 Lecture 11 of the Varieties of Religious Experience. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Varieties of Religious Experience by W. James. Lecture 11. Saintliness. The last lecture left us in a state of expectancy. What may the practical fruits for life have been of such movingly happy conversions as those we heard of? With this question, the really important part of our task opens. For you remember that we began all this empirical inquiry not merely to open a curious chapter in the natural history of human consciousness, but rather to attain a spiritual judgment as to the total value and positive meaning of all the religious trouble and happiness which we have seen. We must therefore first describe the fruits of the religious life and then we must judge them. This divides our inquiry into two distinct parts. Let us without further preamble proceed to the descriptive task. It ought to be the pleasantest portion of our business in these lectures. Some small pieces of it it is true may be painful or may show human nature in a pathetic light, but it will be mainly pleasant because the best fruits of religious experience are the best things that history has to show. They have always been esteemed so here, if anywhere, is the genuinely strenuous life and to call to mind a succession of such examples as I have lately had to wander through, though it has been only in the reading of them, is to feel encouraged and uplifted and washed in better moral air. The highest flights of charity, devotion, trust, patience, bravery, to which the wings of human nature have spread themselves, have been flown for religious ideals. I can do no better than quote as to this, some remarks which Saint Boeuf in his History of Portrayal makes on the results of conversion or the state of grace. Even from the purely human point of view, Saint Boeuf says, quote, the phenomenon of grace must still appear sufficiently extraordinary, eminent and rare, both in its nature and in its effects, to deserve a closer study. For the soul arrives thereby at a certain fixed and invincible state, a state which is genuinely heroic, and from out of which the greatest deeds which it ever performs are executed. Through all the different forms of communion and all the diversity of the means which help to produce the state, whether it be reached by a jubilee, by a general confession, by a solitary prayer and a fusion, whatever in short to be the place and the occasion, it is easy to recognize that it is fundamentally one state in spirit and fruits. Penetrate a little beneath the diversity of circumstances, and it becomes evident that in Christians of different epochs it is always one and the same modification by which they are affected. There is veritably a single, fundamental and identical spirit of piety and charity, common to those who have received grace. An inner state which before all things is one of love and humility, of infinite confidence in God, and of severity for oneself, accompanied with tenderness for others. The fruits peculiar to this condition of the soul have the same savor in all, under distant suns and indifferent surroundings in St. Teresa of Avila, just as in any Moravian brother of Hernaut. St. Bove has here only the more eminent instances of regeneration in mind, and these are of course the instructive ones for us also to consider. These devotees have often laid their course so differently from other men that, judging them by worldly law, we might be tempted to call them monstrous aberrations from the path of nature. I begin therefore by asking a general psychological question as to what the inner conditions are which may make one human character differ so extremely from another. I reply at once that where the character, as something distinguished from the intellect is concerned, the causes of human diversity lie chiefly in our differing susceptibilities of emotional excitement and in the different impulses and inhibitions which these bring in their train. Let me make this more clear. Generally speaking, our moral and practical attitude at any given time is always a resultant of two sets of forces within us, impulses pushing us one way and obstructions and inhibitions holding us back. Yes, yes, say the impulses. No, no, say the inhibitions. Few people who have not expressly reflected on the matter realize how constantly this factor of inhibition is upon us, how it contains and molds us by its restrictive pressure almost as if we were fluids pent within the cavity of a jar. The influence is so incessant that it becomes subconscious. All of you, for example, sit here with a certain constraint at this moment and entirely without express consciousness of the fact because of the influence of the occasion. If I left alone in the room, each of you would probably involuntarily rearrange himself and make his attitude more free and easy. But proprieties and their inhibitions snap like cobwebs if any great emotional excitement supervenes. I have seen a dandy appear in the street with his face covered with shaving lather because a house across the way was on fire and a woman will run among strangers in her nightgown if it be a question of saving her baby's life or her own. Take a self-indulgent woman's life in general. She will yield to every inhibition set by her disagreeable sensations. Lie late in bed. Live upon tea or bromides. Keep indoors from the cold. Every difficulty finds her obedient to its no. But make a mother of her and what have you? Possessed by maternal excitement, she now confronts wakefulness, weariness, and toil without an instant of hesitation or a word of complaint. The inhibitive power of pain over her is extinguished wherever the baby's interests are at stake. The inconveniences which this creature occasions have become, as James Hinton says, the glowing heart of a great joy and indeed are now the very conditions whereby the joy becomes most deep. This is an example of what you have already heard of as the, quote, expulsive power of a higher affection, close quote. But be the affection high or low, it makes no difference, as long as the excitement it brings be strong enough. In one of Henry Drummond's discourses, he tells of an inundation in India where an eminence with a bungalow upon it remained unsubmerged and became the refuge of a number of wild animals and reptiles in addition to the