Chapter XIX: Part 19

Of course there have been exceptions to this, and cures by special
miracle 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 heresies 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.
Christoph Blumhardt, in the early forties and exerted during nearly
thirty years. Blumhardt’s Life by Zündel (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
interposition. Blumhardt was a singularly pure, simple, and non‐
fanatical character, 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. God wants us to be
absolutely healthy, and we should not tolerate ourselves on any
lower terms.

56 Edwards, from whose book on the Revival in New England I quote 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.

57 H. W. DRESSER: Voices of Freedom, 46.

58 DRESSER: Living by the Spirit, 58.

59 DRESSER: Voices of Freedom, 33.

60 TRINE: In Tune with the Infinite, p. 214.

61 TRINE: p. 117.

62 Quoted by LEJEUNE: Introd. à la Vie Mystique, 1899, p. 66.

63 HENRY WOOD: Ideal Suggestion through Mental Photography, pp. 51, 70
(abridged).

64 See Appendix to this lecture for two other cases furnished me by
friends.

65 Whether the various spheres or systems are ever to fuse integrally
into one absolute conception, as most philosophers assume that they
must, and how, 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 verified in some degree, each
leaving out some part of real experience.

66 Tract on God, Man, and Happiness, Book ii. ch. x.

67 Commentary on Galatians, Philadelphia, 1891, pp. 510‐514 (abridged).

68 MOLINOS: Spiritual Guide, Book II., chaps. xvii., xviii. (abridged).

69 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 themselves. 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.

70 Cf. J. MILSAND: Luther et le Serf‐Arbitre, 1884, _passim_.

71 He adds with characteristic healthy‐mindedness: “Our business is to
continue to fail in good spirits.”

72 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 acknowledging and regretting them is the germ of
a better self _in posse_ at least. But the world deals with us _in
actu_ and not _in posse_: 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 very
definitely emerges from this sort of experience of life.

73 E.g., Iliad, XVII. 446: “Nothing then is more wretched anywhere than
man of all that breathes and creeps upon this earth.”

74 E.g., Theognis, 425‐428: “Best of all for all things upon earth is
it not to be born 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 Œdipus in Colonus, 1225.—The Anthology
is full of pessimistic 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 fattened like a herd of hogs that is wantonly
butchered.”

The difference between Greek pessimism and the oriental and modern
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 all the
same was the outlook of those Hellenes blackly pessimistic.

75 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 human being understands
something different. 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 will always prefer work chosen by himself.”

76 RIBOT: Psychologie des sentiments, p. 54.

77 A. GRATRY: Souvenirs de ma jeunesse, 1880, pp. 119‐121, abridged.
Some persons are affected with anhedonia permanently, or at any rate
with a loss of the usual appetite for life. The annals of suicide
supply such examples 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 forever, my own dearest brother.
By the time you get this I shall be gone forever. 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. K. STRAHAN: Suicide and Insanity, 2d
edition, London, 1894, p. 131.

78 ROUBINOVITCH ET TOULOUSE: La Mélancolie, 1897, p. 170, abridged.

79 I cull these examples from the work of G. DUMAS: La Tristesse et la
Joie, 1900.

80 My extracts are from the French translation by “ZONIA.” In abridging
I have taken the liberty of transposing one passage.

81 Grace abounding to the Chief of Sinners: I have printed a number of
detached passages continuously.

82 The Life and Journal of the Rev. Mr. Henry Alline, Boston, 1806, pp.
25, 26. I owe my acquaintance with this book to my colleague, Dr.
Benjamin Rand.

83 Compare Bunyan: “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 fearful and unpardonable sin. I felt also such clogging
and heat at my stomach, 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 also did so oppress me that I could
neither stand, nor go, nor lie, either at rest or quiet.”

