The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

William Jamessaid, ‘Lord, I have done all I can, I leave the whole matter withthee.’ Immediately, like a flash of light, there came to me a greatpeace, and I arose and went into my parents’ bedroom and said, ‘Ido feel so wonderfully happy.’ This I regard as the hour of conversion.It was the hour in which I became assured of divine acceptanceand favor. So far as my life was concerned, it made little immediatechange.”The most characteristic of all the elements of the conversion crisis,and the last one of which I shall speak, is the ecstasy of happinessproduced. We have already heard several accounts of it, but Iwill add a couple more. President Finney’s is so vivid that I give it atlength:—“All my feelings seemed to rise and flow out; and the utterance ofmy heart was, ‘I want to pour my whole soul out to God.’ Therising of my soul was so great that I rushed into the back room ofthe front office, to pray. There was no fire and no light in the room;nevertheless it appeared to me as if it were perfectly light. As I wentin and shut the door after me, it seemed as if I met the Lord JesusChrist face to face. It did not occur to me then, nor did it for sometime afterwards, that it was wholly a mental state. On the contrary,it seemed to me that I saw him as I would see any other man. Hesaid nothing but looked at me in such a manner as to break meright down at his feet. I have always since regarded this as a mostremarkable state of mind; for it seemed to me a reality that he stoodbefore me, and I fell down at his feet and poured out my soul tohim. I wept aloud like a child, and made such confessions as I couldwith my choked utterance. It seemed to me that I bathed his feetwith my tears; and yet I had no distinct impression that I touchedhim, that I recollect. I must have continued in this state for a goodwhile, but my mind was too absorbed with the interview to recollectanything that I said. But I know, as soon as my mind becamecalm enough to break off from the interview, I returned to the frontoffice, and found that the fire that I had made of large wood wasnearly burned out. But as I turned and was about to take a seat bythe fire, I received a mighty baptism of the Holy Ghost. Withoutany expectation of it, without ever having the thought in my mindthat there was any such thing for me, without any recollection that231