The Nicolaitanes, a second-century sect referred to in the New Testament (Rev. ii. 14), were accused of practising religious prostitution. So also were the Manichaeans, a very numerous sect, against whom the charges were of a much more detailed character. With them the ceremonial violation of a virgin is said to have formed a part of their regular ritual, and that their meetings frequently ended in an orgy of promiscuous intercourse.[129] As both these acts are found in connection with other religious ceremonies, and, as will be seen later, have persisted until recent times, the story does not sound so incredible as otherwise it might. The difficulty of deciding definitely is intensified by the fact of the Manichaeans being split into a number of sects, and statements true of some might be untrue of others. So we find St. Augustine, who had been a Manichaean, declaring that if all did not practise licentious rites, one sect (the Catharists) did, believing that they could only mortify the flesh by the exercise of bad instincts, since the flesh proceeded from demons. St. Augustine himself confesses to have taken part in various phallic ceremonies before his conversion. "I myself," he says, "when a young man used to go sometimes to the sacrilegious entertainments and spectacles; I saw the priests raving in religious excitement, and heard the choristers; I took pleasure in the shameful games which were celebrated in honour of gods and goddesses, of the Virgin Coelestia, and of Berecynthia, the mother of all gods. And on the day consecrated to her purification, there were sung before her couch productions so obscene and filthy to the ear—I do not say of the mother of the gods, but of the mother of any senator or honest man—nay, so impure that not even the mother of the foul-mouthed players themselves could have formed one of the audience."[130]

The Carpocratians, who claimed to be a branch of the Gnostics, taught that faith and charity were alone necessary virtues: all others were useless. There is nothing evil in itself, and life only becomes complete when all so-called blemishes are fully displayed in conduct. Their leader "not only allowed his disciples a full liberty to sin, but recommended a vicious course of life as a matter of obligation and necessity; asserting that eternal salvation was only attainable by those who had committed all sorts of crimes.... It was the will of God that all things should be possessed in common, the female sex not excepted."[131]

A little later we have the sect of the Agapetae. They rejected marriage as an institution, and permitted unrestrained intercourse between the sexes. St. Jerome, alluding to this sect, says: "It is a shame even to allude to the true facts. Whence did the pest of the Agapetae creep into the Church? Whence is this new title of wives without marriage rites? Whence this new class of concubines? I will infer more. Whence these harlots cleaving to one man? They occupy the same house, a single chamber, often a single bed, and call us suspicious if we think anything of it. The brother deserts his virgin sister, the virgin despises her unmarried brother, and seeks a stranger, and since they pretend to be aiming at the same object, they ask for the spiritual consolation of each other that they may enjoy the pleasures of the flesh."[132]

This form of extravagance does not appear to have been limited to a single sect. It was more or less general during the ascendancy of asceticism. Tertullian says that the desire to enjoy the reputation of virginity led to much immorality, the effects of which were concealed by infanticide. The Council of Antioch lamented the practice of unmarried men and women sharing the same room. In 450, the Anchorites of Palestine are described as herding together without distinction of sex, and with no garments but a breech-clout.[133] The practice of priests travelling about with women, mothers and wives, and the scandals created thereby, is referred to in regulation after regulation. Although legislated against, it never entirely disappeared, and eventually led to a recognised priestly concubinage—recognised, that is, by public opinion, although condemned by the Church.

There is no need to go over even the names of all the numerous sects that appeared during the early centuries manifesting curious features concerning sexual relations. When suppressed in one form they reappeared in another, and were unusually prominent during seasons of religious unrest. Many of the teachings already noted made their appearance again with the "Brethren of the Free Spirit" in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. Some of these sects took their stand on the Pauline teaching, "The law of the spirit of life in Jesus Christ hath made me free from the law of sin and death," and claimed freedom from sin, no matter what their actions. The "Brethren of the Free Spirit" carried women about with them, held midnight assemblies, and, according to Mosheim, attended these meetings in a state of nudity. The Ranters, the Spirituels of Geneva, the Berghards, the Flagellants, the Molinists, were all accused of sexual misconduct in their assemblies. One of the specific teachings of the last-named body, as condemned by the Inquisition, ran as follows: "God, to humble us, permits in certain perfect souls that the devil should make them commit certain acts. In this case, and in others, which without the permission of God, would be guilty, there is no sin because there is no consent. It may happen, that this violent movement, which excites to carnal acts, may take place in two persons, a man and a woman, at the same instant."[134]

It has been pointed out that the dominant Church made continuous efforts to suppress these sects, but the remarkable thing is that they should so often reappear, and always with strong claims to existence on the basis of religious conviction. That a number of men and women should seek gratification of their sensual feelings in ways not countenanced by the laws of normal life need not excite surprise. There always have been and always will be such. But to do this in the name of religion, and with a persistency as great as that of the religious idea itself, is a phenomenon that surely deserves more attention than it ordinarily receives. Nor can it be said with justice that these sects began in mere conscious lust. They ended there, true; more or less disguised, it may always have been present, but those who initiated them believed that they were justified in doing so by religious principles, and appealed to those principles to justify their conduct. Why should this have been the case? Why should conduct of which men and women are ashamed in the social sphere, and which their social sense promptly condemns, in the religious sphere be crowned with the dignity of lofty principles and fought for with the fervour of intense conviction? So long as theologians leave that question unanswered, their arguments are simply wide of the real issue.

Naturally, the closer we get to our own day, and to times when religious feeling is more vigorously controlled by purely social forces, these manifestations of sexuality become less frequent, less widely spread, and more transient in character. Still they do occur. For reasons that do not concern us here, America has in recent years been a favourable ground for these religio-sexual developments. A sympathetic account of many of these American sects will be found in Hepworth Dixon's Spiritual Wives, with accounts of similar sects in Germany and England. In some cases many of the features of the early Christian sects were reproduced, even to the length of young women sharing the bedrooms of their spiritual guides. All took Paul as their principal authority. J. H. Noyes, one of the best known and most representative of these teachers, laid down the main principles of his teachings thus:—

"When the will of God is done on earth as it is in heaven, there will be no marriage. The marriage supper of the Lamb is a feast at which every dish is free to every guest. Exclusiveness, jealousy, quarrelling, have no place there, for the same reason as that which forbids the guests at a thanksgiving dinner to claim each his separate dish, and quarrel with the rest for his rights. In a holy community there is no more reason why sexual intercourse should be restrained by law, than why eating and drinking should be; and there is as little occasion for shame in the one case as in the other.... The guests of the marriage supper may have each his favourite dish, each a dish of his own procuring, and that without the jealousy of exclusiveness. I call a certain woman my wife; she is yours; she is Christ's; and in Him she is the bride of all saints. She is dear in the hands of a stranger, and according to my promise to her I rejoice."[135]

In a letter to Mr. Hepworth Dixon, J. H. Noyes claims the "right of religious inspiration to shape society and dictate the form of family life," and with probable accuracy says that the origin of these American sects is to be found in revivals:—

"The philosophy of the matter seems to be this: Revivals are theocratic in their very nature; they introduce God into human affairs.... In the conservative theory of revivals, this power is restricted to the conversion of souls; but in actual experience it goes, or tends to go, into all the affairs of life.... Religious love is very near neighbour to sexual love, and they always get mixed in the intimacies and social excitements of revivals. The next thing a man wants, after he has found the salvation of his soul, is to find his Eve and his Paradise.... The course of things may be restated thus: Revivals lead to religious love; religious love excites the passions; the converts, finding themselves in theocratic liberty, begin to look about for their mates and their liberty."[136]

With regard to the beginnings of these modern movements of "Spiritual Wifehood," all involving the abrogation of the normal relations of the sexes, Hepworth Dixon writes:—

"It has not, I think, been noticed by any writer that three of the most singular movements in the churches of our generation seem to have been connected, more or less closely, with the state of mind produced by revivals; one in Germany, one in England, and one in the United States; movements which resulted, among other things, in the establishment of three singular societies—the congregation of Pietists, vulgarly called the Mucker, at Koenigsberg; the brotherhood of Princeites at Spaxton; and the Bible Communists at Oneida Creek.... They had these chief things in common: they began in colleges, they affected the form of family life, and they were carried on by clergymen; each movement in a place of learning and of theological study: that in Germany at the Luther-Kirch of Koenigsberg, that in England at St. David's College, that in the United States at Yale College.... These three divines, one Lutheran, one Anglican, one Congregational, began their work in perfect ignorance of each other.... Each movement was regarded by its votaries as the most perfect fruit of the revival spirit. In truth, the change which came upon the saints from their close experience of revival passion, was regarded by themselves as in some degree miraculous, equal in divine significance to a new creation of the world."[137]

