soul was set at liberty, the Lord discovered to me my labor in the
ministry and call to preach the gospel. I cried out, Amen, Lord,
I’ll go; send me, send me. I spent the greatest part of the night
in ecstasies of joy, praising and adoring the Ancient of Days for
his free and unbounded grace. After I had been so long in this
transport and heavenly frame that my nature seemed to require
sleep, I thought to close my eyes for a few moments; then the
devil stepped in, and told me that if I went to sleep, I should
lose it all, and when I should awake in the morning I would find
it to be nothing but a fancy and delusion. I immediately cried
out, O Lord God, if I am deceived, undeceive me.
“I then closed my eyes for a few minutes, and seemed to be
refreshed with sleep; and when I awoke, the first inquiry was,
Where is my God? And in an instant of time, my soul seemed awake
in and with God, and surrounded by the arms of everlasting love.
About sunrise I arose with joy to relate to my parents what God
had done for my soul, and declared to them the miracle of God’s
unbounded grace. I took a Bible to show them the words that were
impressed by God on my soul the evening before; but when I came to
open the Bible, it appeared all new to me.
“I so longed to be useful in the cause of Christ, in preaching the
gospel, that it seemed as if I could not rest any longer, but go I
must and tell the wonders of redeeming love. I lost all taste for
carnal pleasures, and carnal company, and was enabled to forsake
them.”(120)
Young Mr. Alline, after the briefest of delays, and with no book‐learning
but his Bible, and no teaching save that of his own experience, became a
Christian minister, and thenceforward his life was fit to rank, for its
austerity and single‐mindedness, with that of the most devoted saints. But
happy as he became in his strenuous way, he never got his taste for even
the most innocent carnal pleasures back. We must class him, like Bunyan
and Tolstoy, amongst those upon whose soul the iron of melancholy left a
permanent imprint. His redemption was into another universe than this mere
natural world, and life remained for him a sad and patient trial. Years
later we can find him making such an entry as this in his diary: “On
Wednesday the 12th I preached at a wedding, and had the happiness thereby
to be the means of excluding carnal mirth.”
The next case I will give is that of a correspondent of Professor Leuba,
printed in the latter’s article, already cited, in vol. vi. of the
American Journal of Psychology. This subject was an Oxford graduate, the
son of a clergyman, and the story resembles in many points the classic
case of Colonel Gardiner, which everybody may be supposed to know. Here it
is, somewhat abridged:—
“Between the period of leaving Oxford and my conversion I never
darkened the door of my father’s church, although I lived with him
for eight years, making what money I wanted by journalism, and
spending it in high carousal with any one who would sit with me
and drink it away. So I lived, sometimes drunk for a week
together, and then a terrible repentance, and would not touch a
drop for a whole month.
“In all this period, that is, up to thirty‐three years of age, I
never had a desire to reform on religious grounds. But all my
pangs were due to some terrible remorse I used to feel after a
heavy carousal, the remorse taking the shape of regret after my
folly in wasting my life in such a way—a man of superior talents
and education. This terrible remorse turned me gray in one night,
and whenever it came upon me I was perceptibly grayer the next
morning. What I suffered in this way is beyond the expression of
words. It was hell‐fire in all its most dreadful tortures. Often
did I vow that if I got over ‘this time’ I would reform. Alas, in
about three days I fully recovered, and was as happy as ever. So
it went on for years, but, with a physique like a rhinoceros, I
always recovered, and as long as I let drink alone, no man was as
capable of enjoying life as I was.
