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Nine
years later, in 1829, Mr. Bradley heard of a revival of religion that had
begun in his neighborhood. "Many
of the young converts," he says, "would come to me when in meeting
and ask me if I had religion, and my reply generally was, I hope I have.
This did not appear to satisfy them; they said they KNEW THEY had it.
I requested them to pray for me, thinking with myself, that if I had
not got religion now, after so long a time professing to be a Christian,
that it was time I had, and hoped their prayers would be answered in my
behalf.
"One
Sabbath, I went to hear the Methodist at the Academy. He spoke of the
ushering in of the day of general judgment; and he set it forth in such a
solemn and terrible manner as I never heard before.
The scene of that day appeared to be taking place, and so awakened
were all the powers of my mind that, like Felix, I trembled involuntarily on
the bench where I was sitting, though I felt nothing at heart.
The next day evening I went to hear him again.
He took his text from Revelation:
'And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God.'
And he represented the terrors of that day in such a manner that it
appeared as if it would melt the heart of stone.
When he finished his discourse, an old gentleman turned to me and
said 'This is what I call preaching.' I
thought the same, but my feelings were still unmoved by what he said, and I
did not enjoy religion, but I believe he did.
"I
will now relate my experience of the power of the Holy Spirit which took
place on the same night. Had
any person told me previous to
this that I could have experienced the power of the Holy Spirit in the
manner which I did, I could not have believed it, and should have thought
the person deluded that told me so. I
went directly home after the meeting, and when I got home I wondered what
made me feel so stupid. I
retired to rest soon after I got home, and felt indifferent to the things of
religion until I began to be exercised by the Holy Spirit, which began in
about five minutes after, in the following manner:--
"At
first, I began to feel my heart beat very quick all on a sudden, which made
me at first think that perhaps something is going to ail me, though I was
not alarmed, for I felt no pain. My
heart increased in its beating, which soon convinced me that it was the Holy
Spirit from the effect it had on me. I
began to feel exceedingly happy and humble, and such a sense of unworthiness
as I never felt before. I could
not very well help speaking out, which I did, and said, Lord, I do not
deserve this happiness, or words to that effect, while there was a stream
(resembling air in feeling) came into my mouth and heart in a more sensible
manner than that of drinking anything, which continued, as near as I could
judge, five minutes or more, which appeared to be the cause of such a
palpitation of my heart. It
took complete possession of my soul, and I am certain that I desired the
Lord, while in the midst of it, not to give me any more happiness, for it
seemed as if I could not contain what I had got.
My heart seemed as if it would burst, but it did not stop until I
felt as if I was unutterably full of the love and grace of God.
In the mean time while thus exercised, a thought arose in my mind,
what can it mean? and all at
once, as if to answer it, my memory became exceedingly clear, and it
appeared to me just as if the New Testament was placed open before me,
eighth chapter of Romans, and as light as if some candle lighted was held
for me to read the 26th and 27th verses of that chapter, and I read these
words: 'The Spirit helpeth our
infirmities with groanings which cannot be uttered.'
And all the time that my heart was a-beating, it made me groan like a
person in distress, which was not very easy to stop, though I was in no pain
at all, and my brother being in bed in another room came and opened the
door, and asked me if I had got the toothache.
I told him no, and that he might get to sleep. I tried to stop.
I felt unwilling to go to sleep myself, I was so happy, fearing I
should lose it-- thinking within myself
'My willing soul would stay
In such a frame as this.'
And
while I lay reflecting, after my heart stopped beating, feeling as if my
soul was full of the Holy Spirit, I thought that perhaps there might be
angels hovering round my bed. I
felt just as if I wanted to converse with them, and finally I spoke, saying
'O ye affectionate angels! how is it that ye can take so much interest in
our welfare, and we take so little interest in our own.'
After this, with difficulty I got to sleep; and when I awoke in the
morning my first thoughts were: What
has become of my happiness? and,
feeling a degree of it in my heart, I asked for more, which was given to me
as quick as thought. I then got
up to dress myself, and found to my surprise that I could but just stand.
It appeared to me as if it was a little heaven upon earth.
My soul felt as completely raised above the fears of death as of
going to sleep; and like a bird in a cage, I had a desire, if it was the
will of God, to get released from my body and to dwell with Christ, though
willing to live to do good to others, and to warn sinners to repent.
I went downstairs feeling as solemn as if I had lost all my friends,
and thinking with myself, that I would not let my parents know it until I
had first looked into the Testament. I
went directly to the shelf and looked into it, at the eighth of Romans, and
every verse seemed to almost speak and to confirm it to be truly the Word of
God, and as if my feelings corresponded with the meaning of the word.
I then told my parents of it, and told them that I thought that they
must see that when I spoke, that it was not my own voice, for it appeared so
to me. My speech seemed
entirely under the control of the Spirit within me; I do not mean that the
words which I spoke were not my own, for they were.
I thought that I was influenced similar to the Apostles on the day of
Pentecost (with the exception of having power to give it to others, and
doing what they did). After
breakfast I went round to converse with my neighbors on religion, which I
could not have been hired to
have done before this, and at their request I prayed with them, though I had
never prayed in public before.
"I
now feel as if I had discharged my duty by telling the truth, and hope by
the blessing of God, it may do some good to all who shall read it.
He has fulfilled his promise in sending the Holy Spirit down into our
hearts, or mine at least, and I now defy all the Deists and Atheists in the
world to shake my faith in Christ."
