and the addition or subtraction of a certain amount of this quality
makes a different man, a different life. Various excitements let the
courage loose. Trustful hope will do it; inspiring example will do
it; love will do it; wrath will do it. In some people it is natively
so high that the mere touch of danger does it, though danger is for
most men the great inhibitor of action. “Love of adventure” becomes
in such persons a ruling passion. “I believe,” says General
Skobeleff, “that my bravery is simply the passion and at the same
time the contempt of danger. The risk of life fills me with an
exaggerated rapture. The fewer there are to share it, the more I
like it. The participation of my body in the event is required to
furnish me an adequate excitement. Everything intellectual appears
to me to be reflex; but a meeting of man to man, a duel, a danger
into which I can throw myself headforemost, attracts me, moves me,
intoxicates me. I am crazy for it, I love it, I adore it. I run
after danger as one runs after women; I wish it never to stop. Were
it always the same, it would always bring me a new pleasure. When I
throw myself into an adventure in which I hope to find it, my heart
palpitates with the uncertainty; I could wish at once to have it
appear and yet to delay. A sort of painful and delicious shiver
shakes me; my entire nature runs to meet the peril with an impetus
that my will would in vain try to resist.” (JULIETTE ADAM: Le
Général Skobeleff, Nouvelle Revue, 1886, abridged.) Skobeleff seems
to have been a cruel egoist; but the disinterested Garibaldi, if one
may judge by his “Memorie,” lived in an unflagging emotion of
similar danger‐seeking excitement.
146 See the case on p. 70, above, where the writer describes his
experiences of communion with the Divine as consisting “merely in
the _temporary obliteration of the conventionalities_ which usually
cover my life.”
147 Above, p. 201. “The only radical remedy I know for dipsomania is
religiomania,” is a saying I have heard quoted from some medical
man.
148 Doddridge’s Life of Colonel James Gardiner, London Religious Tract
Society, pp. 23‐32.
149 Here, for example, is a case, from Starbuck’s book, in which a
“sensory automatism” brought about quickly what prayers and resolves
had been unable to effect. The subject is a woman. She writes:—
“When I was about forty I tried to quit smoking, but the desire was
on me, and had me in its power. I cried and prayed and promised God
to quit, but could not. I had smoked for fifteen years. When I was
fifty‐three, as I sat by the fire one day smoking, a voice came to
me. I did not hear it with my ears, but more as a dream or sort of
double think. It said, ‘Louisa, lay down smoking.’ At once I
replied, ‘Will you take the desire away?’ But it only kept saying:
‘Louisa, lay down smoking.’ Then I got up, laid my pipe on the
mantel‐shelf, and never smoked again or had any desire to. The
desire was gone as though I had never known it or touched tobacco.
The sight of others smoking and the smell of smoke never gave me the
least wish to touch it again.” The Psychology of Religion, p. 142.
150 Professor Starbuck expresses the radical destruction of old
influences physiologically, as a cutting off of the connection
between higher and lower cerebral centres. “This condition,” he
says, “in which the association‐centres connected with the spiritual
life are cut off from the lower, is often reflected in the way
correspondents describe their experiences.... For example:
‘Temptations from without still assail me, but there is nothing
_within_ to respond to them.’ The ego [here] is wholly identified
with the higher centres, whose quality of feeling is that of
withinness. Another of the respondents says: ‘Since then, although
Satan tempts me, there is as it were a wall of brass around me, so
that his darts cannot touch me.’ ”—Unquestionably, functional
exclusions of this sort must occur in the cerebral organ. But on the
side accessible to introspection, their causal condition is nothing
but the degree of spiritual excitement, getting at last so high and
strong as to be sovereign; and it must be frankly confessed that we
do not know just why or how such sovereignty comes about in one
person and not in another. We can only give our imagination a
certain delusive help by mechanical analogies.
If we should conceive, for example, that the human mind, with its
different possibilities of equilibrium, might be like a many‐sided
solid with different surfaces on which it could lie flat, we might
liken mental revolutions to the spatial revolutions of such a body.