“I was converted in my own bedroom in my father’s rectory house at
precisely three o’clock in the afternoon of a hot July day (July
13, 1886). I was in perfect health, having been off from the drink
for nearly a month. I was in no way troubled about my soul. In
fact, God was not in my thoughts that day. A young lady friend
sent me a copy of Professor Drummond’s Natural Law in the
Spiritual World, asking me my opinion of it as a literary work
only. Being proud of my critical talents and wishing to enhance
myself in my new friend’s esteem, I took the book to my bedroom
for quiet, intending to give it a thorough study, and then write
her what I thought of it. It was here that God met me face to
face, and I shall never forget the meeting. ‘He that hath the Son
hath life eternal, he that hath not the Son hath not life.’ I had
read this scores of times before, but this made all the
difference. I was now in God’s presence and my attention was
absolutely ‘soldered’ on to this verse, and I was not allowed to
proceed with the book till I had fairly considered what these
words really involved. Only then was I allowed to proceed, feeling
all the while that there was another being in my bedroom, though
not seen by me. The stillness was very marvelous, and I felt
supremely happy. It was most unquestionably shown me, in one
second of time, that I had never touched the Eternal: and that if
I died then, I must inevitably be lost. I was undone. I knew it as
well as I now know I am saved. The Spirit of God showed it me in
ineffable love; there was no terror in it; I felt God’s love so
powerfully upon me that only a mighty sorrow crept over me that I
had lost all through my own folly; and what was I to do? What
could I do? I did not repent even; God never asked me to repent.
All I felt was ‘I am undone,’ and God cannot help it, although he
loves me. No fault on the part of the Almighty. All the time I was
supremely happy: I felt like a little child before his father. I
had done wrong, but my Father did not scold me, but loved me most
wondrously. Still my doom was sealed. I was lost to a certainty,
and being naturally of a brave disposition I did not quail under
it, but deep sorrow for the past, mixed with regret for what I had
lost, took hold upon me, and my soul thrilled within me to think
it was all over. Then there crept in upon me so gently, so
lovingly, so unmistakably, a way of escape, and what was it after
all? The old, old story over again, told in the simplest way:
‘There is no name under heaven whereby ye can be saved except that
of the Lord Jesus Christ.’ No words were spoken to me; my soul
seemed to see my Saviour in the spirit, and from that hour to
this, nearly nine years now, there has never been in my life one
doubt that the Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father both worked
upon me that afternoon in July, both differently, and both in the
most perfect love conceivable, and I rejoiced there and then in a
conversion so astounding that the whole village heard of it in
less than twenty‐four hours.
“But a time of trouble was yet to come. The day after my
conversion I went into the hay‐field to lend a hand with the
harvest, and not having made any promise to God to abstain or
drink in moderation only, I took too much and came home drunk. My
poor sister was heart‐broken; and I felt ashamed of myself and got
to my bedroom at once, where she followed me, weeping copiously.
She said I had been converted and fallen away instantly. But
although I was quite full of drink (not muddled, however), I knew
that God’s work begun in me was not going to be wasted. About
midday I made on my knees the first prayer before God for twenty
years. I did not ask to be forgiven; I felt that was no good, for
I would be sure to fall again. Well, what did I do? I committed
myself to him in the profoundest belief that my individuality was
going to be destroyed, that he would take all from me, and I was
willing. In such a surrender lies the secret of a holy life. From
that hour drink has had no terrors for me: I never touch it, never
want it. The same thing occurred with my pipe: after being a
regular smoker from my twelfth year the desire for it went at
once, and has never returned. So with every known sin, the
deliverance in each case being permanent and complete. I have had
no temptation since conversion, God seemingly having shut out
Satan from that course with me. He gets a free hand in other ways,
but never on sins of the flesh. Since I gave up to God all
ownership in my own life, he has guided me in a thousand ways, and
has opened my path in a way almost incredible to those who do not
enjoy the blessing of a truly surrendered life.”
So much for our graduate of Oxford, in whom you notice the complete
abolition of an ancient appetite as one of the conversion’s fruits.