So
much for Mr. Bradley and his conversion, of the effect of which upon his
later life we gain no information. Now
for a minuter survey of the constituent elements of the conversion process.
If
you open the chapter on Association, of any treatise on Psychology, you will
read that a man's ideas, aims, and objects form diverse internal groups and
systems, relatively independent of one another.
Each 'aim' which he follows awakens a certain specific kind of
interested excitement, and gathers a certain group of ideas together in
subordination to it as its associates; and if the aims and excitements are
distinct in kind, their groups of ideas may have little in common.
When one group is present and engrosses the interest, all the ideas
connected with other groups may be excluded from the mental field.
The President of the United States when, with paddle, gun, and
fishing-rod, he goes camping in the wilderness for a vacation, changes his
system of ideas from top to bottom. The
presidential anxieties have lapsed into the background entirely; the
official habits are replaced by the habits of a son of nature, and those who
knew the man only as the strenuous magistrate would not "know him for
the same person" if they saw him as the camper.
If
now he should never go back, and never again suffer political interests to
gain dominion over him, he would be for practical intents and purposes a
permanently transformed being. Our
ordinary alterations of character, as we pass from one of our aims to
another, are not commonly called transformations, because each of them is so
rapidly succeeded by another in the reverse direction; but whenever one aim
grows so stable as to expel definitively its previous rivals from the
individual's life, we tend to speak of the phenomenon, and perhaps to wonder
at it, as a "transformation."
These
alternations are the completest of the ways in which a self may be divided.
A less complete way is the simultaneous coexistence of two or more
different groups of aims, of which one practically holds the right of way
and instigates activity, whilst the others are only pious wishes, and never
practically come to anything. Saint
Augustine's aspirations to a purer life, in our last lecture, were for a
while an example. Another would
be the President in his full pride of office, wondering whether it were not
all vanity, and whether the life of a wood-chopper were not the wholesomer
destiny. Such fleeting aspirations are mere velleitates, whimsies.
They exist on the remoter outskirts of the mind, and the real self of
the man, the centre of his energies, is occupied with an entirely different
system. As life goes on, there
is a constant change of our interests, and a consequent change of place in
our systems of ideas, from more central to more peripheral, and from more
peripheral to more central parts of consciousness.
I remember, for instance, that one evening when I was a youth, my
father read aloud from a Boston newspaper that part of Lord Gifford's will
which founded these four lectureships.
At that time I did not think of being a teacher of philosophy, and
what I listened to was as remote from my own life as if it related to the
planet Mars. Yet here I am,
with the Gifford system part and parcel of my very self, and all my
energies, for the time being, devoted to successfully identifying myself
with it. My soul stands now
planted in what once was for it a practically unreal object, and speaks from
it as from its proper habitat and centre.
When
I say "Soul," you need not take me in the ontological sense unless
you prefer to; for although ontological language is instinctive in such
matters, yet Buddhists or Humians can perfectly well describe the facts in
the phenomenal terms which are their favorites.
For them the soul is only a succession of fields of consciousness:
yet there is found in each field a part, or sub-field, which figures
as focal and contains the excitement, and from which, as from a centre, the
aim seems to be taken. Talking
of this part, we involuntarily apply words of perspective to distinguish it
from the rest, words like "here," "this,"
"now," "mine," or "me"; and we ascribe to the
other parts the positions "there," "then,"
"that," "his" or "thine," "it,"
"not me." But a
"here" can change to a "there," and a "there"
become a "here," and what was "mine" and what was
"not mine" change their places.
What
brings such changes about is the way in which emotional excitement alters.
Things hot and vital to us to-day are cold to-morrow.
It is as if seen from the hot parts of the field that the other parts
appear to us, and from these hot parts personal desire and volition make
their sallies. They are in
short the centres of our dynamic energy, whereas the cold parts leave us
indifferent and passive in proportion to their coldness.
Whether
such language be rigorously exact is for the present of no importance.
It is exact enough, if you recognize from your own experience the
facts which I seek to designate by it.
Now
there may be great oscillation in the emotional interest, and the hot places
may shift before one almost as rapidly as the sparks that run through
burnt-up paper. Then we have
the wavering and divided self we heard so much of in the previous lecture.
Or the focus of excitement and heat, the point of view from which the
aim is taken, may come to lie permanently within a certain system; and then,
if the change be a religious one, we call it a CONVERSION, especially if it
be by crisis, or sudden.
Let
us hereafter, in speaking of the hot place in a man's consciousness, the
group of ideas to which he devotes himself, and from which he works, call it
THE HABITUAL CENTRE OF HIS PERSONAL ENERGY.
It makes a great difference to a man whether one set of his ideas, or
another, be the centre of his energy; and it makes a great difference, as
regards any set of ideas which he may possess, whether they become central
or remain peripheral in him. To
say that a man is "converted" means, in these terms, that
religious ideas, previously peripheral in his consciousness, now take a
central place, and that religious aims form the habitual centre of his
energy.
Now
if you ask of psychology just HOW the excitement shifts in a man's mental
system, and WHY aims that were peripheral become at a certain moment
central, psychology has to reply that although she can give a general
description of what happens, she is unable in a given case to account
accurately for all the single forces at work.