human beings who were there. At a certain moment, a royal Bengal tiger appeared swimming towards it, reached it, and lay panting like a dog on the ground in the midst of the people, still possessed by such an agony of terror that one of the Englishmen could calmly step up with a rifle and blow out its brains. The tiger's habitual ferocity was temporarily quelled by the emotion of fear which became sovereign and formed a new center for his character. Sometimes no emotional state is sovereign, but many contrary runs are mixed together. In that case, one hears both yeses and noes, and the will is called on then to solve the conflict. Take a soldier, for example, with his dread of cowardice impelling him to advance, his fears impelling him to run, and his propensities to imitation pushing him towards various courses if his comrades offer various examples. His person becomes the seat of a mass of interferences, and he may for a time simply waver because no one emotion prevails. There is a pitch of intensity, though, which, if any emotion reach it, enthrones that one as a lone effective and sweeps its antagonists and all their inhibitions away. The fury of his comrades' charge once entered on will give this pitch of courage to the soldier, the panic of their rout will give this pitch of fear. In these sovereign excitements, things ordinarily impossible grow natural because the inhibitions are annulled. There, no, no, not only is not heard, it does not exist. Obstacles are then like tissue paper hoops to the circus rider. No impediment. The flood is higher than the dam they make. Las zibetan gam ven zihungri zint, cries the grenadier, frantic over his emperor's capture when his wife and babes are suggested, and men, pent into a burning theater, have been known to cut their way through the crowd with knives. Footnote. Love would not be love, says Bourget, unless it could carry one to crime. And so one may say that no passion would be a veritable passion unless it could carry one to crime. In other words, great passions annull the ordinary inhibitions set by conscience. And conversely, of all the criminal human beings, the false, cowardly, sensual, or cruel persons who actually live, there is perhaps not one whose criminal impulse may not be at some moment overpowered by the presence of some other emotion to which his character is also potentially liable, provided that other emotion the only made intense enough. Fear is usually the most available emotion for this result in this particular class of persons. It stands for conscience and may here be classed appropriately as a higher affection. If we are soon to die, or if we believe a day of judgment to be near at hand, how quickly do we put our moral house in order? We do not see how sin can ever more exert temptation over us. Old-fashioned hellfire Christianity well knew how to extract from fear its full equivalent in the way of fruits for repentance and its full conversion value. End footnote. One mode of emotional excitability is exceedingly important in the composition of the energetic character from its peculiarly destructive power over inhibitions. I mean what in its lower form is mere irascibility, susceptibility to wrath, the fighting temper, and what in subtler ways manifests itself as impatience, grimness, earnestness, severity of character. Ernestness means willingness to live with energy, though energy bring pain. The pain may be pain to other people, or pain to oneself. It makes little difference. For when the strenuous mood is on one, the aim is to break something, no matter whose or what. Nothing annihilates an inhibition as irresistibly as anger does it. For, as Moltke says of war, destruction, pure and simple, is its essence. This is what makes it so invaluable an ally of every other passion. The sweetest delights are trampled on with a ferocious pleasure the moment they offer themselves as checks to cause by which our higher indignations are elicited. It costs then nothing to drop friendships, to renounce long-rooted privileges and possessions, to break with social ties. Rather, do we take a stern joy in the astringency and desolation, and what is called weakness of character seems in most cases to consist in the inaptitude of these sacrificial moods, of which one's own inferior self and its pet softnesses must often be the targets and the victims. Footnote. Example, Benjamin Constant was often marveled at as an extraordinary instance of superior intelligence with inferior character. He writes, quote, I am tossed and dragged about by my miserable weakness. Never was anything so ridiculous as my decision. Now marriage, now solitude. Now Germany, now France. Hesitation upon hesitation and all because at bottom I am unable to give up anything. Close quote. He can't get mad at any of his alternatives, and the career of a man be set by such an all-round amiability is hopeless. And footnote. So far I have spoken of temporary alterations produced by shifting excitements in the same person. But the relatively fixed differences of character of different persons are explained in a precisely similar way. In a man with a liability to a special sort of emotion, whole ranges of inhibition habitually vanish, which in other men remain effective, and other sorts of inhibition take their place. When a person has an inborn genius for certain emotions, his life differs strangely from that of ordinary people. For none of their usual deterrents check him. Your mere aspirant to a type of character on the contrary only shows when your natural lover, fighter or reformer with whom the passion is a gift of nature comes along the hopeless inferiority of voluntary to instinctive action. He has deliberately to overcome his inhibitions. The genius with the inborn passion seems not to feel them at all. He is free of all that inner friction and nervous waste. To a Fox, a Jerry Baldy, a General Booth, a John Brown, a Luis Michele, a Bradlow, the obstacles omnipotent over those around them are as if non-existent. Could the rest of us so disregard them, there might be many such heroes, for many have the wish to live for similar ideals, and only the adequate degree of inhibition quenching fury is lacking. Footnote The great thing which the higher excitabilities give is courage, and the addition or subtraction of a certain amount of this quality makes a different man, a