 Lecture 10, Part 1 of the Varieties of Religious Experience. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James. Lecture 10, Conversion concluded. Part 1 In this lecture, we have to finish the subject of conversion. Considering at first those striking instantaneous instances of which St. Paul's is the most imminent, and in which, often amid tremendous emotional excitement or perturbation of the senses, a complete division is established in the twinkling of an eye between the old life and the new. Conversion of this type is an important phase of religious experience, owing to the part which it has played in Protestant theology, and it behooves us to study it conscientiously on that account. I think I had better cite two or three of these cases before proceeding to a more generalized account. One must know concrete instances first. Four, as Professor Agassiz used to say, One can see no farther into a generalization than just so far as one's previous acquaintance with particulars enables one to take it in. I will go back, then, to the case of our friend Henry Alene, and quote his report of the 26th of March, 1775, on which his poor divided mind became unified for good. Quote, As I was about sunset, wandering in the fields, lamenting my miserable, lost and undone condition, and almost ready to sink under my burden, I thought I was in such a miserable case as never any man was before. I returned to the house, and when I had got to the door, just as I was stepping off the threshold, the following impressions came into my mind like a powerful but small still voice. You have been seeking, praying, reforming, laboring, reading, hearing, and meditating, and what have you done by it towards your salvation? Are you any nearer to conversion now than when you first began? Are you any more prepared for heaven, or fitter to appear before the impartial bar of God than when you first began to seek? It brought such conviction on me that I was obliged to say that I did not think I was one step nearer than at first, but was much condemned, as much exposed, and as miserable as before. I cried out within myself, Oh Lord God, I am lost! And if thou, oh Lord, dost not find out some new way, I know nothing of, I shall never be saved, for the ways and methods I have prescribed to myself have all failed me, and I am willing they should fail. Oh Lord, have mercy! Oh Lord, have mercy! These discoveries continued until I went into the house and sat down. After I sat down, being all in confusion, like a drowning man that was just giving up to sink, and almost in an agony, I turned very suddenly round in my chair, and seeing part of an old Bible lying in one of the chairs, I caught hold of it in great haste, and opened it without any premeditation. Cast my eyes on the 38th Psalm, which was the first time I ever saw the word of God. It took hold of me with such power that it seemed to go through my whole soul, so that it seemed as if God was praying in, with, and for me. About this time my father called the family to attend prayers. I attended, but paid no regard to what he said in his prayer, but continued praying in those words of the Psalm. Cryed I, Oh, help me, help me thou redeemer of souls, and save me, or I am gone for ever. Thou canst this night, if thou pleasest, with one drop of thy blood atone for my sins, and appease the wrath of an angry God. At that instant of time, when I gave all up to him to do with me as he pleased, and was willing that God should rule over me at his pleasure, redeeming love broke into my soul with repeated scriptures, with such power that my whole soul seemed to be melted down with love. The burden of guilt and condemnation was gone, darkness was expelled, my heart humbled and filled with gratitude, and my whole soul, that was a few minutes ago groaning under mountains of death, and crying to an unknown God for help, was now filled with immortal love, soaring on the wings of faith, freed from the chains of death and darkness, and crying out, my Lord and my God, thou art my rock and my fortress, my shield and my high tower, my life, my joy, my present and my everlasting portion. Looking up, I thought I saw that same light, for he had on more than one previous occasion seen subjectively a bright blaze of light. Though it appeared different, and as soon as I saw it, the design was opened to me according to his promise, and I was obliged to cry out, enough, enough, oh blessed God, the work of conversion, the change, and the manifestations of it are no more disputable than that light which I see or anything that ever I saw. In the midst of all my joys, in less than half an hour after my soul was set at liberty, the Lord discovered to me my labor in the ministry and called to preach the gospel. I cried out, Amen Lord, I'll go, send me, send me. I spent the greatest part of the night praising and adoring the ancient of days for his free and unbounded grace. After I had been so long in this transport and heavenly frame that my nature seemed to require sleep, I thought to close my eyes for a few moments. Then the devil stepped in and told me that if I went to sleep I should lose it all, and when I should awake in the morning I would find it to be nothing but a fancy and delusion. I immediately cried out, Oh Lord God, if I am deceived, undeceive me. I then closed my eyes for a few minutes and seemed to be refreshed with sleep, and when I awoke my first inquiry was, Where is my God? And in an instant of time my soul seemed to awaken and with God and surrounded by the arms of everlasting love. About sunrise I arose with joy light to my parents what God had done for my soul and declared to them the miracle of God's unbounded grace. I took a Bible to show them the words that were impressed by God on my soul the evening before, but when I came to open the Bible it appeared all new to me. I so longed to be useful in the cause of Christ in preaching the Gospel that it seemed as if I could not rest any longer, but go I must and tell the wonders of redeeming love. I lost all taste for carnal pleasures and carnal company and was enabled to forsake them. Close quote. Young Mr. Alene after the briefest of delays and with no book learning but his Bible and no teaching save that of his own experience became a Christian minister and thence forward his life was fit to rank for its austerity and single-mindedness with that of the most devoted saints. But happy as he became in his strenuous way he never got his taste for even the most innocent carnal pleasures back. We must class him like Bunyan and Tolstoy among those upon whose soul the iron of melancholy left a permanent imprint. His redemption was into another universe in his mere natural world and life remained for him a sad and patient trial. Years later we can find him making such an entry as this in his diary. Quote. On Wednesday the 12th I preached at a wedding and had the happiness thereby to be the means of excluding carnal mirth. Close quote. The next case I will give is that of a correspondent of Professor Leoba in the Ladder's article already cited in volume 6 of the American Journal of Psychology. The subject was an Oxford graduate, the son of a clergyman, and the story resembles in many points the classic case of Colonel Gardiner which everybody may be supposed to know. Here it is, somewhat abridged. Quote. Between the period of leaving Oxford and my conversion I never darkened the door of my father's church although I lived with him for eight years making what money I wanted by journalism and spending it in high carousel with anyone who would sit with me and drink it away. So I lived, sometimes drunk for a week together and then a terrible repentance and would not touch a drop for a whole month. In all this period, that is up to 33 years of age I never had a desire to reform on religious grounds but all my pangs were due to some terrible remorse I used to feel after a heavy carousel the remorse taking the shape of regret after my folly and wasting my life in such a way a man of superior talents and education. This terrible remorse turned me gray in one night and whenever it came upon me I was perceptibly grayer the next morning. What I suffered in this way is beyond the expression of words. It was hellfire in all its most dreadful tortures. Often did I vow that if I got over this time I would reform alas in about three days I fully recovered and was as happy as ever and so it went on for years but with a physique like a rhinoceros I always recovered and as long as I let drink alone no man was as capable of enjoying life as I was. I was converted in my own bedroom in my father's rectory house at precisely three o'clock in the afternoon of a hot July day July 13th, 1886 I was in perfect health having been off from the drink for nearly a month I was in no way troubled about my soul in fact God was not in my thoughts that day A young lady friend sent me a copy of Professor Drummond's Natural Law in the Spiritual World asking me my opinion of it as a literary work only Being proud of my critical talents and wishing to enhance myself in my new friend's esteem I took the book to my bedroom for a quiet intending to give it a thorough study and then write her of what I thought of it It was here that God met me face to face and I shall never forget the meeting He that hath the sun hath eternal life He that hath not the sun hath not life I had read the scores of times before but this made all the difference I was now in