
by the sense of a being at once excessive and identical with the self : great
enough to be God ; interior enough to be me. The < objectivity ' of it ought
in that case to be called excessimttfj rather, or exceedingness." Rlfc^TAC :
Essai sur les fondements de la conscience mystique, 1897, p. 46.
^ The word ' truth ' is here taken to mean something additional to bare
value for life, although the natural propensity of man is to believe that
whatever has great value for life is thereby certified as true.
610 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
of truth most pertinently arises is that ^ more of the
same quality ' with which our own higher self appears in
the experience to come into harmonious working relation.
Is such a ^ more ' merely our own notion, or does it really
exist ? If so, in what shape does it exist ? Does it act,
as well as exist ? And in what form should we conceive
of that ^ union ' with it of which religious geniuses are so
convinced ?
It is in answering these questions that the various theo-
logies perform their theoretic work, and that their dive^
gencies most come to light. They all agree that the * more*
really exists ; though some of them hold it to exist in the
shape of a personal god or gods, while others are satis-
fied to conceive it as a stream of ideal tendency embedded
in the eternal structiu*e of the world. They all agree,
moreover, that it acts as well as exists, and that some-
thing really is eflPected for the better when you throw your
life into its hands. It is when they treat of the experi-
ence of ^ union ' with it that their speculative differences
appear most clearly. Over this point pantheism and
theism, nature and second birth, works and g^ace and
karma, immortality and reincarnation, rationalism and
mysticism, carry on inveterate disputes.
At the end of my lecture on Philosophy ^ I held out
the notion that an impartial science of religions might
sift out from the midst of their discrepancies a common
body of doctrine which she might also formulate in terms
to which'' physical science need not object. This, I said,
she might adopt as her own reconciling hypothesis, and
recommend it for general belief. I also said that in my
last lecture I should have to try my own hand at framing
such an hypothesis.
The time has now come for this attempt. Who says
^ Above, p. 455.
CONCLUSIONS 611
* hypothesis ' renounces the ambition to be coercive in his
arguments. The most 'I can do is, accordingly, to offer
something that may fit the facts so easily that your scien-
tific logic will find no plausible pretext for vetoing your
impulse to welcome it as true.
The ^ more/ as we called it, and the meaning of our
* union ' with it, form the nucleus of our inquiry. Into
what definite description can these words be translated,
and for what definite facts do they stand? It would
never do for us to place ourselves offhand at the posi-
tion of a particular theology, the Christian theology, for
example, and proceed immediately to define the ^ more '
as Jehovah, and the ^ union ' as his imputation to us of
the righteousness of Christ. That would be unfair to
other religions, and, from our present standpoint at least,
would be an over-belief.
We must begin by using less particularized terms;
and, (since one of the duties of the science of religions
is to keep religion in connection with the rest of science^
we shall do well to seek first of all a way of describing
the *more,' which psychologists may also recognize as
real. The subconscious self is nowadays a weD-accredited
psychological entity; and I believe that in it we have
exactly the mediating term required. Apart from all
religious considerations, there is actually and literaUy
more life in our total soul than we are at any time aware
of. The exploration of the transmarginal field has hardly
yet been seriously undertaken, but what Mr. Myers said
in 1892 in his essay on the Subliminal Consciousness ^ is
^ Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. yii. p. 906. For
a fall statement of Mr. Myers's views, I may refer to his posthumoos work^
' Human Personality in the Light of Recent Research,' which is already an-
nounced by Messrs. Longmans, Green & Co. as being in press. Mr. Myers
for the first time proposed as a general psychological problem the ezplora-
612 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
as trae as when it was first written : ^^ Each of us is in
reality an abiding psychical entity far more extensive
than he knows — an individuality which can never express
itself completely through any corporeal manifestation.
The Self manifests through the organism ; but there is
always some part of the Self unmanifested ; and always,
as it seems, some power of organic expression in abey-
ance or reserve." ^ Much of the content of this larger
background against which our conscious being stands out
in relief is insignificant. Imperfect memories, silly jin-
gles, inhibitive timidities, ^ dissolutive ' phenomena of vari-
ous sorts, as Myers calls them, ent^r into it for a large
part. But in it many of the performances of genius
seem also to have their origin ; and in our study of con-
version, of mystical experiences, and of prayer, we have
seen how striking a part invasions from this region play
in the religious life.
Let me then propose, as an hypothesis, that whatever
it may be on its farther side, the ^ more ' with which
in religious experience we feel oiu^elves connected is on
its hither side the subconscious continuation of our con-
scious life. Starting thus with a recognized psycholo-
gical fact as our basis, we seem to preserve a contact
with ^ science * which the ordinary theologian lacks. At
the same time the theologian's contention that the reli-
gious man is moved by an external power is vindicated,
for it is one of the peculiarities of invasions from the
tion of the subliminal region of consciousness throughout its whole extent,
and made the first methodical steps in its topography by treating as a natural
series a mass of subliminal facts hitherto considered only as curious isolated
facts, and subjecting them to a systematized nomenclature. How impor-
tant this exploration will prove, future work upon the path which Myers
has opened can alone show. Compare my paper : ' Frederic Myers's Ser-
vices to Psychology/ in the said Proceeding^, part xlii., May, 1901.
1 Compare the inventory given above on pp. 483-4, and also what is said
of the subconscious self on pp. 233-236, 240-242.
CONCLUSIONS 613
subconscious region to take on objective appearances,
and to suggest to the Subject an external control. In
the religious life the control is felt as ^ higher ' ; but
since on our hypothesis it is primarily the higher facul-
ties of our own hidden mind which are controlling, the
sense of union with the power beyond us is a sense of
something, not merely apparently, but literally true.
This doorway into the subject seems to me the best
one for a science of religions, for it mediates between a
number of different points of view. Yet it is only a
doorway, and difficulties present themselves as soon as
we step through it, and ask how far our transmarginal
consciousness carries us if we follow it on its remoter
side. Here the over-beliefs begin : here mysticism and
the conversion-rapture and Yedantism and transcendental
idealism bring in their monistic interpretations ^ and tell
us that the finite self rejoins the absolute self, for it was
always one with God and identical with the soul of the
world.^ Here the prophets of all the different religions
^ Compare above, pp. 419 ff.