different life. Various excitements let the courage loose. Trustful hope will do it. Inspiring example will do it. Love will do it. Wrath will do it. In some people it is natively so high that the mere touch of danger does it, though danger is for most men the great inhibitor of action. Love of adventure becomes in such persons a ruling passion. I believe, says General Skobeleth, that my bravery is simply the passion and at the same time the contempt of danger. The risk of life fills me with an exaggerated rapture. The fewer there are to share it the more I like it. The participation of my body in the event is required to furnish me an adequate excitement. Everything intellectual appears to me to be a reflex, but a meeting of man to man, a duel, a danger into which I can't throw myself head foremost attracts me, moves me, intoxicates me. I am crazy for it. I love it. I adore it. I run after danger as one runs after women. I wish it never to stop. Or it always the same. It would always bring me a new pleasure. When I throw myself into an adventure in which I hope to find it, my heart palpitates with the uncertainty. I could wish at once to have it appear and yet to delay. A sort of painful and delicious shiver shakes me. My entire nature runs to meet the peril with an impetus that my will would in vain try to resist. Close quote. Skobeleth seems to have been a cruel egoist, but the disinterested Garibaldi, if one may judge from his memory, lived in an unflagging emotion of similar danger-seeking excitement. End footnote. The difference between willing and merely wishing, between having ideals that are creative and ideals that are but pinings and regrets, thus depends solely either on the amount of steam pressure chronically drawing the character in the ideal direction or on the amount of ideal excitement transiently acquired. Given a certain amount of love, indignation, generosity, magnanimity, admiration, loyalty, or enthusiasm of self-surrender, the result is always the same. That whole raft of cowardly obstructions which entain persons and dull moods are sovereign impediments to action sinks away at once. Our conventionality, our shyness, laziness, and stinginess, our demands for precedent and permission, for guarantee and surety, our small suspicions, timidities, despairs, where are they now? Severed like cobwebs, broken like bubbles in the sun. Where are the worries now and not, which I still wanted to erase yesterday? I am looking for them in the morning. The flood we are born on rolls them so lightly under that their very contact is unfelt. Set free of them, we float and soar and sing. This auroral openness and uplift gives to all creative ideal levels a bright and caroling quality which is nowhere more marked than where the controlling emotion is religious. The true monk, writes an Italian mystic, takes nothing with him but his lyre. We may now turn from these psychological generalities to those fruits of the religious state which form the special subject of our present lecture. The man who lives in his religious center of personal energy and is actuated by spiritual enthusiasm differs from his previous carnal self in perfectly definite ways. The new ardor which burns in his breast consumes in its glow the lower nose which formerly beset him and keeps him immune against infection from the entire groveling portion of his nature. Magnanimities once impossible are now easy. Poultry conventionalities and mean incentives once tyrannical hold no sway. The stone wall inside of him has fallen. The hardness in his heart has broken down. The rest of us can, I think, imagine this by recalling our state of feeling in these temporary melting moods into which either the trials of real life or the theater or a novel sometimes throw us especially if we weep for it is then as if our tears broke through an inveterate inner dam and let all sorts of ancient pecancies and moral stagnancies drain away leaving us now washed and soft of heart and open to every nobler leading. With most of us the customary hardness quickly returns but not so with saintly persons. Many saints, even the energetic ones as Teresa and Loyola have possessed what the church traditionally reveres as a special grace the so-called gift of tears. In these persons the melting mood seems to have held almost uninterrupted control and as it is with tears and melting moods so it is with other exalted affections. Their reign may come by gradual growth or by a crisis but in either case it may have come to stay. At the end of the last lecture we saw this permanence to be true of the general paramountcy of the higher insight even though in the ebbs of emotional excitement meaner motives might temporarily prevail and backsliding might occur but that lower temptations may remain completely annulled apart from transient emotion and as if by alteration of the man's habitual nature is also proved by documentary evidence in certain cases. Before embarking on the general natural history of the regenerate character let me convince you of this curious fact by one or two examples. The most numerous are those of reformed drunkards. You recollect the case of Mr. Hadley in the last lecture the Jerry Macaulay Water Street mission abounds in similar instances. You also remember the graduate of Oxford converted at three in the afternoon and getting drunk in the hayfield the next day but after that permanently cured of his appetite. Quote From that hour drink has had no terrors for me I never touch it, never want it the same thing occurred with my pipe the desire for it went at once and has never returned so with every known sin the deliverance in each case being permanent and complete I have had no temptations since conversion close quote here is an analogous case from Starbucks manuscript collection quote I went into the Old Adelphi Theater where there was a holiness meeting and I began saying Lord, Lord, I must have this blessing then what was to me an audible voice said are you willing to give up everything to the Lord? and question after question kept coming up to all of which I said yes Lord, yes Lord until this came why do you not accept it now? and I said, I do Lord I felt no particular joy only a trust just then the meeting closed and as I went out on the street I met a gentleman smoking a fine cigar and a cloud of smoke came into my face and I