The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

The Varieties of Religious Experienceproached himself as for a grave sin against modesty. He cultivatedsilence, as preserving from sins of the tongue; and his greatest penancewas the limit which his superiors set to his bodily penances. Hesought after false accusations and unjust reprimands as opportunitiesof humility; and such was his obedience that, when a room-mate,having no more paper, asked him for a sheet, he did not feel free togive it to him without first obtaining the permission of the superior,who, as such, stood in the place of God, and transmitted his orders.I can find no other sorts of fruit than these of Louis’s saintship.He died in 1591, in his twenty-ninth year, and is known in theChurch as the patron of all young people. On his festival, the altarin the chapel devoted to him in a certain church in Rome “isembosomed in flowers, arranged with exquisite taste; and a pile ofletters may be seen at its foot, written to the Saint by young menand women, and directed to ‘Paradiso.’ They are supposed to beburnt unread except by San Luigi, who must find singular petitionsin these pretty little missives, tied up now with a green ribbon, expressiveof hope, now with a red one, emblematic of love,” etc.214I cannot resist the temptation to quote from Starbuck’s book, p.388, another case of purification by elimination. It runs as follows:—“The signs of abnormality which sanctified persons show are offrequent occurrence. They get out of tune with other people; oftenthey will have nothing to do with churches, which they regard asworldly; they become hypercritical towards others; they grow carelessof their social, political, and financial obligations. As an instanceof this type may be mentioned a woman of sixty-eight ofwhom the writer made a special study. She had been a member ofone of the most active and progressive churches in a busy part of alarge city. Her pastor described her as having reached the censoriousstage. She had grown more and more out of sympathy with thechurch; her connection with it finally consisted simply in attendanceat prayer-meeting, at which her only message was that ofreproof and condemnation of the others for living on a low plane.At last she withdrew from fellowship with any church. The writer214 Mademoiselle Mori, a novel quoted in Hare’s Walks in Rome, 1900,i. 55.316