^ One more expression of this belief, to increase the reader's familiarity
with the notion of it : —
*' If this room is full of darkness for thousands of years, and you come in
and begin to weep and wail, * Oh, the darkness,' will the darkness vanish ?
Bring the light in, strike a match, and light comes in a moment. So what
good will it do you to think all your lives, ' Oh, I have done evil, I have
made many mistakes ' ? It requires no ghost to tell us that. Bring in the
light, and the evil goes in a moment. Strengthen the real nature, build up
you.^^selves, the effulgent, the resplendent, the ever pure, call that up in
ever} one whom you see. I wish that every one of us had come to such a
state ..hat even when we see the vilest of human beings we can see the God
within, and instead of condemning, say, * Rise, thou effulgent One, rise thou
who art always pure, rise thou birthless and deathless, rise almighty, and
manifest your nature.' . . . This is the highest prayer that the Advaita
teaches. This is the one prayer : remembering our nature." ..." Why
does man go out to look for a God ? ... It is your own heart beating, and
yon did not know, you were mistaking it for something external. He, near-
est of the near, my own self, the reality of my own life, my body and my
614 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
come with their visions^ voices^ raptures, and other open-
ings, supposed by each to authenticate his own peculiar
faith.
Those of us who are not personally favored with such
specific revelations must stand outside of them altogether
and, for the present at least, decide that, since they cor-
roborate incompatible theological doctrines, they neu-
tralize one another and leave no fixed result. If we
follow any one of them, or if we follow philosophical
theory and embrace monistic pantheism on non-mystical
grounds, we do so in the exercise of our individual
freedom, and build out our religion in the way most
congruous with our personal susceptibilities. Among
these susceptibilities intellectual ones play a decisive part
Although the reUgious question is primarily a question
of life, of living or not Uving in the higher union which
opens itself to us as a gift, yet the spiritual excitement in
which the gift appears a real one will often fail to be
aroused in an individual until certain particular intel-
lectual beliefs or ideas which, as we say, come home to
him, are touched.^ These ideas will thus be essential to
Boul. — I am Thee and Thou art Me. That is yoar own nature. Assert
it, manifest it. Not to become pure, you are pure already. You are not to
be perfect, you are that already. Every good thought which you think or
act upon is simply tearing the veil, as it were, and the purity, the Infinity,
the God behind, manifests itself — the eternal Subject of everything, the
eternal Witness in this universe, your own Self. Knowledge is, as it were, a
lower step, a degradation. We are It already ; how to know It ? " Swami
ViVEKANANDA : Addresscs, No. XII., Practical Vedanta, part iv. pp. 172,
174, London, 1897 ; and Lectures, The Real and the Apparent Man, p. 24^
abridged.
^ For instance, here is a case where a person exposed from her birth to
Christian ideas had to wait till they came to her clad in spiritistic formulas
before the saving experience set in : —
** For myself I can say that spiritualism has saved me. It was revealed
to me at a critical moment of my life, and without it I don't know what I
should have done. It has taught me to detach myself from worldly things
and to place my hope in things to come. Through it I have learned to see io
CONCLUSIONS 616
that individual's religion ; — which is as much as to say
that over-beliefs in various directions are absolutely indis-
pensable^ and that we should treat them with tenderness
and tolerance so long as they are not intolerant them-
selves. As I have elsewhere written, the most interest-
ing and valuable things about a man are usually his over-
beliefs.
Disregarding: the over-beliefs, and confining: ourselves
to what is con^on and generic, we have in L^t that
the conscious person is continuous with a wider self
through which saving experiences comcy^ a positive con-
tent of religious experience which, it seems to me, is liter*
ally and objectively true as far as it goes. If I now
proceed to state my own hypothesis about the farther
limits of this extension of our personality, I shall be
offering my own over-belief — though I know it will
appear a sorry under-belief to some of you — for which
I can only bespeak the same indulgence which in a con-
verse case I should accord to yours.
The further limits of our being plunge, it seems to me,
into an altogether other dimension of existence from the
sensible and merely ^ understandable ' world. Name it the
mystical region, or the supernatural region, whichever you
all men, even in those most orimina!, even in those from whom I have most
Buffered, undeveloped brothers to whom I owed assistance, love, and for-
giveness. I have learned that I must lose my temper over nothing, despise
no one, and pray for all. Most of all I have learned to pray t And although
I have still much to learn in this domain, prayer ever brings me more
strength, consolation, and comfort. I feel more than ever that I have only
made a few steps on the long road of progress ; but I look at its length
without dismay, for I have confidence that the day will come when all my
efforts shall be rewarded. So Spiritualism has a great place in my life, in-
deed it holds the first place there." Floumoy Collection.
^ << The influence of the Holy Spirit, exquisitely called the Comforter, is
a matter of actual experience, as solid a reality as that of electro-magnet-
iam." W. C. Bbowkell^ Scribner's MagaiinOi vol. zzx. p. 112.
516 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
choose. So far as our ideal impulses originate in this
region (and most of them do originate in it^ for we find
them possessing us in a way for which we cannot artien*
lately account), we belong to it in a more intimate sense
than that in which we belong to the visible world, for
we belong in the most intimate sense wherever our ideals
belong. Yet the unseen region in question is not merely
ideal, for it produces effects in this world. When we
commune with it, work is actually done upon our finite
personality, for we are turned into new men, and conse-
quences in the way of conduct follow in the natural
world upon our regenerative change.^ But that which
produces effects within another reality must be termed
a reality itself, so I feel as if we had no philosophic
excuse for caUing the unseen or mystical world un-
real.
God is the natural appellation, for us Christians at
least, for the supreme reality, so I will call this higher
part of the universe by the name of God.^ We and God
^ That the transaction of opening ourselves, otherwise called prayer, is a
perfectly definite one for certain persons, appears abundantly in the preced-
ing lectures. I append another concrete example to reinforce the impres-
sion on the reader's mind : —
^* Man can learn to transcend these limitations [of finite thought] and
draw power and wisdom at will. . . . The divine presence is known through
experience. The turning to a higher plane is a distinct act of consciousness.
