The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

The Varieties of Religious Experiencea higher control. If, abstracting altogether from the question of theirvalue for the future spiritual life of the individual, we take them ontheir psychological side exclusively, so many peculiarities in them remindus of what we find outside of conversion that we are tempted toclass them along with other automatisms, and to suspect that whatmakes the difference between a sudden and a gradual convert is notnecessarily the presence of divine miracle in the case of one and ofsomething less divine in that of the other, but rather a simple psychologicalpeculiarity, the fact, namely, that in the recipient of the moreinstantaneous grace we have one of those Subjects who are in possessionof a large region in which mental work can go on subliminally,and from which invasive experiences, abruptly upsetting the equilibriumof the primary consciousness, may come.I do not see why Methodists need object to such a view. Pray goback and recollect one of the conclusions to which I sought to leadyou in my very first lecture. You may remember how I there arguedagainst the notion that the worth of a thing can be decided by itsorigin. Our spiritual judgment, I said, our opinion of the significanceand value of a human event or condition, must be decided on empiricalgrounds exclusively. If the fruits for life of the state of conversionare good, we ought to idealize and venerate it, even though it be apiece of natural psychology; if not, we ought to make short work withit, no matter what supernatural being may have infused it.Well, how is it with these fruits? If we except the class of preeminentsaints of whom the names illumine history, and consider onlythe usual run of “saints,” the shopkeeping church-members and ordinaryyouthful or middle-aged recipients of instantaneous conversion,whether at revivals or in the spontaneous course of methodisticgrowth, you will probably agree that no splendor worthy of awholly supernatural creature fulgurates from them, or sets them apartfrom the mortals who have never experienced that favor. Were ittrue that a suddenly converted man as such is, as Edwards says,125125 Edwards says elsewhere: “I am bold to say that the work of God in theconversion of one soul, considered together with the source foundation,and purchase of it, and also the benefit, end, and eternal issue of it, is amore glorious work of God than the creation of the whole material universe.”216