For an almost exact replica of the erotic extravagances of some of the early Christian sects, one may turn to Russia. The difficulties and dangers of political life in Russia are doubtless responsible for having made religion such a power among the mass of the people, and this will also explain the diversion into religious channels of energy that under more favourable conditions is expended in social agitation and activity. Many of these sects are, of course, of a harmless character, mostly originating in an even greater love for the past and a more slavish adherence to ancient formulas than is displayed by the orthodox Church. Some, however, present the wildest excesses of sexual theory and practice. Nothing seems too wild or too extravagant to become the originating point of a new sect. Theories of marriage and sexual relations generally are developed with a logical fearlessness peculiarly Russian. Among the Bezpopovtsi, a numerous sect split up into several branches, opinions on marriage vary between regarding it as a mere conventional affair, and denouncing it as a hindrance to spiritual development. "Between these two extremes," says Mr. Heard, "there is room for the wildest and most repulsive theories. Carnal sensuality is allied in monstrous union with religious mysticism. Free love, independence of the sexes, possession of women in common, have been preached and practised. Debauchery, as an incidental weakness of human nature, has been advocated as the lesser evil; libertinism as preferable to concubinage, and the latter as better than marriage. One of their most austere teachers cynically declares that 'it is wiser to live with beasts than to be joined to a wife; to frequent many women in secret, rather than to live with one openly.'"[138]

Another sect called 'Eunuchs' take their stand on Matt. xix. 12: "There are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it." This sect believes in and practises emasculation as the surest way of attaining perfection. Man, they say, should be like the angels, without sex and without desire. This practice reminds one of an early Christian sect, the Valesians, which not only emasculated members of their own sect, but performed the same operation forcibly on those who fell into their hands.[139] The Khlysti, a sect which derives its name from the practice of flagellation, denounce marriage as unclean, and part of their religious ritual is, according to some writers, the worship of a naked woman. Baron Von Haxthausen, writing in 1856, gives the following description of their ceremonies on Easter night:—

"On this night the Khlysti all assemble for a great solemnity, the worship of the mother of God. A virgin, fifteen years of age, whom they have induced to act the part by tempting promises, is bound and placed in a tub of warm water; some old women come, and first make a large incision in the left breast, then cut it off, and staunch the blood in a wonderfully short time. During the operation a mystical picture of the Holy Spirit is put into the victim's hand, in order that she may be absorbed in regarding it. The breast which has been removed is laid upon a plate and cut into small pieces, which are eaten by all the members of the sect present; the girl in the tub is then raised upon an altar which stands near, and the whole congregation dance wildly round it, singing at the same time. The jumping then grows madder and wilder, till the lights are suddenly extinguished and horrible orgies commence."[140]

The 'Jumpers,' an offshoot of the Khlysti, are much more pronounced in their sexual extravagances. They openly profess debauchery, for the usual reason, that of conquering the flesh by exhaustion and satiety. They meet usually by night, and after prayers are chanted and hymns sung, the leader commences a slow jumping movement, keeping time with a song. Then:—

"The audience, arranged in couples, engaged to each other in advance, imitate his example and join the strain; the bounds and the singing grow faster and louder as it spreads, until, at its height, the elder shouts that he hears the voices of angels; the lights are extinguished, the jumping ceases, and the scene that follows in the darkness defies description. Each one yields to his desires, born of inspiration, and therefore righteous, and to be gratified; all are brethren in Christ, all promptings of the inner spirit are holy; incest, even, is no sin. They repudiate marriage, and justify their abominations by the Biblical legends of Lot's daughters, Solomon's harem, and the like."[141]

There are many other curious sects in Russia, many of which bring us back to the religious atmosphere of the European dark ages. But without pursuing a description of these to any greater extent, enough has been said to show the persistence of the stream of sexualism in the history of Christianity. Of course, this feature did not enter religion with Christianity. On the contrary, I have shown that it was present from the earliest times. The association of religion with sexual phenomena does not commence as a sexual aberration; it only assumes that form at a comparatively late stage in religious history. The origin of the connection has to be found in that atmosphere of the supernatural which envelops primitive life, moulds primitive conceptions, and more or less fashions all primitive institutions. The sexual side of religious belief and religious symbolism only becomes abnormal, and even morbid, when the development of social life makes possible a truer view of sexuality. In this the great churches have, perhaps, unconsciously assisted. Their position of social control has compelled them to set their faces against the sexual symbolism which is so closely associated with early religious history, while at the same time countenancing religious fervour in general. The consequence has been that small bodies of men and women, freed from the restraining influence of social responsibility, have developed to extravagant length certain phases of religious belief that have been generally discountenanced elsewhere. Their so doing certainly helps the present-day student to make a more complete survey of all the factors that have played their part in religious history than would otherwise have been possible. Repulsive as some of these features now are, they have helped in their time to nourish the general belief in a supernatural order, and so to strengthen the general idea to which they were affiliated.

FOOTNOTES:

[121] The Future of Science, p. 465.

[122] Lost and Hostile Gospels, Preface, p. 7.

[123] See Baring-Gould's Study of St. Paul, pp. 450-1.

[124] See Hepworth Dixon's curious work, Spiritual Wives, 1888, 2 vols.

[125] Study of St. Paul, p. 458.

[126] History of European Morals, i. p. 417.

[127] Cutten, Psychological Christianity, p. 157.

[128] Sanger, History of Prostitution, p. 116.

[129] See Blunt's Dictionary of Sects, art. "Manichaeans."

[130] De Civitate Dei, ii. 4.

[131] Mosheim, Cent. 2, chap. v. sec. 4.

[132] Dictionary of Sects, p. 13.

[133] Lea, Hist. of Sacerdotal Celibacy, 1884, p. 42.

[134] Cited by Michelet, Priests, Women, and Families, p. 130.

[135] Spiritual Wives, ii. pp. 55-6.

[136] Spiritual Wives, pp. 176-7, 181.

[137] Ibid., pp. 84-6.

[138] The Russian Church and Russian Dissent, p. 201.

[139] Lea, Hist. of Sacerdotal Celibacy, p. 40.

[140] Visit to the Russian Empire, i. p. 254. Merejkowski, in his historical novel, Peter and Alexis, gives a more detailed account of the sexual ceremonies of this sect. See also Heard's description, Russian Church, p. 258.

[141] Russian Church and Russian Dissent, p. 262.



CHAPTER SEVEN

CONVERSION

From what has been already said, it should be clear that a complete understanding of religious phenomena—whether legitimately or wrongly so called—involves acquaintance with a number of factors that are not usually called religious. Man's religious beliefs are usually a very composite product; they are built up from a number of states of feeling and mental convictions, some of which have only an accidental connection with the religious idea itself. Unfortunately, the training given to professional religious teachers rarely equips them for dealing with religion from the scientific point of view. Their training gives them a knowledge of several ancient languages, makes them acquainted with the rise and fall of certain doctrines, the nature of Church ritual and the like, all of which, while interesting enough in themselves, give little more genuine enlightenment than a knowledge of the dates of English monarchs provides of the character of genuine historic processes. One writer pertinently asks:—

"What does the ordinary seminary graduate know of the histology, anatomy, and physiology of the soul? Absolutely nothing. He must stumble along through years of trying experience and look back over countless mistakes before he understands these things even in a general way. What does the ordinary graduate understand about doubt? It is all classed together, whether in adolescents or in hardened sinners, and one dose is applied. What does the graduate know about sexuality, so closely allied with certain forms of religious manifestations? What about ecstasy, in its various forms, the numerous methods of faith cure thrust upon an illiterate but credulous people, or the significance or insignificance of visions and dreams?"[142]

It is, indeed, not too much to say that a theological training tends to prevent a rational comprehension of religion in both its normal and abnormal manifestations. Religious phenomena are not affiliated to phenomena as a whole; they are treated as quite distinct from the rest of life, possessing both an independent origin and justification. The consequence is that what are usually called studies of religion move round and round the same circle of ideas, and a revolution is mistaken for progress. Genuine enlightenment has come to us from men who have attacked the subject from a quite different point of view. They recognised that whether the religious idea was accepted as true or rejected as false, it could not be separated from that host of ideas and beliefs which make up the psychological side of the social structure. It was to be studied as a piece of natural history first of all. Whether it involved more than this they left to be settled later. It cannot be said that they belittled the power of religion; on the contrary, the investigations showed it to be one of the most potent of the forces that shape social institutions. But they demonstrated the absurdity of placing religion in a category of its own. As an objective fact, they showed that religion was subject to the same forces that determine the form of other objective facts. As a culture fact, they traced its connection with corresponding phases of social development; and as a psychological fact, they demonstrated its workings to be in harmony with workings of normal psychological laws. Five thousand years of theological study had left the world as ignorant of the nature of religious phenomena as it was in the days of ancient Chaldea. Fifty years of scientific study has served to make at least a broad path through what was hitherto an impenetrable jungle.

