The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

The Varieties of Religious Experiencesame in all religions, of which the features can easily be traced.153They are these:—1. A feeling of being in a wider life than that of this world’s selfishlittle interests; and a conviction, not merely intellectual, but as itwere sensible, of the existence of an Ideal Power. In Christian saintlinessthis power is always personified as God; but abstract moralideals, civic or patriotic utopias, or inner versions of holiness orright may also be felt as the true lords and enlargers of our life, inways which I described in the lecture on the Reality of the Unseen.154153 “It will be found,” says Dr. W. R. Inge (in his lectures on ChristianMysticism, London, 1899, p. 326), “that men of preeminent saintlinessagree very closely in what they tell us. They tell us that they have arrived atan unshakable conviction, not based on inference but on immediate experience,that God is a spirit with whom the human spirit can hold intercourse;that in him meet all that they can imagine of goodness, truth, andbeauty; that they can see his footprints everywhere in nature, and feel hispresence within them as the very life of their life, so that in proportion asthey come to themselves they come to him. They tell us what separates usfrom him and from happiness is, first, self-seeking in all its forms; andsecondly, sensuality in all its forms; that these are the ways of darkness anddeath, which hide from us the face of God; while the path of the just islike a shining light, which shineth more and more unto the perfect day.”154 The “enthusiasm of humanity” may lead to a life which coalesces inmany respects with that of Christian saintliness. Take the following rulesproposed to members of the Union pour l’Action morale, in the Bulletinde l’Union, April 1-15, 1894. See, also, Revue Bleue, August 13, 1892.“We would make known in our own persons the usefulness of rule, ofdiscipline, of resignation and renunciation; we would teach the necessaryperpetuity of suffering, and explain the creative part which it plays. Wewould wage war upon false optimism; on the base hope of happiness comingto us ready made; on the notion of a salvation by knowledge alone, orby material civilization alone, vain symbol as this is of civilization, precariousexternal arrangement ill-fitted to replace the intimate union andconsent of souls. We would wage war also on bad morals, whether inpublic or in private life; on luxury, fastidiousness, and over-refinement,on all that tends to increase the painful, immoral, and anti-social multi-246