Roubinovitch et Toulouse: La Mélancolie, 1897, p. 170, abridged. ↩
I cull these examples from the work of G. Dumas: La Tristesse et la Joie, 1900. ↩
My extracts are from the French translation by “Zonia.” In abridging I have taken the liberty of transposing one passage. ↩
Grace abounding to the Chief of Sinners: I have printed a number of detached passages continuously. ↩
The Life and Journal of the Rev. Mr. Henry Alline, Boston, 1806, pp. 25, 26. I owe my acquaintance with this book to my colleague, Dr. Benjamin Rand. ↩
Compare Bunyan:
“There was I struck into a very great trembling, insomuch that at some times I could, for days together, feel my very body, as well as my mind, to shake and totter under the sense of the dreadful judgment of God, that should fall on those that have sinned that most fearful and unpardonable sin. I felt also such clogging and heat at my stomach, by reason of this my terror, that I was, especially at some times, as if my breastbone would have split asunder. … Thus did I wind, and twine, and shrink, under the burden that was upon me; which burden also did so oppress me that I could neither stand, nor go, nor lie, either at rest or quiet.”
For another case of fear equally sudden, see Henry James: Society the Redeemed Form of Man, Boston, 1879, pp. 43 ff. ↩
Example:
“It was about eleven o’clock at night … but I strolled on still with the people. … Suddenly upon the left side of our road, a crackling was heard among the bushes; all of us were alarmed, and in an instant a tiger, rushing out of the jungle, pounced upon the one of the party that was foremost, and carried him off in the twinkling of an eye. The rush of the animal, and the crush of the poor victim’s bones in his mouth, and his last cry of distress, ‘Ho hai!’ involuntarily reechoed by all of us, was over in three seconds; and then I know not what happened till I returned to my senses, when I found myself and companions lying down on the ground as if prepared to be devoured by our enemy, the sovereign of the forest. I find my pen incapable of describing the terror of that dreadful moment. Our limbs stiffened, our power of speech ceased, and our hearts beat violently, and only a whisper of the same ‘Ho hai!’ was heard from us. In this state we crept on all fours for some distance back, and then ran for life with the speed of an Arab horse for about half an hour, and fortunately happened to come to a small village. … After this every one of us was attacked with fever, attended with shivering, in which deplorable state we remained till morning.”
Autobiography of Lutfullah, a Mohammedan Gentleman, Leipzig, 1857, p. 112
E.g.,
“Our young people are diseased with the theological problems of original sin, origin of evil, predestination, and the like. These never presented a practical difficulty to any man—never darkened across any man’s road, who did not go out of his way to seek them. These are the soul’s mumps, and measles, and whooping-coughs,”
Emerson: Spiritual Laws
etc. ↩
A. Daudet: Notes sur la Vie, p. 1. ↩
See, for example, F. Paulhan, in his book Les Caractères, 1894, who contrasts les Equilibrés, les Unifiés, with les Inquiets, les Contrariants, les Incohérents, les Emiettés, as so many diverse psychic types. ↩
Annie Besant: An Autobiography, p. 82. ↩
Smith Baker, in Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, September, 1893. ↩
Louis Gourdon (Essai sur la Conversion de Saint Augustine, Paris, Fischbacher, 1900) has shown by an analysis of Augustine’s writings immediately after the date of his conversion (AD 386) that the account he gives in the Confessions is premature. The crisis in the garden marked a definitive conversion from his former life, but it was to the neo-platonic spiritualism and only a halfway stage toward Christianity. The latter he appears not fully and radically to have embraced until four years more had passed. ↩
Saint Augustine: Confessions, Book VIII, chaps. V, VII, XI, abridged. ↩
Th. Jouffroy: Nouveaux Mélanges philosophiques, 2me édition, p. 83. I add two other cases of counter-conversion dating from a certain moment. The first is from Professor Starbuck’s manuscript collection, and the narrator is a woman.
“Away down in the bottom of my heart, I believe I was always more or less skeptical about ‘God;’ skepticism grew as an undercurrent, all through my early youth, but it was controlled and covered by the emotional elements in my religious growth. When I was sixteen I joined the church and was asked if I loved God. I replied ‘Yes,’ as was customary and expected. But instantly with a flash something spoke within me, ‘No, you do not.’ I was haunted for
