The Varieties of Religious Experience — William James

p. 215often again they speak as if the higher actively drove the lower out. This is undoubtedly true in a great many instances, as we shall presently see. But often there seems little doubt that both conditions — subconscious ripening of the one affection and exhaustion of the other — must simultaneously have conspired, in order to produce the result. T. W.

B., a convert of Nettleton's, being brought to an acute paroxysm of conviction of sin, ate nothing all day, locked himself in his room in the evening in complete despair, crying aloud, "How long, O Lord, how long? "After repeating this and similar language," he says, "several times, / seemed to sink away into a state of insensibility. When I came to myself again I was on my knees, praying not for myself but for others.

I felt submission to the will of God, willing that he should do with me as should seem good in his sight. My concern seemed all lost in concern for others." ^ Our great American revivalist Finney writes : " I said to myself : ' What is this ? I must have grieved the Holy Ghost entirely away. I have lost all my conviction. I have not a particle of concern about my soul ; and it must be that the Spirit has left me. ' Why !

' thought I, ' I never was so far from being concerned about my own salvation in my life.' . . . I tried to recall my convictions, to get back again the load of sin under which I had been laboring. I tried in vain to make myself anxious.

I was so quiet and peaceful that I tried to feel concerned about that, lest it should be the result of my having grieved the Spirit away." ^ But beyond all question there are persons in whom, quite independently of any exhaustion in the Subject's capacity for feeHng, or even in the absence of any acute experiences, are " really the same thing. Self -surrender sees the change in terms of the old self ; determination sees it in terms of the new.

Op. cit., p. 160. ^ A. A. BoNAR : Nettleton and his Labors, Edinburgh, 1854, p. 261. 2 Charles G. Finney : Memoirs written by Himself, 1876, pp. 17, 18.

p. 216previous feeling, the higher condition, having reached the due degree of energy, bursts through all barriers and sweeps in like a sudden flood. These are the most striking and memorable cases, the cases of instantaneous conversion to which the conception of divine grace has been most peculiarly attached. I have given one of them at length — the case of Mr. Bradley. But I had better reserve the other cases and my comments on the rest of the subject for the following lecture.

LECTURE X CONVERSION— Cowc^MfZec? IN this lecture we have to finish the subject of Conversion, considering at first those striking instantaneous instances of which Saint Paul's is the most eminent, and in which, often amid tremendous emotional excitement or perturbation of the senses, a complete division is established in the twinkling of an eye between the old life and the new.

Conversion of this type is an important phase of religious experience, owing to the part which it has played in Protestant theology, and it behooves us to study it conscientiously on that account. I think I had better cite two or three of these cases before proceeding to a more generalized account.

One must know concrete instances first; for, as Professor Agassiz used to say, one can see no farther into a generalization than just so far as one's previous acquaintance with particulars enables one to take it in. I will go back, then, to the case of our friend Henry Alline, and quote his report of the 26th of March, 1775, on which his poor divided mind became unified for good.

" As I was about sunset wandering in the fields lamenting my miserable lost and undone condition, and almost ready to sink under my burden, I thought I was in such a miserable case as never any man was before. I returned to the house, and when I got to the door, just as I was stepping off the threshold, the following impressions came into my mind like a powerful but small still voice. You have been seeking, pray-