God's presence and my attention was absolutely soldered onto this verse and I was not allowed to proceed with the book till I had fairly considered what these words really involved Only then was I allowed to proceed feeling all the while that there was another being in my bedroom though not seen by me The stillness was very marvelous and I felt supremely happy It was most unquestionably shown me in one second of time that I had never touched the eternal and that if I died then I must inevitably be lost I was undone I knew it as well as I now know I am saved The Spirit of God showed it to me in ineffable love There was no terror in it I felt God's love so powerfully upon me that only a mighty sorrow crept over me that I had lost all through my own folly and what was I to do? What could I do? I did not repent even God never asked me to repent All I felt was I am undone and God cannot help it although he loves me No fault on the part of the Almighty All the time I was supremely happy I felt like a little child before his father I had done wrong but my father did not scold me but loved me most wondrously Still my doom was sealed I was lost to a certainty and being naturally of a brave disposition I did not quail under it My deep sorrow for the past mixed with regret for what I had lost took hold upon me and my soul thrilled within me to think it was all over Then there crept in upon me so gently, so lovingly, so unmistakably a way of escape and what was it after all? The old, old story over again told in the simplest way There is no name under heaven whereby ye can be saved except that of the Lord Jesus Christ No words were spoken to me My soul seemed to see my Savior in the Spirit and from that hour to this nearly nine years now there has never been in my life one doubt that the Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father both worked upon me that afternoon in July both differently and both in the most perfect love conceivable and I rejoiced there and then in a conversion so astounding that the whole village heard of it in less than twenty-four hours but a time of trouble was yet to come The day after my conversion I went into the hayfield to lend a hand with the harvest and not having made any promise to God to abstain or drink in moderation only I took too much and came home drunk My poor sister was heartbroken and I felt ashamed of myself not to my bedroom at once where she followed me weeping copiously She said I had been converted and fallen away instantly but although I was quite full of drink not muddled however I knew that God's work begun in me and was not going to be wasted About midday I made on my knees the first prayer before God for twenty years I did not ask to be forgiven I felt that was no good for I would be sure to fall again Well, what did I do? I committed myself to him in the profoundest belief that my individuality was going to be destroyed that he would take all from me and I was willing In such a surrender lies the secret of a holy life From that hour drink has had no terrors for me I never touch it, never want it The same thing occurred with my pipe after being a regular smoker from my twelfth year the desire for it went at once and has never returned So with every known sin the deliverance in each case being permanent and complete I have had no temptation since conversion God seemingly having shut out Satan from that course with me He gets a free hand in other ways but never on sins of the flesh Since I gave up to God all ownership in my life He has guided me in a thousand ways and has opened my path in a way almost incredible to those who do not enjoy the blessing of a truly surrendered life Close quote So much for our graduate of Oxford in whom you notice the complete abolition of an ancient appetite as one of the conversion's fruits The most curious record of sudden conversion with which I am acquainted is that of M. Alphonse Ratisbon a free-thinking French Jew to Catholicism at Rome in 1842 In a letter to a clerical friend written a few months later the convert gives a palpitating account of the circumstances The predisposing conditions appear to have been slight He had an elder brother who converted and was a Catholic priest He was himself irreligious and nourished an antipathy to the apostate brother and generally to his cloth Finding himself at Rome in his 29th year he fell in with a French gentleman who tried to make a proselyte out of him but who succeeded no farther after two or three conversations then to get him to hang half joculously a religious medal round his neck to accept and read a copy of a short prayer to the Virgin M. Ratisbon represents his own part in the conversations as having been of a light and chafing order but he notes the fact that for some days he was unable to banish the words of the prayer from his mind and that the night before the crisis he had a sort of nightmare in the imagery of which a black cross with no Christ upon it figured Nevertheless, until noon of the next day he was free in mind and spent the time in trivial conversations I now give his own words Quote If at this time anyone had accosted me saying Althons, in a quarter of an hour you shall be adoring Jesus Christ as your God and Savior you shall lie prostate with your face upon the ground in a humble church you shall be smiting your breast at the foot of a priest you shall pass the carnival in a college of Jesuits to prepare yourself to receive baptism ready to give your life for the Catholic faith you shall renounce the world and its pops and pleasures renounce your fortune your hopes and if need be your betrothed the affections of your family the esteem of your friends and the attachment to the Jewish people you shall have no other aspiration than to follow Christ and to bear his cross till death if, I say, a prophet had come to me with such a prediction I should have judged that only one person could be more mad than he, whosoever, namely might believe in the possibility of such senseless folly becoming true and yet that folly is at present my only wisdom my soul happiness coming out of the cafe I met the carriage of Monsur B the proselytizing friend he stopped and invited me in for a drive but first asked me to wait for a few minutes whilst he attended to some duty at the church of San Andrea del Frat instead of waiting in the carriage I entered the church myself to look at it the church of San Andrea was poor, small and empty I believe that I found myself there almost alone no work of art attracted my attention and I passed my eyes mechanically over its interior without being arrested by any particular thought I can only remember an entirely black dog which went trotting and turning before me as I mused in an instant the dog had disappeared the whole church had vanished I no longer saw anything or more truly I saw one thing alone heavens how can I speak of it oh no human words cannot attain to expressing the inexpressible any description however sublime it might be could be but a profanation of the unspeakable truth I was there prostate on the ground bathed in my tears with my heart beside itself when M.B. called me back to life I could not reply to the questions which followed from him one upon the other but finally I took the medal which I had in my breast and with all the effusion of my soul I kissed the image of the virgin radiant with grace it bore oh indeed it was she it was indeed she what he had seen had been a vision of the virgin I did not know where I was I did not know whether I was Alphonse or another I only felt myself changed and believed myself another me I looked for myself in myself and did not find myself in the bottom of my soul an explosion of the most ardent joy I could not speak I had no wish to reveal what had happened but I felt something solemn and sacred within me which made me ask for a priest I was led to one and there alone after he had given me the positive order I spoke as best I could kneeling and with my heart still trembling I could give no account to myself of the truth of which I had acquired a knowledge and a faith all that I can say is that in an instant the bandage had fallen from my eyes and not one bandage only but the whole manifold of bandages in which I had been brought up one after another they rapidly disappeared even as the mud and ice disappear under the rays of the burning sun I came out as from a sepulcher of darkness and I was living perfectly living but I wept for at the bottom of that gulf I saw the extreme of misery from which I had been saved by an infinite mercy and I shuddered at the sight of my iniquities stupefied melted overwhelmed with wonder and with gratitude you may ask me how I came to this new insight I had never opened a book of religion nor even read a single page of the Bible and the dogma of original sin is either entirely denied or forgotten by the Hebrews of today so that I had thought so little about it that I doubt whether I ever knew its name but how came I then to this perception of it I can answer nothing save this that on entering that church I was in darkness all together and on coming out of it I saw the fullness of the light I can explain the change no better than by the simile of a profound sleep or the analogy of one born blind who should suddenly open his eyes to the day he sees but cannot define the light which bathes him and by means of which he sees the objects which excite his wonder if we cannot explain physical light how can we explain