had in my life. I never before, for so long a time together,
enjoyed so much of the light and rest and sweetness of heaven in
my soul, but without the least agitation of body during the whole
time. Part of the night I lay awake, sometimes asleep, and
sometimes between sleeping and waking. But all night I continued
in a constant, clear, and lively sense of the heavenly sweetness
of Christ’s excellent love, of his nearness to me, and of my
dearness to him; with an inexpressibly sweet calmness of soul in
an entire rest in him. I seemed to myself to perceive a glow of
divine love come down from the heart of Christ in heaven into my
heart in a constant stream, like a stream or pencil of sweet
light. At the same time my heart and soul all flowed out in love
to Christ, so that there seemed to be a constant flowing and
reflowing of heavenly love, and I appeared to myself to float or
swim, in these bright, sweet beams, like the motes swimming in the
beams of the sun, or the streams of his light which come in at the
window. I think that what I felt each minute was worth more than
all the outward comfort and pleasure which I had enjoyed in my
whole life put together. It was pleasure, without the least sting,
or any interruption. It was a sweetness, which my soul was lost
in; it seemed to be all that my feeble frame could sustain. There
was but little difference, whether I was asleep or awake, but if
there was any difference, the sweetness was greatest while I was
asleep.(158) As I awoke early the next morning, it seemed to me
that I had entirely done with myself. I felt that the opinions of
the world concerning me were nothing, and that I had no more to do
with any outward interest of my own than with that of a person
whom I never saw. The glory of God seemed to swallow up every wish
and desire of my heart.... After retiring to rest and sleeping a
little while, I awoke, and was led to reflect on God’s mercy to
me, in giving me, for many years, a willingness to die; and after
that, in making me willing to live, that I might do and suffer
whatever he called me to here. I also thought how God had
graciously given me an entire resignation to his will, with
respect to the kind and manner of death that I should die; having
been made willing to die on the rack, or at the stake, and if it
were God’s will, to die in darkness. But now it occurred to me, I
used to think of living no longer than to the ordinary age of man.
Upon this I was led to ask myself, whether I was not willing to be
kept out of heaven even longer; and my whole heart seemed
immediately to reply: Yes, a thousand years, and a thousand in
horror, if it be most for the honor of God, the torment of my body
being so great, awful, and overwhelming that none could bear to
live in the country where the spectacle was seen, and the torment
of my mind being vastly greater. And it seemed to me that I found
a perfect willingness, quietness, and alacrity of soul in
consenting that it should be so, if it were most for the glory of
God, so that there was no hesitation, doubt, or darkness in my
mind. The glory of God seemed to overcome me and swallow me up,
and every conceivable suffering, and everything that was terrible
to my nature, seemed to shrink to nothing before it. This
resignation continued in its clearness and brightness the rest of
the night, and all the next day, and the night following, and on
Monday in the forenoon, without interruption or abatement.”(159)
The annals of Catholic saintship abound in records as ecstatic or more
ecstatic than this. “Often the assaults of the divine love,” it is said of
the Sister Séraphique de la Martinière, “reduced her almost to the point
of death. She used tenderly to complain of this to God. ‘I cannot support
it,’ she used to say. ‘Bear gently with my weakness, or I shall expire
under the violence of your love.’ ”(160)
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Let me pass next to the Charity and Brotherly Love which are a usual fruit
of saintliness, and have always been reckoned essential theological
virtues, however limited may have been the kinds of service which the
particular theology enjoined. Brotherly love would follow logically from
the assurance of God’s friendly presence, the notion of our brotherhood as
men being an immediate inference from that of God’s fatherhood of us all.
When Christ utters the precepts: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse
you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully
use you, and persecute you,” he gives for a reason: “That ye may be the
children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise
on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the
unjust.” One might therefore be tempted to explain both the humility as to
one’s self and the charity towards others which characterize spiritual
excitement, as results of the all‐leveling character of theistic belief.