Neither an outside observer nor the Subject who undergoes the process
can explain fully how particular experiences are able to change one's centre
of energy so decisively, or why they so often have to bide their hour to do
so. We have a thought, or we
perform an act, repeatedly, but on a certain day the real meaning of the
thought peals through us for the first time, or the act has suddenly turned
into a moral impossibility. All
we know is that there are dead feelings, dead ideas, and cold beliefs, and
there are hot and live ones; and when one grows hot and alive within us,
everything has to re-crystallize about it.
We may say that the heat and liveliness mean only the "motor
efficacy," long deferred but now operative, of the idea; but such talk
itself is only circumlocution, for whence the sudden motor efficacy? And our explanations then get so vague and general that one
realizes all the more the intense individuality of the whole phenomenon.
In
the end we fall back on the hackneyed symbolism of a mechanical equilibrium.
A mind is a system of ideas, each with the excitement it arouses, and
with tendencies impulsive and inhibitive, which mutually check or reinforce
one another. The collection of ideas alters by subtraction or by addition
in the course of experience, and the tendencies alter as the organism gets
more aged. A mental system may
be undermined or weakened by this interstitial alteration just as a building
is, and yet for a time keep upright by dead habit.
But a new perception, a sudden emotional shock, or an occasion which
lays bare the organic alteration, will make the whole fabric fall together;
and then the centre of gravity sinks into an attitude more stable, for the
new ideas that reach the centre in the rearrangement seem now to be locked
there, and the new structure remains permanent.
Formed
associations of ideas and habits are usually factors of retardation in such
changes of equilibrium. New
information, however acquired, plays an accelerating part in the changes;
and the slow mutation of our instincts and propensities, under the
"unimaginable touch of time" has an enormous influence.
Moreover, all these influences may work subconsciously or half
unconsciously.[99] And when you get a Subject in whom the subconscious
life--of which I must speak more fully soon--is largely developed, and in
whom motives habitually ripen in silence, you get a case of which you can
never give a full account, and in which, both to the Subject and the
onlookers, there may appear an element of marvel. Emotional occasions, especially violent ones, are extremely
potent in precipitating mental rearrangements.
The sudden and explosive ways in which love, jealousy, guilt, fear,
remorse, or anger can seize upon one are known to everybody.[100]
Hope, happiness, security, resolve, emotions characteristic of
conversion, can be equally explosive. And
emotions that come in this explosive way seldom leave things as they found
them.
[99]
Jouffroy is an example: "Down
this slope it was that my intelligence had glided, and little by little it
had got far from its first faith. But
this melancholy revolution had not taken place in the broad daylight of my
consciousness; too many scruples, too many guides and sacred affections had
made it dreadful to me, so that I was far from avowing to myself the
progress it had made. It had
gone on in silence, by an involuntary elaboration of which I was not the
accomplice; and although I had in reality long ceased to be a Christian,
yet, in the innocence of my intention, I should have shuddered to suspect
it, and thought it calumny had I been accused of such a falling away."
Then follows Jouffroy's account of his counter-conversion, quoted
above on p. 173.
[100]
One hardly needs examples; but for love, see p. 176, note, for fear, p. 161
; for remorse, see Othello after the murder; for anger see Lear after
Cordelia's first speech to him; for resolve, see p. 175 (J. Foster case).
Here is a pathological case in which GUILT was the feeling that
suddenly exploded: "One
night I was seized on entering bed with a rigor, such as Swedenborg
describes as coming over him with a sense of holiness, but over me with a
sense of GUILT. During that whole night I lay under the influence of the
rigor, and from its inception I felt that I was under the curse of God.
I have never done one act of duty in my life--sins against God and
man beginning as far as my memory goes back--a wildcat in human shape."
In
his recent work on the Psychology of Religion, Professor Starbuck of
California has shown by a statistical inquiry how closely parallel in its
manifestations the ordinary "conversion" which occurs in young
people brought up in evangelical circles is to that growth into a larger
spiritual life which is a normal phase of adolescence in every class of
human beings. The age is the
same, falling usually between fourteen and seventeen.
The symptoms are the same,--sense of incompleteness and imperfection;
brooding, depression, morbid introspection, and sense of sin; anxiety about
the hereafter; distress over doubts, and the like.
And the result is the same--a happy relief and objectivity, as the
confidence in self gets greater through the adjustment of the faculties to
the wider outlook. In
spontaneous religious awakening, apart from revivalistic examples, and in
the ordinary storm and stress and moulting-time of adolescence, we also may
meet with mystical experiences, astonishing the subjects by their
suddenness, just as in revivalistic conversion.
The analogy, in fact, is complete; and Starbuck's conclusion as to
these ordinary youthful conversions would seem to be the only sound one:
Conversion is in its essence a normal adolescent phenomenon,
incidental to the passage from the child's small universe to the wider
intellectual and spiritual life of maturity.
"Theology,"
says Dr. Starbuck, "takes the adolescent tendencies and builds upon
them; it sees that the essential thing in adolescent growth is bringing the
person out of childhood into the new life of maturity and personal insight.
It accordingly brings those means to bear which will intensify the
normal tendencies. It shortens
up the period of duration of storm and stress."
The conversion phenomena of "conviction of sin" last, by
this investigator's statistics, about one fifth as long as the periods of
adolescent storm and stress phenomena of which he also got statistics, but
they are very much more intense. Bodily accompaniments, loss of sleep and appetite, for
example, are much more frequent in them.
"The essential distinction appears to be that conversion
intensifies but shortens the period by bringing the person to a definite
crisis."[101]
[101]
E. D. Starbuck: The Psychology
of Religion, pp. 224, 262.
