The Varieties of Religious Experience — William James

p. 362When he was seventeen years old Louis joined the Jesuit order/ against his father's passionate entreaties, for v^ /^' he was heir of a princely house ; and when a year later the 4 / father died, he took the loss as a ' particular attention ' to himself on God's part, and wrote letters of stilted good advice, as from a spiritual superior, to his grieving mother.

He soon became so good a monk that if any one asked him the number of his brothers and sisters, he had to reflect and count them over before replying. A Father asked him one day if he were never troubled by the thought of his family, to which, " I never think of them except when praying for them," was his only , answer. Never was he seen to hold in his hand a flower 4 or anything perfumed, that he might take pleasure in ^ . it.

On the contrary, in the hospital, he used to seek K V for whatever was most disgusting, and eagerly snatch the 3 ■% bandas^es of ulcers, etc., from the hands of his comr~~)r-^Danions. He avoided worldly talk, and immediately tried w turn every conversation on to pious subjects, or else he remained silent. He systematically refused to notice his surroundings.

Being ordered one day to bring a book from the rector's seat in the refectory, he had to ask where the rector sat, for in the three months he had eaten bread there, so carefully did he guard his eyes that he had not noticed the place. One day, during recess, having looked by chance on one of his companions, he reproached himself as for a grave sin against modesty.

He cultivated silence, as preserving from sins of the tongue ; and his greatest penance was the limit which his superiors set to his bodily penances. He sought after 1 In his boyish note-book he praises the monastic life for its freedom from sin, and for the imperishable treasures, which it enables us to store up, " of merit in God's eyes which makes of Him our debtor for all Eternity. Loc. cit., p. 62.

p. 353false accusations and unjust reprimands as opportunities of humility ; and sujdIi was his obedience that, when a room-mate, having no more paper, asked him for a sheet, he did not feel free to give it to him without first obtaining the permission of the superior, who, as such, stood in the place of God, and transmitted his orders. I can find no other sorts of fruit than these of Louis's saintship.

He died in 1591, in his twenty-ninth year, and is known in the Church as the patron of all young people. On his festival, the altar in the chapel devoted to him in a certain church in Rome " is embosomed in flowers, arranged with exquisite taste; and a pile of letters may be seen at its foot, written to the Saint by young men and women, and directed to ' Paradiso.

They are supposed to be burnt unread except by San Luigi, who must find singular petitions in these pretty little missives, tied up now with a green ribbon, expressive of hope, now with a red one, emblematic of love," etc' ^ Mademoiselle Mori, a novel quoted in Hare's "Walks in Rome, 1900, i. 55. I cannot resist the temptation to quote from Starbuek's book, p. 388, another case of purification by elimination.

It runs as follows : — " The signs of abnormality which sanctified persons show are of frequent occurrence. They get out of tune with other people ; often they will have . nothing to do with churches, which they regard as worldly ; they become / hypercritical towards others ; they grow careless of their social, political, and financial obligations.

As an instance of this type may be mentioned a woman of sixty-eight of whom the writer made a special study. She had been a member of one of the most active and progressive churches in a busy part of a large city. Her pastor described her as having reached the censorious stage.

She had grown more and more out of sympathy with the church ; her connection with it finally consisted simply in attendance at prayer-meeting, at which her only message was that of reproof and condemnation of the others for living on a low plane. At last she withdrew from fellowship with any church.

The writer found her living alone in a little room on the top story of a cheap boarding-house, quite out of touch with all human relations, but apparently happy in the enjoyment of her

p. 354Our final judgment of the worth of such a life as this will depend largely on our conception of God, and of the y^ sort of conduct he is best pleased with in his creatures. ^ The CathoHcism of the sixteenth centmy paid little heed to social righteousness ; and to leave the world to the devil whilst saving one's own soul was then accounted no discreditable scheme.

To-day, rightly or wrongly, helpfulness in general human affairs is, in consequence of one of those secular mutations in moral sentiment of which I spoke, deemed an essential element of worth in character ; and to be of some public or private use is also reckoned as a species of divine service.

Other early Jesuits, especially the missionaries among them, the Xaviers, Brebeufs, Jogues, were objective minds, and fought in their way for the world's welfare; so their lives to-day inspire us. But when the intellect, as in this ' Louis, is originally no larger than a pin's head, and cherishes ideas of God of corresponding smallness, the result, notwithstanding the heroism put forth, is on the whole repulsive.

Purity, we see in the object-lesson, is not the one thing needful ; and it is better that a life should contract many a dirt-mark, than forfeit usefulness in its efforts to remain unspotted. own spiritual blessings. Her time was occupied in writing booklets on sanctiflcation — page after page of dreamy rhapsody.

She proved to be one of a small group of persons who claim that entire salvation involves three steps instead of two ; not only must there be conversion and sanctiflcation, but a third, which they call ' crucifixion ' or ' perfect redemption,' and which seems to bear the same relation to sanctiflcation that this bears to conversion. She related how the Spirit had said to her, ' Stop going to church. Stop going to holiness meetings.

Go to your own room and I will teach you. She professes to care nothing for colleges, or preachers, or churches, but only cares to listen to what God says to her. Her description of her experience seemed entirely consistent ; she is happy and contented, and her life is entirely satisfactory to herself.

While listening to her own story, one was tempted to forget that it was from the life of a person who could not live by it in conjunction with her fellows."