Chapter VII: Part 7

“I was now very moral in my life, but found no rest of conscience.
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
company, were such strong allurements, 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 willing 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 condition, 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 diversion, 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 some 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! 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 discourse 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 ringleader 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, telling 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
followed it, I thought, for sufficient reasons.

“But still, all that I did or could do, conscience would roar
night and day.”

Saint Augustine and Alline 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 designate as “mystical.” However it come, it brings a characteristic 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 of many ways of reaching unity; and the process of remedying inner incompleteness and reducing inner discord is a general psychological process, which may take place with any sort of mental material, and need not necessarily assume the religious form. In judging of the religious types of 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 religion into incredulity; or it may be from moral scrupulosity into freedom and license; or it may be produced by the irruption into the individual’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 firmness, stability, and equilibrium succeeding a period of storm and stress and inconsistency. In these non‐religious cases the new man may also be born either gradually or suddenly.

The French philosopher Jouffroy has left an eloquent memorial of his own “counter‐conversion,” as the transition from orthodoxy to infidelity 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 Jouffroy,
“in which the veil that concealed from me my own incredulity 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 illuminated the frigid window‐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
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 obstinate 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 morning 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.”(93)

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 young 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 almost 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 opportunity, of however humble a kind, to gain
any money, though it were ever so despicable a trifle, and
resolved absolutely not to 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 regarding 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 cautiously 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.”(94)

Let me turn now to the kind of case, the religious case, namely, that immediately concerns us. Here is one of the simplest possible type, an account of the conversion to the systematic religion 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 Menticulture, 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 revelation 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, conductor,
hotel‐waiter, peddler, book‐agent, cabman, and others who were
formerly 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 doesn’t
matter at all, you couldn’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 the
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 passions, 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 desire to do something useful
that it seems as if I were a boy again 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 individually 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.”(95)

The older medicine used to speak of two ways, _lysis_ and _crisis_, 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 confessed at the outset that it is hard to follow these windings 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 questioning, seemed to come to one insight after another. First he perceived that his conviction that life was meaningless took only this finite life into account. He was looking for the value of one finite term in that of another, 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 something, 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 reasoning 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 had personally always led, the cerebral life, the life of conventionality, artificiality, and personal ambition. He had been living wrongly and must change. To work for animal needs, to abjure lies and vanities, to relieve common 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 aspirations
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. Well, then! live,
seek God, and there will be no life without him....

“After this, things cleared up within me and about me better 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 new. 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, recognizing 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.(96)

As I interpret his melancholy, then, it was not merely an accidental vitiation of his humors, though it was doubtless also that. It was logically called for by the clash 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 cruelties of our polite civilization are profoundly unsatisfying, and for whom the eternal veracities lie 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 personality 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; comfort now and
trouble presently; peace now and before I could go a furlong as
full of guilt and fear as ever heart could hold.” 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 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 afflictions 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
Righteousness 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.”

Bunyan 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 healthy‐ minded. 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 exactly 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 appear within their sphere to have remained unmodified. His later works show him implacable to the whole system of official 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 ministry of death.

Bunyan also leaves this world to the enemy.

“I must first pass a sentence of death,” he says, “upon everything
that can properly be called a thing of this life, even to reckon
myself, my wife, my children, my health, my enjoyments, 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 flesh 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! Thou must be beaten,
must beg, suffer hunger, cold, nakedness, and a thousand
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.”(97)

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 “Conversion.” In the next lecture I shall invite you to study its peculiarities and concomitants in some detail.

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 sudden, by which a self hitherto divided, and consciously wrong inferior and unhappy, becomes unified and consciously right superior and happy, in consequence of its firmer hold upon religious 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 unlettered man, Stephen H. Bradley, whose experience is related in a scarce American pamphlet.(98)

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 converted 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 to say to
me, Come. The next day I rejoiced with trembling; soon after, my
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 I 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 Academy. 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 appeared 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. He took his text from Revelation: ‘And I saw the dead,
small and great, 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 told me
previous to this that I could have 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 deluded that told me so. I
went directly home after the meeting, and when I got home I
wondered what made me feel so stupid. I retired to rest soon after
I got home, and felt indifferent 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 appeared to me just as if the New
Testament was placed open before me, eighth chapter of Romans, and
as light as if some candle lighted was held for me to read the
26th and 27th verses of that chapter, and I read these words: ‘The
Spirit helpeth our infirmities with groanings 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
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 myself, 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! 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 surprise 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 chapter 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 influenced similar
to the Apostles on the day of Pentecost (with the exception of
having power to give it to others, and doing what they did). After
breakfast I went round to converse with my neighbors on religion,
which I could not have been hired to have done before this, and at
their request I prayed with them, though I had never prayed in
public before.