It is not a vague, twilight or semi-conscious experience. It is not an ecstasy ;
it is not a trance. It is not super-consciousness in the Vedantic sense. It
is not due to self-hypnotization. It is a perfectly calm, sane, sound,
rational, common-sense shifting of consciousness from the phenomena of
sense-perception to the phenomena of seership, from the thought of self to
a distinctively higher realm. . . . For example, if the lower self be nervous,
anxious, tense, one can in a few moments compel it to be calm. This is not
done by a word simply. Again I say, it is not hypnotism. It is by the
exercise of power. One feels the spirit of peace as definitely as heat is
perceived on a hot summer day. The power can be as surely used as the
sun's rays can be focused and made to do work, to set fire to wood."
The Higher Law, vol. iv. pp. 4, 6, Boston, August, 1901.
^ Transcendentalists are fond of the term * Over-soul,' but as a rule they
CONCLUSIONS 517
have business with each other ; and in opening ourselves
to his influence our deepest destiny is fulfilled. The uni-
verse^ at those parts of it which our personal being con-
stitutesy takes a turn genuinely for the worse or for the
better in proportion as each one of us fulfills or evades
God's demands. As far as this goes I probably have you
with mC; for I only translate into schematic language
what I may call the instinctive belief of mankind : God
is real since he produces real effects.
The real effects in question, so far as I have as yet ad-
mitted them, are exerted on the personal centres of energy
of the various subjects, but the spontaneous faith of most
of the subjects is that they embrace a wider sphere than
this. Most religious men believe (or ' know/ if they be
mystical) that not only they themselves, but the whole
universe of beings to whom the God is present, are secure
in his parental hands. There is a sense, a dimension,
they are sure, in which we are all saved, in spite of the
gates of hell and all adverse terrestrial appearances.
God's existence is the guarantee of an ideal order that
shall be permanently preserved. This world may indeed,
as science assures us, some day bum up or freeze ; but
if it is part of his order, the old ideals are sure to be
brought elsewhere to fruition, so that where God is,
tragedy is only provisional and partial, and shipwreck
and dissolution are not the absolutely final things. Only
when this farther step of faith concerning God is taken,
and remote objective consequences are predicted, does
religion, as it seems to me, get wholly free from the first
immediate subjective experience, and bring a real hypo-
thesis into play. A good hypothesis in science must have
use it in an intellectnalist sense, as meaning only a medium of communion.
' God ' is a causal agent as well as a medium of communion, and that b the
aspect which I wish to emphasize.
518 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
other properties than those of the phenomenon it is im-
mediately invoked to explain, otherwise it is not prolific
enough. God, meaning only what enters into the reli-
gious man's experience of union, falls short of being an
hypothesis of this more useful order. He needs to enter
into wider cosmic relations in order to justify the subject's
absolute confidence and peace.
That the God with whom, starting from the hither side
of our own extra-marginal self, we come at its remoter
margin into commerce should be the absolute world-ruler,
is of course a very considerable over-belief. QsafiBhelj^
as it is, though, it is an article of almost every one's
religion. Most of us pretend in some way to prop it upon
our philosophy, but the philosophy itself is really propped
upon this faith. What is this but to say that Religion,
in her fullest exercise of function, is not a mere illumina-
tion of facts already elsewhere given, not a mere passion,
Uke love, which views things in a rosier light. It is indeed
that, as we have seen abundantly. But it is something
more, namely, a postulator of new facts as well. The
world interpreted religiously is not the materiaUstic world
over again, with an altered expression ; it must have, over
and above the altered expression, a natural constitution
different at some point from that which a materialistic
world would have. It must be such that different events
can be expected in it, different conduct must be required.
This thoroughly * pragmatic ' view of religion has usu-
ally been taken as a matter of course by common men.
They have interpolated divine miracles into the field of
nature, they have built a heaven out beyond the grave.
It is only transcendentalist metaphysicians who think
that, without adding any concrete details to Nature, or
subtracting any, but by simply calling it the expression of
absolute spirit, you make it more divine just as it stands.
CONCLUSIONS 619
I believe the pragmatic way of taking religion to be the
deeper way. It gives it body as well as soul^ it makes it
claim^ as everything real must claim, some characteristic
realm of fact as its very own. What the more character-
istically divine facts are, apart from the actual inflow of
energy in the faith-state and the prayer-state, I know
not. But the over-belief on which I am ready to make
Biiy personal venture is that they exist. The whole drift
of my education goes to persuade me that the world of
our present consciousness is only one out of many worlds
of consciousness that exist, and that those other worlds
must contain experiences which have a meaning for our
life also ; and that although in the main their experi-
ences and those of this world keep discrete, yet the two
become continuous at certain points, and higher energies
filter in. By being faithful in my poor measure to this
over-belief, I seem to myself to keep more sane and true.
I ca7iy of course, put myself into the sectarian scientist's
attitude, and imagine vividly that the world of sensations
and of scientific laws and objects may be all. But when-
ever I do this, I hear that inward monitor of which W.
K. Clifford once wrote, whispering the word * bosh ! '
Humbug is humbug, even though it bear the scientific
name, and the total expression of human experience, as I
view it objectively, myincibly urges me beyond the narrow tjMv
^ scientific ' bounds. \ Assuredly, the real world is of a dif- Qt^
ferent temperament, — more intricately built than phy- ^
sical science allows. \ So my objective and my subjective
conscience both hold me to the over-belief which I ex-
press. Who knows whether the faithfulness of individ-
uals here below to their own poor over-beliefs may not
actually help God in turn to be more effectively faithful
to his own greater tasks ?
POSTSCRIPT
IN writing my concluding lecture I had to aim so much
at simplification that I fear that my general philo-
sophic position received so scant a statement as hardly to
be intelligible to some of my readers. I therefore add
this epilogue, which must also be so brief as possibly to
remedy but little the defect. In a* later work I may be
enabled to state my position more amply and conse-
quently more clearly.