The
conversions which Dr. Starbuck here has in mind are of course mainly those
of very commonplace persons, kept true to a pre-appointed type by
instruction, appeal, and example. The particular form which they affect is
the result of suggestion and imitation.[102] If they went through their
growth-crisis in other faiths and other countries, although the essence of
the change would be the same (since it is one in the main so inevitable),
its accidents would be different. In Catholic lands, for example, and in our
own Episcopalian sects, no such anxiety and conviction of sin is usual as in
sects that encourage revivals. The
sacraments being more relied on in these more strictly ecclesiastical
bodies, the individual's personal acceptance of salvation needs less to be
accentuated and led up to.
[102]
No one understands this better than Jonathan Edwards understood it already.
Conversion narratives of the more commonplace sort must always be
taken with the allowances which he suggests:
"A
rule received and established by common consent has a very great, though to
many persons an insensible influence in forming their notions of the process
of their own experience. I know
very well how they proceed as to this matter, for I have had frequent
opportunities of observing their conduct.
Very often their experience at first appears like a confused chaos,
but then those parts are selected which bear the nearest resemblance to such
particular steps as are insisted on; and these are dwelt upon in their
thoughts, and spoken of from time to time, till they grow more and more
conspicuous in their view, and other parts which are neglected grow more and
more obscure. Thus what they have experienced is insensibly strained, so as
to bring it to an exact conformity to the scheme already established in
their minds. And it becomes
natural also for ministers, who have to deal with those who insist upon
distinctness and clearness of method, to do so too."
Treatise on Religious Affections.
But
every imitative phenomenon must once have had its original, and I propose
that for the future we keep as close as may be to the more first-hand and
original forms of experience. These
are more likely to be found in sporadic adult cases.
Professor
Leuba, in a valuable article on the psychology of conversion,[103]
subordinates the theological aspect of the religious life almost entirely to
its moral aspect. The religious
sense he defines as "the feeling of unwholeness, of moral imperfection,
of sin, to use the technical word, accompanied by the yearning after the
peace of unity." "The
word 'religion,'" he says, "is getting more and more to signify
the conglomerate of desires and emotions springing from the sense of sin and
its release"; and he gives a large number of examples, in which the sin
ranges from drunkenness to spiritual pride, to show that the sense of it may
beset one and crave relief as urgently as does the anguish of the sickened
flesh or any form of physical misery.
[103]
Studies in the Psychology of Religious Phenomena, American Journal of
Psychology, vii. 309 (1896).
Undoubtedly
this conception covers an immense number of cases. A good one to use as an example is that of Mr. S. H. Hadley,
who after his conversion became an active and useful rescuer of drunkards in
New York. His experience runs
as follows:--
"One
Tuesday evening I sat in a saloon in Harlem, a homeless, friendless, dying
drunkard. I had pawned or sold
everything that would bring a drink. I
could not sleep unless I was dead drunk.
I had not eaten for days, and for four nights preceding I had
suffered with delirium tremens, or the horrors, from midnight till morning.
I had often said, 'I will never be a tramp.
I will never be cornered, for when that time comes, if ever it comes,
I will find a home in the bottom of the river.'
But the Lord so ordered it that when that time did come I was not
able to walk one quarter of the way to the river.
As I sat there thinking, I seemed to feel some great and mighty
presence. I did not know then
what it was. I did learn
afterwards that it was Jesus, the sinner's friend.
I walked up to the bar and pounded it with my fist till I made the
glasses rattle. Those who stood
by drinking looked on with scornful curiosity.
I said I would never take another drink, if I died on the street, and
really I felt as though that would happen before morning.
Something said, 'If you want to keep this promise, go and have
yourself locked up.' I went to
the nearest station-house and had myself locked up.
"I
was placed in a narrow cell, and it seemed as though all the demons that
could find room came in that place with me.
This was not all the company I had, either. No, praise the Lord: that
dear Spirit that came to me in the saloon was present, and said, Pray.
I did pray, and though I did not feel any great help, I kept on
praying. As soon as I was able
to leave my cell I was taken to the police court and remanded back to the
cell. I was finally released,
and found my way to my brother's house, where every care was given me.
While lying in bed the admonishing Spirit never left me, and when I
arose the following Sabbath morning I felt that day would decide my fate,
and toward evening it came into my head to go to Jerry M'Auley's Mission.
I went. The house was
packed, and with great difficulty I made my way to the space near the
platform. There I saw the
apostle to the drunkard and the outcast--that man of God, Jerry M'Auley.
He rose, and amid deep silence told his experience.
There was a sincerity about this man that carried conviction with it,
and I found myself saying, 'I wonder if God can save me?'
I listened to the testimony of twenty-five or thirty persons, every
one of whom had been saved from rum, and I made up my mind that I would be
saved or die right there. When
the invitation was given, I knelt down with a crowd of drunkards.
Jerry made the first prayer. Then
Mrs. M'Auley prayed fervently for us. Oh,
what a conflict was going on for my poor soul!
A blessed whisper said, 'Come'; the devil said, 'Be careful.'
I halted but a moment, and then, with a breaking heart, I said, 'Dear
Jesus, can you help me?' Never
with mortal tongue can I describe that moment.
Although up to that moment my soul had been filled with indescribable
gloom, I felt the glorious brightness of the noonday sun shine into my
heart. I felt I was a free man.
Oh, the precious feeling of safety, of freedom, of resting on Jesus!