the light which is the truth itself and I think I remain within the limits of veracity when I say that without having any knowledge of the letter of religious doctrine I now intuitively perceived its sense and spirit better than if I saw them I felt those hidden things I felt them by the inexplicable effects they produced in me it all happened in my interior mind and those impressions more rapid than thought shook my soul revolved and turned it as it were in another direction towards other aims by other paths I express myself badly but do you wish Lord that I should enclose in poor and barren words sentiments which the heart alone can understand close quote might multiply cases almost indefinitely but these will suffice to show you how real definite and memorable an event a sudden conversion may be to him who has the experience throughout the height of it he undoubtedly seems to himself a passive spectator or undergoer of an astounding process performed upon him from above there is too much evidence for this for any doubt of it to be possible theology combining this fact with the doctrines of election and grace has concluded that the spirit of God is with us at these dramatic moments in a peculiarly miraculous way unlike what happens at any other juncture of our lives at that moment it believes an absolutely new nature is breathed into us and we become partakers of the very substance of the deity that the conversion should be instantaneous seems called for on this view and the Moravian Protestants appear to have been the first to see this logical consequence the Methodists soon followed suit practically if not dogmatically and a short time ere his death John Wesley wrote quote in London alone I found 652 members of our society who were exceeding clear in their experience and whose testimony I could see no reason to doubt and every one of these without a single exception has declared that his deliverance from sin was instantaneous that the change was wrought in a moment had half of these or one third or one in twenty declared it was gradually wrought in them I should have believed this with regard to them and thought that some were gradually sanctified and some instantaneously but as I have not found in so long a space of time a single person speaking thus I cannot but believe that sanctification is commonly if not always an instantaneous work close quote all this while the more usual sects of Protestantism have set no such store by instantaneous conversion for them as for the Catholic Church Christ's blood the sacraments and the individual's ordinary religious duties are practically supposed to suffice to his salvation even though no acute crisis of self-despair and surrender followed by relief should be experienced for Methodism on the contrary unless there have been a crisis of this sort salvation is only offered not effectively received and Christ's sacrifice in so far set forth is incomplete Methodism surely here follows if not the healthier minded yet on the whole the profounder spiritual instinct the individual models which it has set up as typical and worthy of imitation are not only the more interesting dramatically but psychologically they have been the more complete in the fully evolved revivalism of Great Britain and America we have so to speak the codified and stereotyped procedure to which this way of thinking has led in spite of the unquestionable fact that saints of the once born type exist that there may be a gradual growth in holiness without a cataclysm in spite of the obvious leakage as one may say of much more natural goodness into the scheme of salvation revivalism has always assumed that only its own type of religious experience can be perfect you must first be nailed on the cross of natural despair and agony and then in the twinkling of an eye be miraculously released it is natural to those who personally have traversed such an experience should carry away a feeling of its being a miracle rather than a natural process voices are often heard lights seen or visions witnessed automatic motor phenomena occur and it always seems after the surrender of the personal will as if an extraneous higher power has flooded in and taken possession moreover the sense of renovation safety, cleanness, rightness can be so marvelous and jubilant as well to warrant one's belief in a radically new substantial nature the New England Puritan Joseph Allian writes quote conversion is not the pudding in a patch of holiness but with the true convert holiness is woven into all his powers, principles and practice the sincere Christian is quite a new fabric from the foundation to the top stone he is a new man, a new creature close quote Jonathan Edwards says in the same strain quote those gracious influences which are the effects of the spirit of God are all together supernatural are quite different from anything that unregenerate men experience they are what no improvement or composition of natural qualifications or principles will ever produce because they not only differ from what is natural and from everything that natural men experience in degree and circumstances but also in kind and are of a nature far more excellent from hence it follows that in gracious affections there are also new perceptions and sensations entirely different in their nature and kind from anything experienced by the same saints before they were sanctified the conceptions which the saints have of the loveliness of God and that kind of delight which they experience in it are quite peculiar and entirely different from anything which a natural man can possess or of which from any proper notion close quote and that such a glorious transformation as this out of necessity to be preceded by despair is shown by Edwards in another passage he says quote surely it cannot be unreasonable that before God delivers us from a state of sin and liability to everlasting woe he should give us some considerable sense of the evil from which he delivers us in order that we may know and feel the importance of salvation and be enabled to appreciate the value of what God is pleased to do for us as those who are saved are successively in two extremely different states first in a state of condemnation and then in a state of justification and blessedness and as God in the salvation of men deals with them as rational and intelligent creatures it appears agreeable to this wisdom that those who are saved should be made sensible of their being in those two different states in the first place that they should be made sensible of their state of condemnation and afterwards of their state of deliverance and happiness close quote such quotations express sufficiently well for our service the doctrinal interpretation of these changes whatever part suggestion and imitation may have played in producing them in men and women in excited assemblies they have at any rate been in countless individual instances in original and unborrowed experience were we writing the story of the mind from the purely natural history point of view with no religious interest whatever we should still have to write down to see to sudden and complete conversion as one of his most curious peculiarities what now must we ourselves think of this question is an instantaneous conversion a miracle in which God is present as he is present in no change of heart less strikingly abrupt are there two classes of human beings even among the apparently regenerate of which the one class really partakes of Christ's nature while the other merely seems to do so or on the contrary may the whole phenomenon of regeneration even in the startling instantaneous examples possibly be a strictly natural process divine in its fruits of course but in one case more and in another less so and neither more or less divine in its mere causation and mechanism than any other process high or low of man's interior life before proceeding to answer this question I must ask you to listen to some more psychological remarks at our last lecture I explained the shifting of men's centers of personal energy within them and the lighting up of a new crisis of emotion I explained the phenomena as partly due to explicitly conscious processes of thought and will but as do largely also to the subconscious incubation and maturing of motives deposited in the experiences of life when ripe the results hatch out or burst into flower I have now to speak of the subconscious region in which such processes of flowering may occur in a somewhat less vague way I only regret that my limits of time here force me to be so short the expression field of consciousness has but recently come into vogue in many psychology books until quite lately the unit of mental life which figured most was the single idea supposed to be a definitely outline thing but at present psychologists are tending first to admit that the actual unit is more probably the total mental state the entire wave of consciousness or field of objects present to the thought at any time and second to see that it is impossible to outline this wave this field with any definiteness as our mental fields succeed one another each has its center of interest around which the objects of which we are less and less attentively conscious fade to a margin so faint that its limits are unassignable some fields are narrow fields and some are wide fields usually when we have a wide field of choice for we then see masses of truth together and often get glimpses of relations which we divine