But these affections are certainly not mere derivatives of theism. We find
them in Stoicism, in Hinduism, and in Buddhism in the highest possible
degree. They harmonize with paternal theism beautifully; but they
_harmonize_ with all reflection whatever upon the dependence of mankind on
general causes; and we must, I think, consider them not subordinate but
coördinate parts of that great complex excitement in the study of which we
are engaged. Religious rapture, moral enthusiasm, ontological wonder,
cosmic emotion, are all unifying states of mind, in which the sand and
grit of the selfhood incline to disappear, and tenderness to rule. The
best thing is to describe the condition integrally as a characteristic
affection to which our nature is liable, a region in which we find
ourselves at home, a sea in which we swim; but not to pretend to explain
its parts by deriving them too cleverly from one another. Like love or
fear, the faith‐state is a natural psychic complex, and carries charity
with it by organic consequence. Jubilation is an expansive affection, and
all expansive affections are self‐forgetful and kindly so long as they
endure.
We find this the case even when they are pathological in origin. In his
instructive work, la Tristesse et la Joie,(161) M. Georges Dumas compares
together the melancholy and the joyous phase of circular insanity, and
shows that, while selfishness characterizes the one, the other is marked
by altruistic impulses. No human being so stingy and useless as was Marie
in her melancholy period! But the moment the happy period begins,
“sympathy and kindness become her characteristic sentiments. She displays
a universal goodwill, not only of intention, but in act.... She becomes
solicitous of the health of other patients, interested in getting them
out, desirous to procure wool to knit socks for some of them. Never since
she has been under my observation have I heard her in her joyous period
utter any but charitable opinions.”(162) And later, Dr. Dumas says of all
such joyous conditions that “unselfish sentiments and tender emotions are
the only affective states to be found in them. The subject’s mind is
closed against envy, hatred, and vindictiveness, and wholly transformed
into benevolence, indulgence, and mercy.”(163)
There is thus an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness, and
their companionship in the saintly life need in no way occasion surprise.
Along with the happiness, this increase of tenderness is often noted in
narratives of conversion. “I began to work for others”;—“I had more tender
feeling for my family and friends”;—“I spoke at once to a person with whom
I had been angry”;—“I felt for every one, and loved my friends better”;—“I
felt every one to be my friend”;—these are so many expressions from the
records collected by Professor Starbuck.(164)
“When,” says Mrs. Edwards, continuing the narrative from which I
made quotation a moment ago, “I arose on the morning of the
Sabbath, I felt a love to all mankind, wholly peculiar in its
strength and sweetness, far beyond all that I had ever felt
before. The power of that love seemed inexpressible. I thought, if
I were surrounded by enemies, who were venting their malice and
cruelty upon me, in tormenting me, it would still be impossible
that I should cherish any feelings towards them but those of love,
and pity, and ardent desires for their happiness. I never before
felt so far from a disposition to judge and censure others, as I
did that morning. I realized also, in an unusual and very lively
manner, how great a part of Christianity lies in the performance
of our social and relative duties to one another. The same joyful
sense continued throughout the day—a sweet love to God and all
mankind.”
Whatever be the explanation of the charity, it may efface all usual human
barriers.(165)
Here, for instance, is an example of Christian non‐resistance from Richard
Weaver’s autobiography. Weaver was a collier, a semi‐professional pugilist
in his younger days, who became a much beloved evangelist. Fighting, after
drinking, seems to have been the sin to which he originally felt his flesh
most perversely inclined. After his first conversion he had a backsliding,
which consisted in pounding a man who had insulted a girl. Feeling that,
having once fallen, he might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb,
he got drunk and went and broke the jaw of another man who had lately
challenged him to fight and taunted him with cowardice for refusing as a
Christian man;—I mention these incidents to show how genuine a change of
heart is implied in the later conduct which he describes as follows:—
“I went down the drift and found the boy crying because a fellow‐
workman was trying to take the wagon from him by force. I said to
him:—
“ ‘Tom, you mustn’t take that wagon.’
“He swore at me, and called me a Methodist devil. I told him that
God did not tell me to let him rob me. He cursed again, and said
he would push the wagon over me.
“ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘let us see whether the devil and thee are
stronger than the Lord and me.’
“And the Lord and I proving stronger than the devil and he, he had
to get out of the way, or the wagon would have gone over him. So I
gave the wagon to the boy. Then said Tom:—
“ ‘I’ve a good mind to smack thee on the face.’
“ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘if that will do thee any good, thou canst do
it.’ So he struck me on the face.
“I turned the other cheek to him, and said, ‘Strike again.’