Originality cannot be expected in a field like this,
where all the attitudes and tempers that are possible
have been exhibited in literature long ago, and where
any new writer can immediately be classed under a fa-
miliar head. If one should make a division of all
thinkers into naturalists and supernaturaUsts, I should
undoubtedly have to go, along with most philosophers,
into the supernaturalist branch. But there is a crasser
and a more refined supematuraHsm, and it is to the
refined division that most philosophers at the present day
belong. If not regular transcendental idealists, they at
least obey the Kantian direction enough to bar out ideal
entities from interfering causally in the course of phe-
nomenal events. Refined supematuralism is universaHstic
supernaturalism ; for the ^ crasser ' variety ^ piecemeal '
supematuralism would perhaps be the better name. It
went with that older theology which to-day is supposed
to reign only among uneducated people, or to be found
among the few belated professors of the dualisms jirhich
Kant is thought to have displaced. It admits miracles
POSTSCRIPT 521
and providential leadings, and finds no intellectual diffi-
culty in mixing the ideal and the real worlds together
by interpolating influences from the ideal region among
the forces that causally determine the real world's details.
In this the refined supernaturalists think that it muddles
disparate dimensions of existence. For them the world
of the ideal has no efficient causality, and never bursts
into the world of phenomena at particular points. The
ideal world, for them, is not a world of facts, but only of
the meaning of facts ; it is a point of view for judging
facte. It appertams to a different * -ology,' and inhabits
a different dimension of being altogether from that in
which existential propositions obtain. It cannot get down
upon the flat level of experience and interpolate itself
piecemeal between distinct portions of nature, as those
who beUeve, for example, in divine aid coming in response
to prayer, are bound to think it must.
Notwithstanding my own inability to accept either
popular Christianity or scholastic theism, I suppose that
my belief that in communion with the Ideal new force
comes into the world, and new departures are made here
below, subjects me to being classed among the super-
naturalists of the piecemeal or crasser type. Uuiver-
salistic supematuralism surrenders, it seems to me, too
easily to naturalism. It takes the facts of physical
science at their face-value, and leaves the laws of life
just as naturalism finds them, with no hope of remedy,
in case their fruits are bad. It confines itself to sen-
timents about life as a whole, sentiments which may be
admiring and adoring, but which need not be so, as
the existence of systematic pessimism proves. In this
universalistic way of taking the ideal world, the essence
of practical religion seems to me to evaporate. Both
instinctively and for logical reasons, I find it hard to
622 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
believe that principles can exist which make no difference
in facts.^ But all facts are particular f acts^ and the whole
interest of the question of Grod's existence seems to me
to lie in the consequences for particulars which that exist-
ence may be expected to entail. T That no concrete par-
ticular of experience should alter its complexion in con-
sequence of a God being there seems to me an incredible
proposition^ and yet it is the thesis to which (implicitly
at any rate) refined supernaturalism seems to cling. It
is only with experience en bloCy it says, that the Absolute
maintains relations. It condescends to no transactions of
detaiLj
I am ignorant of Buddhism and speak under correc-
tion, and merely in order the better to describe my gen-
eral point of view ; but as I apprehend the Buddhistic
doctrine of Karma, I agree in principle with that. All
supernaturalists admit that facts are under the judgment
of higher law ; but for Buddhism as I interpret it, and
for religion generally so far as it remains unweakened by
transcendentaUstic metaphysics, the word * judgment ' here
means no such bare academic verdict or platonic appre-
ciation as it means in Yedantic or modem absolutist sys-
tems ; it carries, on the contrary, execution with it, is in
^ Transcendental idealism, of coarse, insists that its ideal world makes
this difference, that facts exist. We owe it to the Absolute that we have a
world of fact at all. * A world * of fact I — that exactly is the trouble. An
entire world is the smallest unit with which the Absolute can work, whereas
to our finite minds work for the better ought to be done within this world,
setting in at single points. Our difficulties and our ideals are all piece-
meal affairs, but the Absolute can do no piecework for us ; so that all the
interests which our poor souls compass raise their heads too late. We
should have spoken earlier, prayed for another world absolutely, before this
world was born. It is strange, I have heard a friend say, to see this blind
comer into which Christian thought has worked itself at last, with its God
who can raise no particular weight whatever, who can help us with no pri-
vate burden, and who is on the side of our enemies as much as he is on onr
own. Odd evolution from the God of David's psalms !
POSTSCRIPT 623
rebus as well as post reniy and operates ^ causally ' as
partial factor in the total fact. The universe becomes a
gnosticism ^ pure and simple on any other terms. But
this view that judgment and execution go together is
that of the crasser supernaturalist way of thinking, so the
present volume must on the whole be classed with the
other expressions of that creed.
I state the matter thus bluntly, because the current of
thought in academic circles runs against me, and I feel
like a man who must set his back against an open door
quickly if he does not wish to see it closed and locked. In
spite of its being so shocking to the reigning intellectual
tastes, I believe that a candid consideration of piecemeal
supernaturalism and a complete discussion of all its meta-
physical bearings will show it to be the hypothesis by
which the largest number of legitimate requirements are
met. That of course would be a program for other
books than this ; what I now say sufficiently indicates to
the philosophic reader the place where I belong.
If asked just where the differences in fact which are
due to God's existence come in, I should have to say that
in general I have no hypothesis to offer beyond what the
phenomenon of ' prayerful communion,' especially when
certain kinds of incursion from the subconscious region
take part in it, immediately suggests. The appearance is
that in this phenomenon something ideal, which in one
sense is part of ourselves and in another sense is not our-
selves, actually exerts an influence, raises our centre of
personal energy, and produces regenerative effects unat-
tainable in other ways. If, then, there be a wider world
of being than that of our every-day consciousness, if in
it there be forces whose effects on us are intermittent, if
^ See my Will to Believe and other Essays in Popular Philosophy, 1897,
p. 165.