rather than see for they shoot beyond the field into still remote regions of objectivity regions which we seem rather to be about to perceive than to perceive actually at other times of drowsiness illness or fatigue our fields may narrow almost to a point and we find ourselves correspondingly oppressed and contracted different individuals present constitutional differences in this matter of width of field your great organizing geniuses are men with habitually vast fields of mental vision in which a whole program of future operations will appear dotted out at once the rays shooting far ahead into definite directions of advance in common people there is this magnificent inclusive view of a topic they stumble along feeling their way as it were from point to point and often stop entirely in certain diseased conditions consciousness is a mere spark without memory of the past or thought of a future and with the present narrowed down to some one simple emotion or sensation of the body the important fact that this field formula commemorates is the indetermination of the margin inattentively realized as is the matter which the margin contains it is nevertheless there and helps both to guide our behavior and to determine the next movement of our attention it lies around us like a magnetic field inside of which our center of energy turns like a compass needle as the present phase of consciousness alters its successor our whole past store of memories floats beyond this margin ready at a touch to come in and the entire mass of residual powers impulses and knowledges that constitute our empirical self stretches continuously beyond it so vaguely drawn are the outlines between what is actual and what is only potential at any moment of our conscious life that it is always hard to say of certain mental elements whether we are conscious of them or not the ordinary psychology admitting fully the difficulty of tracing the marginal outline has nevertheless taken for granted first that all the consciousness the person now has be the same focal or marginal inattentive or attentive is there in the field of the moment all dim and impossible to assign as the ladders outline may be and second that what is absolutely extra marginal is absolutely non existent and cannot be a fact of consciousness at all having reached this point I must now ask you to recall what I said in my last lecture about the subconscious life I said as you may recollect that those who first laid stress upon these phenomena could not know the facts as we now know them the first duty now is to tell you what I meant by such a statement I cannot but think that the most important step forward that has occurred in psychology since I have been a student of that science is the discovery first made in 1886 that in certain subjects at least there is not only the consciousness of the ordinary field with its usual center and margin but an addition there too in the shape of a set of memories thoughts and feelings which are extra marginal and outside of the primary consciousness all together but yet must be classed as conscious facts of some sort able to reveal their presence by unmistakable signs I call this the most important step forward because unlike the other advances which psychology has made this discovery has revealed to us an entirely unsuspected peculiarity in the constitution of human nature no other step forward which psychology has made can proffer any such claim as this in particular this discovery of consciousness existing beyond the field or subliminally as Mr. Meyers terms it casts light on many phenomena of religious biography that is why I have to advert to it now although it is naturally impossible for me in this place to give you any account of this evidence on which the admission of such a consciousness is based you will find it set forth in many recent books Bina's alterations of personality being perhaps as good a one as any to recommend the human material on which the demonstration has been made has so far been rather limited and in part at least eccentric consisting of unusually suggestible hypnotic subjects and of hysteric patients yet the elementary mechanisms of our life are presumably so uniform that what is shown to be true in a marked degree of some persons is probably true in some degree of all and may in a few be true in an extraordinarily high degree the most important consequence of having a strongly developed ultra-marginal life of this sort is that one's ordinary fields of consciousness are liable to incursions from it of which the subject does not guess the source and which therefore take for him the form of unaccountable impulses to act or inhibitions of action of obsessive ideas or even of hallucinations of sight or hearing the impulses may take the direction of automatic speech or writing the meaning of which the subject himself may not understand even while he utters it and generalizing this phenomenon Mr. Myers has given the name of automatism sensory or motor emotional or intellectual to this whole sphere of effects due to uprushes into the ordinary consciousness of energies originating in the subliminal parts of the mind the simplest instance of an automatism is the phenomenon of post-hypnotic suggestion so-called you give to a hypnotized subject adequately susceptible in order to perform some designated act usual or eccentric it makes no difference after he wakes from his hypnotic sleep punctually when the signal comes or the time he lapses upon which you have told him that the act must ensue he performs it but in so doing he has no recollection of your suggestion and he always trumps up the improvised pretext for his behavior if the act be of an eccentric kind it may even be suggested to a subject to have a vision or to hear a voice at a certain interval after waking and when the time comes the vision is seen or the voice heard with no inkling on the subject's part of its source in the wonderful explorations by Binet, Jeanet Brower, Freud, Mason of the subliminal consciousness of patients with hysteria we have revealed to us whole systems of underground life in the shape of memories of a painful sort which lead a parasitic existence buried outside of the primary fields of consciousness and making eruptions there unto with hallucinations, pains convulsions, paralysis of feeling and of motion and the whole procession of symptoms hysteric disease of body and of mind alter or abolish by suggestion these subconscious memories and the patient immediately gets well his symptoms were automatisms in Mr. Meyer's sense of the word these clinical records sound like fairy tales when one first reads them yet it is impossible to doubt their accuracy and the path having been once opened by these first observers similar observations have been made elsewhere they throw, as I said a wholly new light upon our natural constitution and it seems to me that they make a further step inevitable interpreting the unknown after the analogy of the known it seems to me that hereafter, wherever we meet with a phenomenon of automatism be it motor impulses or obsessive idea or unaccountable caprice or delusion or hallucination we are bound, first of all to make search whether it be not an explosion into the fields of ordinary consciousness of ideas elaborated outside of those fields in subliminal regions of the mind we should look therefore for its source in the subject subconscious life in the hypnotic cases we ourselves create the source by our suggestion so we know it directly in the hysteric cases the lost memories which are the source have to be extracted from the patient's subliminal by a number of ingenious methods for an account of which you must consult the books in other pathological cases insane delusions, for example or psychopathic obsessions the source is yet to seek but by analogy it also should be in subliminal regions which improvements in our methods may yet conceivably put on tap there lies the mechanism logically to be assumed that the assumption involves a vast program of work to be done in the way of verification in which the religious experiences of man must play their part footnote the reader will hear please notice that in my exclusive reliance on 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 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 a 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 three were of this order and we shall see other experiences of the kind when we come to the subject of mysticism sadly that of M. Ratisbone possibly that of Colonel Gardiner possibly that of Saint Paul might not be so easily explained in the 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 the case that 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 and footnote and thus I return to our own specific subject of instantaneous conversions you remember the cases of Alanie, Bradley, Brainerd and the graduate of Oxford converted at three in the afternoon similar occurrences abound some with and some without luminous visions all with a sense of astonished happiness and of being wrought on by a higher control if abstracting all together from the question of their value for the future spiritual life of the individual we take them on their psychological side exclusively so many peculiarities in them remind us of what we find outside of conversion that we are tempted to class them along with other automatisms and to suspect that what makes the difference between a sudden and a gradual