“He struck again and again, till he had struck me five times. I
turned my cheek for the sixth stroke; but he turned away cursing.
I shouted after him: ‘The Lord forgive thee, for I do, and the
Lord save thee.’
“This was on a Saturday; and when I went home from the coal‐pit my
wife saw my face was swollen, and asked what was the matter with
it. I said: ‘I’ve been fighting, and I’ve given a man a good
thrashing.’
“She burst out weeping, and said, ‘O Richard, what made you
fight?’ Then I told her all about it; and she thanked the Lord I
had not struck back.
“But the Lord had struck, and his blows have more effect than
man’s. Monday came. The devil began to tempt me, saying: ‘The
other men will laugh at thee for allowing Tom to treat thee as he
did on Saturday.’ I cried, ‘Get thee behind me, Satan;’—and went
on my way to the coal‐pit.
“Tom was the first man I saw. I said ‘Good‐morning,’ but got no
reply.
“He went down first. When I got down, I was surprised to see him
sitting on the wagon‐road waiting for me. When I came to him he
burst into tears and said: ‘Richard, will you forgive me for
striking you?’
“ ‘I have forgiven thee,’ said I; ‘ask God to forgive thee. The
Lord bless thee.’ I gave him my hand, and we went each to his
work.”(166)
“Love your enemies!” Mark you, not simply those who happen not to be your
friends, but your _enemies_, your positive and active enemies. Either this
is a mere Oriental hyperbole, a bit of verbal extravagance, meaning only
that we should, as far as we can, abate our animosities, or else it is
sincere and literal. Outside of certain cases of intimate individual
relation, it seldom has been taken literally. Yet it makes one ask the
question: Can there in general be a level of emotion so unifying, so
obliterative of differences between man and man, that even enmity may come
to be an irrelevant circumstance and fail to inhibit the friendlier
interests aroused? If positive well‐wishing could attain so supreme a
degree of excitement, those who were swayed by it might well seem
superhuman beings. Their life would be morally discrete from the life of
other men, and there is no saying, in the absence of positive experience
of an authentic kind,—for there are few active examples in our scriptures,
and the Buddhistic examples are legendary,(167)—what the effects might be:
they might conceivably transform the world.
Psychologically and in principle, the precept “Love your enemies” is not
self‐contradictory. It is merely the extreme limit of a kind of
magnanimity with which, in the shape of pitying tolerance of our
oppressors, we are fairly familiar. Yet if radically followed, it would
involve such a breach with our instinctive springs of action as a whole,
and with the present world’s arrangements, that a critical point would
practically be passed, and we should be born into another kingdom of
being. Religious emotion makes us feel that other kingdom to be close at
hand, within our reach.
The inhibition of instinctive repugnance is proved not only by the showing
of love to enemies, but by the showing of it to any one who is personally
loathsome. In the annals of saintliness we find a curious mixture of
motives impelling in this direction. Asceticism plays its part; and along
with charity pure and simple, we find humility or the desire to disclaim
distinction and to grovel on the common level before God. Certainly all
three principles were at work when Francis of Assisi and Ignatius Loyola
exchanged their garments with those of filthy beggars. All three are at
work when religious persons consecrate their lives to the care of leprosy
or other peculiarly unpleasant diseases. The nursing of the sick is a
function to which the religious seem strongly drawn, even apart from the
fact that church traditions set that way. But in the annals of this sort
of charity we find fantastic excesses of devotion recorded which are only
explicable by the frenzy of self‐immolation simultaneously aroused.
Francis of Assisi kisses his lepers; Margaret Mary Alacoque, Francis
Xavier, St. John of God, and others are said to have cleansed the sores
and ulcers of their patients with their respective tongues; and the lives
of such saints as Elizabeth of Hungary and Madame de Chantal are full of a
sort of reveling in hospital purulence, disagreeable to read of, and which
makes us admire and shudder at the same time.
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So much for the human love aroused by the faith‐state. Let me next speak
of the Equanimity, Resignation, Fortitude, and Patience which it brings.
