The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

William Jamesment. It is part of the general system of purgation and cleansing whichone feels one’s self in need of, in order to be in right relations to one’sdeity. For him who confesses, shams are over and realities have begun;he has exteriorized his rottenness. If he has not actually got rid of it,he at least no longer smears it over with a hypocritical show of virtue—helives at least upon a basis of veracity. The complete decay ofthe practice of confession in Anglo-Saxon communities is a little hardto account for. Reaction against popery is of course the historic explanation,for in popery confession went with penances and absolution,and other inadmissible practices. But on the side of the sinner himselfit seems as if the need ought to have been too great to accept so summarya refusal of its satisfaction. One would think that in more menthe shell of secrecy would have had to open, the pent-in abscess toburst and gain relief, even though the ear that heard the confessionwere unworthy. The Catholic church, for obvious utilitarian reasons,has substituted auricular confession to one priest for the more radicalact of public confession. We English-speaking Protestants, in the generalself-reliance and unsociability of our nature, seem to find it enoughif we take God alone into our confidence.304The next topic on which I must comment is Prayer—and thistime it must be less briefly. We have heard much talk of late againstprayer, especially against prayers for better weather and for the recoveryof sick people. As regards prayers for the sick, if any medicalfact can be considered to stand firm, it is that in certain environmentsprayer may contribute to recovery, and should be encouragedas a therapeutic measure. Being a normal factor of moral healthin the person, its omission would be deleterious. The case of theweather is different. Notwithstanding the recency of the oppositebelief,305 every one now knows that droughts and storms follow304 A fuller discussion of confession is contained in the excellent work by FrankGranger: The Soul of a Christian, London, 1900, ch. xii.305 Example: “The minister at Sudbury, being at the Thursday lecture in Boston,heard the officiating clergyman praying for rain. As soon as the service wasover, he went to the petitioner and said ‘You Boston ministers, as soon as a tulipwilts under your windows, go to church and pray for rain, until all Concord andSudbury are under water.’” R. W. Emerson: Lectures and Biographical Sketches,p. 363.411