The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

The Varieties of Religious ExperienceThat nearness of God is a constant security against terror and anxiety.It is not that they are at all assured of physical safety, or deemthemselves protected by a love which is denied to others, but thatthey are in a state of mind equally ready to be safe or to meet withinjury. If injury befall them, they will be content to bear it becausethe Lord is their keeper, and nothing can befall them without hiswill. If it be his will, then injury is for them a blessing and no calamityat all. Thus and thus only is the trustful man protected andshielded from harm. And I for one—by no means a thick-skinnedor hard-nerved man-am absolutely satisfied with this arrangement,and do not wish for any other kind of immunity from danger andcatastrophe. Quite as sensitive to pain as the most highly strungorganism, I yet feel that the worst of it is conquered, and the stingtaken out of it altogether, by the thought that God is our loving andsleepless keeper, and that nothing can hurt us without his will.”158More excited expressions of this condition are abundant in religiousliterature. I could easily weary you with their monotony. Hereis an account from Mrs. Jonathan Edwards:—“Last night,” Mrs. Edwards writes, “was the sweetest night I everhad in my life. I never before, for so long a time together, enjoyed somuch of the light and rest and sweetness of heaven in my soul, butwithout the least agitation of body during the whole time. Part ofthe night I lay awake, sometimes asleep, and sometimes betweensleeping and waking. But all night I continued in a constant, clear,and lively sense of the heavenly sweetness of Christ’s excellent love,of his nearness to me, and of my dearness to him; with an inexpressiblysweet calmness of soul in an entire rest in him. I seemed tomyself to perceive a glow of divine love come down from the heartof Christ in heaven into my heart in a constant stream, like a streamor pencil of sweet light. At the same time my heart and soul allflowed out in love to Christ, so that there seemed to be a constantflowing and reflowing of heavenly love, and I appeared to myself tofloat or swim, in these bright, sweet beams, like the motes swimmingin the beams of the sun, or the streams of his light whichcome in at the window. I think that what I felt each minute was158 The Mystery of Pain and Death, London, 1892, p. 258.250