took a long deep breath of it and praised the Lord all my appetite for it was gone then as I walked along the street passing saloons where the fumes of liquor came out I found that all my taste and longing for that accursed stuff was gone glory to God but for ten or eleven long years after that I was in the wilderness with its ups and downs my appetite for liquor never came back close quote the classic case of Colonel Gardiner is that of a man cured of sexual temptation in a single hour to Mr. Spears the Colonel said quote I was effectually cured of all inclination to that sin I was so strongly addicted to that I thought nothing but shooting me through the head would have cured me of it and all desire and inclination to it was removed as entirely as if I had been a suckling child nor did the temptation return to this day close quote Mr. Webster's words on the same subject are these quote one thing I have heard the Colonel frequently say that he was much addicted to impurity before his acquaintance with religion but that so soon as he was enlightened from above he felt the power of the Holy Ghost changing his nature so wonderfully that his sanctification in this respect seemed more remarkable than in any other close quote such rapid abolition of ancient impulses and propensities reminds us so strongly of what has been observed as the result of hypnotic suggestion that it is difficult not to believe that subliminal influences play the decisive part in these abrupt changes of heart just as they do in hypnotism footnote here for example is a case from Starbucks book in which a sensory automatism brought about quickly what prayers and resolves had been unable to affect the subject is a woman she writes quote when I was about 40 I tried to quit smoking but the desire was on me and had to be in its power I cried and prayed and promised God to quit but could not I had smoked for 15 years when I was 53 as I sat by the fire one day smoking a voice came to me I did not hear it with my ears but more as a dream or sort of double think it said Luisa lay down your smoking at once I replied will you take the desire away but it only kept saying Luisa lay down your smoking then I got up laid my pipe on the mantel shelf and never smoked again or had any desire to the desire was gone as though I had never known it or touched tobacco the sight of other smoking and the smell of smoke never gave me the least wish to touch it again close quote end footnote suggestive therapeutics abound in records of cure after a few sittings of inveterate bad habits with which the patient left to ordinary moral and physical influences had struggled in vain both drunkenness and sexual vice have been cured in this way action through the subliminal seeming thus in many individuals to have the prerogative of inducing relatively stable change if the grace of God miraculously operates it probably operates through the subliminal door then but just how anything operates in this region is still unexplained and we shall do well now to say goodbye to the process of transformation altogether leaving it if you like a good deal of a psychological or theological mystery and to turn our attention to the fruits of the religious condition no matter in what way they may have been produced footnote professor star book expresses the radical destruction of old influences physiologically as a cutting off of the connection between higher and lower cerebral centers this condition he says quote in which the association centers connected with the spiritual life are cut off from the lower is often reflected in the way correspondence described their experiences for example temptations from without still assail me but there is nothing within to respond to them the ego here is wholly identified with the higher centers whose quality of feeling is that of withinness another of the respondents says since then although Satan tempts me there is as it were a wall of brass around me so that his darts cannot touch me close quote unquestionably functional exclusions of this sort must occur in the cerebral organ but on the side accessible to introspection their causal condition is nothing but the degree of spiritual excitement getting at last so high and strong as to be sovereign and it must be frankly confessed that we do not know just why or how such sovereignty comes about in one person and not in another we can only give our imagination a certain delusive help by mechanical analogies if we should conceive for example that the human mind with its different possibilities of equilibrium might be like a many-sided solid different surfaces on which it could lie flat we might liken mental revolutions to the spatial revolutions of such a body as it is pried up say by a lever from a position in which it lies on surface A for instance it will linger for a time unstably halfway up and if the lever ceased to urge it it will tumble back or relapse under the continued pull of gravity but if at last it rotate far enough for its center of gravity to pass beyond surface A altogether the body will fall over on surface B say and abide there permanently the poles of gravity towards A have vanished and may now be disregarded the polyhedron has become immune against further attraction from their direction in this figure of speech the lever may correspond to the emotional influences making for a new life and the initial pull of gravity to the ancient drawbacks and inhibitions so long as the emotional influence fails to reach a certain pitch of efficacy the changes it produces are unstable and the man relapses into his original attitude but when a certain intensity is attained by the new emotion a critical point is passed and there then ensues an irreversible revolution equivalent to the production of a new nature and footnote the collective name for the ripe fruits of religion in a character is saintliness footnote I use this word in spite of a certain flavor of sanctimoniousness which sometimes clings to it because no other word suggests as well the exact combination of affections which the text goes on to describe and footnote the saintly character is the character for which spiritual emotions are the habitual center of the personal energy and there is a certain composite photograph of universal saintliness the same in all religions of which the features can easily be traced footnote