524 TH£ VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
one facilitating condition of the effects be the openness
of the ^subliminal' door, we have the elements of a
theory to which the phenomena of religious life lend
plausibility. I am so impressed by the importance of
these phenomena that I adopt the hypothesis which they
so naturally suggest. At these places at leasts I say, it
would seem as though transmundane energies, God, if
you will, produced immediate effects within the natural
world to which the rest of our experience belong^.
The difference in natural ^fact' which most of us
would assign as the first difference which the existence of
a God ought to make would, I imagine, be personal im-
mortality. Religion, in fact, for the great majority of
our own race means immortality, and nothing else. God
is the producer of immortality ; and whoever has doubts
of immortality is written down as an atheist without
farther trial. I have said nothing in my lectures about
immortality or the belief therein, for to me it seems a
secondary point. If our ideals are only cared for in
* eternity,' I do not see why we might not be willing to
resign their care to other hands than ours. Yet I sym-
pathize with the urgent impulse to be present ourselves,
and in the conflict of impulses, both of them so vague
yet both of them noble, I know not how to decide. It
seems to me that it is eminently a case for facts to testify.
Facts, I think, are yet lacking to prove ^ spirit-retum,'
though I have the highest respect for the patient labors
of Messrs. Myers, Hodgson, and Hyslop, and am some-
what impressed by their favorable conclusions. I conse-
quently leave the matter open, with this brief word to
save the reader from a possible perplexity as to why im-
mortality got no mention in the body of this book.
The ideal power with which we feel ourselves in con-
nection, the ^ God ' of ordinary men, is, both by ordinary
POSTSCRIPT 625
men and by philosophers^ endowed with certain of those
metaphysical attributes which in the lecture on philoso-
phy I treated with such disrespect. He is assumed as a
matter of course to be ^ one and only ' and to be ^ infi-
nite ' ; and the notion of many finite gods is one which
hardly any one thinks it worth while to consider, and
stiU less to uphold. Nevertheless^ in the interests of
intellectual clearness, I feel bound to say that religious
experience, as we have studied it, cannot be cited as un-
equivocally supporting the infinitist belief. The only
thing that it unequivocally testifies to is that we can
experience union with something larger than ourselves
and in that union find our greatest peace. Philosophy,
with its passion for unity, and mysticism with its mono-
ideistic bent, both ^pass to the limit' and identify the
something with a unique God who is the all-inclusive
soul of the world. Popular opinion, respectful to their
authority, follows the example which they set.
Meanwhile the practical needs and experiences of reli-
gion seem to me sufficiently met by the belief that be-
yond each man and in a fashion continuous with him
there exists a larger power which is friendly to him and to
his ideals. All that the facts require is that the power
should be both other and larger than our conscious
selves. Anything larger will do, if only it be large
enough to trust for the next step. It need not be infi-
nite, it need not be solitary. It might conceivably even
be only a larger and more godlike self, of which the pre-
sent self would then be but the mutilated expression, and
the universe might conceivably be a collection of such
selves, of diflFerent degrees of inclusiveness, with no ab-
solute unity realized in it at aU.^ Thus would a sort of
1 Such a notion is suggetted in my IngenoU Leetnre On Human Iin mor-
tality, Boston and LfOndon^ 18d9.
626 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
polytheism return upon us — a polytheism which I do not
on this occasion defend^ for my only aim at present is to
keep the testimony of religious experience clearly within
its proper bounds.
Upholders of the monistic view will say to such a poly-
theism (which^ by the way, has always been the real reU-
gion of common people, and is so still to-day) that unless
there be one all-inclusive God, our guarantee of security is
left imperfect. In the Absolute, and in the Absolute
• only, all is saved. If there be different gods, each car-
ing for his part, some portion of some of us might not
be covered with divine protection, and our reUgious con-
solation would thus fail to be complete. It goes back to
what was said on pages 131-133, about the possibility
of there being portions of the universe that may irre-
trievably be lost. Common sense is less sweeping in its
demands tlian philosophy or mysticism have been wont to
be, and can suffer the notion of this world being partly
saved and partly lost. The ordinary moralistic state of
mind makes the salvation of the world conditional upon
the success with which each unit does its part. Partial
and conditional salvation is in fact a most familiar notion
when taken in the abstract, the only difficulty being to
determine the details. Some men are even disinterested
enough to be willing to be in the unsaved remnant as far
as their persons go, if only they can be persuaded that
their cause will prevail — all of us are willing, whenever
our activity-excitement rises sufficiently high. I think, in
fact, that a final philosophy of rehgion will have to con-
sider the pluralistic hypothesis more seriously than it has
hitherto been willing to consider it. For practical life at
any rate, the chance of salvation is enough. No fact in
human nature is more characteristic than its willingness
to live on a chance. The existence of the chance makes
POSTSCRIPT 627
the difference, as Edmund Gurney says, between a life of
which the keynote is resignation and a life of which the
keynote is hope.^ But all these statements are unsatis-
factory from their brevity, and I can only say that I hope
to return to the same questions in another book.
^ Tertiam Quid, 18S7, p. 99. See also pp. 148, 149.
INDEX
Abflolnte, oneneas vith the, 419.
Abstractneas of religions objeotii 63.
Achilles, 86.
ackermann, m ada bos, 63.
Adaptation to environment, of things,
438; of saints, 374-377.
^Bathetic elements in religions, 460.
Alacoque, 310, 344,413.
Alcohol, :^7.
Al-6hazzali, 402.
Au, lUl.
Alleikb,228.
Allinr, 150, 217.
Alternations of personality, 103.
Alyabbz de Paz, 116.
Amiel, 394.
Ancesthesia, 288.
Ansesthetic revelation, 387-393.
Anorlus 81LE8IU8, 417.
Anger, 181, 264.
' Anhedonia,' 145.
Aristocratic type, 371.
Abistotle, 49.-).
Ars, leCur^d',;^.
Asceticism, 273, 296-310, 360-365.
Ascity, Ood's, 439, 445.
Atman, 400.
Attributes of God, 440 ; their esthetic
use, 458.
Augustine, Saikt, 171, 361, 496.
Aurelius, see Marcus.
Automatic writing, 62, 478.
Automatisms, 2:^, 250, 478-483.
