What and Where is God? A Human Answer to the Deep Religious Cry of the Modern SoulSwain, Richard La Rue
Religion
What and Where is God? A Human Answer to the Deep Religious Cry of the Modern Soul
Swain, Richard La Rue
Christianity; God (Christianity)
Since I had always been a Christian, it was not conversion that I
needed, but a deeper commitment of myself to the will and work of God.
And as I have already explained, this I did before trying to "get
religion." The moral will is the spiritual spine. If it stands erect in
its duties toward God and men, the whole spiritual life will come into
normal feeling and action. My unconditional submission to the will of
God was normal, beautiful, and necessary. But the experience which came
two days later should be characterized as _a super-normal psychic
state_, _self-induced_. While the psychic state lasted my true religious
feelings coöperated vigorously; but when it subsided, as it was bound to
do, my true religious emotions likewise disappeared. For years, all
references to spirituality were understood by me to mean an exciting,
nervous thrill; such a thrill as I had once felt. This led me to study
the feelings, a few years later, to see if I could determine their
value. I found that I was able to hypnotize a man so that he thought he
saw God; and then I could cause him to fall down in adoration before his
imaginary deity. Or, by taking ether, I could reproduce the glory world
of my own so-called conversion. Feelings alone are not to be trusted,
for the objects which they often create do not exist. On the other hand,
real objects, valid and knowable, produce appropriate feelings when we
are rightly related to them. Never have I been in such a state of pain
or dejection but that I knew that I loved my children if my attention
was called to it. I still demand, therefore, an objective, knowable God
before I can love Him.
While greatly deploring such religious exercises as are calculated to
produce extreme psychic states, yet I bring an indictment against the
average Church of this generation because its religious feelings are
sub-normal. The latter condition is probably as dangerous as the former.
Even our physical temperature must be allowed to run neither too high
nor too low. If in everything but religion we feel warmth and
enthusiasm, we reveal a deplorable religious condition. For if one
intelligently and fully commits himself to the will and service of God,
appropriate feelings will come to him as surely as color comes to
ripening fruit.
When prayer availed me nothing in bringing back the spirit of God--as I
conceived of it--I first questioned my own heart. And when it no longer
condemned me, I then questioned God. As I understood it, to produce a
rapturous feeling was God's part. My part was to believe and obey. If
only the hand of faith could succeed in laying hold of God the spiritual
current would come on with a thrill. A great deal of this sensational
religion still exists. It is to be found in all our great cities as well
as in rural communities.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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