The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

William Jameswhen the higher wishes lack just that last acuteness, that touch ofexplosive intensity, of dynamogenic quality (to use the slang of thepsychologists), that enables them to burst their shell, and make irruptionefficaciously into life and quell the lower tendencies forever.In a later lecture we shall have much to say about this higherexcitability.I find another good description of the divided will in the autobiographyof Henry Alline, the Nova Scotian evangelist, of whosemelancholy I read a brief account in my last lecture. The poor youth’ssins were, as you will see, of the most harmless order, yet they interferedwith what proved to be his truest vocation, so they gave himgreat distress.“I was now very moral in my life, but found no rest of conscience.I now began to be esteemed in young company, who knew nothingof my mind all this while, and their esteem began to be a snare tomy soul, for I soon began to be fond of carnal mirth, though I stillflattered myself that if I did not get drunk, nor curse, nor swear,there would be no sin in frolicking and carnal mirth, and I thoughtGod would indulge young people with some (what I called simpleor civil) recreation. I still kept a round of duties, and would notsuffer myself to run into any open vices, and so got along very wellin time of health and prosperity, but when I was distressed or threatenedby sickness, death, or heavy storms of thunder, my religionwould not do, and I found there was something wanting, and wouldbegin to repent my going so much to frolics, but when the distresswas over, the devil and my own wicked heart, with the solicitationsof my associates, and my fondness for young company, were suchstrong allurements, I would again give way, and thus I got to be verywild and rude, at the same time kept up my rounds of secret prayerand reading; but God, not willing I should destroy myself, still followedme with his calls, and moved with such power upon my conscience,that I could not satisfy myself with my diversions, and inthe midst of my mirth sometimes would have such a sense of mylost and undone condition, that I would wish myself from the company,and after it was over, when I went home, would make manypromises that I would attend no more on these frolics, and would begforgiveness for hours and hours; but when I came to have the tempta-159