The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human NatureJames, William
ReligionComparative
The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature
James, William
Conversion; Experience (Religion); Philosophy and religion; Psychology, Religious; Religion
“Between the period of leaving Oxford and my conversion I never
darkened the door of my father’s church, although I lived with him
for eight years, making what money I wanted by journalism, and
spending it in high carousal with any one who would sit with me
and drink it away. So I lived, sometimes drunk for a week
together, and then a terrible repentance, and would not touch a
drop for a whole month.
“In all this period, that is, up to thirty‐three years of age, I
never had a desire to reform on religious grounds. But all my
pangs were due to some terrible remorse I used to feel after a
heavy carousal, the remorse taking the shape of regret after my
folly in wasting my life in such a way—a man of superior talents
and education. This terrible remorse turned me gray in one night,
and whenever it came upon me I was perceptibly grayer the next
morning. What I suffered in this way is beyond the expression of
words. It was hell‐fire in all its most dreadful tortures. Often
did I vow that if I got over ‘this time’ I would reform. Alas, in
about three days I fully recovered, and was as happy as ever. So
it went on for years, but, with a physique like a rhinoceros, I
always recovered, and as long as I let drink alone, no man was as
capable of enjoying life as I was.
“I was converted in my own bedroom in my father’s rectory house at
precisely three o’clock in the afternoon of a hot July day (July
13, 1886). I was in perfect health, having been off from the drink
for nearly a month. I was in no way troubled about my soul. In
fact, God was not in my thoughts that day. A young lady friend
sent me a copy of Professor Drummond’s Natural Law in the
Spiritual World, asking me my opinion of it as a literary work
only. Being proud of my critical talents and wishing to enhance
myself in my new friend’s esteem, I took the book to my bedroom
for quiet, intending to give it a thorough study, and then write
her what I thought of it. It was here that God met me face to
face, and I shall never forget the meeting. ‘He that hath the Son
hath life eternal, he that hath not the Son hath not life.’ I had
read this scores of times before, but this made all the
difference. I was now in God’s presence and my attention was
absolutely ‘soldered’ on to this verse, and I was not allowed to
proceed with the book till I had fairly considered what these
words really involved. Only then was I allowed to proceed, feeling
all the while that there was another being in my bedroom, though
not seen by me. The stillness was very marvelous, and I felt
supremely happy. It was most unquestionably shown me, in one
second of time, that I had never touched the Eternal: and that if
I died then, I must inevitably be lost. I was undone. I knew it as
well as I now know I am saved. The Spirit of God showed it me in
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