convert namely the presence of divine miracle in the case of one and something less divine in that of the other but rather a simple psychological peculiarity the fact, namely that in the recipient of the more instantaneous grace we have one of those subjects who are in possession of a large region in which mental work can go on subliminally and from which invasive experiences abruptly upsetting the equilibrium of every consciousness may come I do not see why Methodists need object to such a view pray go back and recollect one of the conclusions to which I sought to lead you in my very first lecture you may remember how I there argued against the notion that the worth of a thing can be decided by its origin our spiritual judgment I said our opinion of the significance of the value of a human event or condition must be decided on empirical grounds exclusively if the fruits for life of the state of conversion are good we ought to idealize and venerate it even though it be a piece of natural psychology if not we ought to make short work with it no matter what supernatural being may have infused it well how is it with these fruits accept the class of preeminent saints of whom the names illumine history and consider only the usual run of saints the shopkeeping church members and ordinary youthful or middle aged recipients of instantaneous conversion whether at revivals or in the spontaneous course of Methodistic growth you will probably agree that no splendor worthy of a holy supernatural creature fulgarates from them but from the mortals who have never experienced that favor were it true that a suddenly converted man as such is, as Edward says of an entirely different kind from a natural man partaking as he does directly of Christ's substance there surely ought to be some exquisite class mark some distinctive radiance attaching even to the lowliest specimen of this genus to which no one could remain insensible and which so far as it went would prove him more excellent than ever the most highly gifted among mere natural men footnote Edward says elsewhere quote close quote and footnote but notoriously there is no such radiance converted men as a class are indistinguishable from natural men some natural men even excel some converted men in their fruits and no one ignorant of doctrinal theology could guess by mere everyday inspection of the accidents of the two groups of persons before him that their substance differed as much as divine differs from human substance end of lecture 10 part 1 lecture 10 part 2 of the varieties of religious experience this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org the varieties of religious experience by William James lecture 10 conversion concluded part 2 the believers in the non-natural character of sudden conversion have had practically to admit that there is no unmistakable class mark distinctive of all true converts the super normal incidents such as voices and divisions and overpowering impressions of the meaning of suddenly presented scripture texts the melting emotions and tumultuous affections connected with the crisis of change may all come by way of nature or worse still be counterfeited by Satan the real witness of the spirit to the second birth is to be found only in the disposition of the genuine child of God the permanently patient heart the love of self eradicated and this it has to be admitted is also found in those who pass this crisis and may even be found outside of Christianity all together throughout Jonathan Edwards admirably rich and delicate description of the supernaturally infused condition in his treatise on religious affections there is not one decisive trait not one mark that unmistakably parts it off from what may possibly be only an exceptionally high degree of natural goodness in fact one could hardly read a clearer argument than this book unwittingly offers in favor of the thesis that no chasm exists between the orders of human excellence but that here as elsewhere nature shows continuous differences and generation and regeneration are matters of degree all which denial of two objective classes of human beings separated by a chasm must not leave us blind to the extraordinary momentousness of the fact of his conversion to the individual himself who gets converted there are higher and lower limits of possibility set to each personal life if a flood but goes above one's head it's absolute elevation becomes a matter of small importance and when we touch our own upper limit and live in our own highest center of energy we may call ourselves saved no matter how much higher someone else's center may be the small man's salvation will always be a great salvation and the greatest of all facts for him and we should remember this when the fruits of our ordinary evangelism look discouraging who knows how much less ideal still the lives of these spiritual grubs and earthworms these crumps and stingences might have been if such for grace as they have received had never touched them at all footnote emerson writes quote 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 quote 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 gentlemanly as these may be and footnote if we roughly arrange human beings in classes each class standing for a grade of spiritual excellence I believe we shall find natural men and converts both sudden and gradual in all the classes the forms which regenerative change effects have then no general spiritual significance but only a psychological significance we have seen how Starbucks laborer statistical studies tend to assimilate conversion to ordinary spiritual growth another American psychologist professor George A. Co. has analyzed the cases of 77 converts or ex-candidates for conversion known to him and the results strikingly confirm the view that sudden conversion is connected with a possession of an active criminal cell examining his subjects with reference to their hypnotic sensibility and to such automatisms as hypnagogic hallucinations odd impulses religious dreams about the time of their conversion etc. he found these relatively much more frequent in the group of converts whose transformation had been striking striking transformation being defined as a change which though not necessarily instantaneous seems to the subject of it to be distinctly different from a process of growth however rapid candidates for conversion at revivals are as you know often disappointed they experienced nothing striking professor Co. had a number of persons of this class among his 77 subjects and they almost all when tested by hypnotism proved to belong to a subclass which he calls spontaneous that is fertile in self suggestions as distinguished from a passive subclass to which most of the subjects of striking transformation belonged his inference is that self suggestion of impossibility had prevented the influence upon these persons of environment which on the more passive subjects had easily brought forth the effects they looked for sharp distinctions are difficult in these regions and professor Co.'s numbers are small but his methods were careful and the results tally with what one might expect and they seem on the whole to justify his practical conclusion which is that if you should expose to a converting influence a subject in whom three factors unite first pronounced emotional sensibility second tendency to automatisms and third suggestibility of the passive type you might then safely predict the result there would be a sudden conversion a transformation of the striking kind does this temperamental origin diminish the significance of the sudden conversion when it has occurred not in the least as professor Co. well says for quote the ultimate test of religious values is nothing psychological nothing definable in terms of how it happens but something ethical definable only in terms of what is attained close quote as we proceed farther in our inquiry we shall see that what is attained is often an altogether new level of spiritual vitality a relatively heroic level in which impossible things have become possible and new energies and endurance are shown the personality is changed the man is born anew whether or not his psychological idiosyncrasies are what give the particular shape to his metamorphosis sanctification is the technical name of this result and ere long examples of it shall be brought before you in this lecture I have still only to add a few remarks on the assurance and peace which fill the hour of change itself one word more though before proceeding to that point lest the final purpose of my explanation of suddenness by subliminal activity be misunderstood I do indeed believe that if the subject have no liability to such subconscious activity or if his conscious fields have a hard rind of a margin that resists incursions from beyond it his conversion must be gradual if it occur and must resemble any simple growth into new habits his possession of a developed subliminal self and of a leaky or pervious margin is thus a conditio sine qua non of the subjects becoming converted in the instantaneous way but if you being orthodox Christians ask me as a psychologist whether the reference of a phenomenon to the subliminal self does not exclude the notion of the direct presence of the deity altogether I have to say frankly that as a psychologist I do not see why it necessarily should the lower manifestations of the subliminal indeed fall within the resources of the personal subject his