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
“I had been a smoker as well as a drunkard, and I used to love my
tobacco as much as I loved my meat, and I would rather go down
into the mine without my dinner than without my pipe. In the days
of old, the Lord spoke by the mouths of his servants, the
prophets; now he speaks to us by the spirit of his Son. I had not
only the feeling part of religion, but I could hear the small,
still voice within speaking to me. When I took the pipe to smoke,
it would be applied within, ‘It is an idol, a lust; worship the
Lord with clean lips.’ So, I felt it was not right to smoke. The
Lord also sent a woman to convince me. I was one day in a house,
and I took out my pipe to light it at the fire, and Mary Hawke—for
that was the woman’s name—said, ‘Do you not feel it is wrong to
smoke?’ I said that I felt something inside telling me that it was
an idol, a lust, and she said that was the Lord. Then I said,
‘Now, I must give it up, for the Lord is telling me of it inside,
and the woman outside, so the tobacco must go, love it as I may.’
There and then I took the tobacco out of my pocket, and threw it
into the fire, and put the pipe under my foot, ‘ashes to ashes,
dust to dust.’ And I have not smoked since. I found it hard to
break off old habits, but I cried to the Lord for help, and he
gave me strength, for he has said, ‘Call upon me in the day of
trouble, and I will deliver thee.’ The day after I gave up smoking
I had the toothache so bad that I did not know what to do. I
thought this was owing to giving up the pipe, but I said I would
never smoke again, if I lost every tooth in my head. I said,
‘Lord, thou hast told us My yoke is easy and my burden is light,’
and when I said that, all the pain left me. Sometimes the thought
of the pipe would come back to me very strong; but the Lord
strengthened me against the habit, and, bless his name, I have not
smoked since.”
Bray’s biographer writes that after he had given up smoking, he
thought that he would chew a little, but he conquered this dirty
habit, too. “On one occasion,” Bray said, “when at a prayer‐
meeting at Hicks Mill, I heard the Lord say to me, ‘Worship me
with clean lips.’ So, when we got up from our knees, I took the
quid out of my mouth and ‘whipped ’en’ [threw it] under the form.
But, when we got on our knees again, I put another quid into my
mouth. Then the Lord said to me again, ‘Worship me with clean
lips.’ So I took the quid out of my mouth, and whipped ’en under
the form again, and said, ‘Yes, Lord, I will.’ From that time I
gave up chewing as well as smoking, and have been a free man.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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