The Varieties of Religious Experience — William James

p. 286There is something pathetic and fatalistic about this, but the power of such a tone as a protection against outward shocks is manifest. Pascal is another Frenchman of pessimistic natural temperament.

He expresses still more amply the temper of self -surrendering submissiveness : — " Deliver me, Lord," he writes in his prayers, " from the sadness at my proper suffering which self-love might give, but put into me a sadness like your own. Let my sufferings appease your choler. Make them an occasion for my conversion and salvation.

I ask you neither for health nor for sickness, for life nor for death ; but that you may dispose of my health and my sickness, my life and my death, for your glory, for my salvation, and for the use of the Church and of your saints, of whom I would by your grace be one. You alone know what is expedient for me ; you are the sovereign master ; do with me according to your will. Give to me, or take away from me, only conform my will to yours.

I know but one thing. Lord, that it is good to follow you, and bad to offend you. Apart from that, I know not what is good or bad in anything. I know not which is most profitable to me, health or sickness, wealth or poverty, nor anything else in the world. That discernment is beyond the power of men or angels, and is hidden among the secrets of your Providence, which I adore, but do not seek to fathom.

1 When we reach more optimistic temperaments, the resignation grows less passive. Examples are sown so broadcast throughout history that I might well pass on without citation. As it is, I snatch at the first that occurs to my mind. Madame Guyon, a frail creature physically, was yet of a happy native disposition. She went through many perils with admirable serenity of soul.

After being sent to prison for heresy, — " Some of my friends," she writes, " wept bitterly at the hearing of it, but such was my state of acquiescence and resig- 1 B. Pascal : Prilres pour les Maladies, §§ xiii., xiv., abridged.

p. 287nation that it failed to draw any tears from me. . . . There appeared to be in me then, as I find it to be in me now, such an entire loss of what regards myself, that any of my own interests gave me little pain or pleasure ; ever wanting to will or wish for myself only the very thing which God does. In another place she writes : " We all of us came near perishing in a river which we found it necessary to pass.

The carriage sank in the quicksand. Others who were with us threw themselves out in excessive fright. But I found my thoughts so much taken up with God that I had no distinct sense of danger.

It is true that the thought of being drowned passed across my mind, but it cost no other sensation or reflection in me than this — that I felt quite contented and willing it were so, if it were my heavenly Father's choice," Sailing from Nice to Genoa, a storm keeps her eleven days at sea. " As the irritated waves dashed round us," she writes, " I could not help experiencing a certain degree of satisfaction in my mind.

I pleased myself with thinking that those mutinous billows, under the command of Him who does all things rightly, might probably furnish me with a watery grave. Perhaps 1 carried the point too far, in the pleasure which I took in thus seeing myself beaten and bandied by the swelling waters. Those who were with me took notice of my intrepidity." ^ The contempt of danger which religious enthusiasm produces may be even more buoyant still.

I take an example from that charming recent autobiography, " With Christ at Sea," by Frank BuUen. A couple of days after he went through the conversion on shipboard of which he there gives an account, — " It was blowing stiffly," he writes, " and we were carrying a press of canvas to get north out of the bad weather.

Shortly after four bells we hauled down the flying-jib, and I sprang out astride the boom to furl it, I was sitting astride the boom when suddenly it gave way with me. The sail slipped through my fingers, and I fell backwards, hanging head downwards 1 From Thomas C. Upham's Life and Religious Opinions and Experiences of Madame de la Mothe Guyon, New York, 1877, ii. 48, i. 141, 413, abridged.

p. 288over the seething tumult of shining foam under the ship's bows, suspended by one foot. But I felt only high exultation in my certainty of eternal life. Although death was divided from me by a hair's breadth, and I was acutely conscious of the fact, it gave me no sensation but joy. I suppose I could have hung there no longer than five seconds, but in that time I lived a whole age of delight.

But my body asserted itself, and with a desperate gymnastic effort I regained the boom. How I furled the sail I don't know, but I sang at the utmost pitch of my voice praises to God that went pealing out over the dark waste of waters." ^ The annals o£ martyrdom are of course the signal field of triumph for religious imperturbability.

Let me cite as an example the statement of a humble sufferer, persecuted as a Huguenot under Louis XIV. : — " They shut all the doors," Blanche Gamond writes, " and I saw six women, each with a bunch of willow rods as thick as the hand could hold, and a yard long. He gave me the order, * Undress yourself,' which I did. He said, ' You are leaving on your shift ; you must take it off.

They had so little patience that they took it off themselves, and I was naked from the waist up. They brought a cord with which they tied me to a beam in the kitchen. They drew the cord tight with all their strength and asked me, ' Does it hurt you ? ' and then they discharged their fury upon me, exclaiming as they struck me, ' Pray now to your God. It was the Roulette woman who held this language.

But at this moment I received the greatest consolation that I can ever receive in my life, since I had the , honor of being whipped for the name of Christ, and in addition / of being crowned with his mercy and his consolations. Why can I not write down the inconceivable influences, consolations, and peace which I felt interiorly ?

To understand them one must have passed by the same trial ; they were so great that I was ravished, for there where afflictions abound grace is given superabundantly. In vain the women cried, ' We must double our blows ; she does not feel them, for she neither speaks nor 1 Op. cit., London, 1901, p. 130.