The psychology of religion : an empirical study of the growth of religious consciousness / by Edwin Diller Starbuck ; with a preface by William James.

  • Starbuck, Edwin Diller, 1866-1947.
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The psychology of religion : an empirical study of the growth of religious consciousness / by Edwin Diller Starbuck ; with a preface by William James. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    sins forgiven. One morning, sitting in my room reading, peace just seemed to come, and I was happy indeed.’ M., 14. ‘ I cannot now designate any external cause of my conversion. I wanted to be a Christian, and without speaking to anyone about it, prayed for for- giveness. Relief came as a sense of peace and for- giveness. My religious life seemed to come into being at that moment. It came without any thought or act of my own.’ Such cases have probably some direct antecedent in thought or action which temporarily fades away and is revived in the finished result. 7. Feeling of oneness with God (or with friends).— M., 15. ‘ I felt my sins forgiven, and for the first time in my life I really enjoyed a prayer-meeting. I felt I had something in common with the church members who spoke to me. I enjoyed speaking to them and felt at rights with God.’ F., 12. ‘The witness of the Spirit that I was a child of God’s was very clear.’ M., 17. ‘It was a sudden awakening, so I could say in my heart, “Our father in heaven.”’ M., 14. ‘I knelt and prayed; I seemed immersed for the moment in a larger being as though it had closed about me; I felt sure I had re- ceived the Holy Spirit.’ The idea of oneness is also involved in ‘forgiveness.’ It runs likewise at one point into ‘ public confession,’ from the fact that the sense of oneness is often only the condition of coming into har- monious relationship with the social order. The quota- tions above are given to show how they form a series from those in which the sense of oneness is concrete and personal, to those in which it is abstract and spiritual. The relative frequency of the various elements thought to be central is given in Table XI. The same person often mentioned facts which came under two or more of the seven headings. The percentages were distributed so that the sum of each column gives 100 per cent. The figures do not show, therefore, the per cent, of cases in which each element enters, but the relative prominence of the various classes. In the table the different groups are placed in the order of their