The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

William Jameseasier it is to make it the carrier of unsubstantiated notions.”134The characteristics of the affective experience which, to avoidambiguity, should, I think, be called the state of assurance ratherthan the faith-state, can be easily enumerated, though it is probablydifficult to realize their intensity, unless one has been through theexperience one’s self.The central one is the loss of all the worry, the sense that all isultimately well with one, the peace, the harmony, the willingness tobe, even though the outer conditions should remain the same. Thecertainty of God’s “grace,” of “justification,” “salvation,” is an objectivebelief that usually accompanies the change in Christians; butthis may be entirely lacking and yet the affective peace remain thesame—you will recollect the case of the Oxford graduate: and manymight be given where the assurance of personal salvation was only alater result. A passion of willingness, of acquiescence, of admiration,is the glowing centre of this state of mind.The second feature is the sense of perceiving truths not knownbefore. The mysteries of life become lucid, as Professor Leuba says;and often, nay usually, the solution is more or less unutterable inwords. But these more intellectual phenomena may be postponeduntil we treat of mysticism.A third peculiarity of the assurance state is the objective changewhich the world often appears to undergo. “An appearance of newnessbeautifies every object,” the precise opposite of that other sortof newness, that dreadful unreality and strangeness in the appearanceof the world, which is experienced by melancholy patients,and of which you may recall my relating some examples.135 Thissense of clean and beautiful newness within and without is one ofthe commonest entries in conversion records. Jonathan Edwardsthus describes it in himself:—“After this my sense of divine things gradually increased, and becamemore and more lively, and had more of that inward sweetness.The appearance of everything was altered; there seemed to be, as itwere, a calm, sweet cast, or appearance of divine glory, in almost134 American Journal of Psychology, vii. 345-347, abridged.135 Above, p. 150.225