What has been said holds with peculiar force of the subject of conversion. This is not a phenomenon peculiar to Christianity, for initiation and conversion accompanies religion in all its phases. I do not think that it is peculiar to religion even as a whole. A sudden discharge of feeling in a special direction leading to a changed attitude, more or less permanent towards life, may be seen in connection with the non-religious life, although it fails to receive the attention bestowed on changes that are connected with religion. But if conversion is not a peculiarly Christian phenomenon, one school of theologians, at least, has raised it to a position of peculiar eminence in connection with Christianity. They have taken it to be the mark of a person who has attained spiritual manhood, and have laid down elaborate rules for its achievement. Many theologians will agree that this has been almost wholly disastrous. On the one side, conversion has been dwelt upon as a cataclysmal epoch in a person's life, produced, negatively, by an act of self-surrender, and, positively, by a supernatural act of grace. This has had the effect of blinding people to the real nature of the process, and has led to certain evil consequences that must always accompany attempts at wholesale conversion. On the other hand, it has given rise to a class of professional evangelists who count their trophies in 'souls' as a Red Indian might count scalps, and who are ignorant of nearly everything except the art of working upon the emotions of a crowd of more or less uncultured people. Here, for instance, is an account of an American evangelist and ex-prize fighter, and evidently a great favourite with certain sections of the religious public in America. The account is cited by Dr. Cutten from a local paper, Illinois:—

"5843 converts, 683 in a day. Total gift to Mr. Sunday, $10,431. Greatest revival in history. Will attract the attention of the religious world. Sermon on 'Booze,' the great effort of the revival! These are all headlines to the report of the meeting, which covers six columns—evidently a response to the interest shown in 'Billy' Sunday's meetings. The sermon on 'Booze' is given in full, and the physical exertions of the preacher described in detail. He began with his coat, vest, tie, and collar off. In a few moments his shirt and undershirt were gaping open to the waist, and the muscles of his neck and chest were seen working like those in the arm of a blacksmith, while perspiration poured from every pore. His clothing was soaked, as if a hose had been turned on him. He strained, and twisted, and reached up and down. Once he was on the floor for just a second, in the attitude of crawling, to show that all crime crawled out of the saloon; then he was on his feet as quickly as a cat could jump. At the end of forty-five minutes he mounted a chair, reached high, as he shouted, then again was on the floor, and dropped prostrate to illustrate a story of a drunken man, bounded to his feet again as if steel springs filled that lithe, slender, lightning-like body. He generally breaks a common kitchen chair in this sermon, and this came after a terrible effort, with eyes flashing, face scowling, the picture of hate. He whirled the chair over his head, smashed the chair to the platform floor, whirled the shattered wreck in the air again, and threw it to the ground in front of the pulpit. In two minutes men from the front row were tearing the wreck to pieces and dividing it up—a round here, a leg there, a piece of the back to another, and so on. Later, men carried away in cheering could be seen in the audience waving those chair fragments in the air."

This is, of course, an extreme case, although it is but an exaggeration of methods in common use among these professional revivalists. The whole aim and purpose of these men is to arouse in the audience a high emotional tension, and any means is acceptable that succeeds in doing this. On the part of the congregation a large portion go for the express purpose of indulging in an emotional debauch. Many attend revival after revival, living over again the debauch of the last, and treasuring lively expectations of the next. Between these and the victim of alcohol tasting again his last 'burst,' and seeking opportunities for another, there is really little moral or psychological distinction. The social consequences of these engineered revivals have never been fully worked out, but when it is done by some competent person, the conclusions will be a revelation to many. One thing is certain: to expect really useful social results from such methods is verily to look to gather grapes from thistles.

During recent years the phenomena of religious conversion have been studied in a more scientific spirit.[143] Statistics have been compiled and analysed, the frames of mind attendant on conversion arranged and studied, with the result that the salient features are to be discerned by all who approach the study of the subject with a little detachment of mind. One outstanding feature of this more scientific enquiry into the nature of conversion has been to demonstrate that it is almost exclusively a phenomenon of puberty and adolescence. Mr. Hall has compiled a lengthy list of the ages at which noted religious characters experienced what is known as conversion.[144] From this I take the following examples. Religious conviction came to St. Thekla at the age of 18, to St. Agnes at 13, St. Antony at 18, Martin of Tours at 18, Euphrasia at 12, Benedict at 14, Cuthbert at 15, St. Bernard at 12, St. Dominic at 15, St. Collette at 20, St. Catherine at 7, St. Teresa at 12, St. Francis of Sales at 11. In his Life of Jesus, Keim also remarks that although some of the disciples may have been married, most of them were probably about twenty years of age.[145]

Professor Starbuck, placing on one side both historical and anthropological aspects, set himself the task of examining cases of the present day. A paper was sent out asking various questions as to age, state of health, frame of mind, before, during, and following conversion. The questions were sent to male and female members of different religious denominations. In reply, 1265 papers were filled up and returned. One result of a scrutiny of these returns was to show that the age at which religious conversion was experienced began as early as 7 or 8 years, it increased gradually till 10 or 11, then a more rapid increase till 18 or 20, a decline increasing in rapidity to the age of 25, and its practical disappearance beyond the age of 30. In girls, the period of conversion antedates that of boys by about two years.[146] Starbuck's conclusion is the perfectly valid one that conversion "belongs almost exclusively to the years between 10 and 25," and is distinctly a phenomenon of adolescence.

This conclusion would be borne out by a study of almost any revival crusade. Thus a few years ago—1904—England received a visit from the American evangelist, Dr. Torrey. At the conclusion of his visit, Sir Robertson Nicol invited opinions from ministers in the towns visited by Torrey, and published the replies in his paper, The British Weekly, on October 27. There was no attempt whatever to elicit the ages of the reported converts; the enquiry was directed to the point of ascertaining whether these engineered missions had a beneficial effect on church life, or the reverse. But incidentally the ages of the converts were given in some cases, and one may safely assume that in the reports where no age was mentioned the facts, if disclosed, would not run counter to the generalisation above given. The Rev. T. Towers, Birmingham, noted that 16 out of 25 reported converts were children. Rev. A. Le Gros, Rugby, reported: "A number of our youngest members, especially amongst the young girls, were amongst those who professed conversion." Rev. H. Singleton, Smethwick, says: "The bulk of the names sent to me were those of children under thirteen years of age." Rev. W. G. Percival, Lozells Congregational Church, says of the 'inquiry' meeting held after the preaching: "The dear little things followed one another for inquiry until the place was a scene of utter confusion." Reports of a similar nature came from other places. The ages were pointed out quite incidentally; conversions of youths of 17 or 18 would not excite comment with these. Were the ages of all given, we should, without doubt, find them fall into line with Starbuck's and Hall's figures.

Professor James quite accepts this view of conversion. The conclusion, he says, "would seem to be the only sound one: conversion is in its essence a normal adolescent phenomenon, incidental to the passage from the child's small universe to the wider intellectual and spiritual life of maturity."[147] Conversion, in the sense of a change from "the child's small universe" to the large world of human society, may be a normal fact in life, but the really essential fact in the enquiry is not the fact of growth, but growth in a specific direction. Why should this normal change from childhood to maturity be the period during which religious conversion is experienced? This question is not only ignored by Professor James, it is made more confused by his method of stating it. Of course, if all people experienced this religious conviction, as all people undergo other changes at adolescence, the question would be simplified. But this is obviously not the case. A large number of people never experience it so long as they are only brought into contact with ordinary social forces. Special circumstances seem usually to be required to rouse this sense of religious conviction. Nearly every story of conversion turns upon something unusual, unexpected, or dramatic occurring as the exciting cause. The question is, therefore, why should the line of growth, general with all at adolescence, be, in the case of some, diverted into religious channels? A study of the subject from this point of view will, I think, show that conversion is only normal in the sense that in an environment where religious influences are powerful each person is normally exposed to it. Those on whom the religious influence fails to operate experience the change from childhood to adolescence, on to complete maturity, without their nature evincing any lack of completeness. This is the vital truth of which Professor James loses sight, and it is ignored by the vast majority of writers who treat of the subject.

Leaving, for a while, the statistical view of conversion, we may turn to its other aspects. By the more advanced of religious teachers to-day the developments attendant on adolescence are taken as supplying no more than a favourable occasion for directing mind and emotion to definite religious conviction. Here the connection is admittedly more or less accidental. But by the great majority of theologians there is assumed a direct supernatural influence in the states of mind developed during adolescence. In more primitive times the connection is of a yet closer character. Puberty does not at this stage represent what a modern would call an awakening of the religious consciousness, but a direct impingement of supernatural influence. From one point of view this conception still remains part of all religious systems, however overlaid it may be with modern ideas concerning sexual maturity. And we have, as a mere matter of historic fact, a whole series of customs commencing with the initiatory customs of savages and running right on to the modern practice of confirmation.