The most curious record of sudden conversion with which I am acquainted is
that of M. Alphonse Ratisbonne, a freethinking French Jew, to Catholicism,
at Rome in 1842. In a letter to a clerical friend, written a few months
later, the convert gives a palpitating account of the circumstances.(121)
The predisposing conditions appear to have been slight. He had an elder
brother who had been converted and was a Catholic priest. He was himself
irreligious, and nourished an antipathy to the apostate brother and
generally to his “cloth.” Finding himself at Rome in his twenty‐ninth
year, he fell in with a French gentleman who tried to make a proselyte of
him, but who succeeded no farther after two or three conversations than to
get him to hang (half jocosely) a religious medal round his neck, and to
accept and read a copy of a short prayer to the Virgin. M. Ratisbonne
represents his own part in the conversations as having been of a light and
chaffing order; but he notes the fact that for some days he was unable to
banish the words of the prayer from his mind, and that the night before
the crisis he had a sort of nightmare, in the imagery of which a black
cross with no Christ upon it figured. Nevertheless, until noon of the next
day he was free in mind and spent the time in trivial conversations. I now
give his own words.
“If at this time any one had accosted me, saying: ‘Alphonse, in a
quarter of an hour you shall be adoring Jesus Christ as your God
and Saviour; you shall lie prostrate with your face upon the
ground in a humble church; you shall be smiting your breast at the
foot of a priest; you shall pass the carnival in a college of
Jesuits to prepare yourself to receive baptism, ready to give your
life for the Catholic faith; you shall renounce the world and its
pomps and pleasures; renounce your fortune, your hopes, and if
need be, your betrothed; the affections of your family, the esteem
of your friends, and your attachment to the Jewish people; you
shall have no other aspiration than to follow Christ and bear his
cross till death;’—if, I say, a prophet had come to me with such a
prediction, I should have judged that only one person could be
more mad than he,—whosoever, namely, might believe in the
possibility of such senseless folly becoming true. And yet that
folly is at present my only wisdom, my sole happiness.
“Coming out of the café I met the carriage of Monsieur B. [the
proselyting friend]. He stopped and invited me in for a drive, but
first asked me to wait for a few minutes whilst he attended to
some duty at the church of San Andrea delle Fratte. Instead of
waiting in the carriage, I entered the church myself to look at
it. The church of San Andrea was poor, small, and empty; I believe
that I found myself there almost alone. No work of art attracted
my attention; and I passed my eyes mechanically over its interior
without being arrested by any particular thought. I can only
remember an entirely black dog which went trotting and turning
before me as I mused. In an instant the dog had disappeared, the
whole church had vanished, I no longer saw anything, ... or more
truly I saw, O my God, one thing alone.
“Heavens, how can I speak of it? Oh no! human words cannot attain
to expressing the inexpressible. Any description, however sublime
it might be, could be but a profanation of the unspeakable truth.
“I was there prostrate on the ground, bathed in my tears, with my
heart beside itself, when M. B. called me back to life. I could
not reply to the questions which followed from him one upon the
other. But finally I took the medal which I had on my breast, and
with all the effusion of my soul I kissed the image of the Virgin,
radiant with grace, which it bore. Oh, indeed, it was She! It was
indeed She! [What he had seen had been a vision of the Virgin.]
“I did not know where I was: I did not know whether I was Alphonse
or another. I only felt myself changed and believed myself another
me; I looked for myself in myself and did not find myself. In the
bottom of my soul I felt an explosion of the most ardent joy; I
could not speak; I had no wish to reveal what had happened. But I
felt something solemn and sacred within me which made me ask for a
priest. I was led to one; and there, alone, after he had given me
the positive order, I spoke as best I could, kneeling, and with my
heart still trembling. I could give no account to myself of the
truth of which I had acquired a knowledge and a faith. All that I
can say is that in an instant the bandage had fallen from my eyes;
and not one bandage only, but the whole manifold of bandages in
which I had been brought up. One after another they rapidly
disappeared, even as the mud and ice disappear under the rays of
the burning sun.
