the easier it is to make it the carrier of unsubstantiated notions.”(133) The characteristics of the affective experience which, to avoid ambiguity, should, I think, be called the state of assurance rather than the faith‐ state, can be easily enumerated, though it is probably difficult to realize their intensity, unless one have been through the experience one’s self. The central one is the loss of all the worry, the sense that all is ultimately well with one, the peace, the harmony, the _willingness to be_, even though the outer conditions should remain the same. The certainty of God’s “grace,” of “justification,” “salvation,” is an objective belief that usually accompanies the change in Christians; but this may be entirely lacking and yet the affective peace remain the same—you will recollect the case of the Oxford graduate: and many might be given where the assurance of personal salvation was only a later result. A passion of willingness, of acquiescence, of admiration, is the glowing centre of this state of mind. The second feature is the sense of perceiving truths not known before. The mysteries of life become lucid, as Professor Leuba says; and often, nay usually, the solution is more or less unutterable in words. But these more intellectual phenomena may be postponed until we treat of mysticism. A third peculiarity of the assurance state is the objective change which the world often appears to undergo. “An appearance of newness beautifies every object,” the precise opposite of that other sort of newness, that dreadful unreality and strangeness in the appearance of the world, which is experienced by melancholy patients, and of which you may recall my relating some examples.(134) This sense of clean and beautiful newness within and without is one of the commonest entries in conversion records. Jonathan Edwards thus describes it in himself:— “After this my sense of divine things gradually increased, and became more and more lively, and had more of that inward sweetness. The appearance of everything was altered; there seemed to be, as it were, a calm, sweet cast, or appearance of divine glory, in almost everything. God’s excellency, his wisdom, his purity and love, seemed to appear in everything; in the sun, moon, and stars; in the clouds and blue sky; in the grass, flowers, and trees; in the water and all nature; which used greatly to fix my mind. And scarce anything, among all the works of nature, was so sweet to me as thunder and lightning; formerly nothing had been so terrible to me. Before, I used to be uncommonly terrified with thunder, and to be struck with terror when I saw a thunderstorm rising; but now, on the contrary, it rejoices me.”(135) Billy Bray, an excellent little illiterate English evangelist, records his sense of newness thus:—