The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

William Jamesso radically taken in our Western world that the devotee could notmix it with some worldly temper. It has always found good menwho could follow most of its impulses, but who stopped short whenit came to non-resistance. Christ himself was fierce upon occasion.Cromwells, Stonewall Jacksons, Gordons, show that Christians canbe strong men also.How is success to be absolutely measured when there are so manyenvironments and so many ways of looking at the adaptation? Itcannot be measured absolutely; the verdict will vary according tothe point of view adopted. From the biological point of view SaintPaul was a failure, because he was beheaded. Yet he was magnificentlyadapted to the larger environment of history; and so far asany saint’s example is a leaven of righteousness in the world, anddraws it in the direction of more prevalent habits of saintliness, he isa success, no matter what his immediate bad fortune may be. Thegreatest saints, the spiritual heroes whom every one acknowledges,the Francises, Bernards, Luthers, Loyolas, Wesleys, Channings,Moodys, Gratrys, the Phillips Brookses, the Agnes Joneses, MargaretHallahans, and Dora Pattisons, are successes from the outset.They show themselves, and there is no question; every one perceivestheir strength and stature. Their sense of mystery in things,their passion, their goodness, irradiate about them and enlarge theiroutlines while they soften them. They are like pictures with an atmosphereand background; and, placed alongside of them, the strongmen of this world and no other seem as dry as sticks, as hard andcrude as blocks of stone or brick-bats.In a general way, then, and “on the whole,” our abandonment oftheological criteria, and our testing of religion by practical commonsense and the empirical method, leave it in possession of its toweringplace in history. Economically, the saintly group of qualities is indispensableto the world’s welfare. The great saints are immediate successes;the smaller ones are at least heralds and harbingers, and theymay be leavens also, of a better mundane order. Let us be saints, then,if we can, whether or not we succeed visibly and temporally. But inour Father’s house are many mansions, and each of us must discoverfor himself the kind of religion and the amount of saintship whichbest comports with what he believes to be his powers and feels to be335