THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE - Pink Monkey

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 strokewe
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.
“I had been a smoker as well as a drunkard, and I used to love my tobacco as
much as I loved my meat, and I would rather go down into the mine without my
dinner than without my pipe. In the days of old, the Lord spoke by the mouths of
his servants, the prophets; now he speaks to us by the spirit of his Son. I had not
only the feeling part of religion, but I could hear the small, still voice within
speaking to me. When I took the pipe to smoke, it would be applied within, ‘It is
an idol, a lust; worship the Lord with clean lips.’ So, I felt it was not right to
smoke. The Lord also sent a woman to convince me. I was one day in a house,
and I took out my pipe to light it at the fire, and Mary Hawke- for that was the
woman’s name- said, ‘Do you not feel it is wrong to smoke?’ I said that I felt