In a previous chapter it was pointed out what is the savage state of mind in relation to the beginnings of sex life as it is manifested in both boys and girls. Adolescence does not, to the primitive mind, serve as an occasion for the creation of an interest in the religious life, it is the sign of direct supernatural influence. One consequence of this is the rise of more or less elaborate ceremonials marking the initiation of youth into direct communion with the spiritual forces that govern tribal life.[148] Among the Polynesians tattooing forms part of the religious ceremony, and during the time the marks are healing the boy is taboo to the rest of the tribe, owing to his having been touched by the gods. With the North American Indians the following ceremony seems characteristic:—

"When a boy has attained the age of fourteen or fifteen years he absents himself from his father's lodge, lying on the ground in some remote or secluded spot, crying to the Great Spirit, and fasting the whole time. During this period of peril and abstinence, when he falls asleep, the first animal, bird, or reptile, of which he dreams, he considers the Great Spirit has designated for his mysterious protector through life."[149] Similar ceremonies are described by Livingstone as existing among the South African tribes. These customs are too widespread, and bear too great a similarity to be described with reference to many races. The variations are unimportant, and such as they are they may be studied in the pages of Hall, Frazer, and numerous other writers. With girls the measures adopted are of a more elaborate character than is the case with boys, because, for reasons already stated, the occurrence of puberty in girls gives the supernatural act a more startling and significant character. Hence the strict seclusion of girls almost universally practised among uncivilised peoples. The precautions taken indicate, as Hartland points out, that they are at this period not merely charged with a malign influence, but are peculiarly susceptible to the onset of powers other than human. And with a modification of language the same idea has persisted down to our time, even amongst those who would reject with indignation the statement that savage ideas concerning the nature of puberty form the real basis of their own mental attitude.

This truth cannot be too strongly emphasised. To ignore it is to miss the whole significance of continuity in human institutions and ideas. The ceremonies described do, of course, gather round the fact of sexual development, but they are not concerned with the sexual life, as such. It is sex as a supernatural manifestation that is the vital feature of the situation. The governing idea is that puberty marks the direct association of the individual with a spiritual world to the influence of which the functional changes are due. As more accurate conceptions are formed, the older and inaccurate one is not altogether discarded. It has become incarnate in ceremonies, it is part of the traditional psychic life of the people, and the change is one of transformation rather than of eradication. In later cultural stages the physiological nature of the changes are seen, but they are expressed in terms of religion. Such expressions as "the soul's awareness of God," "the dawning consciousness of religion," etc., take the place of the earlier and more direct animistic interpretation. But the essential misinterpretation is retained, disguised from careless or uninformed people by the use of a modified terminology. But in substance the use made of puberty by organised religious forces remains the same throughout. We have the same absence of a rational explanation in both instances. In the one because the state of knowledge makes any other impossible; in the other because tradition, self-interest, and prejudice prevent its use. It is not only in his physical structure that man carries reminiscences of a lower form of life; such reminders are quite as plentiful in his mental life, and in social institutions.

Even with many who perceive the mechanism of conversion its real significance is often missed. For the important thing is, not that some people express the changes incident to adolescence in terms of religion, but that many do not, and also that these find complete satisfaction along lines of aesthetic, intellectual, or social interest. Yet one often finds it assumed that the difference between the two classes is explained by assuming a certain lack of 'spiritual' development in the non-religious class. As stated, this is often perilously near to impertinence, and in any case is little better than the language of a charlatan. In the same way, the use of amatory phraseology is often treated as the intrusion of the sex element in a sphere in which it has no proper place. Enough has already been said to furnish good grounds for believing that there is much more than this in the phenomenon, and that one is justified in treating it as symptomatic of the operation of forces of the nature of which the subject is quite unaware. The only explanation of the facts already cited is that a misinterpretation of sexual states lies at the heart of the question. No other hypothesis covers the facts; no other hypothesis will explain why the larger number of people should find complete development in activities that lie outside the field of religion.

How easy it is to see the truth and distort it in the stating may be seen in the following passage:—

"Passing over the fact that the period of adolescence is noticeably a period of 'susceptibility,' we may take as an example of the intrusion or the persistence of the sexual elements in conditions of a non-sexual kind the frequent association of sexual with religious excitement. The appeal made during a religious revival to an unconverted person has psychologically some resemblance to the attempt of the male to overcome the hesitancy of the female. In each case the will has to be set aside, and strong suggestive means are used; and in both cases the appeal is not of the conflict type, but of an intimate, sympathetic, and pleading kind. In the effort to make a moral adjustment, it consequently turns out that a technique is used which was derived originally from sexual life, and the use, so to speak, of the sexual machinery for a moral adjustment involves, in some cases, the carrying over into the general process of some sexual manifestations."[150]

The important questions, why religion should so powerfully appeal to people at adolescence, why its strength should reside so largely in the appeal to feelings associated with sexual development, and why conversion should be so rarely experienced when the period of sexual crisis is past, are quite ignored by Mr. Thomas. Yet it is precisely these questions that call most loudly for answers, and which, I believe, contain the key of the situation.

From many points of view adolescence is perhaps the most important epoch in the life of every individual. It is a time of great and significant organic growth, with the development of new organs and functions, and a corresponding transformation of both the emotional and intellectual output. So far as the brain, the most important organ of all, is concerned, one may safely say that before puberty its main function has been acquisition. After puberty vast tracts of brain tissue become active, and an era of rapid development sets in. There is a rapid growth of new nerve connections which occasions both physiological and psychological unrest.[151] An important point to bear in mind, also, is that all periods of rapid development involve conditions of relative instability—one is, in fact, only the obverse side of the other. Dr. Mercier says that with girls "more or less decided manifestations of hysteria are the rule," and with both sexes this instability involves a peculiar susceptibility to suggestions and impressions. Accompanying the purely physical changes the mental and emotional nature undergoes what is little less than a transformation. There is less direct concern with self, and a more conscious concern with others. There is a craving for sympathy, for fellowship, a tendency to look at oneself from the outside, so to speak, a susceptibility to sights and sounds and impressions that formerly had little influence. Each one is conscious of new desires, new attractions, expressed often only in a vague feeling of unrest, with a desire, half shy because half conscious, for the company of the opposite sex. The childish desire for protection weakens; the more mature desire to protect others begins to express itself.

Now, the whole significance of these changes, physical and mental, is fundamentally sexual and social. Human life, it may be said, has a twofold aspect. As a mere animal organism, there is the perpetuation of the species, which nature secures by the mere force of the sex impulse. As a human being, he is part of a social structure, cell in the social tissue, to use Leslie Stephen's expressive phrase. And in this direction nature secures what is necessary by the presence of impulses and cravings as imperious as, and even more permanent than, those of mere sex. Of course, in practice these two things operate together. By a process of selection, the anti-social character is weeded out, and the two sets of feelings work together in harmony for the furtherance and the development of the life of the species. The species is perpetuated in the interests of society; society is perpetuated in the interests of the species. Further, it is part of the natural 'plan' that there shall be developed impulses and capacities suitable to each phase of life as it emerges. Thus it has been shown that the lengthening of infancy—that is, the prolongation of the time during which the young human being is dependent upon its parents for support and protection—is nature's method of developing to a greater degree the capacity of the human animal for more complex adjustment. Instead of being launched on the world with a number of instincts practically fully developed, and so capable of attending to its own needs almost as soon as born, man is born with few instincts, and a great capacity for education enabling him to adjust his conduct to the demands of an environment constantly increasing in complexity. In the same way it has been shown that the instinct for play, practically universal throughout the whole of the animal world, is nature's method of preparing the young for the more serious business of nature.[152] It is, therefore, only in line with what is found to be true elsewhere that the changes incident to puberty should receive their rational interpretation in the necessities of social life. That these necessities should be met largely by the play of unreasoning impulse is, again, quite in line with what occurs in other directions. The insistent pressure of social life for thousands of generations secures the emergence of needs of the true nature of which the individual may be ignorant. In no other way, in fact, could the persistence of the species and of human society be secured.

The whole significance, then, of puberty and adolescence is the entry of the individual into the larger life of the race. It is, too, a statement beyond reasonable dispute that if we eliminate religion altogether from the environment there is not a single feeling experienced at adolescence, not a single intellectual craving, that would not undergo full development and receive complete satisfaction. The proof of the truth of this is that it occurs in a large number of cases. Sacrifice, the craving for the ideal, with every other feeling associated by many with religion, exist in connection with non-religious phases of life. It is idle to argue that some people have a craving for religion, and nothing but religion will satisfy them. Where an individual is in complete ignorance of the nature and significance of his own development, and those around him no better informed; where, moreover, there are others in a position of authority ready with a special interpretation, it is not surprising if the religious explanation is accepted as the genuine and only one. But in reality a sound judgment is formed, not on the basis of what some declare they cannot do without, but on the basis of what others actually do without, and suffer no observable loss in consequence. We do not estimate the value of alcohol on the basis of those who declare they cannot do without it. The true test is found in those who abstain from its use. So, also, in the case of religion. That some, even the majority, declare that religious belief is essential to their welfare, proves little or nothing. Human nature being what it is, and the history of society being what it is, it would be surprising were it otherwise. There is much greater significance in so large a number of people finding complete satisfaction in purely secular activities.

