divine inspiration and revelation which must afford us guidance and momentum in the manifold activities which make up our daily lives.

Crises not to be forced. But if cataclysmic transitions in the religious life are not to be suppressed, neither are they to be forced. Sudden conversions belong to persons of certain temperaments, but not to others. One of the most important discoveries of modern psychology has been that of the great individual differences between persons. And these differences hold no less of religious experience than of any other phase of life. Yet, unfortunately, religious leaders — especially evangelists have too often insisted that all men should have just their type of experience. Being of an emotional temperament their conversion has usually been of the violent, cataclysmic nature, and they lead young people to believe that they can not enter the religious life except through such eruption. In consequence many a person, anxious to do his part in the Kingdom of God, has been led to force his religious emotions, or even to resort to a certain more or less conscious hypocrisy. As a result his religious nature has suffered infinite harm instead of good, and not a few persons have been alienated from the church throughout life in consequence of such unfortunate affectation.

Of course, every one who enters the Kingdom of God must be born again, must lay aside his selfish animal nature and become a child of God, must face about from that selfcenteredness which characterizes his childhood life and unself himself, but whether or not he should do this through one great emotional cataclysm is a matter to be determined wholly by his individual temperament. Professor Ames

says:

The differences of temperament pertain largely to susceptibility to suggestion and to automatisms. It is of great importance historically that the apostle Paul and St. Augustine belonged to

the type for which the extreme form of emotional, dramatic conversion is possible. Their personal experience has been regarded as of superior value because it has been assumed uncritically that their moral characters and achievements were determined by the manner of their conversion. But when it is recognized that Paul was probably a neurotic, and that Augustine was a sensualist with a highly developed nervous temperament, it becomes apparent that there were very special individual reasons for their dramatic conversions. It also appears that the forms of their conversions are accidental, and not essential in spiritual development. The attempts to induce that type of experience among all classes of persons have failed, and such failures have proved not the depravity of the recalcitrant, unresponsive persons, but the one-sided and abnormal character of the cases set up as the standard.

Desirability of regular growth. - Certainly the experience of many truly religious men shows that a more gradual type of conversion is no less a true one. Edward Everett Hale, whose experience is paralleled by that related by many other unquestionably religious persons, says of his development:

I observe, with profound regret, the religious struggles which come into many biographies, as if almost essential to the formation of the hero. I ought to speak of these, to say that any man has an advantage, not to be estimated, who is born, as I was, into a family where the religion is simple and rational; who is trained in the theory of such a religion, so that he never knows, for an hour, what these religious or irreligious struggles are. I always knew God loved me, and I was always grateful to him for the world he placed me in. I always liked to tell him so, and was always glad to receive his suggestion to me. To grow up in this way saves boy or youth from those battles which men try to describe and can not describe, which seem to use up a great deal of young life. I can remember perfectly that, when I was coming to manhood, the half philosophical novels of the time had a deal to say about the young men and maidens who were facing the "problem of life." I had no idea whatever what the problem of life was. To live with all my might seemed to me easy; to learn where there was so much to learn seemed pleasant and almost of course; to lend a hand, if one had a chance, natural; and if one did this, why he enjoyed life because he could not help it, and without proving to himself

that he ought to enjoy it. I suppose that a skillful professor of the business could have prodded up my conscience, which is, I think, as sensitive as another's. I suppose I could have been made very wretched, and that I could have made others very wretched. But I was in the hands of no such professor, and my relations with the God whose child I am were permitted to develop themselves in the natural way.

In fact, dramatic conversions are probably largely due to the fact that religious growth is somehow morbidly retarded until a breaking point is reached. Beneath the surface there is a constant but unconfessed growth toward the religious life, but it is not permitted to express itself as rapidly as it matures. In consequence there is accumulated a strain which either, as a suppressed instinct, passes away by dissolution, or breaks out at some time into open eruption. Certainly such eruptions are better than the disappearance of the religious interest by dissolution, but it would seem far better still, if, as rapidly as religious impulses develop, they could express themselves if, at periods of transition, one's life could quietly open out into a larger range, and, during intervening periods of monotony, one could make these acquisitions of his moments of special communion and revelation his own through their clarification and application in practice. Starbuck conforms to a widely-held conviction when he says on this point:

It is doubtless the ideal to be striven after that the development during adolescence should be so even and symmetrical that no crisis would be reached, that the capacity for spiritual assimilation should be constantly equal to the demands that are made on consciousness.

EXERCISES

1. Have you observed "plateaus" in the course of your own learning? Have you found any means of avoiding them? How would it be to give up work, or at least to slacken effort, while they last? What should be done?

2. Friar Lawrence counsels Romeo to "love mildly; long love doth so." Discuss that advice.

3. Some one has said: "The youth is distinguished by falling in love. If he is not in love with a maiden he is in love with love." Is it, or is it not, advisable for a youth to remain during youth "in love with love," associating with members of the opposite sex, but not allowing himself to become so entangled with any one that the breaking of friendship, inevitable in the case of most early attachments, may not cause an undue amount of pain?

4. Is Jerome right in expecting more from "affection" than from "love" in making a couple permanently happy? What is the difference?

5. What advice would you give to one driven to despair by some great disappointment?

6. Do you find your impulses oscillating between good and bad? Is the author's advice as to using good impulses and holding off bad ones correct and feasible? Why?

7. What is the relative importance of inspiration and habit in character building?

8. Is there any essential difference between a conversion which comes suddenly, and one which consists of so many stages in the awakening process as to seem practically a continuous growth? Do all churches emphasize equally the dramatic conversion?

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE STRONG MAN'S RELIGION

Religion to be rightly interpreted. A few years ago a prominent Chicago business man wrote and distributed, at considerable expense to himself and at no small risk to his reputation, a book on "The Utility of All Sorts of Higher Schooling." In this he roundly condemned higher education as "a course of four years of social life at some university," consisting of "useless and extravagant frills and fads," and "filling the head with a lot of impractical stuff." And doubtless there was much about higher education to justify the worthy gentleman's conclusions. Many instances of time wasted, or worse than wasted, as well as much “impractical stuff" crammed into the heads of students, could be found. But this critic had unfairly taken higher education at its worst. Had he searched out its inner spirit, its hopes, its aspirations, and evaluated these his verdict would have been much more charitable.

Now the same dual viewpoint may be taken with regard to religion, and before we commend it as a mark of strength to the seeker after the largest life we must protect ourselves against being interpreted as urging a type of weakness and of selfishness masquerading under the name of religion, in the same way in which the "fads and frills" and the "four years of social life" sometimes masquerade under the name of higher education.

Perverted religion. The abuse to which we refer is the effort to use God for selfish ends, and religion as a prudential consideration. Not a few persons calling themselves reli