The Varieties of Religious Experience — William James
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p. 322nor without loving herself. Yet she said, ' By thy Grace I will do it, Lord ! ' But when she would perform her promise, she knew not where to begin.
Having thought on the religious in monasteries, that they forsook all earthly things by being shut up in a cloister, and the love of themselves by subjecting of their wills, she asked leave of her father to enter into a cloister of the barefoot Carmelites, but he would not permit it, saying he would rather see her laid in her grave.
This seemed to her a great cruelty, for she thought to find in the cloister the true Christians she had been seeking, but she found afterwards that he knew the cloisters better than she ; for after he had forbidden her, and told her he would never permit her to be a religious, nor give her any money to enter there, yet she went to Father Laurens, the Director, and offered to serve in the monastery and work hard for her bread, and be content with little, if he would receive her.
At which he smiled and said : Tfcat cannot he. We must have money to build ; we take no maids without money ; you must find the way to get it, else there is no entry here. " This astonished her greatly, and she was thereby undeceived as to the cloisters, resolving to forsake all company and live alone till it should please God to show her what she ought to do and whither to go.
She asked always earnestly, ' When shall I be perfectly thine, O my God ? ' And she thought he still answered her. When thou shalt no longer jwssess anything, and shalt die to thyself. ' And where shall I do that, Lord ? ' He answered her. In the desert.
This made so strong an impression on her soul that she aspired after this ; but being a maid of eighteen years only, she was afraid of unlucky chances, and was never used to travel, and knew no way. She laid aside all these doubts and said, ' Lord, thou wilt guide me how and where it shall please thee. It is for thee that I do it. I will lay aside my habit of a maid, and will take that of a hermit that I may pass unknown.
Having then secretly made ready this habit, while her parents thought to have married her, her father having promised her to a rich French merchant, she prevented the time, and on Easter evening, having cut her hair, put on the habit, and slept a little, she went out of her chamber p. 323about four in the morning, taking nothing but one penny to buy bread for that day. x\nd it being said to her in the going out, Where is thy faith f in a penny ? she threw it away, begging pardon of God for her fault, and saying, ' No, Lord, my faith is not in a penny, but in thee alone.
Thus she went away wholly delivered from the heavy burthen of the cares and good things of this world, and found her soul so satisfied that she no longer wished for anything upon earth, resting entirely upon God, with this only fear lest she should be discovered and be obliged to return home ; for she felt already more content in this poverty than she had done for all her life in all the delights of the world." ^ The penny was a small financial safeguard, but an effective spiritual obstacle.
Not till it was thrown away could the character settle into the new equilibrium completely. Over and above the mystery of self-surrender, there are in the cult of poverty other religious mysteries. There is 1 An Apology for M. Antonia Bourignon, London, 1699, pp. 269, 270, abridged. Another example from Starbuck's MS. collection : — " At a meeting held at six the next morning, I heard a man relate his experience.
He said : The Lord asked him if he would confess Christ among the quarrymen with whom he worked, and he said he would. Then he asked him if he would give up to be used of the Lord the four hundred dollars he had laid up, and he said he would, and thus the Lord saved him. The thought came to me at once that I had never made a real consecration either of myself or of my property to the Lord, but had always tried to serve the Lord in my way.
Now the Lord asked me if I would serve him in his way, and go out alone and penniless if he so ordered. The question was pressed home, and I must decide : To forsake all and have him, or have all and lose him ! I soon decided to take him ; and the blessed assurance came, that he had taken me for his own, and my joy was full. I returned home from the meeting with feelings as simple as a child.
I thought all would be glad to hear of the joy of the Lord that possessed me, and so I began to tell the simple story. But to my great surprise, the pastors (for I attended meetings in three churches) opposed the experience and said it was fanaticism, and one told the members of his church to shun those that professed it, and I soon found that my foes were those of my own household.^"
p. 324the mystery of veracity : " Naked came I into the world," etc., — whoever first said that, possessed this mystery. My own bare entity must fight the battle — shams cannot save me. There is also the mystery of democracy, or sentiment of the equality before God of all his creatures.
This sentiment (which seems in general to have been more widespread in Mohammedan than in Christian lands) tends to nullify man's usual acquisitiveness. Those who have it spurn dignities and honors, privileges and advantages, preferring, as I said in a former lecture, to grovel on the common level before the face of God. It is not exactly the sentiment of humility, though it comes so close to it in practice.
It is humanity, rather, refusing to enjoy anything that others do not share. A profound moralist, writing of Christ's saying, ^ Sell all thou hast and follow me,' proceeds as follows : — " Christ may have meant : If you love mankind absolutely you will as a result not care for any possessions whatever, and this seems a very likely proposition.
But it is one thing to believe that a proposition is probably true ; it is another thing to see it as a fact. If you loved mankind as Christ loved them, you would see his conclusion as a fact. It would be obvious. You would sell your goods, and they would be no loss to you. These truths, while literal to Christ, and to any mind that has Christ's love for mankind, become parables to lesser natures.
There are in every generation people who, beginning innocently, with no predetermined intention of becoming saints, find themselves drawn into the vortex by their interest in helping mankind, and by the understanding that comes from actually doing it. The abandonment of their old mode of life is like dust in the balance. It is done gradually, incidentally, imperceptibly.
Thus the whole question of the abandonment of luxury is no question at all, but a mere incident to another question, namely, the degree to which we abandon ourselves to the remorseless logic of our love for others." ^ * J. J. Chapman, in the Political Nursery, vol. iv. p. 4, April, 1900, abridged.
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