I felt that Christ with all his brightness and power had come into my life;
that, indeed, old things had passed away and all things had become new.
"From
that moment till now I have never wanted a drink of whiskey, and I have
never seen money enough to make me take one.
I promised God that night that if he would take away the appetite for
strong drink, I would work for him all my life. He has done his part, and I have been trying to do
mine."[104]
[104]
I have abridged Mr. Hadley's account. For
other conversions of drunkards, see his pamphlet, Rescue Mission Work,
published at the Old Jerry M'Auley Water Street Mission, New York City.
A striking collection of cases also appears in the appendix to
Professor Leuba's article.
<200>
Dr. Leuba rightly remarks that there is little doctrinal theology in such an
experience, which starts with the absolute need of a higher helper, and ends
with the sense that he has helped us. He
gives other cases of drunkards' conversions which are purely ethical,
containing, as recorded, no theological beliefs whatever.
John B. Gough's case, for instance, is practically, says Dr. Leuba,
the conversion of an atheist--neither God nor Jesus being mentioned.[105]
But in spite of the importance of this type of regeneration, with little or
no intellectual readjustment, this writer surely makes it too exclusive.
It corresponds to the subjectively centered form of morbid
melancholy, of which Bunyan and Alline were examples.
But we saw in our seventh lecture that there are objective forms of
melancholy also, in which the lack of rational meaning of the universe, and
of life anyhow, is the burden that weighs upon one--you remember Tolstoy's
case.[106] So there are distinct elements in conversion, and their relations
to individual lives deserve to be discriminated.[107]
[105]
A restaurant waiter served provisionally as Gough's 'Saviour.'
General Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, considers that the
first vital step in saving outcasts consists in making them feel that some
decent human being cares enough for them to take an interest in the question
whether they are to rise or sink.
[106]
The crisis of apathetic melancholy--no use in life--into which J. S. Mill
records that he fell, from which he emerged by the reading of Marmontel's
Memoirs (Heaven save the mark!) and Wordsworth's poetry, is another
intellectual and general metaphysical case. See Mill's Autobiography, New
York, 1873, pp. 141, 148.
[107]
Starbuck, in addition to "escape from sin," discriminates
"spiritual illumination" as a distinct type of conversion
experience. Psychology of Religion, p. 85.
Some
persons, for instance, never are, and possibly never under any circumstances
could be, converted. Religious
ideas cannot become the centre of their spiritual energy. They may be excellent persons, servants of God in practical
ways, but they are not children of his kingdom.
They are either incapable of imagining the invisible; or else, in the
language of devotion, they are life-long subjects of "barrenness"
and "dryness." Such
inaptitude for religious faith may in some cases be intellectual in its
origin. Their religious
faculties may be checked in their natural tendency to expand, by beliefs
about the world that are inhibitive, the pessimistic and materialistic
beliefs, for example, within which so many good souls, who in former times
would have freely indulged their religious propensities, find themselves
nowadays, as it were, frozen; or the agnostic vetoes upon faith as something
weak and shameful, under which so many of us today lie cowering, afraid to
use our instincts. In many
persons such inhibitions are never overcome.
To the end of their days they refuse to believe, their personal
energy never gets to its religious centre, and the latter remains inactive
in perpetuity.
In
other persons the trouble is profounder. There are men anaesthetic on the religious side, deficient in
that category of sensibility. Just
as a bloodless organism can never, in spite of all its goodwill, attain to
the reckless "animal spirits" enjoyed by those of sanguine
temperament; so the nature which is spiritually barren may admire and envy
faith in others, but can never compass the enthusiasm and peace which those
who are temperamentally qualified for faith enjoy.
All this may, however, turn out eventually to have been a matter of
temporary inhibition. Even late
in life some thaw, some release may take place, some bolt be shot back in
the barrenest breast, and the man's hard heart may soften and break into
religious feeling. Such cases
more than any others suggest the idea that sudden conversion is by miracle.
So long as they exist, we must not imagine ourselves to deal with
irretrievably fixed classes. Now
there are two forms of mental occurrence in human beings, which lead to a
striking difference in the conversion process, a difference to which
Professor Starbuck has called attention.
You know how it is when you try to recollect a forgotten name.
Usually you help the recall by working for it, by mentally running
over the places, persons, and things with which the word was connected. But
sometimes this effort fails: you
feel then as if the harder you tried the less hope there would be, as though
the name were JAMMED, and pressure in its direction only kept it all the
more from rising. And then the opposite expedient often succeeds.
Give up the effort entirely; think of something altogether different,
and in half an hour the lost name comes sauntering into your mind, as
Emerson says, as carelessly as if it had never been invited.
Some hidden process was started in you by the effort, which went on
after the effort ceased, and made the result come as if it came
spontaneously. A certain music
teacher, says Dr. Starbuck, says to her pupils after the thing to be done
has been clearly pointed out, and unsuccessfully attempted:
"Stop trying and it will do itself!"[108]
[108]
Psychology of Religion, p. 117.
There
is thus a conscious and voluntary way and an involuntary and unconscious way
in which mental results may get accomplished; and we find both ways
exemplified in the history of conversion, giving us two types, which
Starbuck calls the volitional type and the type by self-surrender
respectively.
In
the volitional type the regenerative change is usually gradual, and consists
in the building up, piece by piece, of a new set of moral and spiritual
habits. But there are always
critical points here at which the movement forward seems much more rapid. This psychological fact is abundantly illustrated by Dr.