“I now feel as if I had discharged 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 information. Now for a minuter survey of the constituent elements 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 suffer political interests to gain dominion over him, he would be for practical intents and purposes a permanently 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 reverse direction; but whenever one aim grows so stable as to expel definitively its previous rivals from the individual’s life, 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‐chopper were not the wholesomer destiny. Such fleeting aspirations are mere _velleitates_, 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 central 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 Gifford’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 as if it related to the planet Mars. Yet here I am, with the Gifford system part and parcel of my very self, and all my energies, for the time being, devoted to successfully identifying myself with it. My soul stands now planted in what once was for it a practically unreal object, 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 consciousness: yet there is found in each field a part, or sub‐field, which figures as focal and contains the excitement, 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 like “here,” “this,” “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 volition make their sallies. They are in short the centres of our dynamic energy, whereas the cold parts leave us indifferent and passive in proportion to their coldness.

Whether such language be rigorously exact is for the present of no importance. It is exact enough, if you 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 burnt‐up paper. Then we have the wavering and divided self we heard so much of in the previous lecture. Or the focus of excitement and heat, the point of view from which the aim is taken, may come to lie permanently within a certain system; 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 another, be the centre of his energy; and it makes a great difference, as regards any set of ideas which he may possess, 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 consciousness, 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 shifts 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 description of what happens, she is unable in a given case to account accurately for all the single forces at work. Neither an outside observer nor the Subject who undergoes the process can explain fully how particular experiences are able to change one’s centre of energy so decisively, or why they so often have to bide their hour to do so. We have a thought, or we perform an act, repeatedly, but on a certain day the real meaning of the thought peals through us for the first time, or the act has suddenly turned into a moral impossibility. 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‐ crystallize about it. We may say that the heat and liveliness mean only the “motor efficacy,” long deferred but now operative, of the idea; but such talk itself is only circumlocution, for whence the sudden motor efficacy? And our explanations then get so vague 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 reinforce one another. The collection of ideas alters by subtraction 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 sinks 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 instincts and propensities, under the “unimaginable touch of time” has an enormous influence. Moreover, all these influences may work subconsciously or half unconsciously.(99) 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 silence, 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. Emotional 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.(100) 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 statistical 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 conclusion as to these ordinary youthful conversions 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 maturity.

“Theology,” says Dr. Starbuck, “takes the adolescent tendencies and builds upon them; it sees that the essential 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 investigator’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 intense. Bodily accompaniments, loss of sleep and appetite, for example, are much more frequent in them. “The essential distinction appears to be that conversion intensifies but shortens the period by bringing the person to a definite crisis.”(101)

The conversions which Dr. Starbuck here has in mind are of course mainly those of very commonplace persons, 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.(102) If they went through their growth‐crisis in other faiths and other countries, although the essence of the change would be the same (since it is one in the main so inevitable), its accidents would be different. In Catholic lands, for example, and in our own Episcopalian sects, no such anxiety 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 personal acceptance of salvation needs less to be accentuated and led up to.

But every imitative 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 forms of experience. These are more likely to be found in sporadic adult cases.

Professor Leuba, in a valuable article on the psychology of conversion,(103) subordinates the theological aspect of the religious life almost entirely to its moral aspect. The religious sense he defines as “the feeling of un‐wholeness, of moral imperfection, of sin, to use the technical word, accompanied by the yearning after the peace of unity.” “The word ‘religion,’ ” he says, “is getting more and more to signify the conglomerate of desires and emotions springing from the sense of sin and its release”; 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 number 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:—