it will be found says Dr. W. R. Inge quote that men of preeminent saintliness agree very closely in what they tell us they tell us that they have arrived at an unshakable conviction not based on inference but on immediate experience that God is a spirit with whom the human spirit can hold intercourse that in him meet all that they can imagine of goodness, truth and beauty that they can see his footprints everywhere in nature and feel his presence within them as the very life of their life so that in proportion as they come to themselves they come to him they tell us what separates us from him and from happiness is first self seeking in all its forms and secondly sensuality in all its forms that these are the ways of darkness and death which hide from us the face of God while the path of the just is like a shining light which shineth more and more unto the perfect day close quote and footnote they are these one a feeling of being in a wider life than that of the world's selfish little interests and a conviction not merely intellectual but as it were sensible of the existence of an ideal power in Christian saintliness this power is always personified as God but abstract moral ideals civic or patriotic utopias or inner visions of holiness or right they also be felt as the true lords and enlargers of our life in ways which I described in the lecture of the reality of the unseen footnote the enthusiasm of humanity may lead to a life which coalesces in many respects with that of Christian saintliness take the following rules proposed to members of the Union Pois L'Action Morale quote we would make known in our own persons the usefulness of rule of discipline of resignation and renunciation we would teach the necessary perpetuity of suffering and explain the creative part which it plays we would wage war upon false optimism in the base hope of happiness coming to us ready made on the notion of a salvation by knowledge alone or by material civilization alone vain symbol as this is of civilization precarious external arrangement ill fitted to replace the intimate union of consent of souls we would wage war also on bad morals whether in public or in private life on luxury fastidiousness and over refinement on all that tends to increase the painful moral and antisocial multiplication of our wants on all that excites envy and dislike in the soul of the common people and confirms the notion that the chief end of life is freedom to enjoy we would preach by our example the respect of superiors and equals the respect of all men affectionate simplicity in all relations with inferiors and insignificant persons indulgence where our own claims only are concerned but firmness in our demands where they relate to duties towards others or towards the public for the common people are what we help them to become their vices are our vices gazed upon envied and imitated and if they come back with all their weight upon us it is but just we forbid ourselves all seeking after popularity all ambition to appear important we pledge ourselves to abstain from falsehood in all its degrees we promise not to create or encourage illusions as to what is possible by what we say or write we promise to one another active sincerity which strives to see truth clearly and which never fears to declare these we promise deliberate resistance to the tidal waves of fashion to the booms and panics of the public mind and to all the forms of weakness and fear we forbid ourselves the use of sarcasm of serious things we still speak seriously and unsmilingly without banter and without the appearance of banter and even so of all things for there are serious ways of being light of heart we will put ourselves forward always for what we are simply and without false humility as well as without ped entry, affectation, or pride close quote end footnote 2. a sense of the friendly continuity of the ideal power with our own life and a willing self surrender to its control 3. an immense elation and freedom as the outlines of the confining selfhood melt down 4. a shifting of the emotional center towards loving and harmonious affections towards yes yes and away from no where the claims of the non-ego are concerned these fundamental inner conditions have characteristic practical consequences as follows a. asceticism the self surrender may become so passionate as to turn into self-immolation it may then so overrule the ordinary inhibitions of the flesh that the saint finds positive pleasure in sacrifice and asceticism measuring and expressing as they do the degree of his loyalty to the higher power b. strength of soul the sense of enlargement of life may be so uplifting that personal motives and inhibitions commonly omnipotent become too insignificant for notice and new reaches of patience and fortitude open out fears and anxieties go and blissful equanimity takes their place come heaven, come hell it makes no difference now c. purity the shifting of the emotional center brings with it first increase of purity the sensitiveness to spiritual discords is enhanced and the cleansing of existence from brutal and sensual elements becomes imperative occasions of contact with such elements are avoided the saintly life must deepen its spiritual consistency and keep unspotted from the world in some temperaments this need of purity of spirit takes an ascetic turn and weaknesses of the flesh are treated with relentless severity d. charity the shifting of the emotional center brings secondly increase of charity tenderness for fellow creatures the ordinary motives to antipathy which usually set such close bounds to tenderness among human beings are inhibited the saint loves his enemies and treats loathes some beggars as his brothers I now have to give some concrete illustrations of these fruits of the spiritual tree the only difficulty is to choose for they are so abundant since the sense of presence of a higher and friendly power seems to be the fundamental feature in the spiritual life I will begin with that in our narratives of conversion we saw how the world might look shining and transfigured to the convert and, apart from anything acutely religious we all have moments when the universal life seems to wrap us round with friendliness in youth and health in summer in the woods or on the mountains there come days when the weather seems all whispering with peace hours when