After what has been said of the misinterpretation of mental and emotional states in terms of religious belief, it is not surprising to find a writer, a clergyman, and one with experience of growing boys, express himself as follows:—

"My experience confirms the opinion of the psychologists that most boys of the public school age have a strongly mystical tendency. This is to be expected, on account of the great emotional development of that period of life. But it is obscured by the fact that the boy is both unwilling and unable to give any verbal expression to this tendency. He is unwilling because it is something very new and curious in his experience; he is often a little frightened of it, and he is exceedingly frightened of other people's contempt for it. And he is unable, because the words he is accustomed to use are valueless in this connection, and he feels priggish if he tries to use others.... But, though unexplained, the mystical tendency is there, and should be appealed to and developed."[153]

Now, clearly, all that can be reasonably meant by saying that a boy of, apparently, from 12 to 16 has a mystical tendency, is that the physiological changes incident to puberty are accompanied by a mass of feeling of a vague and formless character. Naturally, his boyish experience is unable to furnish him with the means of giving adequate expression to his feelings. That can only come with the experience of maturity. And with equal inevitability he is at the mercy of the explanation furnished him by those whom he regards as his teachers and guides. When he is told that this element of 'mysticism' is the awakening of religion in his soul, he accepts the explanation precisely as he accepts explanations of other things. That this 'mystical tendency' should be appealed to and developed is a statement open to very great doubt. It should rather be explained, not perhaps in a brutally frank manner, but in a way that would lead the boy to see himself as an organic part of society, with definite duties and obligations. If this were done, adolescence might provide us with the raw material for a much greater number of useful and intelligent citizens than it does at present. The true nature of the process, so elaborately misunderstood by Dr. Temple, is clearly outlined by Dr. Mercier:—

"In connection with normal development, a large body of vague and formless feeling arises, and, until experience gives it shape, the possessor remains ignorant of the source and nature of the feeling. If the circumstances are appropriate for the natural outlet and expression of the activities, they are expressed in affection, and are a source of health and strength to the possessor. But if no such outlet exists, the vague, voluminous, formless feelings are referred to an occasion that is vague, voluminous, and wanting in definite form, they are ascribed to the direct influence of the Deity, and assume a place in religious emotion."[154]

Leaving this aspect of the subject for a time, let us look more closely at the process of conversion. It has already been pointed out that one great feature of adolescence is susceptibility to impressions and suggestions. One is not surprised to find, therefore, that in Starbuck's collection of cases 34 per cent. of the females and 29 per cent. of the males described their conversion as being directly due to imitation, social pressure, and example. If we were to add to these the cases where unconscious imitation and suggestion is at work, the proportion would be much greater. Religion, like dress, has its modes, and imitation will occur in the one direction as readily as in the other. Nothing is more striking in the records of conversion than the monotony of the language used to describe the feelings experienced. It is exactly as though the converts had been learning a regular catechism, as in a way they have been. Young boys and girls will confess their sinful state in language identical with that used by one who has actually lived a career of vice and crime. Others of an aggressively commonplace character will use the language of exalted mysticism suitable to an Augustine or a Jacob Boehme. In these cases we have not identity of feeling finding expression in identity of language; it is pure imitation and suggestion without the least regard to the fitness of the language employed.

The full power of suggestion would be more fitly considered in connection with waves of religious feeling that have assumed an epidemic form; but it will not be out of place here to call attention to this factor in such a recent case as the outbreaks in Wales under the leadership of persons such as Evan Roberts. Quite apart from the suggestion and imitation operating in the gatherings themselves, it is plain that many went to the meetings quite prepared to act in accordance with what had gone before. Newspapers had published elaborate reports of the 'scenes,' certain manifestations were recognised as signs of the "workings of the Spirit," with the result that all these operated as powerful suggestions, particularly with those of a hysterical disposition. And behind this particular revival there were the traditions of other revivals, all of which had created a heritage as coercive as any purely social tradition. A crowd of people in a state of eager expectancy, exposed to the assaults of a preacher skilled in rousing their emotion to fever pitch, is naturally ready to see and hear things that none would see and hear in their normal moments. No better field for the study of crowd psychology, particularly at the point at which it merges into the abnormal, could be imagined than the ordinary revival.

In America these revival out breaks seem to assume a much more extravagant form than with us. Mr. Stanley Hall, for example, thus describes a Kentucky camp meeting in which the prevailing term of spiritual manifestation was that of 'jerking.' Quoting from an eye-witness, he says:—

"The crowd swarmed all night round the preacher, singing, shouting, laughing, some plunging wildly over stumps and benches into the forest, shouting 'Lost, lost!' others leaping and bounding about like live fish out of water; others rolling over and over on the ground for hours; others lying on the ground and talking when they could not move; and yet others beating the ground with their heels. As the excitement increased, it grew more morbid and took the form of 'jerkings,' or in others the holy laugh. The jerks began with the head, which was thrown violently from side to side so rapidly that the features were blurred and the hair almost seemed to snap, and when the sufferer struck an obstacle and fell he would bounce about like a ball. Saplings were sometimes cut breast high for the people to jerk by. In one place the earth about the roots of one of them was kicked about as though by the feet of a horse stamping flies. One sufferer mounted his horse to ride away when the jerks threw him to the earth, whence he rose a Christian. A lad, who feigned illness to stay away, was dragged there by the spirit and his head dashed against the wall till he had to pray. A sceptic who cursed and swore was crushed by a falling tree. Men fancied themselves dogs, and gathered round a tree barking and 'treeing the devil.' They saw visions and dreamed dreams, and as the revival waned, it left a crop of nervous and hysterical disorders in its wake."[155]

We have nothing quite so extreme as this in British revivals, but the home phenomena are not substantially different in nature. A medical observer of some of the earliest Methodist revivals thus describes the symptoms of those who were subject to 'divine' seizures under the influence of Wesley and his immediate followers:—

"There came on first a feeling of faintness, with rigor and a sense of weight at the pit of the stomach; soon after which the patient cried out as though in the agonies of labour. The convulsions then began, first showing themselves in the muscles of the eyelids, though the eyes themselves were fixed and staring. The most frightful contortions of the countenance followed, and the convulsions now took their course downwards, so that the muscles of the trunk and neck were affected, causing a sobbing respiration, which was performed with great effort. Tremors and agitations ensued, and the patients screamed out violently, and tossed their heads from side to side. As the complaint increased, it seized the arms, and its victims beat their breasts, clasped their hands, and made all sorts of strange noises."

To the non-medical religious observer the scenes produced a different impression, thus:—

"When the power of religion began to be spoken of, the presence of God really filled the place.... The greatest number of them who cried or fell were men; but some women and several children felt the power of the same Almighty Spirit, and seemed just sinking into hell. This occasioned a mixture of sounds, some shrieking, some roaring aloud. The most general was a loud breathing, like that of people half strangled and gasping for life; and, indeed, almost all the cries were like those of human creatures dying in bitter anguish.... I stood on a pew seat, as did a young man in the opposite pew, an able-bodied, fresh, healthy countryman; but in a moment, while he seemed to think of nothing less, down he dropt with a violence inconceivable. The adjoining pews seemed shook with his fall. I heard afterwards the stamping of his feet ready to break the boards as he lay in strong convulsions at the bottom of the pew.... Among the children who felt the arrows of the Almighty, I saw a sturdy boy, about eight years old, who roared above his fellows, and seemed, in his agony, to struggle with the strength of a grown man. His face was red as scarlet; and almost all on whom God laid His hand turned either very red or almost black."[156]

In other instances connected with the same movement, a girl is described as "lying on the floor as one dead." One woman "tore up the ground with her hands, filling them with dust and with the hard-trodden grass"; another "roared and screamed in dreadful agony." A child, seven years old, "saw visions, and astonished the neighbours with her awful manner of relating them." John Wesley personally interviewed a number of the people seized in this manner, and was quite convinced of the supernatural nature of the attacks. He said that he had "generally observed more or less of these outward symptoms to attend the beginning of a general work of God," although he admitted that in some cases "Satan mimicked God's work in order to discredit the whole work." But whether of God or Satan there was no question of their supernatural character. Moreover, whatever may be one's opinion of these outbreaks, there is one fact that stands out clear and indisputable. This is that the Methodist revival owed a great deal of its vitality—as is also the case with other religious movements—to phenomena of a distinctly pathologic nature. Subtract from these movements all phenomena of the class indicated, and such phrases as 'the revival fire' become meaningless. Right through history religious conviction has been gained in innumerable cases by the operation of factors that a more accurate knowledge finds can be explained without any reference whatever to supernatural forces.

