The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

The Varieties of Religious ExperienceHis redemption was into another universe than this mere naturalworld, and life remained for him a sad and patient trial. Years laterwe can find him making such an entry as this in his diary: “OnWednesday the 12th I preached at a wedding, and had the happinessthereby to be the means of excluding carnal mirth.”The next case I will give is that of a correspondent of ProfessorLeuba, printed in the latter’s article, already cited, in vol. vi. of theAmerican Journal of Psychology. This subject was an Oxford graduate,the son of a clergyman, and the story resembles in many pointsthe classic case of Colonel Gardiner, which everybody may be supposedto know. Here it is, somewhat abridged:—“Between the period of leaving Oxford and my conversion I neverdarkened the door of my father’s church, although I lived with himfor eight years, making what money I wanted by journalism, andspending it in high carousal with any one who would sit with me anddrink it away. So I lived, sometimes drunk for a week together, andthen a terrible repentance, and would not touch a drop for a wholemonth.“In all this period, that is, up to thirty-three years of age, I neverhad a desire to reform on religious grounds. But all my pangs weredue to some terrible remorse I used to feel after a heavy carousal, theremorse taking the shape of regret after my folly in wasting my lifein such a way—a man of superior talents and education. This terribleremorse turned me gray in one night, and whenever it cameupon me I was perceptibly grayer the next morning. What I sufferedin this way is beyond the expression of words. It was hell-firein 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 aphysique like a rhinoceros, I always recovered, and as long as I letdrink alone, no man was as capable of enjoying life as I was.“I was converted in my own bedroom in my father’s rectoryhouse 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 thedrink 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 friendsent me a copy of Professor Drummond’s Natural Law in the Spiri-202