the goodness and beauty of existence enfold us like a dry warm climate or chime through us as if our inner ears were subtly ringing with the world's security Thoreau writes quote once a few weeks after I came to the woods for an hour I doubted whether the near neighborhood of man was not essential to a serene and healthy life to be alone was somewhat unpleasant but in the midst of a gentle rain while these thoughts prevailed I was suddenly sensible of such sweet and beneficent society and nature and in the very pattering of the drops and in every sight and sound around my house an infinite and unaccountable friendliness all at once like an atmosphere sustaining me has made the fancied advantages of human neighborhood insignificant and I have never thought of them since every little pine needle expanded and swelled with sympathy and befriended me I was so distinctly made aware of the presence of something kindred to me that I thought no place could ever be strange to me again close quote in the Christian consciousness this sense of the enveloping friendliness becomes most personal and definite the compensation writes a German author quote for the loss of that sense of personal independence which man so unwillingly gives up is the disappearance of all fear from one's life the quite indescribable and inexplicable feeling of an inner security which one can only experience but which once it has been experienced one can never forget close quote I find an excellent description of this state of mind in a sermon by Mr. Boise quote it is the experience of myriads of trustful souls that this sense of God's unfailing presence with them in their going out and in their coming in and by night and day is a source of absolute repose and confident calmness it drives away all fear of what may befall them that nearness of God is a constant security against terror and anxiety it is not that they are at all assured of physical safety or deem themselves protected by a love which is denied to others but that they are in a state of mind equally ready to be safe or to meet with injury if injury can befall them they will be content to bear it because the Lord is their keeper and nothing can befall them without his will if it be his will then injury is for them a blessing and no calamity at all thus and thus only is the trustful man protected and shielded from harm and I for one by no means a thick-skinned or hard-nerved man satisfied with this arrangement and do not wish for any other kind of immunity from danger and catastrophe quite as sensitive to pain as the most highly strong organism I yet feel that the worst of it is conquered and the sting taken out of it altogether by the thought that God is our loving and sleepless keeper and that nothing can hurt us without his will more excited expressions of this condition are abundant in religious literature I could easily weary you with their monotony here's an account from Mrs. Jonathan Edwards quote, last night Mrs. Edwards writes was the sweetest night I ever had in my life I never before for so long a time together enjoyed so much of the light rest and sweetness of heaven in my soul but without the least agitation of body during the whole time part of the night I lay awake sometimes asleep and sometimes between sleeping and waking but all night I continued in a constant clear and lively sense of the heavenly sweetness of Christ's excellent love of his nearness to me and of my dearness to him the sweet calmness of soul in an entire rest in him I seemed to myself to perceive a glow of divine love come down from the heart of Christ in heaven into my heart in a constant stream like a stream or pencil of sweet light at the same time my heart and soul all float out in love to Christ so that there seemed to be a constant flowing of heavenly love and I appeared to myself to float or swim in these bright sweet beams like the motes swimming in the beams of the sun or the streams of his light which come in at the window I think that what I felt each minute was worth more than all the outward comfort and pleasure which I had enjoyed in my whole life put together it was pleasure without least sting or any interruption it was a sweetness which my soul was lost in it seemed to be all that my feeble frame could sustain there was but little difference whether I was asleep or awake but if there was any difference the sweetness was greatest while I was asleep footnote compare Madame Guyon quote I practiced to arise at midnight for purposes of devotion it seemed to me that God came at the precise time and woke me from sleep in order that I might enjoy him when I was out of health or greatly fatigued he did not awake me but at such times I felt even in my sleep a singular possession of God he loved me so much that he seemed to pervade my being at a time when I could be only imperfectly conscious of his presence my sleep is sometimes broken a sort of half-sleep but my soul seems to be awake enough to know God when it is hardly capable of knowing anything else close quote end footnote as I awoke early the next morning it seemed to me that I had entirely done with myself I felt that the opinions of the world concerning me were nothing and that I had no more to do with any outward interest of my own than with that of a person whom I never saw that glory of God seemed to swallow up every wish and desire of my heart after retiring to rest and sleeping a little while I awoke and was led to reflect on God's mercy to me in giving me for many years my willingness to die and after that in making me willing to live that I might do and suffer whatever he called me to hear I also thought how God had graciously given me an entire resignation to his will with respect to the kind and manner of death that I should die having been made willing to die on the rack or at the stake and if it were God's will darkness but now it occurred to me I used to think of living no longer than to the ordinary age of man upon this I was led to ask myself whether I was not willing to be kept out of heaven even longer and my whole heart seemed immediately to reply yes, a thousand years and a thousand in horror if it be most for the honor of God the torment of my body was so great awful and overwhelming that none could bear to live in the country where the spectacle was seen and the torment of my mind being vastly greater