84 For another case of fear equally sudden, see HENRY JAMES: Society
the Redeemed Form of Man, Boston, 1879, pp. 43 ff.

85 Example: “It was about eleven o’clock at night ... 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!’
involuntarily reëchoed 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!’ 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.

86 E.g., “Our 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‐coughs,” etc.
EMERSON: “Spiritual Laws.”

87 Notes sur la Vie, p. 1.

88 See, for example, F. Paulhan, in his book Les Caractères, 1894, who
contrasts les Equilibrés, les Unifiés, with les Inquiets, les
Contrariants, les Incohérents, les Emiettés, as so many diverse
psychic types.

89 ANNIE BESANT: an Autobiography, p. 82.

90 SMITH BAKER, in Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, September,
1893.

91 LOUIS GOURDON (Essai sur la Conversion de Saint Augustine, Paris,
Fischbacher, 1900) has shown by an analysis of Augustine’s writings
immediately 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 definitive conversion from his former life, but it
was to the neo‐platonic spiritualism and only a halfway stage toward
Christianity. The latter he appears not fully and radically to have
embraced until four years more had passed.

92 Confessions, Book VIII., chaps. v., vii., xi., abridged.

93 TH. JOUFFROY: Nouveaux Mélanges philosophiques, 2me édition, p. 83.
I add two other cases of counter‐conversion dating from a certain
moment. The first is from Professor Starbuck’s manuscript
collection, and the narrator 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 elements in my religious growth. When I was sixteen I
joined the church and was asked if I loved God. I replied ‘Yes,’ 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 downstairs, 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 stimulus will
overthrow the mind into a new state of equilibrium when the process
of preparation 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 makes the salt in a supersaturated 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. All this, not because 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 actions with
no inner sense. Having once seized their absurdity, he could no
longer keep them up.” My Confession, p. 8.

94 Op. cit., Letter III., 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 awakening 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 degree, and intensely pleased with my admiration. Would give me
no decided answer yes or no, and the queer thing about it was that
whilst pursuing 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 understand 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, including 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 moment 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 resolved, 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. Compare 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 sudden “conversion,” I
shall make as much use as I can of this hypothesis of subconscious
incubation.

95 H. FLETCHER: Menticulture, or the A‐B‐C of True Living, New York and
Chicago, 1899, pp. 26‐36, abridged.

96 I have considerably abridged Tolstoy’s words in my translation.

97 In my quotations from Bunyan I have omitted certain intervening
portions of the text.

98 A sketch of the life of Stephen H. Bradley, from the age of five to
twenty‐four years, including his remarkable experience of the power
of the Holy Spirit on the second evening of November, 1829. Madison,
Connecticut, 1830.

99 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 revolution had not taken place in the
broad daylight of my consciousness; too many scruples, too many
guides and sacred affections had made it dreadful to me, so that I
was far from avowing to myself the progress it had made. It had gone
on in silence, by an involuntary elaboration 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 have
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.

100 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 is a pathological case in which _guilt_ was
the feeling that suddenly exploded: “One night I was seized on
entering bed with a rigor, such as Swedenborg describes as coming
over him with a sense of holiness, but over me with a sense of
_guilt_. During that whole night I lay under the influence of the
rigor, and from its inception I felt that I was under the curse of
God. I have never done one act of duty in my life—sins against God
and man, beginning as far as my memory goes back—a wildcat in human
shape.”

101 E. D. STARBUCK: The Psychology of Religion, pp. 224, 262.

102 No one understands this better than Jonathan Edwards understood it
already. Conversion narratives of the more commonplace sort must
always be taken with the allowances which he suggests: “A rule
received and established by common consent has a very great, though
to many persons an insensible influence in forming their notions of
the process of their own experience. I know very well how they
proceed as to this matter, for I have had frequent opportunities of
observing their conduct. Very often their experience at first
appears like a confused chaos, but then those parts are selected
which bear the nearest resemblance to such particular steps as are
insisted on; and these are dwelt upon in their thoughts, and spoken
of from time to time, till they grow more and more conspicuous in
their view, and other parts which are neglected grow more and more
obscure. Thus what they have experienced is insensibly strained, so
as to bring it to an 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.” Treatise on Religious
Affections.