As it is pried up, say by a lever, from a position in which it lies
on surface A, for instance, it will linger for a time unstably
halfway up, and if the lever cease to urge it, it will tumble back
or “relapse” under the continued pull of gravity. But if at last it
rotate far enough for its centre of gravity to pass beyond surface A
altogether, the body will fall over, on surface B, say, and abide
there permanently. The pulls of gravity towards A have vanished, and
may now be disregarded. The polyhedron has become immune against
farther attraction from their direction.
In this figure of speech the lever may correspond to the emotional
influences making for a new life, and the initial pull of gravity to
the ancient drawbacks and inhibitions. So long as the emotional
influence fails to reach a certain pitch of efficacy, the changes it
produces are unstable, and the man relapses into his original
attitude. But when a certain intensity is attained by the new
emotion, a critical point is passed, and there then ensues an
irreversible revolution, equivalent to the production of a new
nature.
151 I use this word in spite of a certain flavor of “sanctimoniousness”
which sometimes clings to it, because no other word suggests as well
the exact combination of affections which the text goes on to
describe.
152 “It will be found,” says Dr. W. R. INGE (in his lectures on
Christian Mysticism, London, 1899, p. 326), “that men of preëminent
saintliness agree very closely in what they tell us. They tell us
that they have arrived at an unshakable conviction, not based on
inference but on immediate experience, that God is a spirit with
whom the human spirit can hold intercourse; that in him meet all
that they can imagine of goodness, truth, and beauty; that they can
see his footprints everywhere in nature, and feel his presence
within them as the very life of their life, so that in proportion as
they come to themselves they come to him. They tell us what
separates us from him and from happiness is, first, self‐seeking in
all its forms; and, secondly, sensuality in all its forms; that
these are the ways of darkness and death, which hide from us the
face of God; while the path of the just is like a shining light,
which shineth more and more unto the perfect day.”
153 The “enthusiasm of humanity” may lead to a life which coalesces in
many respects with that of Christian saintliness. Take the following
rules proposed to members of the Union pour l’Action morale, in the
Bulletin de l’Union, April 1‐15, 1894. See, also, Revue Bleue,
August 13, 1892.
“We would make known in our own persons the usefulness of rule, of
discipline, of resignation and renunciation; we would teach the
necessary perpetuity of suffering, and explain the creative part
which it plays. We would wage war upon false optimism; on the base
hope of happiness coming to us ready made; on the notion of a
salvation by knowledge alone, or by material civilization alone,
vain symbol as this is of civilization, precarious external
arrangement, ill‐fitted to replace the intimate union and consent of
souls. We would wage war also on bad morals, whether in public or in
private life; on luxury, fastidiousness, and over‐refinement; on all
that tends to increase the painful, immoral, and anti‐social
multiplication of our wants; on all that excites envy and dislike in
the soul of the common people, and confirms the notion that the
chief end of life is freedom to enjoy. We would preach by our
example the respect of superiors and equals, the respect of all men;
affectionate simplicity in our relations with inferiors and
insignificant persons; indulgence where our own claims only are
concerned, but firmness in our demands where they relate to duties
towards others or towards the public.
“For the common people are what we help them to become; their vices
are our vices, gazed upon, envied, and imitated; and if they come
back with all their weight upon us, it is but just.”
154 Above, pp. 248 ff.
155 H. THOREAU: Walden, Riverside edition, p. 206, abridged.
156 C. H. HILTY: Glück, vol. i. p. 85.
157 The Mystery of Pain and Death, London, 1892, p. 258.
158 Compare Madame Guyon: “It was my practice to arise at midnight for
purposes of devotion.... It seemed to me that God came at the
precise time and woke me from sleep in order that I might enjoy him.