ordinary sense material inattentively taken in and subconsciously remembered and combined will account for all his usual automatisms but just as our primary wide awake consciousness throws open our senses to the touch of things material so it is logically conceivable that if there be higher spiritual agencies that can directly touch us the psychological condition of their doing so might be our possession of a subconscious region which alone should yield access to them the hubbub of the waking life might close a door which in the dreamy subliminal might remain a jar or open thus that perception of external control which is so essentially featuring conversion might in some cases at any rate be interpreted as the orthodox interpreted forces transcending the finite role might impress him on condition of his being what we may call a subliminal human specimen but in any case the value of these forces would have to be determined by their effects and the mere fact of their transcendency would of itself establish no presumption that they were more divine than diabolical I confess that this is the way in which I should rather see the topic left lying in your minds until I come to a much later lecture when I hope once more to gather these dropped threads together into more definitive conclusions the notion of a subconscious self certainly ought not at this point of our inquiry to be held to exclude all notion of a higher penetration if there be higher powers able to impress us they may get access to us only through the subliminal door let us turn now to the feelings which immediately fill the hour of the conversion experience the first one to be noted is just this sense of higher control it is not always but it is very often present we saw examples of it in Alanie, Bradley, Brainerd and elsewhere the need of such a higher controlling agency is well expressed in the short reference which the eminent French Protestant Adolf Manaud makes to the crisis of his own conversion it was at Naples in his early manhood in the summer of 1827 he says my sadness was without limit and having got entire possession of me it filled my life from the most indifferent external acts to the most secret thoughts and corrupted at their source my feelings, my judgment and my happiness then that I saw that to expect to put a stop to this disorder by my reason and my will which were themselves diseased would be to act like a blind man who should pretend to correct one of his eyes by the aid of the other equally blind one I had then no resource save in some influence from without I remembered the promise of the Holy Ghost and what the positive declarations of the Gospel had never succeeded in bringing me home to me I learned at last from necessity and believed for the first time in my life in this promise in the only sense in which it answered the needs of my soul in that, namely of a real external supernatural action capable of giving me thoughts and taking them away from me and exerting on me by a God as truly master of my heart as he is of the rest of nature announcing then all merit all strength abandoning all my personal resources and acknowledging no other title to his mercy than my own utter misery I went home and threw myself on my knees and prayed as I never yet prayed in my life from this day onwards a new interior life began for me not that my melancholy had disappeared but it had lost its sting hope had entered into my heart and once entered on the path the God of Jesus Christ to whom I then had learned to give myself up little by little did the rest close quote it is needless to remind you once more of the admirable congruity of Protestant theology with the structure of the mind as shown in such experiences in the extreme of melancholy the self that consciously is can do absolutely nothing it is completely bankrupt and without resource and no works it can accomplish will avail redemption from such subjective conditions must be a free gift or nothing and grace through Christ's accomplished sacrifice is such a gift says Luther quote God is the God of the humble the miserable the oppressed and of those that are brought even to nothing and his nature is to give sight to the blind to comfort the broken hearted to justify sinners to save the very desperate and damned now that pernicious and pestilent opinion of man's own righteousness which will not be a sinner unclean, miserable and damnable but righteous and holy suffereth not God to his own natural and proper work therefore God must take this maul in hand the law I mean to be in pieces and bring to nothing this beast with her vain confidence that she may so learn at length by her own misery that she is utterly forlorn and damned but here lieth the difficulty that when a man is terrified and cast down he is still able to raise himself up again and say now I am bruised and afflicted enough now is the time of grace now is the time to hear Christ the foolishness of men's heart is so great that then he rather seeketh to himself more laws to satisfy his conscience if I live sayeth he I will amend my life I will do this I will do that but here accept thou do the quite contrary accept thou send Moses away with his law and in these terrors and this anguish lay hold upon Christ who died for thy sins look for no salvation thy cowl thy shaven crown thy chastity thy obedience thy poverty what these do what shall the law of Moses avail if I wretched and damnable sinner through works or merits could have loved the son of God and so come to him what needed he to deliver himself for me if I, being a wretched and damned sinner could be redeemed by any other price what needed the son of God to be given but because there was no other price therefore he preferred neither sheep ox gold nor silver but even God himself entirely and holy for me even for me I say a miserable wretched sinner now therefore I take comfort and apply this to myself and this manner of applying is the very true force and power of faith for he died not to justify the righteous unrighteous and to make them the children of God close quote that is the more literally lost you are the more literally you are the very being whom Christ's sacrifice has already saved nothing in Catholic theology I imagine has ever spoken to six souls as straight as this message from Luther's personal experience as Protestants are not all six souls and of course reliance on what Luther exalts in calling the dung of one's merits the filthy puddle of one's own righteousness has come to the front again in their religion but the adequacy of his view of Christianity to the deeper parts of our human mental structure is shown by its wildfire contagiousness when it was a new and quickening thing faith that Christ has genuinely done his work is part of what Luther meant by faith which so far is fact in a faith intellectually conceived of but this is only one part of Luther's faith the other part being far more vital this other part is something not intellectual but immediate and intuitive the assurance namely that I this individual I just as I stand without one plea etc. am saved now and forever footnote in some conversations both steps are distinct in this one for example quote whilst I was reading the evangelical treatise I was soon struck by an impression the finished work of Christ I asked myself why does the author use these terms why does he not say morning 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 died for our sins not for ours only old 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 the savior and his love to praise God forever close quote and footnote Professor Leuba is undoubtedly right in contending that the conceptual belief about Christ's work although so often efficacious and antecedent is really accessory and non-essential and that the joyous conviction can also come by far other channels than this conception it is to this joyous conviction itself the assurance that all is well with one with the name of faith par excellence he writes quote when the sense of estrangement fencing man about in a narrowly limited ego breaks down the individual finds himself at one with all creation he lives in the universal life he and man he and nature he and God are one that state of confidence trust union with all things upon the achievement of moral unity is the faith state various dogmatic beliefs suddenly on the advent of the faith state acquire a character of certainty assume a new reality become an object of faith as the ground of assurance here is not rational argumentation is irrelevant but such conviction being a mere causal offshoot of the faith state a gross error to imagine that the chief practical value of the faith state is its power to stamp with the seal of reality certain particular theological conceptions footnote 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 footnote on the contrary its value lies solely in the fact that it is the psychic correlate of a biological growth reducing contending desires to one direction a growth which expresses itself in new effective states and new reactions in larger nobler more Christ like activities the ground of the specific assurance in religious dogmas is then an effective experience the objects of faith may even be preposterous the effective stream will float them along and invest them with unshakable certitude the more startling the effective experience the less explicable it seems the easier it is to make it the carrier of unsubstantiated notions close