“I came out as from a sepulchre, from an abyss of darkness; and I
was living, perfectly living. But I wept, for at the bottom of
that gulf I saw the extreme of misery from which I had been saved
by an infinite mercy; and I shuddered at the sight of my
iniquities, stupefied, melted, overwhelmed with wonder and with
gratitude. You may ask me how I came to this new insight, for
truly I had never opened a book of religion nor even read a single
page of the Bible, and the dogma of original sin is either
entirely denied or forgotten by the Hebrews of to‐day, so that I
had thought so little about it that I doubt whether I ever knew
its name. But how came I, then, to this perception of it? I can
answer nothing save this, that on entering that church I was in
darkness altogether, and on coming out of it I saw the fullness of
the light. I can explain the change no better than by the simile
of a profound sleep or the analogy of one born blind who should
suddenly open his eyes to the day. He sees, but cannot define the
light which bathes him and by means of which he sees the objects
which excite his wonder. If we cannot explain physical light, how
can we explain the light which is the truth itself? And I think I
remain within the limits of veracity when I say that without
having any knowledge of the letter of religious doctrine, I now
intuitively perceived its sense and spirit. Better than if I saw
them, I _felt_ those hidden things; I felt them by the
inexplicable effects they produced in me. It all happened in my
interior mind; and those impressions, more rapid than thought,
shook my soul, revolved and turned it, as it were, in another
direction, towards other aims, by other paths. I express myself
badly. But do you wish, Lord, that I should inclose in poor and
barren words sentiments which the heart alone can understand?”
I might multiply cases almost indefinitely, but these will suffice to show
you how real, definite, and memorable an event a sudden conversion may be
to him who has the experience. Throughout the height of it he undoubtedly
seems to himself a passive spectator or undergoer of an astounding process
performed upon him from above. There is too much evidence of this for any
doubt of it to be possible. Theology, combining this fact with the
doctrines of election and grace, has concluded that the spirit of God is
with us at these dramatic moments in a peculiarly miraculous way, unlike
what happens at any other juncture of our lives. At that moment, it
believes, an absolutely new nature is breathed into us, and we become
partakers of the very substance of the Deity.
That the conversion should be instantaneous seems called for on this view,
and the Moravian Protestants appear to have been the first to see this
logical consequence. The Methodists soon followed suit, practically if not
dogmatically, and a short time ere his death, John Wesley wrote:—
“In London alone I found 652 members of our Society who were
exceeding clear in their experience, and whose testimony I could
see no reason to doubt. And every one of these (without a single
exception) has declared that his deliverance from sin was
instantaneous; that the change was wrought in a moment. Had half
of these, or one third, or one in twenty, declared it was
_gradually_ wrought in _them_, I should have believed this, with
regard to _them_, and thought that _some_ were gradually
sanctified and some instantaneously. But as I have not found, in
so long a space of time, a single person speaking thus, I cannot
but believe that sanctification is commonly, if not always, an
instantaneous work.” Tyerman’s Life of Wesley, i. 463.
All this while the more usual sects of Protestantism have set no such
store by instantaneous conversion. For them as for the Catholic Church,
Christ’s blood, the sacraments, and the individual’s ordinary religious
duties are practically supposed to suffice to his salvation, even though
no acute crisis of self‐despair and surrender followed by relief should be
experienced. For Methodism, on the contrary, unless there have been a
crisis of this sort, salvation is only offered, not effectively received,
and Christ’s sacrifice in so far forth is incomplete. Methodism surely
here follows, if not the healthier‐minded, yet on the whole the profounder
spiritual instinct. The individual models which it has set up as typical
and worthy of imitation are not only the more interesting dramatically,
but psychologically they have been the more complete.
In the fully evolved Revivalism of Great Britain and America we have, so
to speak, the codified and stereotyped procedure to which this way of
thinking has led. In spite of the unquestionable fact that saints of the
once‐born type exist, that there may be a gradual growth in holiness
without a cataclysm; in spite of the obvious leakage (as one may say) of
much mere natural goodness into the scheme of salvation; revivalism has
always assumed that only its own type of religious experience can be
perfect; you must first be nailed on the cross of natural despair and
agony, and then in the twinkling of an eye be miraculously released.