Lest the above examples be dismissed as belonging to an old order of things, I subjoin the following account—from a missionary—of a recent revival scene in India:—

"There were people ... on the floor fairly writhing over the realisation of sin as it came over them.... Saturday we were favoured with a wonderful manifestation of the Spirit. One of the older girls who had had a remarkable experience, went into a trance, with her head thrown back, her arms folded, and motionless, except for a slight movement of her foot. She seemed to be seeing something wonderful, for she would marvel at it, and then laugh excitedly.... One girl rushed to the back of the vestibule and, lying across a bench, with her head and hands against the wall, she fairly writhed in agony for two hours before peace came to her."[157]

I do not know on what grounds we are justified in calling civilised people who chronicle these outbreaks as "a wonderful manifestation of the Spirit." Civilised in other respects, in relation to other matters, they may be. Civilised in relation to this particular matter they certainly are not. Their viewpoint is precisely that of the lowest tribe of savages. Savages, indeed, could not do more; our 'civilised' missionaries do no less. Tylor well says that "such descriptions carry us far back in the history of the human mind, showing modern men still in ignorant sincerity producing the very fits and swoons to which for untold ages savage tribes have given religious import. These manifestations in modern Europe indeed form part of a revival of religion, the religion of mental disease."[158]

The truth is that the appeals usually made to induce conversion, and the methods adopted, tend to develop a morbid state of mind, which very easily passes into the pathological. A too insistent habit of introspection is always dangerous, and the danger is heightened when it takes the form of religious brooding. In Dr. Starbuck's collection of cases, seventy-five per cent. of the males and sixty per cent. of the females confessed to feelings of depression, anxiety, and sadness before conversion. This may be attributed partly to the harping upon a conviction of sinfulness, which in itself is wholly of an unhealthy character. It does not indicate moral health, and it is very far from indicating physiological health. The following confessions are pertinent, and will illustrate both points. I give in brackets the ages of the subjects where stated:—

"I felt the wrath of God resting on me. I called on Him for aid, and felt my sins forgiven" (13).

"I couldn't eat, and would lie awake all night."

"Often, very often, I cried myself to sleep" (19).

"Hymns would sound in my ears as if sung" (10).

"I had visions of Christ saying to me, Come to Me, My child" (15).

"Just before conversion I was walking along a pathway, thinking of religious matters, when suddenly the word H-e-l-l was spelled out five yards ahead of me" (17).

"I felt a touch of the Divine One, and a voice said 'Thy sins are forgiven thee; arise and go in peace'" (12).

"The thoughts of my condition were terrible" (13).

"For three months it seemed as if God's Spirit had withdrawn from me. Fear took hold of me. For a week I was on the border of despair" (16).

"A sense of sinfulness and estrangement from God grew daily" (15).

"Everything went wrong with me; it felt like Sunday all the time" (12).

"I felt that something terrible was going to happen" (14).

"I fell on my face by a bench and tried to pray. Every time I would call on God something like a man's hand would strangle me by choking. I thought I would surely die if I could not get help. I made one final effort to call on God for mercy if I did strangle and die, and the last I remember at that time was falling back on the ground with that unseen hand on my throat. When I came to myself there was a crowd around praising God."

A crowd around praising God! For all substantial purposes this last might be the description of a state of affairs in Central Africa instead of an occurrence in a country that claims to be civilised. It is not surprising that so great an authority as Sir T. S. Clouston gives an emphatic warning against revival services and unusual religious meetings, which should "on no account be attended by persons with weak heads, excitable dispositions, and neurotic constitutions."[159] Unfortunately it is precisely these classes for whom they possess the greatest attractions, and from whom the larger number of chronicled cases are drawn. The excitement of the revival meeting is as fatal an attraction to them as the dram is to the confirmed alcoholist; and if the ill-consequences are neither so immediately discernible nor as repulsive in character, they are none the less present in a large number of cases. The emotional strain to which the organism is subjected occurs, as the ages of the converts show, precisely at the time when it is least able to bear it safely. The main characteristic of adolescence is instability, physical, emotional, and intellectual. It is a time of stress and strain, of the formation of new feelings and associations and desires that crave for expression and gratification. The instability of the organic conditions is evidenced by the large proportion of nervous disorders that occur during adolescence. Adolescent insanity is a well-known form of mania, although it is usually of brief duration. Sir T. S. Clouston, in his Neuroses of Development, gives a long list of complaints attendant on adolescence, and Sir W. R. Gowers, dealing with 1450 cases of epilepsy, points out that "three-quarters of the cases of epilepsy begin under twenty years, and nearly half (46 per cent.) between ten and twenty, the maximum being at fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen." Of hysteria, the same writer points out that of the total cases 50 per cent. occurs from ten to twenty years of age, 20 per cent. from twenty to thirty, and only 10 per cent. from thirty to forty.[160]

The peculiar danger, then, of the modern appeal for conversion is that it is couched in a form likely to do the minimum of good and the maximum of harm. Where religion exists as a normally operative factor of the environment—as in lower stages of culture—the danger is avoided, because no special machinery is required to bring about religious conviction. The general social life secures this. But at a later stage, when the religious and secular aspects of life become separated, with a growing preponderance of the latter, religion must be, as it were, specially and forcibly introduced. Whether for good or ill, it is a disturbing force. It strives to divert the developing organic energies into a new channel. To effect this, it plays upon the emotions to an altogether dangerous extent, in complete ignorance of the nature of the passions excited. In the older form of the religious appeal, that in which fear was the chief emotion aroused, it is now generally conceded that the consequences were wholly bad. But under any form the emotional appeal is fraught with danger, since the tendency is for it to bring out unsuspected weaknesses in other directions. Sir W. R. Gowers wisely points out that "mental emotion—fright, excitement, anxiety—is the most potent cause of epilepsy," which is accounted for by bearing in mind "the profoundly disturbing effect of alarm on the nervous system, deranging as it does almost every function of the nervous system." Persons with predispositions to nervous disorders may pass with safety through the period of adolescence so long as their circumstances provide opportunities for healthy occupation with no undue emotional strain. But let the former be lacking, and the latter danger is always present. The hidden weakness develops, and injury more or less permanent follows. There is hardly a qualified medical authority in the country who would deny the truth of what has been said, although many do not care to speak out in relation to religious matters. But all would doubtless agree with Dr. Mercier that "every revival is attended by its crop of cases of insanity, which are the more numerous as the revival is more fervent and long continued."[161]

Something must be said on the moral character of conversions in general. This is, naturally, greatly exaggerated, often deliberately so. In the first place, confessions of 'sinfulness' in a pre-conversion state, when made by youths of both sexes, may be dismissed as quite worthless. They are merely using the language placed in their mouths by professional evangelists, and the similarity of the confessions carry their own condemnation. Leading a sinful, or even a vicious life, usually means no more than visiting a theatre, or a music hall, or playing cards, or non-attendance at church, or not troubling about religious doctrines. Very often the vague feeling of restlessness incident to adolescence is interpreted as due to sin or estrangement from God, and after conversion the convert is, for purposes of self-glorification, given to magnify the benefits and comforts derived from his religious convictions. The magnitude of the change increases the value of the convert, and with well-known characters there has been as great an exaggeration of vices before conversion as of virtues subsequently. The way in which evangelical Christianity has created a life of the wildest dissipation for the earlier years of John Bunyan is an instructive instance of this procedure.

So far as older converts are concerned, everyone of balanced judgment will regard stories of conversion from extreme vice to extreme virtue with the greatest suspicion. Character does not change suddenly, although there may be cases of 'sports' in the moral world as elsewhere. Where some modification of conduct, but hardly of character, results, the machinery is very obvious, and does not in the least necessitate an appeal to the intrusion of a supernatural influence for an explanation. The religious gathering opens—as any non-religious meeting may open—a new circle of associates with different ideals and standards of value. So long as the newcomer is desirous of retaining the respect of his fresh associates, so long he will try to act as they act and think as they think. There will be a change of conduct, but not, as I have said, of character. Those who look closely will find the same character still active. The mean character remains mean, the untruthful one remains untruthful. The only difference is that these qualities will be expressed in a different form. Moreover, the same thing may be seen occurring quite apart from religion. Every association of men and women exerts precisely the same influence. In the army, a regiment that has a reputation for steadiness and sobriety develops these qualities in all who enter it. Regiments with a reputation for opposite qualities do not fail to convert newcomers. A workshop, a club, a profession, exerts a precisely similar influence. One man finds inspiration in the Bible and another in the Newgate Calendar. A man will usually be guided by the ideals of his associates, whether these ideals be those of a thieves' kitchen or of a philanthropic institution. This only means that each individual is subject to the influence of the group spirit. For good and evil this is one of the deepest and most pregnant facts of human nature. The utilisation and distortion of this fact in the interests of religious organisations has served to prevent its general recognition and the wise use of it by the community at large.

