The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

The Varieties of Religious Experienceother place she writes: “We all of us came near perishing in a riverwhich we found it necessary to pass. The carriage sank in the quicksand.Others who were with us threw themselves out in excessivefright. But I found my thoughts so much taken up with God that Ihad no distinct sense of danger. It is true that the thought of beingdrowned passed across my mind, but it cost no other sensation orreflection in me than this—that I felt quite contented and willing itwere so, if it were my heavenly Father’s choice.” Sailing from Nice toGenoa, a storm keeps her eleven days at sea.“As the irritated waves dashed round us,” she writes, “I could nothelp experiencing a certain degree of satisfaction in my mind. Ipleased myself with thinking that those mutinous billows, underthe command of Him who does all things rightly, might probablyfurnish me with a watery grave. Perhaps I carried the point too far,in the pleasure which I took in thus seeing myself beaten and bandiedby the swelling waters. Those who were with me took notice ofmy intrepidity.”171The contempt of danger which religious enthusiasm produces maybe even more buoyant still. I take an example from that charmingrecent autobiography, “With Christ at Sea,” by Frank Bullen. Acouple of days after he went through the conversion on shipboardof which he there gives an account—“It was blowing stiffly,” he writes, “and we were carrying a press ofcanvas to get north out of the bad weather. Shortly after four bells wehauled down the flying-jib, and I sprang out astride the boom to furlit. I was sitting astride the boom when suddenly it gave way with me.The sail slipped through my fingers, and I fell backwards, hanginghead downwards over the seething tumult of shining foam under theship’s bows, suspended by one foot. But I felt only high exultation inmy certainty of eternal life. Although death was divided from me bya hair’s breadth, and I was acutely conscious of the fact, it gave me nosensation but joy. I suppose I could have hung there no longer thanfive seconds, but in that time I lived a whole age of delight. But my171 From Thomas C. Upham’s Life and Religious Opinions and Experiencesof Madame de la Mothe Guyon, New York, 1877, ii. 48, i. 141,413, abridged.260