When I was out of health or greatly fatigued, he did not awake me,
but at such times I felt, even in my sleep, a singular possession of
God. He loved me so much that he seemed to pervade my being, at a
time when I could be only imperfectly conscious of his presence. My
sleep is sometimes broken,—a sort of half sleep; but my soul seems
to be awake enough to know God, when it is hardly capable of knowing
anything else.” T. C. UPHAM: The Life and Religious Experiences of
Madame de la Mothe Guyon, New York, 1877, vol. i. p. 260.
159 I have considerably abridged the words of the original, which is
given in EDWARDS’S Narrative of the Revival in New England.
160 BOUGAUD: Hist. de la Bienheureuse Marguerite Marie, 1894, p. 125.
161 Paris, 1900.
162 Page 130.
163 Page 167.
164 Op. cit., p. 127.
165 The barrier between men and animals also. We read of Towianski, an
eminent Polish patriot and mystic, that “one day one of his friends
met him in the rain, caressing a big dog which was jumping upon him
and covering him horribly with mud. On being asked why he permitted
the animal thus to dirty his clothes, Towianski replied: ‘This dog,
whom I am now meeting for the first time, has shown a great fellow‐
feeling for me, and a great joy in my recognition and acceptance of
his greetings. Were I to drive him off, I should wound his feelings
and do him a moral injury. It would be an offense not only to him,
but to all the spirits of the other world who are on the same level
with him. The damage which he does to my coat is as nothing in
comparison with the wrong which I should inflict upon him, in case I
were to remain indifferent to the manifestations of his friendship.
We ought,’ he added, ‘both to lighten the condition of animals,
whenever we can, and at the same time to facilitate in ourselves
that union of the world of all spirits, which the sacrifice of
Christ has made possible.’ ” André Towianski, Traduction de
l’Italien, Turin, 1897 (privately printed). I owe my knowledge of
this book and of Towianski to my friend Professor W. Lutoslawski,
author of “Plato’s Logic.”
166 J. PATTERSON’S Life of Richard Weaver, pp. 66‐68, abridged.
167 As where the future Buddha, incarnated as a hare, jumps into the
fire to cook himself for a meal for a beggar—having previously
shaken himself three times, so that none of the insects in his fur
should perish with him.
168 Bulletin de l’Union pour l’Action Morale, September, 1894.
169 B. PASCAL: Prières pour les Maladies, §§ xiii., xiv., abridged.
170 From THOMAS C. UPHAM’S Life and Religious Opinions and Experiences
of Madame de la Mothe Guyon, New York, 1877, ii. 48, i. 141, 413,
abridged.
171 Op. cit., London, 1901, p. 130.
172 CLAPARÈDE et GOTY: Deux Héroines de la Foi, Paris, 1880, p. 112.
173 Compare these three different statements of it: A. P. CALL: As a
Matter of Course, Boston, 1894; H. W. DRESSER: Living by the Spirit,
New York and London, 1900; H. W. SMITH: The Christian’s Secret of a
Happy Life, published by the Willard Tract Repository, and now in
thousands of hands.
174 T. C. UPHAM: Life of Madame Catharine Adorna, 3d ed., New York,
1864, pp. 158, 172‐174.
175 The History of THOMAS ELWOOD, written by Himself, London, 1885, pp.
32‐34.
176 Memoirs of W.E. Channing, Boston, 1840, i. 196.
177 L. TYERMAN: The Life and Times of the Rev. John Wesley, i. 274.
178 A. MOUNIN: Le Curé d’Ars, Vie de M. J. B. M. Vianney, 1864, p. 545,
abridged.
179 B. WENDELL: Cotton Mather, New York, no date, p. 198.
180 That of the earlier Jesuit, RODRIGUEZ, which has been translated
into all languages, is one of the best known. A convenient modern
manual, very well put together, is L’Ascétique Chrétienne, by M. J.
RIBET, Paris, Poussielgue, nouvelle édition, 1898.
181 SAINT JEAN DE LA CROIX, Vie et Œuvres, Paris, 1893, ii. 94, 99,
abridged.
182 “Insects,” i.e. lice, were an unfailing token of mediæval sainthood.