“A paradise of inward tranquillity” seems to be faith’s usual result; and
it is easy, even without being religious one’s self, to understand this. A
moment back, in treating of the sense of God’s presence, I spoke of the
unaccountable feeling of safety which one may then have. And, indeed, how
can it possibly fail to steady the nerves, to cool the fever, and appease
the fret, if one be sensibly conscious that, no matter what one’s
difficulties for the moment may appear to be, one’s life as a whole is in
the keeping of a power whom one can absolutely trust? In deeply religious
men the abandonment of self to this power is passionate. Whoever not only
says, but _feels_, “God’s will be done,” is mailed against every weakness;
and the whole historic array of martyrs, missionaries, and religious
reformers is there to prove the tranquil‐mindedness, under naturally
agitating or distressing circumstances, which self‐surrender brings.
The temper of the tranquil‐mindedness differs, of course, according as the
person is of a constitutionally sombre or of a constitutionally cheerful
cast of mind. In the sombre it partakes more of resignation and
submission; in the cheerful it is a joyous consent. As an example of the
former temper, I quote part of a letter from Professor Lagneau, a
venerated teacher of philosophy who lately died, a great invalid, at
Paris:—
“My life, for the success of which you send good wishes, will be
what it is able to be. I ask nothing from it, I expect nothing
from it. For long years now I exist, think, and act, and am worth
what I am worth, only through the despair which is my sole
strength and my sole foundation. May it preserve for me, even in
these last trials to which I am coming, the courage to do without
the desire of deliverance. I ask nothing more from the Source
whence all strength cometh, and if that is granted, your wishes
will have been accomplished.”(168)
There is something pathetic and fatalistic about this, but the power of
such a tone as a protection against outward shocks is manifest. Pascal is
another Frenchman of pessimistic natural temperament. He expresses still
more amply the temper of self‐surrendering submissiveness:—
“Deliver me, Lord,” he writes in his prayers, “from the sadness at
my proper suffering which self‐love might give, but put into me a
sadness like your own. Let my sufferings appease your choler. Make
them an occasion for my conversion and salvation. I ask you
neither for health nor for sickness, for life nor for death; but
that you may dispose of my health and my sickness, my life and my
death, for your glory, for my salvation, and for the use of the
Church and of your saints, of whom I would by your grace be one.
You alone know what is expedient for me; you are the sovereign
master; do with me according to your will. Give to me, or take
away from me, only conform my will to yours. I know but one thing,
Lord, that it is good to follow you, and bad to offend you. Apart
from that, I know not what is good or bad in anything. I know not
which is most profitable to me, health or sickness, wealth or
poverty, nor anything else in the world. That discernment is
beyond the power of men or angels, and is hidden among the secrets
of your Providence, which I adore, but do not seek to
fathom.”(169)
When we reach more optimistic temperaments, the resignation grows less
passive. Examples are sown so broadcast throughout history that I might
well pass on without citation. As it is, I snatch at the first that occurs
to my mind. Madame Guyon, a frail creature physically, was yet of a happy
native disposition. She went through many perils with admirable serenity
of soul. After being sent to prison for heresy,—
“Some of my friends,” she writes, “wept bitterly at the hearing of
it, but such was my state of acquiescence and resignation that it
failed to draw any tears from me.... There appeared to be in me
then, as I find it to be in me now, such an entire loss of what
regards myself, that any of my own interests gave me little pain
or pleasure; ever wanting to will or wish for myself only the very
thing which God does.” In another place she writes: “We all of us
came near perishing in a river which we found it necessary to
pass. The carriage sank in the quicksand. Others who were with us
threw themselves out in excessive fright. But I found my thoughts
so much taken up with God that I had no distinct sense of danger.
It is true that the thought of being drowned passed across my
mind, but it cost no other sensation or reflection in me than
this—that I felt quite contented and willing it were so, if it
were my heavenly Father’s choice.” Sailing from Nice to Genoa, a
storm keeps her eleven days at sea. “As the irritated waves dashed
round us,” she writes, “I could not help experiencing a certain
degree of satisfaction in my mind. I pleased myself with thinking
that those mutinous billows, under the command of Him who does all
things rightly, might probably furnish me with a watery grave.
Perhaps I carried the point too far, in the pleasure which I took
in thus seeing myself beaten and bandied by the swelling waters.