It is natural that those who personally have traversed such an experience
should carry away a feeling of its being a miracle rather than a natural
process. Voices are often heard, lights seen, or visions witnessed;
automatic motor phenomena occur; and it always seems, after the surrender
of the personal will, as if an extraneous higher power had flooded in and
taken possession. Moreover the sense of renovation, safety, cleanness,
rightness, can be so marvelous and jubilant as well to warrant one’s
belief in a radically new substantial nature.
“Conversion,” writes the New England Puritan, Joseph Alleine, “is
not the putting in a patch of holiness; but with the true convert
holiness is woven into all his powers, principles, and practice.
The sincere Christian is quite a new fabric, from the foundation
to the top‐stone. He is a new man, a new creature.”
And Jonathan Edwards says in the same strain: “Those gracious
influences which are the effects of the Spirit of God are
altogether supernatural—are quite different from anything that
unregenerate men experience. They are what no improvement, or
composition of natural qualifications or principles will ever
produce; because they not only differ from what is natural, and
from everything that natural men experience in degree and
circumstances, but also in kind, and are of a nature far more
excellent. From hence it follows that in gracious affections there
are [also] new perceptions and sensations entirely different in
their nature and kind from anything experienced by the [same]
saints before they were sanctified.... The conceptions which the
saints have of the loveliness of God, and that kind of delight
which they experience in it, are quite peculiar, and entirely
different from anything which a natural man can possess, or of
which he can form any proper notion.”
And that such a glorious transformation as this ought of necessity to be
preceded by despair is shown by Edwards in another passage.
“Surely it cannot be unreasonable,” he says, “that before God
delivers us from a state of sin and liability to everlasting woe,
he should give us some considerable sense of the evil from which
he delivers us, in order that we may know and feel the importance
of salvation, and be enabled to appreciate the value of what God
is pleased to do for us. As those who are saved are successively
in two extremely different states—first in a state of condemnation
and then in a state of justification and blessedness—and as God,
in the salvation of men, deals with them as rational and
intelligent creatures, it appears agreeable to this wisdom, that
those who are saved should be made sensible of their Being, in
those two different states. In the first place, that they should
be made sensible of their state of condemnation; and afterwards,
of their state of deliverance and happiness.”
Such quotations express sufficiently well for our purpose the doctrinal
interpretation of these changes. Whatever part suggestion and imitation
may have played in producing them in men and women in excited assemblies,
they have at any rate been in countless individual instances an original
and unborrowed experience. Were we writing the story of the mind from the
purely natural‐history point of view, with no religious interest whatever,
we should still have to write down man’s liability to sudden and complete
conversion as one of his most curious peculiarities.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
What, now, must we ourselves think of this question? Is an instantaneous
conversion a miracle in which God is present as he is present in no change
of heart less strikingly abrupt? Are there two classes of human beings,
even among the apparently regenerate, of which the one class really
partakes of Christ’s nature while the other merely seems to do so? Or, on
the contrary, may the whole phenomenon of regeneration, even in these
startling instantaneous examples, possibly be a strictly natural process,
divine in its fruits, of course, but in one case more and in another less
so, and neither more nor less divine in its mere causation and mechanism
than any other process, high or low, of man’s interior life?
Before proceeding to answer this question, I must ask you to listen to
some more psychological remarks. At our last lecture, I explained the
shifting of men’s centres of personal energy within them and the lighting
up of new crises of emotion. I explained the phenomena as partly due to
explicitly conscious processes of thought and will, but as due largely
also to the subconscious incubation and maturing of motives deposited by
the experiences of life. When ripe, the results hatch out, or burst into
flower. I have now to speak of the subconscious region, in which such
processes of flowering may occur, in a somewhat less vague way. I only
regret that my limits of time here force me to be so short.
The expression “field of consciousness” has but recently come into vogue
in the psychology books. Until quite lately the unit of mental life which
figured most was the single “idea” supposed to be a definitely outlined
thing. But at present psychologists are tending, first, to admit that the
actual unit is more probably the total mental state, the entire wave of
consciousness or field of objects present to the thought at any time; and,
second, to see that it is impossible to outline this wave, this field,
with any definiteness.