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James, William, 1842-1910

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


When this experience came, I seemed to be conducted around a
large, capacious, well-lighted room. As I walked with my
invisible conductor and looked around, a clear thought was coined
in my mind, 'They are not here, they are gone.' As soon as the
thought was definitely formed in my mind, though no word was
spoken, the Holy Spirit impressed me that I was surveying my
own soul. Then, for the first time in all my life, did I know
that I was cleansed from all sin, and filled with the fullness of
God."
Leuba quotes the case of a Mr. Peek, where the luminous affection
reminds one of the chromatic hallucinations produced by the
intoxicant cactus buds called mescal by the Mexicans:--
"When I went in the morning into the fields to work, the glory of
God appeared in all his visible creation. I well remember we
reaped oats, and how every straw and head of the oats seemed, as
it were, arrayed in a kind of rainbow glory, or to glow, if I may
so express it, in the glory of God."[140]
[140] These reports of sensorial photism shade off into what are
evidently only metaphorical accounts of the sense of new
spiritual illumination, as, for instance, in Brainerd's
statement: "As I was walking in a thick grove, unspeakable glory
seemed to open to the apprehension of my soul.


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