and it seemed to me that I found a perfect willingness quietness and elecrity of soul in consenting that it should be so if that were most for the glory of God so that there was no hesitation doubt or darkness in my mind the glory of God seemed to overcome me and swallow me up and every conceivable suffering and everything that was terrible to my nature seemed to shrink to nothing before it this resignation continued in its clearness and brightness the rest of the night and all the next day and the night following and on Monday in the forenoon without interruption or abatement the annals of catholic saintship abound in records as ecstatic or more ecstatic than this often the assaults of the divine love it is said of the sister Seraphic de la Martinier quote reduced her almost to the point of death she used tenderly to complain of this to God I cannot support it she used to say bear gently with my weakness or I shall expire under the violence of your love close quote let me pass next to the charity and brotherly love which are a usual fruit of saintliness and have always been reckoned essential theological virtues however limited may have been the kinds of service which the particular theology enjoined brotherly love would follow logically from the assurance of God's friendly presence the notion of our brotherhood as men being an immediate inference from that of God's fatherhood of us all when Christ utters the precepts love your enemies bless them that curse you do good to them that hate you and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you he gives for a reason that ye may be the children of your father which is in heaven for he maketh his son to rise on the evil and on the good and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust one might therefore be tempted to explain both the humility as to oneself and the charity towards others which characterize spiritual excitement as results of the all-leveling character of theistic belief but these affections are certainly not mere derivatives of theism we find them in stoicism in hinduism and in buddhism in the highest possible degree they harmonize with paternal theism beautifully but they harmonize with all reflection whatever upon the dependence of mankind on general causes and we must I think consider them not subordinate but coordinate parts of that great complex excitement in the study of which we are engaged religious rapture moral enthusiasm ontological wonder cosmic emotion are all unifying states of mind in which the sand and grit of the selfhood inclined to disappear and tenderness to rule the best thing is to describe the condition integrally as a characteristic affection to which our nature is liable a region in which we find ourselves at home a sea in which we swim but not to pretend to explain its parts by deriving them too cleverly from one another like love or fear the faith state is a natural psychic complex and carries charity with it by organic consequence jubilation is an expansive affection and all expansive affections are self-forgetful and kindly so long as they endure we find this the case even when they are pathological in origin in his instructive work La Tristesse et la Joie M. George Dumas compares together the melancholy and the joyous phase of circular insanity and shows that while selfishness characterizes the one the other is marked by altruistic impulses no human being so stingy and useless as was Marie in her melancholy period but the moment the happy period begins quote sympathy and kindness become her characteristic sentiments she displays a universal goodwill not only of intention but an act she becomes solicitous of the health of other patients interested desires to procure wool to knit socks for some of them never since she has been under my observation have I heard her in a joyous period utter any but charitable opinions close quote and later Dr. Dumas says of all such joyous conditions that quote unselfish sentiments and tender emotions are the only effective states to be found in them the subject's mind is closed against envy, hatred and vindictiveness and wholly transformed into benevolence indulgence and mercy close quote there is thus an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness and their companionship in the saintly life need in no way occasion surprise along with the happiness this increase of tenderness is often noted in narratives of conversion quote I began to work for others I had more tender feeling for my family and friends quote I spoke at once to a person with whom I had been angry quote I felt for everyone and loved my friends better quote I felt everyone to be my friend these are so many expressions from the records collected by Professor Starbuck quote when says Mrs. Edwards continuing the narrative from which I made quotation a moment ago I arose in the morning of the Sabbath I felt a love to all mankind wholly peculiar in its strength and sweetness far beyond all that I had ever felt before the power of that loved seemed inexpressible I thought if I were surrounded by enemies who were venting their malice and cruelty upon me and tormenting me it would still be impossible that I should cherish any feelings towards them but those of love and pity and ardent desires for their happiness I never before felt so far from a disposition to judge and censure others as I did that morning I realized also in an unusual and very lively manner how great a part of Christianity lies in the performance of our social and relative duties to one another the same joyful sense continued throughout the day a sweet love to God and all mankind close quote whatever be the explanation of the charity it may efface all usual human barriers footnote the barrier between men and animals also we read of Toeanski an eminent Polish patriot and mystic that quote one day one of his friends met him in the rain caressing a big dog which was jumping upon him and covering him horribly with mud on being asked why he permitted the animal thus to dirty his clothes Toeanski replied this dog whom I am now meeting for the first time and a great fellow feeling for me and a great joy in my recognition and acceptance of his greetings where I to drive him off I should wound his feelings and do him a moral injury it would be an offense not only to him but to all the spirits of the other world who are