We read of Francis of Assisi’s sheepskin that “often a companion of
the saint would take it to the fire to clean and _dispediculate_ it,
doing so, as he said, because the seraphic father himself was no
enemy of _pedocchi_, but on the contrary kept them on him (le
portava adosso), and held it for an honor and a glory to wear these
celestial pearls in his habit.” Quoted by P. SABATIER: Speculum
Perfectionis, etc., Paris, 1898, p. 231, note.
183 The Life of the Blessed HENRY SUSO, by Himself, translated by T. F.
KNOX, London, 1865, pp. 56‐80, abridged.
184 BOUGAUD: Hist. de la bienheureuse Marguerite Marie, Paris, 1894, pp.
265, 171. Compare, also, pp. 386, 387.
185 LEJEUNE: Introduction à la Vie Mystique, 1899, p. 277. The holocaust
simile goes back at least as far as Ignatius Loyola.
186 ALFONSO RODRIGUEZ, S. J.: Pratique de la Perfection Chrétienne, Part
iii., Treatise v., ch. x.
187 Letters li. and cxx. of the collection translated into French by
BOUIX, Paris, 1870.
188 BARTOLI‐MICHEL, ii. 13.
189 RODRIGUEZ: Op. cit., Part iii., Treatise v., ch. vi.
190 SAINTE‐BEUVE: Histoire de Port Royal, i. 346.
191 RODRIGUEZ: Op. cit., Part iii., Treatise iii., chaps. vi., vii.
192 R. PHILIP: The Life and Times of George Whitefield, London, 1842, p.
366.
193 EDWARD CARPENTER: Towards Democracy, p. 362, abridged.
194 Speculum Perfectionis, ed. P. SABATIER, Paris, 1898, pp. 10, 13.
195 An Apology for M. Antonia Bourignon, London, 1699, pp. 269, 270,
abridged.
Another example from Starbuck’s MS. collection:—
“At a meeting held at six the next morning, I heard a man relate his
experience. He said: The Lord asked him if he would confess Christ
among the quarrymen with whom he worked, and he said he would. Then
he asked him if he would give up to be used of the Lord the four
hundred dollars he had laid up, and he said he would, and thus the
Lord saved him. The thought came to me at once that I had never made
a real consecration either of myself or of my property to the Lord,
but had always tried to serve the Lord in _my_ way. Now the Lord
asked me if I would serve him in _his_ way, and go out alone and
penniless if he so ordered. The question was pressed home, and I
must decide: To forsake all and have him, or have all and lose him!
I soon decided to take him; and the blessed assurance came, that he
had taken me for his own, and my joy was full. I returned home from
the meeting with feelings as simple as a child. I thought all would
be glad to hear of the joy of the Lord that possessed me, and so I
began to tell the simple story. But to my great surprise, the
pastors (for I attended meetings in three churches) opposed the
experience and said it was fanaticism, and one told the members of
his church to shun those that professed it, and I soon found that my
foes were those of my own household.”
196 J. J. CHAPMAN, in the Political Nursery, vol. iv. p. 4, April, 1900,
abridged.
197 GEORGE FOX: Journal, Philadelphia, 1800, pp. 59‐61, abridged.
198 Christian saints have had their specialties of devotion, Saint
Francis to Christ’s wounds; Saint Anthony of Padua to Christ’s
childhood; Saint Bernard to his humanity; Saint Teresa to Saint
Joseph, etc. The Shi‐ite Mohammedans venerate Ali, the Prophet’s
son‐in‐law, instead of Abu‐bekr, his brother‐in‐law. Vambéry
describes a dervish whom he met in Persia, “who had solemnly vowed,
thirty years before, that he would never employ his organs of speech
otherwise but in uttering, everlastingly, the name of his favorite,
_Ali, Ali_. He thus wished to signify to the world that he was the
most devoted partisan of that Ali who had been dead a thousand
years. In his own home, speaking with his wife, children, and
friends, no other word but ‘Ali!’ ever passed his lips. If he wanted
food or drink or anything else, he expressed his wants still by
repeating ‘Ali!’ Begging or buying at the bazaar, it was always
‘Ali!’ Treated ill or generously, he would still harp on his
monotonous ‘Ali!’ Latterly his zeal assumed such tremendous
proportions that, like a madman, he would race, the whole day, up
and down the streets of the town, throwing his stick high up into
the air, and shriek out, all the while, at the top of his voice,
‘Ali!’ This dervish was venerated by everybody as a saint, and
received everywhere with the greatest distinction.” ARMINIUS
VAMBÉRY, his Life and Adventures, written by Himself, London, 1889,
p. 69. On the anniversary of the death of Hussein, Ali’s son, the
Shi‐ite Moslems still make the air resound with cries of his name
and Ali’s.