quote the characteristics of the effective experience to avoid ambiguity should I think be called the state of assurance rather than the faith state can be easily enumerated though it is probably difficult to realize their intensity unless one have been through the experience oneself the central one is the loss of all the worry the sense that all is ultimately well with one the peace, the harmony the willingness to be even though the outer conditions should remain the same the certainty of God's grace of justification, salvation is an objective belief that usually accompanies the change in Christians but this may be entirely lacking and yet the effective peace remain the same you will recollect the case of the Oxford graduate and many might be given where the assurance of personal salvation was only a later result a passion of willingness of acquiescence, of admiration is the glowing center of this state of mind the second feature is the sense of perceiving truths not known before the mysteries of life become lucid as professor Layuba says and often may usually the solution is more or less unutterable in words but these more intellectual phenomena may be postponed until we treat mysticism a third peculiarity of the assurance state is the objective change which the world often appears to undergo an appearance of newness beautifies every object the precise opposite of that other sort of newness that dreadful unreality and strangeness in the appearance of the world which is experienced by melancholy patients which you may recall my relating some examples this sense of clean and beautiful newness within and without is one of the commonest entries in conversion records Jonathan Edwards thus describes it in himself quote after this my sense of devying things gradually increased and became more and more lively and had more of that inward sweetness of everything was altered there seemed to be as it were a calm sweet cast or appearance of divine glory in almost everything God's excellency his wisdom his purity and love seemed to appear in everything in the sun moon and stars in the clouds and blue sky in the grass flowers and trees in the water and all nature which used greatly to fix my mind and scarce anything among all the works of nature was so sweet to me as thunder and lightning formerly nothing had been so terrible to me before I used to be uncommonly terrified with thunder and to be struck with terror when I saw a thunderstorm rising but now on the contrary it rejoices me close quote Billy Bray an excellent little literate English evangelist records his sense of newness thus quote I said to the Lord thou hast said they that ask shall receive they that seek shall find and to them that knock the door shall be opened and I have faith to believe it in an instant the Lord made me so happy that I cannot express what I felt with my whole heart I think this was November 1823 but what day of the month I do not know I remember this that everything looked new to me the people the fields the cattle the trees I was like a new man in a new world I spent the greater part of my time in praising the Lord close quote Starbuck and Lyuba both illustrate this sense of newness by quotations I take the two following from Starbucks manuscript collection one a woman says quote I was taken to a camp meeting mother and religious friends seeking and praying for my conversion my emotional nature was stirred to its depths confessions of depravity and pleading with God for salvation from sin made me oblivious of all surroundings I pled for mercy and had a vivid realization of forgiveness and renewal of my nature when rising from my knees I exclaimed old things have passed away all things have become new it was like entering into another world a new state of existence natural objects were glorified my spiritual vision was so clarified that I saw beauty in every material object in the universe the woods were vocal with heavenly music my soul exalted in the love of God and I wanted everybody to share in my joy close quote the next case is that of a man quote I know not how I got back into the encampment but found myself staggering up to reverend so and so's holiness tent and as it was full of seekers and a terrible noise inside some groaning, some laughing and some shouting and by a large oak ten feet from the tent I fell on my face by a bench and tried to pray and every time I would call on God something like a man's hand would strangle me by choking I don't know whether there were anyone around or near me or not I thought I would surely die if I did help but just as often as I would pray that unseen hand was felt on my throat and my breath squeezed off finally something said venture on the atonement for you will die anyway if you don't so I made one final struggle to call on God for mercy with the same choking and strangling determined to finish the sentence of prayer for mercy if I did strangle and die and the last I remember that time was falling back on the ground with the same unseen hand on my throat I don't know how long I lay there or what was going on none of my folks were present when I came to myself there were a crowd around me praising God the very heavens seemed to open and pour down rays of light and glory but all day and night floods of light and glory seemed to pour through my soul and oh how I was changed and everything became new my horses and hogs and even everybody seemed changed close quote this man's case introduces the feature of automatisms which in suggestible subjects have been so startling in the revival since in Edwards, Wesley's and Whitfield's time these became a regular means of gospel propagation they were at first supposed to be semi-miraculous proofs of power on the part of the Holy Ghost but great divergence of opinion quickly arose concerning them Edwards in his thoughts on the revival of religion in New England has to defend them against their critics long been matter of debate even within the revivalistic denominations they undoubtedly have no essential spiritual significance and although their presence makes his conversion more memorable to the convert it has never been proved that converts who show them are more preserving or fertile in good fruits than those whose change of heart has had less violent accompaniments on the whole including consciousness, convulsions, visions involuntary vocal utterances and suffocation must be simply ascribed to the subject having a large subliminal region involving nervous instability this is often the subject's own view of the matter afterwards one of Starbucks correspondence writes, for instance quote I have been through the experience which is known as conversion the only experience of it is this the subject works his emotions up to the breaking point at the same time resisting their physical manifestations such as quickened pulse, etc and then suddenly lets them have their full sway over his body the relief is something wonderful and the pleasurable effects of the emotions are experienced to the highest degree close quote there is one form of sensory automatism which possibly deserves special notice on account of its frequency I refer to hallucinatory or pseudo hallucinatory luminous phenomena photisms, to use the term of the psychologists Saint Paul's blinding heavenly vision seems to have been a phenomenon of this sort so does Constantine's cross in the sky the last case but one which I quoted mentions the blood of light and glory Henry Aleney mentions a light about whose externality he seems uncertain Colonel Gardiner sees a blazing light President Finney writes quote all at once the glory of God shone upon and round about me in a manner almost marvelous a light perfectly ineffable shown in my soul that almost prostrated me on the ground this light seemed like the brightness of the sun in every direction it was too intense for the eyes I think I knew something then by actual experience of that light that prostrated Paul on the way to Damascus it was surely a light such as I could not have endured long close quote such reports of photisms are indeed far from uncommon here is another from Starbucks collection where the light appeared evidently external quote I had attended a series of revival services for about two weeks off and on had been invited to the altar several times all the same becoming more deeply impressed when finally I decided I must do this or I should be lost realization of conversion was very vivid like a tons weight being lifted from my heart a strange light which seemed to light up the whole room for it was dark a conscious supreme bliss which caused me to repeat glory to God for a long time decided to be God's child for life and to give up my pet ambition wealth and social position my former habits of life hindered my growth somewhat but I set about overcoming these systematically and in one year my whole nature was changed i.e. my ambitions were of a different order close quote here is another one of Starbucks cases involving a luminous element quote I had been clearly converted 23 years before or rather reclaimed my experience in regeneration was then clear and spiritual I had not backslidden but I experienced entire sanctification on the 15th day of March 1893 about 11 o'clock in the morning the particular accompaniments of the experience were entirely unexpected I was quietly sitting at home seeing selections out of Pentecostal hymns suddenly there seemed to be a something sweeping into me and