Religious Experience through the Church

H. N. Wieman

The Method of Spiritual Fellowship

The church and the home are designed to promote a precious fellowship. He who never experiences it, whether found in church or home or elsewhere, misses one of the greatest goods of life. But church and home should not monopolize this fellowship; rather they should be the nursery of it, where it is fostered and grows and whence it spreads out into other social groupings.

There are three kinds of association highly prized by men. All three can be found in the church at its best. We shall call the first sympathetic, the second instrumental, the third organic. The third kind is the best. It is described in the New Testament by such phrases as being members one of another, being branches of a single vine, or in such statements as: "Ye in me and I in you that ye all may be one." It is the rare and excellent kind of fellowship which constitutes the Kingdom of God. It does not exclude the sympathetic and instrumental types of association. On the contrary, it ought properly to include them; but it is more than they.

1. Sympathetic and Instrumental Association

Sympathy, taken in its original sense, means feeling together. Sympathetic association is one in which the people associated share the same feelings, the same thoughts, the same aspirations, the same hopes and purposes. A shared experience is deepened, sweetened, and intensified through the sharing of it. The psychology of this has been intensively studied and is now well understood. Each who has the experience acts as a stimulus on the others to intensify the feeling, if it is a feeling that is shared, or to make the thought more vivid and compelling, if it is a thought, to make the aspiration more absorbing and thrilling, if it is aspiration that is shared.

If it is a painful experience, such as a sorrow, a disappointment, a danger, the sharing of it somehow makes it sweet. Blessed are they that mourn if they mourn together as a beloved community, for in thus sharing the experience they shall be comforted. In sympathetic association there is q magic which transforms bitter grief or loss or disappointment or tragedy into something precious. The fellowship of sympathy touches the evils of life, and by the magic of that touch it makes them yield a fragrance. They become beatitudes. Jesus was speaking, not to isolated individuals, but to a beloved community when he said: "Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you and say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake, rejoice and be exceeding glad. For so persecuted they the prophets that were before you." Not only would they have fellowship with one another in this persecution, but also with the great prophets that went before them.

Yet, if a fellowship were merely sympathetic and nothing more, if it did nothing to remove the causes of grief and pain and disappointment, and if it did not constructively change the evil situation resulting from these causes, save only to sympathize, it would be an inadequate kind of association. Precious as sympathetic fellowship may be, taken by itself alone it is not sufficient. It ought to be an accompaniment of instrumental and organic association. It is like a climbing vine; it needs these others to provide the strong-frame on which to climb.

Instrumental association might be called association for good works. It serves as an instrument for doing things. It does things which are helpful to its own members and to others. Almost all the charitable work of the church is of this sort. The church has sought to provide wholesome recreation, to improve education, to rectify some of the economic evils. It has applied itself as an instrument to fight the use of alcoholic liquors, to limit long hours of labor, to overcome corruption in politics, etc. It has also greatly improved its organization for helping its own membership in any time of need. All this belongs to the instrumental phase of association. It is so plain and simple and commonplace that it is probably the first thing which comes to the mind of anyone who considers the value of any association, whether in the church or outside.

2. Organic Association

Over against association for sympathy and association for service is association for personality-building. We call it organic. In organic association the members do not necessarily share the same feeling. Of c6urse they may, and often do; but this sharing belongs to the sympathetic, not the organic, aspect of their association. If the association is organic, each must have, over and above the feelings he shares with others, those feelings which are the peculiar expression of his own unique individuality. But the members interact on one another in such a way as to intensify and vastly enrich the feeling of each, however different their feelings may be from one another. In this association they have thoughts which are not shared. They may differ greatly in their ideas about things. But they interact on one another in such a way as to clarify and magnify the ideas of each. They have purposes and aspirations which are not shared; but they interact in such a way as to extend the scope and accuracy and effectiveness of the purpose and aspiration of each.