199 Compare H. C. WARREN: Buddhism in Translation, Cambridge, U. S.,
1898, passim.
200 Compare J. L. MERRICK: The Life and Religion of Mohammed, as
contained in the Sheeah traditions of the Hyat‐ul‐Kuloob, Boston,
1850, passim.
201 BOUGAUD: Hist. de la bienheureuse Marguerite Marie, Paris, 1894, p.
145.
202 BOUGAUD: Hist. de la bienheureuse Marguerite Marie, Paris, 1894, pp.
365, 241.
203 BOUGAUD: Op. cit., p. 267.
204 Examples: “Suffering from a headache, she sought, for the glory of
God, to relieve herself by holding certain odoriferous substances in
her mouth, when the Lord appeared to her to lean over towards her
lovingly, and to find comfort Himself in these odors. After having
gently breathed them in, He arose, and said with a gratified air to
the Saints, as if contented with what He had done: ‘See the new
present which my betrothed has given Me!’
“One day, at chapel, she heard supernaturally sung the words,
‘_Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus_.’ The Son of God leaning towards her
like a sweet lover, and giving to her soul the softest kiss, said to
her at the second Sanctus: ‘In this _Sanctus_ addressed to my
person, receive with this kiss all the sanctity of my divinity and
of my humanity, and let it be to thee a sufficient preparation for
approaching the communion table.’ And the next following Sunday,
while she was thanking God for this favor, behold the Son of God,
more beauteous than thousands of angels, takes her in His arms as if
He were proud of her, and presents her to God the Father, in that
perfection of sanctity with which He had dowered her. And the Father
took such delight in this soul thus presented by His only Son, that,
as if unable longer to restrain Himself, He gave her, and the Holy
Ghost gave her also, the Sanctity attributed to each by His own
_Sanctus_—and thus she remained endowed with the plenary fullness of
the blessing of _Sanctity_, bestowed on her by Omnipotence, by
Wisdom, and by Love.” Révélations de Sainte Gertrude, Paris, 1898,
i. 44, 186.
205 FURNEAUX JORDAN: Character in Birth and Parentage, first edition.
Later editions change the nomenclature.
206 As to this distinction, see the admirably practical account in J. M.
BALDWIN’S little book, The Story of the Mind, 1898.
207 On this subject I refer to the work of M. MURISIER (Les Maladies du
Sentiment Religieux, Paris, 1901), who makes inner unification the
mainspring of the whole religious life. But _all_ strongly ideal
interests, religious or irreligious, unify the mind and tend to
subordinate everything to themselves. One would infer from M.
Murisier’s pages that this formal condition was peculiarly
characteristic of religion, and that one might in comparison almost
neglect material content, in studying the latter. I trust that the
present work will convince the reader that religion has plenty of
material content which is characteristic, and which is more
important by far than any general psychological form. In spite of
this criticism, I find M. Murisier’s book highly instructive.