Baldwin, 347, 5a3.
Bashkirtbrfp, 83.
Bercher, 250.
Behmen. see Borhme.
Belief, due to non-rationalistio impolses,
73.
Besant, Mrs., 23, 168.
Bhagavad-GitA, 361.
Blavatsky, Madam, 421.
Blood, :^a
Blumiiardt, 113.
Boehme, 410, 417, 418.
Booth, 203.
BouoAUD, M4,
BouRORT, 263.
BOURIGNON, 321.
BowNE, 602.
Brainerd, 212, 253.
Bray, 249, 256, 290.
Brooks, 512.
BBOwzrELL, 516.
Bucks, 308.
Buddhism, 31, 34,522.
Buddhist mysticism, 401.
BULLEN, 287.
BUNYAN, 157, 160.
butterworth, 411.
Caird, Edward, 106.
Caibd, J., on feeling in religion, 434 ;
on absolute self, 450; he does not
prove, but reaffirms, religion*s diota,
453.
Gall, 289.
Carlyle, 41, 300.
Carpenter, 319.
Catharine, Saint, of (Jenoa, 289.
Catholicism and Protestantism com-
pared, 114,227,3:^6,461.
Causality of God, 517, 522.
Cause, 502.
Cennick, 301.
Centres of personal energy, }96, 267,
52.3.
Cerebration, unconscious, 207.
Chance, 526.
Channinq, 300, 488.
Chapman, 324.
Character, cause of its alterations, 193 ;
scheme of its difiPerences of type,
197, 214.
Causes of its diversity, 261 ; balanoe
of, 340.
Charity, 274, 278, 310, 366.
Chastity, 310.
Chiefs of tribes, 371.
Christian Science, 106.
Christ's atonement, 129, 246.
Churches, .'m, 460.
Clark, 889.
Clibsold, 481.
COE, 240.
Conduct, perfect, 355.
Confession, 462.
Consciousness, fields of, 231 ; sublimi-
nal, 233.
530
INDEX
CkiDsisteiioy, 206.
ConTernon, to avaiioe, 178.
CoDTenion, Fletcher's, 181; Tolstoy's,
184 ; Banyan's, 186 ; in general,
Lectures IX azid X, passim; Brad-
ley's, 189; compared with natural
moral growth, 1»9; Hadley's, 201;
two tyros of, 205 fiP. ; Brainerd's, 212 ;
Alline% 217 ; Oxford gxiidnate's, 221 ;
Ratisbonne's, 223 ; instantaneous,
227 ; is it a natural phenomenon ? 230 ;
subliminal action uyolyed, in sudden
cases, 236, 240; fruits of, 287; its
momentonsness, 230; may be super-
natural, 242 ; its concomitants : sense
of higher control, 244, happiness,
248, automatisms, 250, luminous
phenomena, 261; its deg^ree of per-
manence, 256.
Cosmic consciousness, 308.
Counter-conversion, 176.
Courage, 265, 287.
Crankiness, see Psychopathy.
Crichtom-Browve, 384, 386.
Criminal character, 263.
Criteria of value of spiritual affections,
18.
Cbumf, 230.
Cure of bad habits, 270.
Daudet, 167.
Death, 130. 364.
Debham, 403.
Design, argument from, 438, 402 ff.
Devoutness, 340.
DiOMYSius Abeopagiticus, 416.
Disease, 00, 113.
Disorder in contents of world, 438.
Divided Self, Lecture VIII, pasdm ;
Cases of: Saint Aug^tine, 172, H.
AUine, 173.
Divine, the, 31.
Dog, 281.
Dogmatism, 326, 333.
DowiE, U.S.
Dresser. H. W., 06, 00, 280, 516.
Drink, 268.
Dnimmer, 476.
Drummond, 202.
Drunkenness. 887, 403,488.
* Dryness,' 204.
Dumas, 279.
Dyes, on clothing, 204.
Earnestness, 264.
Ecclesiastical spirit, the, 335, 338.
ECKHART, 417.
Eddy, 106.
Edwards, Jonathan, 20; 114, 200,
220, 238, 230, 248, 330.
Edwabds, Mrs. J., 276, 280.
Effects of religious states, 21.
Effeminacy, 365.
Ego of Apperception, 440.
Ellis, Hayklock, 418.
Elwood, 202.
Emerson, 32, 56, 167, 205, 239, 330.
Emotion, as alterer of life's value, 150;
of the character, 106, 261 ff., 279.
Empirical method, 18, 327 ff., 443.
Enemies, love your, 278, 288.
Energy, personal, 196; myitieal itatM
increase it, 414.
Environment, 356, 874.
Epictetns, 474.
Epicureans, 143.
Equanimity, 284.
Etner, mystical effects of, 892.
Evil, ignored by hnalthy mindodnfi.
88, 106, 131 ; due to things or to ths
Self, 134; its reality, 163.
Evolutionist optimism, 91.
Excesses of piety, 340.
Excitement, its effects, 195, 266, 279,
825.
Experience, religious, the eosenoe of,
508.
Extravagances of piety, 889, 486.
Extreme cases, why we take them,
486.
Failure, 139.
Faith, 246, 506.
Faith-state, 505.
Fanaticism, 338 ff.
Fear, 08, 159, 161, 263, 276.
Feeling deeper than intelleot ia leligioBi
431.
Fielding, 436.
Finney, 207, 215.
Fletcher, 08, 181.
Flodrnoy, 67, 514.
Flower, 476.
Foster, 178, 883.
Fox, George, 7, 201, 335, 411.
Francis, Saint, d'Assisi, 319.
Francis, Saint, de Sales, 11.
Eraser, 454.
Fruits, of conversion, 237 ; of religion,
327 ; of Saintliness, 357.
Fuller, 41.
Gamond, 288.
Gardiner, 260.
Genius and insanity, 16.
Geniuses, see Religions leaden.
Gentleman, character of the, 817, 371*
Gertrude, Saint, 345.
' Gifts,' 151.
Glory of God, 842.
