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
“Some of my friends,” she writes, “wept bitterly at the hearing of
it, but such was my state of acquiescence and resignation that it
failed to draw any tears from me.... There appeared to be in me
then, as I find it to be in me now, such an entire loss of what
regards myself, that any of my own interests gave me little pain
or pleasure; ever wanting to will or wish for myself only the very
thing which God does.” In another place she writes: “We all of us
came near perishing in a river which we found it necessary to
pass. The carriage sank in the quicksand. Others who were with us
threw themselves out in excessive fright. But I found my thoughts
so much taken up with God that I had no distinct sense of danger.
It is true that the thought of being drowned passed across my
mind, but it cost no other sensation or reflection in me than
this—that I felt quite contented and willing it were so, if it
were my heavenly Father’s choice.” Sailing from Nice to Genoa, a
storm keeps her eleven days at sea. “As the irritated waves dashed
round us,” she writes, “I could not help experiencing a certain
degree of satisfaction in my mind. I pleased myself with thinking
that those mutinous billows, under the command of Him who does all
things rightly, might probably furnish me with a watery grave.
Perhaps I carried the point too far, in the pleasure which I took
in thus seeing myself beaten and bandied by the swelling waters.
Those who were with me took notice of my intrepidity.”(170)
The contempt of danger which religious enthusiasm produces may be even
more buoyant still. I take an example from that charming recent
autobiography, “With Christ at Sea,” by Frank Bullen. A couple of days
after he went through the conversion on shipboard of which he there gives
an account,—
“It was blowing stiffly,” he writes, “and we were carrying a press
of canvas to get north out of the bad weather. Shortly after four
bells we hauled down the flying‐jib, and I sprang out astride the
boom to furl it. I was sitting astride the boom when suddenly it
gave way with me. The sail slipped through my fingers, and I fell
backwards, hanging head downwards over the seething tumult of
shining foam under the ship’s bows, suspended by one foot. But I
felt only high exultation in my certainty of eternal life.
Although death was divided from me by a hair’s breadth, and I was
acutely conscious of the fact, it gave me no sensation but joy. I
suppose I could have hung there no longer than five seconds, but
in that time I lived a whole age of delight. But my body asserted
itself, and with a desperate gymnastic effort I regained the boom.
How I furled the sail I don’t know, but I sang at the utmost pitch
of my voice praises to God that went pealing out over the dark
waste of waters.”(171)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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