inflating my entire being such a sensation as I had never experienced before when this experience came I seemed to be conducted around a large capacious well-lighted room as I walked with my invisible conductor and looked around a clear thought was coined in my head they are not here they are gone as soon as the thought was definitely formed in my mind though no word was spoken the Holy Spirit impressed me that I was surveying my own soul then for the first time in all my life did I know that I was cleansed from all sin and filled with the fullness of God close quote Leobah quotes the case of a Mr. Peak where the luminous affection reminds one of the chromatic hallucinations produced by the intoxicant cactus buds called mescal by the Mexicans quote when I went in the morning into the fields to work the glory of God appeared in all his visible creation I well remember we reaped oats and how every straw and head of the oats seemed as it were a raid in a kind of rainbow glory or to glow if I may so express it in the glory of God close quote 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 statement quote 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 close quote in a case like this next one from starbucks manuscript collection the lighting up of the darkness is probably also metaphorical quote one Sunday night I resolved that when I got home to the ranch 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 the 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 into 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 et cetera et cetera 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 close quote in the following case also the flash of light is metaphorical quote a prayer meeting had been called for at close of evening service the pastor supposed me impressed by his discourse a mistake he was dull he came and placing his hands upon my shoulder said do you not want to give your heart to God I replied in the affirmative then he said come to the front seat they sang and prayed and talked with me I experienced nothing but unaccountable wretchedness they declared that the reason 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 parent's 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 end footnote the most characteristic of all the elements of the conversion crisis and the last one of which I shall speak is the ecstasy of happiness produced we have already heard several accounts of it but I will add a couple more President Finney's is so vivid that I will give it at length quote all my feelings seem to rise and flow out and the utterance of my heart was I want to pour my whole soul out to God the rising of my soul was so great that I rushed into the back room of the front office to pray there was no fire and no light in the room nevertheless it appeared to me as if it were perfectly light as I went in and shut the door after me it seemed as if I met the Lord Jesus Christ face to face it did not occur to me then nor did it for some time afterwards that it was wholly a mental state on the contrary it seemed to me that I saw him as I would see any other man he said nothing but looked at me in such a manner as to break me right down at his feet I have always since regarded this as a most remarkable state of mind for it seemed to me a reality that he stood before me and I fell down at his feet and poured out my soul to him I wept aloud like a child and made such confessions as I could with my choked utterance it seemed to me that I bathed his feet with my tears and yet I had no distinct impression that I touched him that I recollect I must have continued in the state for a good while but my mind was too much absorbed with the interview to recollect anything that I said but I know as soon as my mind became calm enough to break off from the interview I returned to the front office and found that the fire that I had made of large wood was nearly burned out but as I turned and was about to take a seat by the fire I received a mighty baptism of the Holy Ghost without any expectation of it without ever having the thought in my mind that there was any such thing for me without any recollection that I had ever heard the thing mentioned by any person in the world the Holy Spirit descended upon me in a manner that seemed to go through me body and soul I could feel the impression like a wave of electricity going through and through me indeed it seemed to come in waves and waves of liquid love for I could not express it it seemed like the very breath of God I can recollect distinctly that it seemed to fan me like immense wings no words can express the wonderful love that was shed abroad in my heart I wept aloud with joy and love and I do not know but I should say I literally bellowed out the unutterable gushings of my heart these waves came over me and over me and over me one after the other until I recollect I cried out I shall die if these waves continue to pass over me I said Lord I cannot bear anymore yet I had no fear of death how long I continued in this state with this baptism continuing to roll over me and go through me I do not know I know it was late in the evening when a member of my choir for I was the leader of the choir came into the office to see me he was a member of the church he found me in this state of loud weeping and he said to me Mr. Finney what ails you I could make him no answer for some time then he said are you in pain I gathered myself up as best I could and replied how happy that I cannot live close quote I just now quoted Billy Bray I cannot do better than give his own brief account of his post conversion feelings quote I can't help praising the Lord as I go along the street I lift up one foot and it seems to say glory and I lift up the other and it seems to say amen and so they keep up like that all the time I am walking close quote footnote I add in a note a few more records quote 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 soul 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 quote in an instant there rose up in me such a sense of gods taking care of those who put their trust in him that for an hour the heavens were lucid and I sprang to my feet and began to cry and laugh quote 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 quote 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 quote I experienced joy almost to weeping quote I felt my face must have shown like that of Moses I had a general feeling of buoyancy it was the greatest joy it was ever my lot to experience quote 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 end footnote one word before I close this lecture a question of the transiency or permanence of these abrupt conversions some of you I feel sure knowing that numerous backsliding and relapses take place make of these they're a perceiving mass for interpreting the whole subject and dismiss it with a pitting smile at so much hysterics psychologically as well as religiously however this is shallow this is the point of serious interest which is not so much the duration as the nature and quality of these shiftings of character to higher levels men lapse from every level we need no statistics to tell us that love is for instance well known not to be irrevocable yet constant or inconstant it reveals new flights and reaches of ideality while it lasts relations form its significance to men and women whatever be its duration so with the conversion experience that it should for even a short time show a human being what the high watermark of his spiritual capacity is this is what constitutes its importance an importance which backsliding cannot diminish although persistence might increase it as a matter of fact all the more striking instances of conversion all those for instance which I have quoted have been permanent the case of which there might be most doubt on account of it suggesting so strongly an epileptoid seizure was the case of m ratis bone yet I am informed that ratis bones whole future was shaped by those few minutes he gave up his project of marriage became a priest founded at Jerusalem where he went to dwell a mission of nuns for the conversion of the jews showed no tendency to use for egotistic purposes the notoriety given him by the peculiar circumstances of his conversion which for the rest he could seldom refer to without tears and in short remained an exemplary son of the church until he died late in the 80s if I remember rightly the only statistics I know of the subject of the duration of conversions are those collected for professor starbuck by miss johnston they embrace only a hundred persons evangelical church members more than half being methodists according to the statement of the subjects themselves there had been backsliding of some sort in nearly all the cases 93% of the women 77% of the men discussing the returns more minutely starbuck finds that only 6% are relapses from the religious faith which the conversion confirmed and that the backsliding complained of is in most only a fluctuation in the ardor of sentiment only six of the hundred cases report a change of faith starbuck's conclusion is that effective conversion is to bring with it a changed attitude toward life which is fairly constant and permanent although the feelings fluctuate in other words the persons who have passed through conversion having once taken a stand for the religious life tend to feel themselves identified with it no matter how much the religious enthusiasm declines end of lecture 10