The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

The Varieties of Religious Experiencehe slay me, yet will I trust in him!” and you immediately see thedifference I mean. The anima mundi, to whose disposal of his ownpersonal destiny the Stoic consents, is there to be respected andsubmitted to, but the Christian God is there to be loved; and thedifference of emotional atmosphere is like that between an arcticclimate and the tropics, though the outcome in the way of acceptingactual conditions uncomplainingly may seem in abstract termsto be much the same.“It is a man’s duty,” says Marcus Aurelius, “to comfort himselfand wait for the natural dissolution, and not to be vexed, but tofind refreshment solely in these thoughts—first that nothing willhappen to me which is not conformable to the nature of the universe;and secondly that I need do nothing contrary to the God anddeity within me; for there is no man who can compel me to transgress.He is an abscess on the universe who withdraws and separateshimself from the reason of our common nature, through being displeasedwith the things which happen. For the same nature producesthese, and has produced thee too. And so accept everythingwhich happens, even if it seem disagreeable, because it leads to this,the health of the universe and to the prosperity and felicity of Zeus.For he would not have brought on any man what he has brought ifit were not useful for the whole. The integrity of the whole is mutilatedif thou cuttest off anything. And thou dost cut off, as far as itis in thy power, when thou art dissatisfied, and in a manner triest toput anything out of the way.”14Compare now this mood with that of the old Christian author ofthe Theologia Germanica:—“Where men are enlightened with the true light, they renounceall desire and choice, and commit and commend themselves and allthings to the eternal Goodness, so that every enlightened man couldsay: ‘I would fain be to the Eternal Goodness what his own hand isto a man.’ Such men are in a state of freedom, because they havelost the fear of pain or hell, and the hope of reward or heaven, andare living in pure submission to the eternal Goodness, in the perfectfreedom of fervent love. When a man truly perceiveth and14 Book V., ch. ix. (abridged).46