Those who were with me took notice of my intrepidity.”(170)
The contempt of danger which religious enthusiasm produces may be even
more buoyant still. I take an example from that charming recent
autobiography, “With Christ at Sea,” by Frank Bullen. A couple of days
after he went through the conversion on shipboard of which he there gives
an account,—
“It was blowing stiffly,” he writes, “and we were carrying a press
of canvas to get north out of the bad weather. Shortly after four
bells we hauled down the flying‐jib, and I sprang out astride the
boom to furl it. I was sitting astride the boom when suddenly it
gave way with me. The sail slipped through my fingers, and I fell
backwards, hanging head downwards over the seething tumult of
shining foam under the ship’s bows, suspended by one foot. But I
felt only high exultation in my certainty of eternal life.
Although death was divided from me by a hair’s breadth, and I was
acutely conscious of the fact, it gave me no sensation but joy. I
suppose I could have hung there no longer than five seconds, but
in that time I lived a whole age of delight. But my body asserted
itself, and with a desperate gymnastic effort I regained the boom.
How I furled the sail I don’t know, but I sang at the utmost pitch
of my voice praises to God that went pealing out over the dark
waste of waters.”(171)
The annals of martyrdom are of course the signal field of triumph for
religious imperturbability. Let me cite as an example the statement of a
humble sufferer, persecuted as a Huguenot under Louis XIV.:—
“They shut all the doors,” Blanche Gamond writes, “and I saw six
women, each with a bunch of willow rods as thick as the hand could
hold, and a yard long. He gave me the order, ‘Undress yourself,’
which I did. He said, ‘You are leaving on your shift; you must
take it off.’ They had so little patience that they took it off
themselves, and I was naked from the waist up. They brought a cord
with which they tied me to a beam in the kitchen. They drew the
cord tight with all their strength and asked me, ‘Does it hurt
you?’ and then they discharged their fury upon me, exclaiming as
they struck me, ‘Pray now to your God.’ It was the Roulette woman
who held this language. But at this moment I received the greatest
consolation that I can ever receive in my life, since I had the
honor of being whipped for the name of Christ, and in addition of
being crowned with his mercy and his consolations. Why can I not
write down the inconceivable influences, consolations, and peace
which I felt interiorly? To understand them one must have passed
by the same trial; they were so great that I was ravished, for
there where afflictions abound grace is given superabundantly. In
vain the women cried, ‘We must double our blows; she does not feel
them, for she neither speaks nor cries.’ And how should I have
cried, since I was swooning with happiness within?”(172)
The transition from tenseness, self‐responsibility, and worry, to
equanimity, receptivity, and peace, is the most wonderful of all those
shiftings of inner equilibrium, those changes of the personal centre of
energy, which I have analyzed so often; and the chief wonder of it is that
it so often comes about, not by doing, but by simply relaxing and throwing
the burden down. This abandonment of self‐responsibility seems to be the
fundamental act in specifically religious, as distinguished from moral
practice. It antedates theologies and is independent of philosophies.
Mind‐cure, theosophy, stoicism, ordinary neurological hygiene, insist on
it as emphatically as Christianity does, and it is capable of entering
into closest marriage with every speculative creed.(173) Christians who
have it strongly live in what is called “recollection,” and are never
anxious about the future, nor worry over the outcome of the day. Of Saint
Catharine of Genoa it is said that “she took cognizance of things, only as
they were presented to her in succession, _moment by moment_.” To her holy
soul, “the divine moment was the present moment,... and when the present
moment was estimated in itself and in its relations, and when the duty
that was involved in it was accomplished, it was permitted to pass away as
if it had never been, and to give way to the facts and duties of the
moment which came after.”(174)
Hinduism, mind‐cure, and theosophy all lay great emphasis upon this
concentration of the consciousness upon the moment at hand.
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The next religious symptom which I will note is what I have called Purity
of Life. The saintly person becomes exceedingly sensitive to inner
inconsistency or discord, and mixture and confusion grow intolerable. All
the mind’s objects and occupations must be ordered with reference to the
special spiritual excitement which is now its keynote. Whatever is
unspiritual taints the pure water of the soul and is repugnant. Mixed with
this exaltation of the moral sensibilities there is also an ardor of
sacrifice, for the beloved deity’s sake, of everything unworthy of him.
Sometimes the spiritual ardor is so sovereign that purity is achieved at a
stroke—we have seen examples. Usually it is a more gradual conquest. Billy
Bray’s account of his abandonment of tobacco is a good example of the
latter form of achievement.