208 Example: “At the first beginning of the Servitor’s [Suso’s] interior
life, after he had purified his soul properly by confession, he
marked out for himself, in thought, three circles, within which he
shut himself up, as in a spiritual intrenchment. The first circle
was his cell, his chapel, and the choir. When he was within this
circle, he seemed to himself in complete security. The second circle
was the whole monastery as far as the outer gate. The third and
outermost circle was the gate itself, and here it was necessary for
him to stand well upon his guard. When he went outside these
circles, it seemed to him that he was in the plight of some wild
animal which is outside its hole, and surrounded by the hunt, and
therefore in need of all its cunning and watchfulness.” The Life of
the Blessed Henry Suso, by Himself, translated by KNOX, London,
1865, p. 168.
209 Vie des premières Religieuses Dominicaines de la Congrégation de St.
Dominique, à Nancy; Nancy, 1896, p. 129.
210 MESCHLER’S Life of Saint Louis of Gonzaga, French translation by
LEBRÉQUIER, 1891; p. 40.
211 In his boyish note‐book he praises the monastic life for its freedom
from sin, and for the imperishable treasures, which it enables us to
store up, “of merit in God’s eyes which makes of Him our debtor for
all Eternity.” Loc. cit., p. 62.
212 Mademoiselle Mori, a novel quoted in HARE’S Walks in Rome, 1900, i.
55.
I cannot resist the temptation to quote from Starbuck’s book, p.
388, another case of purification by elimination. It runs as
follows:—
“The signs of abnormality which sanctified persons show are of
frequent occurrence. They get out of tune with other people; often
they will have nothing to do with churches, which they regard as
worldly; they become hypercritical towards others; they grow
careless of their social, political, and financial obligations. As
an instance of this type may be mentioned a woman of sixty‐eight of
whom the writer made a special study. She had been a member of one
of the most active and progressive churches in a busy part of a
large city. Her pastor described her as having reached the
censorious stage. She had grown more and more out of sympathy with
the church; her connection with it finally consisted simply in
attendance at prayer‐meeting, at which her only message was that of
reproof and condemnation of the others for living on a low plane. At
last she withdrew from fellowship with any church. The writer found
her living alone in a little room on the top story of a cheap
boarding‐house, quite out of touch with all human relations, but
apparently happy in the enjoyment of her own spiritual blessings.
Her time was occupied in writing booklets on sanctification—page
after page of dreamy rhapsody. She proved to be one of a small group
of persons who claim that entire salvation involves three steps
instead of two; not only must there be conversion and
sanctification, but a third, which they call ‘crucifixion’ or
‘perfect redemption,’ and which seems to bear the same relation to
sanctification that this bears to conversion. She related how the
Spirit had said to her, ‘Stop going to church. Stop going to
holiness meetings. Go to your own room and I will teach you.’ She
professes to care nothing for colleges, or preachers, or churches,
but only cares to listen to what God says to her. Her description of
her experience seemed entirely consistent; she is happy and
contented, and her life is entirely satisfactory to herself. While
listening to her own story, one was tempted to forget that it was
from the life of a person who could not live by it in conjunction
with her fellows.”
213 The best missionary lives abound in the victorious combination of
non‐resistance with personal authority. John G. Paton, for example,
in the New Hebrides, among brutish Melanesian cannibals, preserves a
charmed life by dint of it. When it comes to the point, no one ever
dares actually to strike him. Native converts, inspired by him,
showed analogous virtue. “One of our chiefs, full of the Christ‐
kindled desire to seek and to save, sent a message to an inland
chief, that he and four attendants would come on Sabbath and tell
them the gospel of Jehovah God. The reply came back sternly
forbidding their visit, and threatening with death any Christian
that approached their village. Our chief sent in response a loving
message, telling them that Jehovah had taught the Christians to
return good for evil, and that they would come unarmed to tell them
the story of how the Son of God came into the world and died in
order to bless and save his enemies. The heathen chief sent back a
stern and prompt reply once more: ‘If you come, you will be killed.’
On Sabbath morn the Christian chief and his four companions were met
outside the village by the heathen chief, who implored and
threatened them once more. But the former said:—
“ ‘We come to you without weapons of war! We come only to tell you
about Jesus. We believe that He will protect us to‐day.’