103 Studies in the Psychology of Religious Phenomena, American Journal
of Psychology, vii. 309 (1896).

104 I have abridged Mr. Hadley’s account. For other conversions of
drunkards, see his pamphlet, Rescue Mission Work, published at the
Old Jerry M’Auley Water Street Mission, New York city. A striking
collection of cases also appears in the appendix to Professor
Leuba’s article.

105 A restaurant waiter served provisionally as Gough’s “Saviour.”
General Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, 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.

106 The crisis of apathetic melancholy—no use in life—into which J. S.
Mill records that he fell, and from which he emerged by the reading
of Marmontel’s Memoirs (Heaven save the mark!) and Wordsworth’s
poetry, is another intellectual and general metaphysical case. See
Mill’s Autobiography, New York, 1873, pp. 141, 148.

107 Starbuck, in addition to “escape from sin,” discriminates “spiritual
illumination” as a distinct type of conversion experience.
Psychology of Religion, p. 85.

108 Psychology of Religion, p. 117.

109 Psychology of Religion, p. 385. Compare, also, pp. 137‐144 and 262.

110 For instance, C. G. Finney italicizes the volitional element: “Just
at this point the whole question of Gospel salvation opened to my
mind in a manner most marvelous to me at the time. I think I then
saw, as clearly as I ever have in my life, the reality and fullness
of the atonement of Christ. Gospel salvation seemed to me to be an
offer 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, ‘Yes; _I will accept it to‐day, or I will die in
the 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 give my heart to
God before I left the woods. When I came to try, I found I could
not.... My inward soul hung back, and there was no going out of my
heart to God. The thought was pressing me, of the rashness of my
promise that I would give 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 great 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 approach me, and I
opened my eyes to see whether it were so. But right there the
revelation of my pride of heart, as the great difficulty that stood
in the way, was distinctly shown to me. An overwhelming sense of my
wickedness in being ashamed to have a human being see me on my knees
before God took such powerful possession of me, that I _cried at the
top of my voice, and exclaimed that I would not leave that place if
all the men on earth and all the devils in hell surrounded me_.
‘What!’ I said, ‘such a degraded sinner as I am, on my knees
confessing my sins to the great and holy God; and ashamed to have
any human being, and a sinner like myself, find me on my knees
endeavoring to make my peace with my offended God!’ The sin appeared
awful, infinite. It broke me down before the Lord.” Memoirs, pp.
14‐16, abridged.

111 STARBUCK: Op. cit., pp. 91, 114.

112 Extracts from the Journal of Mr. John Nelson, London, no date, p.
24.

113 STARBUCK, p. 64.

114 STARBUCK, p. 115.

115 STARBUCK, p. 113.

116 EDWARD’S and DWIGHT’S Life of Brainerd, New Haven, 1822, pp. 45‐47,
abridged.

117 Describing the whole phenomenon as a change of equilibrium, we might
say that the movement of new psychic energies towards the personal
centre and the recession of old ones towards the margin (or the
rising of some objects 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 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.,
p. 160.

118 A. A. BONAR: Nettleton and his Labors, Edinburgh, 1854, p. 261.

119 CHARLES G. FINNEY: Memoirs written by Himself, 1876, pp. 17, 18.

120 Life and Journals, Boston, 1806, pp. 31‐40, abridged.

121 My quotations are made from an Italian translation of this letter in
the Biografia del Sig. M. A. Ratisbonne, Ferrara, 1843, which I have
to thank Monsignore D. O’Connell of Rome for bringing to my notice.
I abridge the original.

