The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

The Varieties of Religious Experiencetoid seizure, was the case of M. Ratisbonne. Yet I am informed thatRatisbonne’s whole future was shaped by those few minutes. Hegave up his project of marriage, became a priest, founded at Jerusalem,where he went to dwell, a mission of nuns for the conversionof the Jews, showed no tendency to use for egotistic purposes thenotoriety given him by the peculiar circumstances of his conversion—which,for the rest, he could seldom refer to without tears—and in short remained an exemplary son of the Church until hedied, late in the 80’s, if I remember rightly.The only statistics I know of, on the subject of the duration ofconversions, are those collected for Professor Starbuck by MissJohnston. They embrace only a hundred persons, evangelical churchmembers,more than half being Methodists. According to the statementof the subjects themselves, there had been backsliding of somesort in nearly all the cases, 93 per cent. of the women, 77 per cent.of the men. Discussing the returns more minutely, Starbuck findsthat only 6 per cent. are relapses from the religious faith which theconversion confirmed, and that the backsliding complained of is inmost only a fluctuation in the ardor of sentiment. Only six of thehundred cases report a change of faith. Starbuck’s conclusion is thatthe effect of conversion is to bring with it “a changed attitude towardslife, which is fairly constant and permanent, although thefeelings fluctuate… . In other words, the persons who have passedthrough conversion, having once taken a stand for the religious life,tend to feel themselves identified with it, no matter how much theirreligious enthusiasm declines.”142142 Psychology of Religion, pp. 360, 357.234