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James, William, 1842-1910

"Varieties of Religious Experience, a Study in Human Nature"

The perfect stillness of the night was thrilled by a
more solemn silence. The darkness held a presence that was all
the more felt because it was not seen. I could not any more have
doubted that HE was there than that I was. Indeed, I felt myself
to be, if possible, the less real of the two.
"My highest faith in God and truest idea of him were then born in
me. I have stood upon the Mount of Vision since, and felt the
Eternal round about me. But never since has there come quite the
same stirring of the heart. Then, if ever, I believe, I stood
face to face with God, and was born anew of his spirit. There
was, as I recall it, no sudden change of thought or of belief,
except that my early crude conception, had, as it were burst into
flower. There was no destruction of the old, but a rapid,
wonderful unfolding. Since that time no discussion that I have
heard of the proofs of God's existence has been able to shake my
faith. Having once felt the presence of God's spirit, I have
never lost it again for long. My most assuring evidence of his
existence is deeply rooted in that hour of vision in the memory
of that supreme experience, and in the conviction, gained from
reading and reflection, that something the same has come to all
who have found God.


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