The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

The Varieties of Religious Experiencenaturally to think that the smallest details of this world derive infinitesignificance from their relation to an unseen divine order. Thethought of this order yields him a superior denomination of happiness,and a steadfastness of soul with which no other can compare.In social relations his serviceability is exemplary; he abounds inimpulses to help. His help is inward as well as outward, for his sympathyreaches souls as well as bodies, and kindles unsuspected facultiestherein. Instead of placing happiness where common men placeit, in comfort, he places it in a higher kind of inner excitement,which converts discomforts into sources of cheer and annuls unhappiness.So he turns his back upon no duty, however thankless;and when we are in need of assistance, we can count upon the saintlending his hand with more certainty than we can count upon anyother person. Finally, his humble-mindedness and his ascetic tendenciessave him from the petty personal pretensions which so obstructour ordinary social intercourse, and his purity gives us in hima clean man for a companion. Felicity, purity, charity, patience, selfseverity—theseare splendid excellencies, and the saint of all menshows them in the completest possible measure.But, as we saw, all these things together do not make saints infallible.When their intellectual outlook is narrow, they fall into all sortsof holy excesses, fanaticism or theopathic absorption, self-torment,prudery, scrupulosity, gullibility, and morbid inability to meet theworld. By the very intensity of his fidelity to the paltry ideals withwhich an inferior intellect may inspire him, a saint can be even moreobjectionable and damnable than a superficial carnal man would bein the same situation. We must judge him not sentimentally only,and not in isolation, but using our own intellectual standards, placinghim in his environment, and estimating his total function.Now in the matter of intellectual standards, we must bear in mindthat it is unfair, where we find narrowness of mind, always to imputeit as a vice to the individual, for in religious and theological mattershe probably absorbs his narrowness from his generation. Moreover,we must not confound the essentials of saintliness, which are thosegeneral passions of which I have spoken, with its accidents, which arethe special determinations of these passions at any historical moment.In these determinations the saints will usually be loyal to the tempo-330