on the same level with him the damage which he does to my coat is as nothing in comparison with the wrong which I should inflict upon him in case I were to remain indifferent to the manifestations of his friendship he added we ought both to enlighten the condition of animals whenever we can and at the same time to facilitate in ourselves that union of the world of all spirits which the sacrifice of Christ has made possible close quote end footnote here for instance an example of Christian non-resistance from Richard Weaver's autobiography Weaver was a collier a semi-professional pugilist in his younger days who became a much beloved evangelist fighting after drinking seems to have been the sin to which he originally felt his flesh most perversely inclined after his first conversion he had a back sliding which consisted in pounding a man who had insulted a girl feeling that having once fallen he might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb he got drunk and went and broke the jaw of another man who had lately challenged him to fight and taunted him with cowardice for refusing as a Christian man I mention these incidents to show how genuine a change of heart is implied in the latter conduct which he describes as follows quote I went down the drift and found the boy crying because a fellow workman was trying to take the wagon from him by force I said to him, Tom you mustn't take that wagon he swore at me and called me a methodist devil I told him that God did not tell me to let him rob me he cursed again and said he would push the wagon over me well, I said see whether the devil and thee are stronger than the Lord and me and the Lord and I proved stronger than the devil and he, he had to get out of the way or the wagon would have gone over him so I gave the wagon to the boy then said Tom I have a good mind to smack thee on the face well, I said if that will do thee any good thou canst do it so he struck me on the face I turned the other cheek to him and said strike again he struck again and again till he had struck me five times I turned my cheek for the sixth stroke but he turned away cursing I shouted after him the Lord forgive thee for I do and the Lord save thee this was on a Saturday and when I went home from the coal pit my wife saw my face was swollen and asked what was the matter with it I said I've been fighting and I've given a man a good thrashing she burst out weeping and said oh Richard, what made you fight then I told her all about it and she thanked the Lord I had not struck back but the Lord had struck and his blows have more effect than man's Monday came and the Lord began to tempt me saying the other men will laugh at thee for allowing Tom to treat thee as he did on Saturday I cried get thee behind me Satan and went on my way to the coal pit Tom was the first man I saw I said good morning but got no reply he went down first when I got down when I came to him he burst into tears and said Richard, will you forgive me for striking you I have forgiven me said I ask God to forgive thee the Lord bless thee I gave him my hand and we went each to his work close quote love your enemies mark you not simply those who happen not to be your friends but your enemies your positive and active enemies either this is a mere oriental hyperbole a bit of verbal extravagance meaning only that we should as far as we can abate our animosities or else it is sincere and literal outside of certain cases of intimate individual relation its seldom has been taken literally yet it makes one ask the question can there in general be a level of emotion so unifying so obliterative of differences between man and man that even enmity may come to be an irrelevant circumstance and fail to inhibit the friendlier interests aroused if positive well wishing could attain so supreme a degree of excitement those who were swayed by it might well seem superhuman beings life would be morally discreet from the life of other men and there is no saying in the absence of positive experience of an authentic kind for there are few active examples in our scriptures and the budistic examples are legendary what the effects might be they might conceivably transform the world footnote as where the future Buddha incarnated as a hare jumps into the fire to cook himself for a meal for a beggar having previously shaken himself three times so that none of the insects in his fur should perish with him and footnote psychologically and in principle the precept love your enemies is not self contradictory it is merely the extreme limit of a kind of magnanimity with which in the shape of pitting tolerance in our scriptures we are fairly familiar yet if radically followed it would involve such a breach with our instinctive springs of action as a whole and with the present world's arrangements that a critical point would practically be passed and we should be born into another kingdom of being religious emotion makes us feel that other kingdom to be close at hand within our reach our instinctive repugnance is proved not only by the showing of love to enemies but by the showing of it to anyone who is personally loathsome in the annals of saintliness we find a curious mixture of motives impelling in this direction asceticism plays its part and along with charity pure and simple we find humility or the desire to disclaim distinction and to grovel on the common level of our God certainly all three principles were at work when Francis of Assisi and Ignatius of Loyola exchanged their garments with those of filthy beggars all three are at work when religious persons consecrate their lives to the care of leprosy or other peculiarly unpleasant diseases the nursing of the sick is a function to which the religious seem strongly drawn to that church traditions set that way but in the annals of this sort of charity we find fantastic excesses of devotion recorded which are only explicable by the frenzy of self-immolation simultaneously aroused Francis of Assisi kisses his lepers Margaret Mary Alacoc Francis Javier Saint John of God and others are said to have cleansed the sores of their patients with their respective tongues and the lives of such saints as Elizabeth of Hungary and Madame de Chantal are full of a sort of reveling in hospital purulence disagreeable to read of and which makes us admire and shudder at the same time End of Lecture 11