The Varieties of Religious Experience — William James

p. 212only positive consciousness he has tells him that all is not well, and the better way you offer sounds simply as if you proposed to him to assert cold-blooded falsehoods. * The will to believe ' cannot be stretched as far as that.

We can make ourselves more faithful to a belief of which we have the rudiments, but we cannot create a belief out of whole cloth when our perception actively assures us of its opposite. The better mind proposed to us comes in that case in the form of a pure negation of the only mind we have, and we cannot actively will a pure negation.

There are only two ways in which it is possible to get rid of anger, worry, fear, despair, or other undesirable affections. One is that an opposite affection should overpoweringly break over us, and the other is by getting so exhausted with the struggle that we have to stop, — so we drop down, give up, and doii't care any longer. Our emotional brain-centres strike work, and we la2)se into a temporary apathy.

Now there is documentary proof that this state of temporary exhaustion not infrequently forms part of the conversion crisis. So long as the egoistic worry of the sick soul guards the door, the expansive confidence of the soul of faith gains no presence. But let the former faint away, even but for a moment, and the latter can profit by the opportunity, and, having once acquired possession, may retain it.

Carlyle's Teufelsdrockh passes from the everlasting No to the everlasting Yes through a ' Centre of Indifference. Let me give you a good illustration of this feature in the conversion process.

That genuine saint, David Brainerd, describes his own crisis in the following words : — " One morning, while I was walking in a solitary place as usual, I at once saw that all my contrivances and projects to effect or procure deliverance and salvation for myself were utterly in 2p. 213vain ; I was brought quite to a stand, as finding rayseK totally lost. I saw that it was forever impossible for me to do anything towards helping or delivering myself, that I had made all the pleas I ever could have made to all eternity ; and that all my pleas were vain, for I saw that self-interest had led me to pray, and that I had never once prayed from any respect to the glory of God.

I saw that there was no necessary connection between my prayers and the bestowment of divine mercy ; that they laid not the least obligation upon God to bestow his grace upon me ; and that there was no more virtue or goodness in them than there would be in my paddling with my hand in the water.

I saw that I had been heaping up my devotions before God, fasting, praying, etc., pretending, and indeed really thinking sometimes that I was aiming at the glory of God ; whereas I never once truly intended it, but only my own happiness. I saw that as I had never done anything for God, I had no claim on anything from him but perdition, on account of my hypocrisy and mockery.

When I saw evidently that I had regard to nothing but self-interest, then my duties appeared a vile mockery and a continual course of lies, for the whole was nothing but self-worship, and an horrid abuse of God. " I continued, as I remember, in this state of mind, from Friday morning till the Sabbath evening following (July 12, 1739), when I was walking again in the same solitary place.

Here, in a mournf id melancholy state / was attempting to -pray ; hut found no heart to engage in that or any other duty ; my former concern^ exercise^ and religious affections were now gone. I thought that the Sinrit of God had quite left me ; hut still was not distressed ; yet disconsolate^ as if there was nothing in heaven or earth could make me hajjjjy.

Having been thus endeavoring to pray — though, as I thought, very stupid and senseless — for near half an hour; then, as I was walking in a thick grove, unspeakable glory seemed to open to the aj)prehension of my soul. I do not mean any external brightness, nor any imagination of a body of light, but it was a new inward apprehension or view that I had of God, such as I never had before, nor anything which had the least resemblance to it. I had no particular apprehension of any one person in 3p. 214the Trinity, either the Father, the Son, or the Holy Ghost ; but it a^3eared to be Divine glory. My soul rejoiced with joy unspeakable, to see such a God, such a glorious Divine Being; and I was inwardly pleased and satisfied that he should be God over ai^ for ever and ever.

My soul was so captivated and delighted with the excellency of God that I was even swallowed up in him ; at least to that degree that I had no thought about my own salvation, and scarce reflected that there was such a creature ks myself.

I continued in this state of inward joy, peace, and astonishing, till near dark without any sensible abatement ; and then began to think and examine what I had seen ; and felt sweetly composed in my mind all the evening following. I felt myself in a new world, and everything about me appeared with a different aspect from what it was wont to do.

At this time, the way of salvation opened to me with such infinite wisdom, suitableness, and excellency, that I wondered I should ever think of any other way of salvation ; was amazed that I had not dropped my own contrivances, and complied with this lovely, blessed, and excellent way before. If I could have been saved by my own duties or any other way that I had formerly contrived, my whole soul would now have refused it.

T wondered that all the world did not see and comply with this way of salvation, entirely by the righteousness of Christ. 1 I have italicized the passage which records the exhaustion of the anxious emotion hitherto habitual.

In a large proportion, perhaps the majority, of reports, the writers speak as if the exhaustion of the lower and the entrance of the higher emotion were simultaneous,^ yet 1 Edward's and Dwight's Life of Brainerd, New Haven, 1822, pp. 45- 47, abridged.

2 Describing the whole phenomenon as a change of equilibrium, we might say that the movement of new psychic energies towards the personal centre and the recession of old ones towards the margin (or the rising of some objects above, and the sinking of others below the conscious threshold) were only two ways of describing an indivisible event.

Doubtless this is often absolutely true, and Starbuck is right when he says that ' self-surrender ' and ' new determination,' though seeming at first sight to be such different