Finally, it has to be borne in mind, in view of the data given above, that conversion is experienced by the individual at that period of life when the more social side of human nature is beginning to find expression. In this way the natural growth from the small world of childhood to the larger world of adult humanity is taken advantage of by religion, and the process of inevitable growth is attributed to the influence of religious belief. In itself the phenomenon is in no degree religious, but wholly social. The process is well enough described by Starbuck in the following passage—although there are certain quite unnecessary theological implications:—

"Conversion is the surrender of the personal will to be guided by the larger forces of which it is a part. These two aspects are often mingled. In both there is much in common. There is a sudden revelation and recognition of a higher order than that of the personal will. The sympathies follow the direction of the new insight, and the convert transfers the centre of life and activity from the part to the whole. With new insight comes new beauty. Beauty and worth awaken love—love for parents, kindred, kind, society, cosmic order, truth, and spiritual life. The individual learns to transfer himself from a centre of self-activity into an organ of revelation of universal being, and to live a life of affection for and oneness with the larger life outside. As a necessary condition of the spiritual awakening is the birth of fresh activity and of a larger self-consciousness, which often assert themselves as the dominant element in consciousness."[162]

Adolescence is the golden period of life, because it is the age in which the formative influences effect their strongest and most permanent impressions. But this susceptibility, while pregnant with promise, is because of this susceptibility likewise fraught with the possibilities of danger. The developing qualities of mind need to be wisely and carefully guided; and it is little short of criminal that at this critical juncture so many young people should be handed over to the ignorant ministrations of professional evangelism. The true sociological significance of the development is ignored, and it is small wonder that, having wasted this impressionable period, so many people should go through life with a quite rudimentary sense of social responsibility and duty. An American author, speaking of the connection between certain brutal manifestations in social life in the United States and religious teaching, says:—

"It is well known that lynching in the South is carried on largely by the ignorant and baser elements of the white population. It is also well known that the chief method of religious influence and training of the black man and the ignorant white man is impulsive and emotional revivalism. It is a highly dangerous situation, and deserves the earnest consideration of the ecclesiastical statesmen of all denominations which work in the South. It will be impossible to protect that part of the nation, or any other, from the epidemic madness of the lynching mob if the seeds of it are sown in the sacred soil of religion.... Their preachers are great 'soul-savers,' but they lack the practical sense to build up their emotionalised converts into anything that approaches a higher life."[163]

The truth of this passage has a very wide implication. It is not alone true that so long as the lower kind of revivalism is encouraged, we are unconsciously perpetuating certain very ugly manifestations of social life; it is also true that while we give a supernaturalistic interpretation of phenomena that are wholly physiological and sociological in character, we can never make the most of the human material we possess. On the one side we have a deplorable encouragement of unhealthy emotionalism, and on the other a sheer misdirection and misuse of human faculty. The increase of self-consciousness, the craving for sympathy and communion with one's fellows, the impulse to service in the common life of the State, have no genuine connection with religion, although all these qualities are classified as religious, and are utilised by religious organisations. Actually and fundamentally they belong to the social side of human nature. As our hands are developed for grasping, and the various organs of the body for their respective functions, so mental and emotional qualities are developed in their due course for a rational social life. Biologically and psychologically, male and female are at adolescence entering into a deeper and more enduring relationship with the life of the race. There is no other meaning to the process.

Naturally enough, the vast majority of people express their developing nature in accordance with the fashion of their environment. If this environmental influence were rationally non-religious, the language would be that of a non-religious philosophy. As, however, supernaturalism, in some form or other, is still a potent force we have a contrary result. It is only here and there that one is found with the inclination or the wit to analyse his or her impulses, and few possess enough knowledge to make the analysis profitable. There is no wonder that concerning many of the most important phenomena of human life we are still little above the level of the fetish worshipper. We may have a more elaborate phraseology, but the old ideas are still operative. The consequence is that each newcomer finds certain ideas and forms of speech ready for his acceptance, and is handed over, bound hand and foot, to influences that are the least capable of sane direction. We do not merely sacrifice our first-born; we immolate the whole of our progeny. The ignorant past plays into the hands of the designing present; the present conspires with the past to rob the future of the good that might result from the growth of a wiser and a better race.

Were society really enlightened and genuinely civilised, the truth of what has been said would be recognised as soon as stated. It would, indeed, be unnecessary to labour what would then be a generally recognised truth. But the mass of the people are not genuinely enlightened, our civilisation is largely a veneer, and numerous agencies prevent our reaping the full benefit of our available knowledge. Thus it happens that in place of an explanation of human qualities in terms of biologic and social evolution, we find current an explanation that is based upon pre-scientific ideas. Because our less instructed ancestors accounted for various manifestations of human qualities as due to a supernatural influence, we continue to perpetuate the delusion. We teach youth to express itself in terms of supernaturalism, and then treat the language and the fact as inseparable. In this respect, sociology is passing through a phase from which some of the sciences have finally emerged. In physics and astronomy, for instance, the fact has been separated from the supernatural explanation, and shown to be independent of it. An exploitation of social life in the interests of supernaturalism is still in active operation. It is this that is really the central truth of the situation. And in ignoring this truth we expose a growing generation to the worst possible of educative influences, at a time when a wiser control would be preparing it for an intelligent participation in the serious and enduring work of social organisation.

FOOTNOTES:

[142] Dr. G. B. Cutten, The Psychological Phenomena of Christianity, pp. 7-8.

[143] The most elaborate study of this character known to the present writer is Mr. G. Stanley Hall's Adolescence, in two volumes. The bulk of the work is, however, terrifying to some, and the cost prohibitive to many. For the general reader of limited leisure and means, Professor Starbuck's smaller volume, The Psychology of Religion, presents the salient facts in a brief and satisfactory manner. It is lacking, however, on the anthropological side, a view that is well presented by Dr. Stanley Hall.

[144] See Adolescence, i. p. 528.

[145] Vol. iii. p. 279.

[146] Psychology of Religion, chap. iii. Hall's figures are given in the second volume of his work, pp. 288-92.

[147] Varieties, p. 199.

[148] An elaborate list of these ceremonies in both the savage and civilised worlds has been compiled by Mr. Hall, ii. chap. xiii.

[149] Catlin, North American Indians, i. p. 36; see also ii. p. 347.

[150] W. I. Thomas, Sex and Society, pp. 115-6.

[151] For a good summary, see Donaldson's Growth of the Brain, pp. 241-48.

[152] See on this subject the two fine works by Karl Groos, The Play of Animals, The Play of Man.

[153] W. Temple, Repton School Sermons.

[154] Sanity and Insanity, p. 281.

[155] Adolescence, ii. pp. 286-7.

[156] Southey's Life of Wesley, chap. xxiv.

[157] From The Examiner of September 6, 1906, cited by Cutten, p. 185.

[158] Primitive Culture, ii. p. 422.

[159] Clinical Lectures, p. 39.

[160] Manual of Diseases of the Nervous System, 1893, pp. 732 and 785.

[161] Sanity and Insanity, p. 282.

[162] Psychology of Religion, pp. 146-7.

[163] Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals.



CHAPTER EIGHT

RELIGIOUS EPIDEMICS

Under pressure of scientific analysis the old distinction between the individual and society bids fair to break down, or to maintain itself as no more than a convenience of classification. It is now being recognised that a society is something more than a mere aggregate of self-contained units, and that the individual is quite inexplicable apart from the social group. It is the latter which gives the former his individuality. His earliest impressions are derived from the life of the group, and as he grows so he comes more and more under the influence of social forces. The consequence is that the key to a very large part of the phenomena of human nature is to be found in a study of group life. We may abstract the individual for purposes of examination, much as a physiologist may study the heart or the liver apart from the body from which it has been taken. But ultimately it is in relation to the whole that the true significance and value of the part is to be discerned.