INDEX
531
QoD, 81 ; Mnae of liii )^rewMe, 65-72,
272, 275 ff. ; historio ohanerM m idea
of bim, 74, 828 IF., 483; miod-euer's
idea of hhn, 101; liis honor, 842;
desoribed by ne^piliTW, 417; bit at-
tribates, Bobolastio proof of, 489 ; the
metaphysioal ones are for ns mean-
ingleas, 445 ; the moral ones are ill-
d^noed, 447 ; he is not a mere inf er-
enoe, 502 ; is usedj not known, 606 ;
his ezistenoe mnst make a difFerenee
among phenomena, 517, 522; his re-
lation to the sabconsoioos region, 242,
515; his tasks, 519; may be finite
and ploral, 525.
Ck)DDABD, 96.
GOEBRBS, 407.
GOBTHX, 187.
GouoH, 203.
GOUBDON, 171.
' Grace,' the operation of, 226 ; thastate
of, 260.
Gbatbt, 146, 476, 506.
Greeks, Uieir pessimism, 86, 142.
Guidance, 472.
GCBNET, 527.
GuTOM, 276, 286.
Haolxt, 201, 268.
Halb,82.
Hamon, 867.
Happiness, 47-49, 79, 248, 279.
Habnack, 100.
Healthy-mindedness, Leotaies IV and
y, passim ; its philosophy of eyil,
181 ; compared with morfatd-miaded-
ness, 162, 48&
Heart, softening of, 267.
Hbgel, 389, 449, 454.
Helmoitt, Vam, 497.
Heroism, 351, 488, note.
Heterogeneons personality, 169, 198.
Higher criticism, 4.
HiLTY, 79, 275, 472.
HoDOflOK, R., 524.
HoM EB, sis.
Hugo, 171.
Hypocrisy, 338.
Hypothesis, what make a niefal one,
517.
Htslop, 524.
Ignatius Loyola, 818, 406, 4ia
Illness, 113.
' Imitation of Christ,' the, 44.
Immortality, 524.
Impulses, 261.
Individaality, 501.
Inhibitions, 261 €F.
] Insane melaaoholy and teligioB, 144.
Insanity and gtntos, 16; and happi-
ness, 279.
Institntional religion, 885.
Intellect a secoiMbry force m religion,
431, 514
Intelleetoal waiknuw of tonie saints,
370.
Intolerance, 342.
Irascibility, 264.
Jesus, Habnaok on, 100.
Job, 76, 448.
JoHir, Sauct, of thb Cbosb, 804^ 407,
418.
johkstoh, 258.
Jonquil, 476.
Jordan, 847.
jouffbot, 176, 198.
Judgments, existential and spiiitnal, i.
Kant, 54, 44a
Karma, 522.
Kellnsb, 401.
Kindliness, see Charity.
KnrosLET, 885.
Lagnbau, 285.
Leaden, see Religions leadsifc
Leaders, of tribes, 871.
Lbjeunb, 118, 812.
Lessino, 318.
Leuba, 201, 203, 220, 246, 506.
Life, its sig^ificsnce, 151.
Life, the saboonsoions, 207, 200.
Lookbb-Lampbon, 89.
Logic, Hegelian, 449.
Louis, Saint, of Gooxsga, 850.
Lore, see Charity.
Lore, cases of falHng out of, 179.
Lots of God, 276.
Lore your enemies, 278, 288.
LOWBLL, 65.
Loyalty, to God, 842.
LUTFULLAH, 164.
LuTHKB, 128, 187, 244, 880, 848, 882.
Lutheran self-despair, 108, 211.
Luxury, 865.
Lyoaon,86.
Lyre, 267.
BCahomet, 171. See Mohakhxdw
BCaboub Aubbuus, 42, 44, 474.
Mabgabet Mabt, see Alacoqub.
Margin of conseionsaess, 232.
Maimhall, 508.
Mabtdcbau, 475.
Mathbb, 808.
Maudslbt, 19.
Meaning of life, 151.
Medicafcritioism of raligioB, 418.
532
INDEX
Medical materialism, 10 ff.
Melancholy, 145, 279; LeotnreaV and
VI, passim; cases of, 148, 149, 157,
159, 198.
Melting moods, 267.
Method of judging yalne of religion, 18,
327.
Methodinn, 227, 237.
MlEYSENBUO, 395.
MUitarism, 365-367.
Military type of character, 371.
Mnx, 204.
Biind-cnre, its sources and history, 94-
97 ; its opinion of fear, 98 ; cases of,
102-105, 120, 123 ; its message, 108 ;
its methods, 112-123 ; it uses yerifica-
tion, 120-124 ; its philosophy of evil,
131.
Miraculous character of conyersion, 227.
Mohammed, 341, 481.
MOUNOB, 130.
MoLTKB, Von, 264, 367.
Monasteries, 296.
Monism, 416.
Morbidness compared with healthy-
mindedness, 488. See, also, Mehw-
choly.
Mormon reyelations, 482.
Mortification, see Asceticism.
Mum, 482.
MuiiFORD, 497.
MtTLLEB, 468.
MuRisiXB, 349.
MrsBS, 233, 234, 466, 511, 524.
Mystic states, their effects, 21, 414.
Mystical experiences, 06.
Mysticism, Liectures XVI and XVII,
passim ; its marks, 380 ; its theoretic
results, 416, 422, 428 ; it cannot war-
rant truth, 422 ; its results, 425 ; its
relation to the sense of union, 509.
Mystical region of experience, 515.
Natural theology, 492.
Naturalism, 141, 167.
Nature, scientific yiew of, 491.
Negative accounts of deity, 417.
Nklbon, 208, 423.
Nettleton, 215.
Newman, F. W., 80.
Newman, J. H., on dogmatic theology,
434, 442; his type of imagination,
459.
Nietzsche, 371, 372.
Nitrous oxide, its mystical effects, 387.
No-function, 261-263, 299, 387, 416.
Non-resistance, 281, 358, 376.
Obedience, 310.
Obebmann, 476.
O'GOKNKLL, 257.
Omit, 296.
' Once-born ' type, 80, 166, 363, 488.
Oneness with God, see Union.