122 Published in the International Scientific Series.

123 The reader will here please notice that in my exclusive reliance in
the last lecture on the subconscious “incubation” of motives
deposited by a growing experience, I followed the method of
employing accepted principles of explanation as far as one can. The
subliminal region, whatever else 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 “tension” that they may at times enter
consciousness with something like a burst. It thus is “scientific”
to interpret all otherwise unaccountable invasive alterations of
consciousness as results of the tension of subliminal memories
reaching the bursting‐point. But candor obliges me to confess that
there are occasional bursts into consciousness of results of which
it is 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
subconscious incubation explains a great number of them, there can
be no doubt.

124 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 glorious work of God than the
creation of the whole material universe.”

125 Emerson writes: “When we see a soul 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 all his native devils.” True
enough. Yet Crump 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 Crump, 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.

126 In his book, The Spiritual Life, New York, 1900.

127 Op. cit., p. 112.

128 Op. cit., p. 144.

129 I piece together a quotation made by W. Monod, in his book La Vie,
and a letter printed in the work: Adolphe Monod: I., Souvenirs de sa
Vie, 1885, p. 433.

130 Commentary on Galatians, ch. iii. verse 19, and ch. ii. verse 20,
abridged.

131 In some conversions, both steps are distinct; in this one, for
example:—

“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 perfect 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.” Autobiography of Hudson Taylor. I translate back into
English from the French translation of Challand (Geneva, no date),
the original not being accessible.

132 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.

133 American Journal of Psychology, vii. 345‐347, abridged.

134 Above, p. 152.

135 DWIGHT: Life of Edwards, New York, 1830, p. 61, abridged.

136 W. F. BOURNE: The King’s Son, a Memoir of Billy Bray, London,
Hamilton, Adams & Co., 1887, p. 9.

137 Consult WILLIAM B. SPRAGUE: Lectures on Revivals of Religion, New
York, 1832, in the long Appendix to which the opinions of a large
number of ministers are given.

138 Memoirs, p. 34.

139 These reports 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, unspeakable 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 is 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 used 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 about it, intending then to
get up and go on. Such a thing as any special answer to my prayer
never entered my mind, having been converted by faith, but still
being most undoubtedly saved. Well, while I was praying, I remember
holding out my hands to God 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 satisfying
experience—when suddenly the darkness of the night seemed lit up—I
felt, realized, knew, that God heard and answered my prayer. Deep
happiness 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 not want to give 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 great peace,
and I arose and went into my parents’ bedroom and said, ‘I do feel
so wonderfully 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.”

140 I add in a note a few more records:—

“One morning, being in deep distress, fearing every 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.”—“I 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.”—“I 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.” STARBUCK’S correspondents.

141 Psychology of Religion, pp. 360, 357.

142 SAINTE‐BEUVE: Port‐Royal, vol. i. pp. 95 and 106, abridged.

143 “ ‘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.” (SIGHELE: Psychologie
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 which his 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 judgment to be near at hand, how
quickly do we put our moral house in order—we do not see how sin can
evermore exert temptation over us! Old‐fashioned hell‐fire
Christianity well knew how to extract from fear its full equivalent
in the way of fruits for repentance, and its full conversion value.

144 Example: Benjamin Constant was often marveled at as an extraordinary
instance of superior intelligence with inferior character. He writes
(Journal, Paris, 1895, p. 56), “I am tossed and dragged about by my
miserable weakness. Never was anything so ridiculous as my
indecision. Now marriage, now solitude; now Germany, now France,
hesitation upon hesitation, 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 such an all‐round
amiability is hopeless.

145 The great thing which the higher excitabilities 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 General
Skobeleff, “that my bravery is simply the passion 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 throw myself headforemost, attracts me, moves me,
intoxicates me. I am crazy for it, I love it, I adore it. I run
after danger as one runs 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
Général Skobeleff, Nouvelle Revue, 1886, abridged.) Skobeleff seems
to have been a cruel egoist; but the disinterested Garibaldi, if one
may judge by his “Memorie,” lived in an unflagging emotion of
similar danger‐seeking excitement.

