|
To be converted, to be regenerated, to receive grace, to experience religion, to gain an assurance, are so many phrases which denote the process, gradual or sudden, by which a self hitherto divided, and consciously wrong inferior and unhappy, becomes unified and consciously right superior and happy, in consequence of its firmer hold upon religious realities. This at least is what conversion signifies in general terms, whether or not we believe that a direct divine operation is needed to bring such a moral change about. Before entering upon a minuter study of the process, let me enliven our understanding of the definition by a concrete example. I choose the quaint case of an unlettered man, Stephen H. Bradley, whose experience is related in a scarce American pamphlet.[98] I select this case because it shows how in these inner alterations one may find one unsuspected depth below another, as if the possibilities of character lay disposed in a series of layers or shells, of whose existence we have no premonitory knowledge. Bradley thought that he had been already fully converted at the age of fourteen. "I thought I saw the Saviour, by faith, in human shape, for about one second in the room, with arms extended, appearing to say to me, Come. The next day I rejoiced with trembling; soon after, my happiness was so great that I said that I wanted to die; this world had no place in my affections, as I knew of, and every day appeared as solemn to me as the Sabbath. I had an ardent desire that all mankind might feel as I did; I wanted to have them all love God supremely. Previous to this time I was very selfish and self-righteous; but now I desired the welfare of all mankind, and could with a feeling heart forgive my worst enemies, and I felt as if I should be willing to bear the scoffs and sneers of any person, and suffer anything for His sake, if I could be the means in the hands of God, of the conversion of one soul." 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 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. 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.
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]
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. 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.
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.
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]
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. 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]
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]
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]
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."
"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, exhausted with the
anxious struggle to escape damnation; and at that moment his soul
was filled with peace.
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." 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.
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]
"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]
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."
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.
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."
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]
But beyond all question there are persons in whom, quite
independently of any exhaustion in the Subject's capacity for
feeling, or even in the absence of any acute previous feeling,
the higher condition, having reached the due degree of energy,
bursts through all barriers and sweeps in like a sudden flood.
These are the most striking and memorable cases, the cases of
instantaneous conversion to which the conception of divine grace
has been most peculiarly attached. I have given one of them at
length--the case of Mr. Bradley. But I had better reserve the
other cases and my comments on the rest of the subject for the
following lecture.
[98] A sketch of the life of Stephen H. Bradley, from the age of
five to twenty four years, including his remarkable experience of
the power of the Holy Spirit on the second evening of November,
1829. Madison, Connecticut, 1830.Back
[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.Back
[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."[101]E. D. Starbuck: The Psychology of Religion, pp. 224, 262.Back
[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. Back
[103] Studies in the Psychology of Religious Phenomena, American
Journal of Psychology, vii. 309 (1896).Back
[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.Back
[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.Back
[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.Back
[107] Starbuck, in addition to "escape from sin," discriminates
"spiritual illumination" as a distinct type of conversion
experience. Psychology of Religion, p. 85.Back
[108] Psychology of Religion, p. 117.Back
[109] Psychology of Religion, p. 385. Compare, also, pp. 137-144
and 262.Back
[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.Back
[111] Starbuck: Op. cit., pp. 91, 114.Back
[112] Extracts from the Journal of Mr. John Nelson, London, no
date, p. 24.Back
[113] Starbuck, p. 64.Back
[116] Edward's and Dwight's Life of Brainerd, New Haven, 1822,
pp. 45-47, abridged.Back
[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.Back
[118] A. A. Bonar: Nettleton and his Labors, Edinburgh, 1854, p.
261.Back
[119] Charles G. Finney: Memoirs written by Himself, 1876, pp.
17, 18.Back
|