Starbuck. Our education in any
practical accomplishment proceeds apparently by jerks and starts just as the
growth of our physical bodies does.
"An
athlete . . . sometimes awakens suddenly to an understanding of the fine
points of the game and to a real enjoyment of it, just as the convert
awakens to an appreciation of religion. If he keeps on engaging in the
sport, there may come a day when all at once the game plays itself through
him--when he loses himself in some great contest.
In the same way, a musician may suddenly reach a point at which
pleasure in the technique of the art entirely falls away, and in some moment
of inspiration he becomes the instrument through which music flows. The
writer has chanced to hear two different married persons, both of whose
wedded lives had been beautiful from the beginning, relate that not until a
year or more after marriage did they awake to the full blessedness of
married life. So it is with the
religious experience of these persons we are studying."[109]
[109]
Psychology of Religion, p. 385. Compare,
also, pp. 137-144 and 262.
We
shall erelong hear still more remarkable illustrations of subconsciously
maturing processes eventuating in results of which we suddenly grow
conscious. Sir William Hamilton
and Professor Laycock of Edinburgh were among the first to call attention to
this class of effects; but Dr. Carpenter first, unless I am mistaken,
introduced the term "unconscious cerebration," which has since
then been a popular phrase of explanation.
The facts are now known to us far more extensively than he could know
them, and the adjective "unconscious," being for many of them
almost certainly a misnomer, is better replaced by the vaguer term
"subconscious" or "subliminal."
Of
the volitional type of conversion it would be easy to give examples,[110]
but they are as a rule less interesting than
those of the self-surrender type, in which the subconscious effects
are more abundant and often startling.
I will therefore hurry to the latter, the more so because the
difference between the two types is after all not radical.
Even in the most voluntarily built-up sort of regeneration there are
passages of partial self-surrender interposed; and in the great majority of
all cases, when the will had done its uttermost towards bringing one close
to the complete unification aspired after, it seems that the very last step
must be left to other forces and performed without the help of its activity.
In other words, self-surrender becomes then indispensable.
"The personal will," says Dr. Starbuck, "must be given
up. In many cases relief
persistently refuses to come until the person ceases to resist, or to make
an effort in the direction he desires to go."
[110]
For instance, C. G. Finney italicizes the volitional element:
"Just at this point the whole question of Gospel salvation
opened to my mind in a manner most marvelous to me at the time.
I think I then saw, as clearly as I ever have in my life, the reality
and fullness of the atonement of Christ.
Gospel salvation seemed to me to be an offer of something to be
accepted, and all that was necessary on my part to get my own consent to
give up my sins and accept Christ. After
this distinct revelation had stood for some little time before my mind, the
question seemed to be put, 'will you accept it now, to-day?' I replied,
'Yes; I will accept it to-day, or I will die in the attempt!'"
He then went into the woods, where he describes his struggles. He could not pray, his heart was hardened in its pride.
"I then reproached myself for having promised to give my heart
to God before I left the woods. When
I came to try, I found I could not. . . .
My inward soul hung back, and there was no going out of my heart to
God. The thought was pressing
me, of the rashness of my promise that I would give my heart to God that
day, or die in the attempt. It seemed to me as if that was binding on my soul; and yet I
was going to break my vow. A
great sinking and discouragement came over me, and I felt almost too weak to
stand upon my knees. Just at
this moment I again thought I heard some one approach me, and I opened my
eyes to see whether it were so. But
right there the revelation of my pride of heart, as the great difficulty
that stood in the way, was distinctly shown to me.
An overwhelming sense of my wickedness in being ashamed to have a
human being see me on my knees before God took such powerful possession of
me, that I cried at the top of my voice, and exclaimed that I would not
leave that place if all the men on earth and all the devils in hell
surrounded me. 'What!' I said, 'such a degraded sinner as I am, on my knees
confessing my sins to the great and holy God; and ashamed to have any human
being, and a sinner like myself, find me on my knees endeavoring to make my
peace with my offended God!' The
sin appeared awful, infinite. It
broke me down before the Lord." Memoirs,
pp. 14-16, abridged.
"I
had said I would not give up; but when my will was broken, it was all
over," writes one of Starbuck's correspondents.-- Another says:
"I simply said: 'Lord,
I have done all I can; I leave the whole matter with Thee,' and immediately
there came to me a great peace."--Another:
"All at once it occurred to me that I might be saved, too, if I
would stop trying to do it all myself, and follow Jesus:
somehow I lost my load."--Another:
"I finally ceased to resist, and gave myself up, though it was a
hard struggle. Gradually the
feeling came over me that I had done my part, and God was willing to do
his."[111]--"Lord Thy will be done; damn or save!" cries John
Nelson,[112] exhausted with the anxious struggle to escape damnation; and at
that moment his soul was filled with peace.
[111]
Starbuck: Op. cit., pp. 91,
114.
[112]
Extracts from the Journal of Mr. John Nelson, London, no date, p. 24.
Dr.
Starbuck gives an interesting, and it seems to me a true, account--so far as
conceptions so schematic can claim truth at all--of the reasons why
self-surrender at the last moment should be so indispensable.
To begin with, there are two things in the mind of the candidate for
conversion: first, the present
incompleteness or wrongness, the "sin" which he is eager to escape
from; and, second, the positive ideal which he longs to compass.