146 See the case on p. 70, above, where the writer describes his
experiences of communion with the Divine as consisting “merely in
the _temporary obliteration of the conventionalities_ which usually
cover my life.”

147 Above, p. 201. “The only radical remedy I know for dipsomania is
religiomania,” is a saying I have heard quoted from some medical
man.

148 Doddridge’s Life of Colonel James Gardiner, London Religious Tract
Society, pp. 23‐32.

149 Here, for example, is a case, from Starbuck’s book, in which a
“sensory automatism” brought about quickly what prayers and resolves
had been unable to effect. 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 God
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 gone 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 wish to touch it again.” The Psychology of Religion, p. 142.

150 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
_within_ to respond to them.’ The ego [here] is wholly identified
with the 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 degree of spiritual excitement, getting at last so 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
different possibilities of equilibrium, might be like a many‐sided
solid with different 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
altogether, the body will fall over, on surface B, say, and abide
there permanently. The pulls of gravity towards A have vanished, and
may now be disregarded. The polyhedron has become immune against
farther attraction from their direction.

In this figure of speech the lever may correspond to the emotional
influences 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 ensues an
irreversible revolution, equivalent to the production of a new
nature.

151 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.

152 “It will be found,” says Dr. W. R. INGE (in his lectures on
Christian Mysticism, London, 1899, p. 326), “that men of preëminent
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 experience, that God is a spirit with
whom the human spirit can hold intercourse; that in him meet all
that they can imagine of goodness, truth, and beauty; that they can
see his footprints everywhere in nature, and feel his presence
within them as the very life of their life, so that in proportion as
they come to themselves they come to him. They tell us what
separates us from him and from happiness is, first, self‐seeking in
all its forms; and, secondly, 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.”

153 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 l’Action morale, in the
Bulletin de l’Union, April 1‐15, 1894. See, also, Revue Bleue,
August 13, 1892.

“We would make known in our own persons the usefulness of rule, of
discipline, of resignation 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
private life; on luxury, fastidiousness, and over‐refinement; on all
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
insignificant persons; indulgence where our own claims only are
concerned, but firmness in our demands where they relate to duties
towards others or towards 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 all their weight upon us, it is but just.”

154 Above, pp. 248 ff.

155 H. THOREAU: Walden, Riverside edition, p. 206, abridged.

156 C. H. HILTY: Glück, vol. i. p. 85.

157 The Mystery of Pain and Death, London, 1892, p. 258.

158 Compare Madame Guyon: “It was my practice to arise at midnight for
purposes of devotion.... It seemed to me that God 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
God. 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. i. p. 260.

159 I have considerably abridged the words of the original, which is
given in EDWARDS’S Narrative of the Revival in New England.

160 BOUGAUD: Hist. de la Bienheureuse Marguerite Marie, 1894, p. 125.

161 Paris, 1900.

162 Page 130.

163 Page 167.

164 Op. cit., p. 127.

165 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 world 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.’ ” André Towianski, Traduction de
l’Italien, Turin, 1897 (privately printed). I owe my knowledge of
this book and of Towianski to my friend Professor W. Lutoslawski,
author of “Plato’s Logic.”

166 J. PATTERSON’S Life of Richard Weaver, pp. 66‐68, abridged.

167 As where the future Buddha, incarnated as a hare, jumps into the
fire to cook himself for a meal for a beggar—having previously
shaken himself three times, so that none of the insects in his fur
should perish with him.

168 Bulletin de l’Union pour l’Action Morale, September, 1894.

169 B. PASCAL: Prières pour les Maladies, §§ xiii., xiv., abridged.

170 From THOMAS C. UPHAM’S Life and Religious Opinions and Experiences
of Madame de la Mothe Guyon, New York, 1877, ii. 48, i. 141, 413,
abridged.