In this corporate life imitation and suggestion play a powerful part. With children, by far the larger part of their education consists of sheer imitation, nor do adults ever develop beyond its influence. Suggestion is a factor that is more operative in youth and maturity than in early childhood, and is exhibited in a thousand and one subtle and unexpected ways. Both these forces are essential to an orderly, and to a progressive, social life; but they may just as easily become the cause of movements that are retrogressive, and even anti-social in character. An epidemic of suicide or of murder is as easily initiated as an epidemic of philanthropy. Let a person commit suicide in a striking and unusual manner, and there will soon be others following his example. Given a favourable environment, there is no idea, however unreal, that will not find advocates; no example, however strange or disgusting, that will not find imitators. The more uniform the society, the more powerful the suggestion, the easier the imitation. That is why a crowd, acting as a crowd, is nearly always made up of people drawn from the same social stratum, each unit already familiar with certain ideals and belief. Under such conditions a crowd will assume all the characteristics of a psychological entity. As Gustave Le Bon has pointed out, a crowd will do collectively what none of its constituent units would ever dream of doing singly.[164] It becomes capable of deeds of heroism or of savage cruelty. It will sacrifice itself or others with indifference. Above all, the mere fact of moving in a mass gives the individual a sense of power, a certainty of being in the right that he can—save under exceptional circumstances—never acquire while alone. The intellect is subdued, inhibition is inoperative, the instincts are given free play, and their movement is determined in turn by suggestions not unlike those with which a trained hypnotist influences his subject.

In the phenomena of contagion words and symbols play a powerful part. They are both a rallying-point and an outlet for the emotions of a crowd. These words or symbols may be wholly incongruous with the real needs of a people, but provided they are sufficiently familiar they will serve their purpose. And the more primitive the type of mind represented by the mass of the people the more powerfully these symbols operate. Shakespeare's portrayal of the crowd in Julius Caesar remains eternally true. The skilled orator, playing on old feelings, using familiar terms, and invoking familiar ideas, finds a crowd quite plastic to his hands. It is for these reasons that there is so keen a struggle with political and social parties for a monopoly of good rallying cries, and a readiness to fix objectionable titles on their opponents. Patriotism, Little Englander, Jingo, The Church in Danger, Godless Education, etc. etc. Causes are materially helped or injured by these means. There is little or no consideration given to their justice or reasonableness; it is the image aroused that does the work.

Psychological epidemics may in some cases be justly called normal in character. That is, they depend upon factors that are always in operation and which form a part of every social structure. A war fever or a commercial panic falls under this head. In other instances they depend upon abnormal conditions, upon the workings, perhaps, of some obscure nervous disease, and are of a pathological description. In yet other cases they represent a mixture of both. In such cases, for example, as that of the Medieval Flagellants or of the Dancing Mania, the presence of pathological elements is unmistakable. But neither of these epidemics could have occurred without a certain social preparation, and unless they had called into operation those principles of crowd psychology to which science has within recent years turned its attention, and which are normal factors in every society. These three classes of epidemics may be found in connection with subjects other than religious, but I am at present concerned with them only in that relation, and to point out that, in spite of their undesirable or admittedly pathologic character, they have yet served to keep supernaturalism alive and active.

During the Christian period of European history by far the most important of all epidemics, as it was indeed the earliest, was monasticism. This takes front rank because of its extent, the degree to which it prepared the ground for subsequent outbreaks, and because of its indirect, and, I think, too little noticed, social consequences. It may safely be said that no other movement has so powerfully affected European society as has the monasticism of the early Christian centuries. It cannot, of course, be urged that Christianity originated monasticism. India and Egypt had its ascetic practices and celibate priesthood long before the birth of Christianity, and indeed gave Christianity the pattern from which to work. But the main stream of social life remained unaffected to any considerable extent by this asceticism. The social and domestic virtues received full recognition from the upholders of the monastic life, and there is no evidence that asceticism ever assumed an epidemic form. It has often been the lot of the Christian Church to give a more intense expression to religious tendencies already existing, and this was so in the case before us. At any rate, it was left for the Christian Church to give to monasticism the character of an epidemic, to treat the purely social and domestic virtues as a positive hindrance to the religious life, seriously to disturb national well-being, and to come perilously near destroying civilisation.

The origin of ascetic practices has already been indicated in a previous chapter. It has there been pointed out that the deliberate torture of mind and body arose from the belief that the induced states brought man into direct communion with supernatural powers, and that this element has continued in almost every religion in the world. Says Baring-Gould:—

"The ascetic instinct is intimately united with the religious instinct. There is scarcely a religion of ancient and modern times, certain forms of Protestantism excepted, that does not recognise asceticism as an element in its system.... Brahmanism has its order of ascetics.... Mohammedanism has its fakirs, subduing the flesh by their austerities, and developing the spirit by their contemplation and prayers. Fasting and self-denial were observances required of the Greeks, who desired initiation into the mysteries.... The scourge was used before the altars of Artemis and over the tomb of Pelops. The Egyptian priests passed their novitiate in the deserts, and when not engaged in their religious functions were supposed to spend their time in caves. They renounced all commerce with the world, and lived in contemplation, temperance, and frugality, and in absolute poverty.... The Peruvians were required to fast before sacrificing to the gods, and to bind themselves by vows of chastity and abstinence from nourishing food.... There were ascetic orders for old men and nunneries for widows among the Totomacs, monastic orders among Toltecs dedicated to the service of Quetzalcoatl, and others among the Aztecs consecrated to Tezcatlipoca."[165]

It was argued by Bingham, a learned eighteenth-century ecclesiastical historian, that although asceticism was known and practised in individual cases from the earliest period of Christian history, it did not establish itself within the Church until the fourth century. It is not a matter of great consequence to the subject under discussion whether this be so or not. It is at least certain that Christian teaching contained within itself all the elements for such a development, which was bound, sooner or later, to transpire. The antithesis between the flesh and the spirit, the conception of the world as given over to Satan, the ascetic teaching of Paul, with the value placed upon suffering and privation as spiritually disciplinary forces, could not but create in a society permeated with a special type of supernaturalism, that asceticism which became so marked a feature of medieval Christianity. And it is certain also that in no other instance has asceticism proved itself so grave a danger to social order and security. Allowing for what Lecky calls the 'glaring mendacity' of the lives of the saints, a description that applies more or less to all the ecclesiastical writings of the early centuries, it is evident that the number of monks, their ferocity, and general practices, were enough to constitute a grave social danger. It is said that St. Pachomius had 7000 monks under his direct rule; that in the time of Jerome 50,000 monks gathered together at the Easter festival; that one Egyptian city mustered 20,000 nuns and 10,000 monks, and that the monastic population of Egypt at one time equalled in number the rest of the inhabitants. At a later date, within fifty years of its institution, the Franciscan Order possessed 8000 houses, with 200,000 members. In the twelfth century the Cluniacs had 2000 monasteries in France. In England, as late as 1546, Hooper, afterwards Bishop of Gloucester, declared that there were no less than 10,000 nuns in England. Every country in Europe possessed a larger or smaller army of men and women whose ideals were in direct conflict with nearly all that makes for a sane and progressive civilisation.

The general character of the monk during the full swing of the ascetic epidemic has been well sketched by Lecky. His summary here will save a more extended exposition:—

"There is perhaps no phase in the moral history of mankind of a deeper and more painful interest than this ascetic epidemic. A hideous, sordid, and emaciated maniac, without knowledge, without patriotism, without natural affection, passing his life in a long routine of useless and atrocious self-torture, and quailing before the ghastly phantoms of his delirious brain, had become the ideal of the nations which had known the writings of Plato and Cicero, and the lives of Socrates and Cato. For about two centuries, the hideous maceration of the body was regarded as the highest proof of excellence. St. Jerome declares, with a thrill of admiration, how he had seen a monk, who for thirty years had lived exclusively on a small portion of barley bread and of mouldy water; another who lived in a hole and never ate more than five figs for his daily repast; a third who cut his hair only on Easter Sunday, who never washed his clothes, who never changed his tunic till it fell to pieces, who starved himself till his eyes grew dim, and his skin like a pumice stone.... For six months, it is said, St. Macarius of Alexandria slept in a marsh, and exposed his naked body to the stings of venomous flies.... His disciple, St. Eusebius, carried one hundred and fifty pounds of iron, and lived for three years in a dried-up well.... St. Besarion spent forty days and nights in the middle of thorn bushes, and for forty days and nights never lay down when he slept.... Some saints, like St. Marcian, restricted themselves to one meal a day, so small that they continually suffered the pangs of hunger.... Some of the hermits lived in deserted dens of wild beasts, others in dried-up wells, while others found a congenial resting-place among the tombs. Some disdained all clothes, and crawled abroad like the wild beasts, covered only by their matted hair. The cleanliness of the body was regarded as a pollution of the soul, and the saints who were most admired had become one hideous mass of clotted filth. St. Athanasius relates with enthusiasm how St. Antony, the patriarch of monachism, had never, to extreme old age, been guilty of washing his feet.... St. Abraham, the hermit, however, who lived for fifty years after his conversion, rigidly refused from that date to wash either his face or his feet.... St. Ammon had never seen himself naked. A famous virgin, named Sylvia, though she was sixty years old, and though bodily sickness was a consequence of her habits, resolutely refused, on religious principles, to wash any part of her body except her fingers. St. Euphraxia joined a convent of one hundred and thirty nuns, who never washed their feet, and who shuddered at the mention of a bath."[166]