Now with most of us the sense of our present wrongness is a far more
distinct piece of our consciousness than is the imagination of any positive
ideal we can aim at. In a
majority of cases, indeed, the "sin" almost exclusively engrosses
the attention, so that conversion is "a process of struggling away from
sin rather than of striving towards righteousness."[113] A man's
conscious wit and will, so far as they strain towards the ideal, are aiming
at something only dimly and inaccurately imagined. Yet all the while the
forces of mere organic ripening within him are going on towards their own
prefigured result, and his conscious strainings are letting loose
subconscious allies behind the scenes, which in their way work towards
rearrangement; and the rearrangement towards which all these deeper forces
tend is pretty surely definite, and definitely different from what he
consciously conceives and determines. It
may consequently be actually interfered with (JAMMED, as it were, like the
lost word when we seek too energetically to recall it), by his voluntary
efforts slanting from the true direction.
[113]
Starbuck, p. 64.
Starbuck
seems to put his finger on the root of the matter when he says that to
exercise the personal will is still to live in the region where the
imperfect self is the thing most emphasized. Where, on the contrary, the
subconscious forces take the lead, it is more probably the better self in
posse which directs the operation. Instead
of being clumsily and vaguely aimed at from without, it is then itself the
organizing centre. What then
must the person do? "He
must relax," says Dr. Starbuck--"that is, he must fall back on the
larger Power that makes for righteousness, which has been welling up in his
own being, and let it finish in its own way the work it has begun. . . .
The act of yielding, in this point of view, is giving one's self over
to the new life, making it the centre of a new personality, and living, from
within, the truth of it which had before been viewed objectively."[114]
[114]
Starbuck, p. 115.
"Man's
extremity is God's opportunity" is the theological way of putting this
fact of the need of self-surrender; whilst the physiological way of stating
it would be, "Let one do all in one's power, and one's nervous system
will do the rest." Both
statements acknowledge the same fact.[115]
[115]
Starbuck, p. 113.
To
state it in terms of our own symbolism:
When the new centre of personal energy has been subconsciously
incubated so long as to be just ready to open into flower, "hands
off" is the only word for us, it must burst forth unaided!
We
have used the vague and abstract language of psychology. But since, in any
terms, the crisis described is the throwing of our conscious selves upon the
mercy of powers which, whatever they may be, are more ideal than we are
actually, and make for our redemption, you see why self-surrender has been
and always must be regarded as the vital turning-point of the religious
life, so far as the religious life is spiritual and no affair of outer works
and ritual and sacraments. One
may say that the whole development of Christianity in inwardness has
consisted in little more than the greater and greater emphasis attached to
this crisis of self-surrender. From
Catholicism to Lutheranism, and then to Calvinism; from that to Wesleyanism;
and from this, outside of technical Christianity altogether, to pure
"liberalism" or transcendental idealism, whether or not of the
mind-cure type, taking in the mediaeval mystics, the quietists, the pietists,
and quakers by the way, we can trace the stages of progress towards the idea
of an immediate spiritual help, experienced by the individual in his
forlornness and standing in no essential need of doctrinal apparatus or
propitiatory machinery.
Psychology
and religion are thus in perfect harmony up to this point, since both admit
that there are forces seemingly outside of the conscious individual that
bring redemption to his life. Nevertheless
psychology, defining these forces as "subconscious," and speaking
of their effects, as due to "incubation," or
"cerebration," implies that they do not transcend the individual's
personality; and herein she diverges from Christian theology, which insists
that they are direct supernatural operations of the Deity.
I propose to you that we do not yet consider this divergence final,
but leave the question for a while in abeyance--continued inquiry may enable
us to get rid of some of the apparent discord.
Revert,
then, for a moment more to the psychology of self-surrender.
When
you find a man living on the ragged edge of his consciousness, pent in to
his sin and want and incompleteness, and consequently inconsolable, and then
simply tell him that all is well with him, that he must stop his worry,
break with his discontent, and give up his anxiety, you seem to him to come
with pure absurdities. The only
positive consciousness he has tells him that all is NOT well, and the better
way you offer sounds simply as if you proposed to him to assert cold-blooded
falsehoods. "The will to
believe" cannot be stretched as far as that. We can make ourselves more faithful to a belief of which we
have the rudiments, but we cannot create a belief out of whole cloth when
our perception actively assures us of its opposite. The better mind proposed to us comes in that case in the form
of a pure negation of the only mind we have, and we cannot actively will a
pure negation.
There
are only two ways in which it is possible to get rid of anger, worry, fear,
despair, or other undesirable affections.
One is that an opposite affection should overpoweringly break over
us, and the other is by getting so exhausted with the struggle that we have
to stop--so we drop down, give up, and DON'T CARE any longer.
Our emotional brain-centres strike work, and we lapse into a
temporary apathy. Now there is documentary proof that this state of
temporary exhaustion not infrequently forms part of the conversion crisis.
So long as the egoistic worry of the sick soul guards the door, the
expansive confidence of the soul of faith gains no presence.
But let the former faint away, even but for a moment, and the latter
can profit by the opportunity, and, having once acquired possession, may
retain it.
Carlyle's
Teufelsdrockh passes from the everlasting No to the everlasting Yes through
a "Centre of Indifference."
Let
me give you a good illustration of this feature in the conversion process.