Optimism, systematic, 88; and eyoln-
tionism, 91 ; it may be shallov,
364.
Ordeiiiness of world, 438.
Organism determines all mental statM
whatsoeyer, 14.
Origin of mental states no oriteiiooof
their yalue, 14 ff.
Orison, 406.
Over-beliefs, 513 ; the author^s, 515.
Oyer-soul, 516.
Oxford, graduate of, 220, 268.
Pagan feeling, 86.
Pantheism, 131, 416.
Parker, 83.
Pascal, 286.
Paton, 359.
Paul, Saint, 171, 357.
Peek, 253.
Pbirce, 444.
Penny, 323.
Perretyb, 505.
Persecutions, 338, 342.
Personality, explained away by sdenes,
119, 491 ; heterogeneous, 169; alter-
ations of, 193, 210 ff. ; is reality, 490.
See Character.
Peter, Saint, of Alcantara, 360.
Philo, 481.
Philosophy, Lecture XVHI, passim;
must coerce assent, 433; soholastie,
439 ; idealistic, 448 ; unable to give
a theoretic warrant to faith, 455 ; iti
true office in religion, 455.
Photisms, 251.
Piety, 339 ff.
Plundism, 131.
Polytheism, 131, 526.
Poverty, 315, 367.
* Pragmatism/ 444, 519, 522-524.
Prayer, 403 ; its definition, 464 ; its es-
sence, 405 ; petitional, 467 ; its ef-
fects, 474-477, 523.
* Presence,' sense of, 58-63.
Presence of God, 66-72, 272, 275 ft,
396, 418.
Presence of Gk>d, the practice of, 116.
Primitive human thought, 495.
Prinole-Pattison, 4M.
Prophets, the Hebrew, 479.
Protestant theology, 244.
Protestantism Mid Catholicism, 114, 227f
330, 401.
Providential leading, 472.
Psychopathy and religion, 22 ff .
INDEX
633
PUFFKB, 894.
Purity, 274, 290, 848.
Qnaken, 7, 291.
Ramakrishna, 801, 866.
Radonalism, 78, 74; iti aathority OTer-
thrown by m3rttioirai, 42S.
Ratubonvb, 223, 267.
Reality of mueen objeoti, Leotnxe HI,
pMBITn
RKcijAO, 407, 609.
* RecoUeotion,' 116, 289.
Redemption, 167.
Reformation of oharaoter, 320.
Regeneration, tee ConTenion; by re-
laxation, 111.
Reid, 446.
Relaxation, talTation by, 110. See Sur-
render.
Religion, to be tested by fmiti, not
by origin, 10 €F., 831 ; its definition,
26, 31 ; is solemn, 87 ; compared
with Stoicism, 41 ; its nniqae func-
tion, 61 ; abstraotness of its objects,
64; differs according to tempera-
ment, 75, 135, aS3, and ought to differ,
487 ; considered to be a * surriTsl,'
118, 400, 498 ; its relations to melan-
choly, 145 ; worldly paarions may
combine with it, 3o7; its essential
characters, 369, 486; its relation to
prayer, 463-466 ; asserts a fact, not a
theory, 489; its truth, 377; more
than science, it holds by concrete
reality, 500; attempts to evaporate
it into philosophy, 502; it is con-
cerned with personal destinies, 491,
503 ; with feeling and conduct, 604 ;
IB a sthenic affection, 505 ; is for life,
not for knowledge, 506 ; its essential
contents, 508 ; it postulates issues of
fact, 518.
Religious emotion, 279.
Religions leaders, often nerronsly un-
stable, 6 ff., 30 ; their loneliness, 836.
' Religious sentiment,' 27.
Renan, 37.
Renunciations, 349.
Repentance, 127.
Resignation, 286.
Revelation, the annsthetic, 387-898.
Revelations, see Automatisms.
Revelations, in Mormon Church, 482.
Revivalism, 228.
RiBET, 407.
RiBOT, 145, 502.
RoDRiocTEz, 318, 314, 317.
RoTCE. 454.
RUTHSBFOBD, MaBK, 76.
Sabatikb, a., 464.
Sacrifice, 803, 462.
Saimt-Pibbbs, 83.
Saiiitb.Bbuvs, 260, 815.
Saintliness, Sainte-Beuve on, 260; its
characteristics, 272, 370; criticism of,
326 ff.
SainUy conduct, 856-^77.
Saints, dislike of natural man for, 371.
Salyation, 526.
Sandats, 480.
Satan, in picture, 50.
SOHBrFLBB, 417.
Scholastic aigumenti for God, 437.
Science, ignores personality and tele-
ology, 491 ; her ' facts,' 500, 501.
'Science of Religions,' 433, 455, 456,
488-490.
Scientific conceptions, their late adop-
tion, 496.
Second-birth, 157, 165, 166.
Sbelbt, 77.
Self of the world, 449.
Self-despair, 110, 129, 208.
Self-surrender, 110, 208.
S^KAMCOUB, 476.
Seth, 454.
Sexual temptation, 269.
Sexuality as cause of religion, 10, 11.
* Shrew, ^347.
Sickness, 118.
Sick souls. Lectures V and VI, passim.
SlGHELE, 263.
Sin, 209.
Sinners, Christ died for, 129.
Skepticism, 332 ff.
Skobblbff, 265.
Smith, Joseph, 482.
Softening of the heart, 267.
Solemnly, 37, 48.
Soul, 196.
Soul, strength of, 273.
Spbkobb, 355, 374.
SpiirozA, 9, 127.
Spiritism, 514.
Spirit-return, 624.
Spiritual judgments, 4.
Spiritual states, tests of their value, 18.
Starbuck, 198, 199, 204, 206, 206-210,
249, 253, 258, 268, 276, 323, 353, 894.
Stevenson, 138, 296.
Stoicism, 42-45, 143.
Strange appearance of world, 151.
Strength of soul, 273.
Subomiscious action in conversion, 236,
242.
Subconscious life, 115, 207, 209, 233,
236, 270, 483.
Subconscious Self, as intermediary be*
tween the Self and God, 611.