That genuine saint, David Brainerd, describes his own crisis in the
following words:--
"One
morning, while I was walking in a solitary place as usual, I at once saw
that all my contrivances and projects to effect or procure deliverance and
salvation for myself were utterly in vain; I was brought quite to a stand,
as finding myself totally lost. I
saw that it was forever impossible for me to do anything towards helping or
delivering myself, that I had made all the pleas I ever could have made to
all eternity; and that all my pleas were vain, for I saw that self-interest
had led me to pray, and that I had never once prayed from any respect to the
glory of God. I saw that there
was no necessary connection between my prayers and the bestowment of divine
mercy, that they laid not the least obligation upon God to bestow his grace
upon me; and that there was no more virtue or goodness in them than there
would be in my paddling with my hand in the water.
I saw that I had been heaping up my devotions before God, fasting,
praying, etc., pretending, and indeed really thinking sometimes that I was
aiming at the glory of God; whereas I never once truly intended it, but only
my own happiness. I saw that as
I had never done anything for God, I had no claim on anything from him but
perdition, on account of my hypocrisy and mockery.
When I saw evidently that I had regard to nothing but self-interest,
then my duties appeared a vile mockery and a continual course of lies, for
the whole was nothing but self-worship, and an horrid abuse of God.
"I
continued, as I remember, in this state of mind, from Friday morning till
the Sabbath evening following (July 12, 1739), when I was walking again in
the same solitary place. Here,
in a mournful melancholy state I was attempting to pray; but found no heart
to engage in that or any other duty; my former concern, exercise, and
religious affections were now gone. I thought that the Spirit of God had
quite left me; but still was NOT DISTRESSED; yet disconsolate, as if there
was nothing in heaven or earth could make me happy.
Having been thus endeavoring to pray--though, as I thought, very
stupid and senseless--for near half an hour; then, as I was walking in a
thick grove, unspeakable glory seemed to open to the apprehension of my
soul. I do not mean any
external brightness, nor any imagination of a body of light, but it was a
new inward apprehension or view that I had of God, such as I never had
before, nor anything which had the least resemblance to it.
I had no particular apprehension of any one person in the Trinity,
either the Father, the Son, or the Holy Ghost; but it appeared to be Divine
glory. My soul rejoiced with
joy unspeakable, to see such a God, such a glorious Divine Being; and I was
inwardly pleased and satisfied that he should be God over all for ever and
ever. My soul was so captivated
and delighted with the excellency of God that I was even swallowed up in
him, at least to that degree that I had no thought about my own salvation,
and scarce reflected that there was such a creature as myself.
I continued in this state of inward joy, peace, and astonishing, till
near dark without any sensible abatement; and then began to think and
examine what I had seen; and felt sweetly composed in my mind all the
evening following. I felt
myself in a new world, and everything about me appeared with a different
aspect from what it was wont to do. At
this time, the way of salvation opened to me with such infinite wisdom,
suitableness, and excellency, that I wondered I should ever think of any
other way of salvation; was amazed that I had not dropped my own
contrivances, and complied with this lovely, blessed, and excellent way
before. If I could have been
saved by my own duties or any other way that I had formerly contrived, my
whole soul would now have refused it. I
wondered that all the world did not see and comply with this way of
salvation, entirely by the righteousness of Christ."[116]
[116]
Edward's and Dwight's Life of Brainerd, New Haven, 1822, pp. 45-47,
abridged.
I
have italicized the passage which records the exhaustion of the anxious
emotion hitherto habitual. In a
large proportion, perhaps the
majority, of reports, the writers speak as if the exhaustion of the lower
and the entrance of the higher emotion were simultaneous,[117] yet often
again they speak as if the higher actively drove the lower out.
This is undoubtedly true in a great many instances, as we shall
presently see. But often there
seems little doubt that both conditions--subconscious ripening of the one
affection and exhaustion of the other--must simultaneously have conspired,
in order to produce the result.
[117]
Describing the whole phenomenon as a change of equilibrium, we might say
that the movement of new psychic energies towards the personal centre and
the recession of old ones towards the margin (or the rising of some objects
above, and the sinking of others below the conscious threshold) were only
two ways of describing an indivisible event.
Doubtless this is often absolutely true, and Starbuck is right when
he says that "self-surrender" and "new determination,"
though seeming at first sight to be such different experiences, are
"really the same thing. Self-surrender
sees the change in terms of the old self, determination sees it in terms of
the new." Op. cit., p.
160.
T.
W. B., a convert of Nettleton's, being brought to an acute paroxysm of
conviction of sin, ate nothing all day, locked himself in his room in the
evening in complete despair, crying aloud, "How long, O Lord, how
long?" "After
repeating this and similar language," he says, "several times, I
seemed to sink away into a state of insensibility.
When I came to myself again I was on my knees, praying not for myself
but for others. I felt
submission to the will of God, willing that he should do with me as should
seem good in his sight. My
concern seemed all lost in concern for others."[118]
[118]
A. A. Bonar: Nettleton and his
Labors, Edinburgh, 1854, p. 261.
Our
great American revivalist Finney writes:
"I said to myself: 'What
is this? I must have grieved
the Holy Ghost entirely away.
I
have lost all my conviction. I
have not a particle of concern about my soul; and it must be that the Spirit
has left me.' 'Why!' thought I, 'I never was so far from being concerned
about my own salvation in my life.' . . . I tried to recall my convictions,
to get back again the load of sin under which I had been laboring.
I tried in vain to make myself anxious.
I was so quiet and peaceful that I tried to feel concerned about
that, lest it should be the result of my having grieved the Spirit
away."[119]
[119]
Charles G. Finney: Memoirs
written by Himself, 1876, pp. 17, 18.
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