Nevertheless in organic association there is profound mutual understanding. While one does not think just as the others do, he knows what they do think. While one does not feel about things as the others, he knows. how they feel. While he does not strive for the same end they may strive for, he knows what is the aspiration and striving of their lives. This deep mutual understanding is what makes their interaction in difference so helpful, so clarifying, and so creative. This stimulating interaction of diverse personalities who have profound mutual understanding of one another fosters and magnifies the individuality of each. Yet each unique individuality is organically and co-operatively connected with the others; just as the limbs of the human body, while totally different from heart, lungs, yet are so organically connected that each in its own unique diversity fulfils a function that nourishes, sustains, and enriches all the others. Thus individuals who enter into organic association with one another are members one of another. They are branches of a single vine. Each abides in the other that they all may be one.

This stimulating, sustaining, diversifying spiritual co-operation and mutual understanding need not exclude sympathy and service; but it is far more than they. It is the kind of fellowship Jesus and the disciples had with one another. These individuals were not all molded according to the same pattern. They did not come out of the process of fellowship like so many bricks, each thinking, feeling, saying, doing the same. Quite the contrary was the case. Under the stimulus of this fellowship each began to grow into a full-orbed individual. Each thought about matters in a different way; each felt differently, spoke differently, reacted differently. Yet each was so organically related to the others in profound mutual understanding, at least so long as Jesus was with them, that each fulfilled his own peculiar function and made his own valuable contribution. Each brought the whole group to a focus in himself, yet the focusing in each was very different from the others.

It should be noted that the early church was not primarily an instrumental association. It was not first of all devoted to service or good works. We do not find that it concentrated its efforts immediately on providing wholesome recreation, or fighting political corruption, or bringing justice into the economic system, or improving the schools, or opposing slavery, or d6ing any good works in marked degree except to dispense charity. It was organic rather than instrumental. It was an association devoted to saving souls; that is, it fostered, enriched, and exalted the individualities of its members until these outcasts, these down trodden and crushed, these slaves and riff raff rose up in towering strength to dominate the age. Such magnified and developed personalities could and did, in the course of time, enter into instrumental association for the purpose of doing good works, removing causes of evil, transforming conditions, and reconstructing the world.

We do not mean to suggest that the church should refrain from good works. On the contrary, it should do even more than it is doing. It should be an instrumental association as well as organic. But first of all, we claim, it should be organic. Its first and greatest function in the world is to bring people together in such a way that they can interact in deep organic community, with profound mutual understanding. It should quicken to life and to abundant growth those impulses, aspirations, and personal attitudes wherein the individual comes to largest fulfilment of his utmost possibilities. This is individual salvation; but it is also profoundly social. The individual finds fulfilment through interaction with his fellows. And as he increases in spiritual stature his interaction becomes increasingly creative of greater personality in himself and others.

It should be noted that this kind of association does not exclude solitude. On the contrary, it requires seasons of solitary, private meditation and worship; for only in solitude can one assimilate the suggestions he has received from others. Only in solitary "waiting on God" can he organize the new impulses which association has stirred within him. He must digest what he has gathered. If he does not do this, he becomes superficial. He ceases to have originality. He becomes incapable of interacting creatively. His capacity for association sinks to the level of the sympathetic and the instrumental. Only as seasons of solitary, private assimilation and organization alternate with seasons of association can his interaction with others serve to develop the powers and possibilities of himself and his associates. Only so can he participate in organic association.

3. Organic Association as Adjustment to God

Organic association is the most profoundly religious kind of association. Through it the individual and the group share most fully in the cosmic working of God. There is a cosmic process which works to make the whole universe more organic. It is God. It works to develop individuals, both human and subhuman; and it works to interrelate these individuals so that they all can be members one of another, tach in diversity fulfilling a function of vital importance to all the others, each sustaining the others and magnifying them, and in so doing finding itself most richly nourished and magnified. Trees and grass and sky and water and earth and beasts and men become increasingly interdependent and mutually supporting. The goal of this movement toward organic interdependence and mutual development of individuals is poetically expressed in the words- "The lion shall lie down with the lamb." The ultimate value of all good works and instrumental service is to provide conditions which are favorable to this work of God--the development of organic interaction between all men and between men and the rest of the universe.

4. The Personal Experiment

The personal experiment which we propose consists in the individual participating in the associations and activities of the church in such a way as to find or achieve the kind of fellowship we have called organic. The personal technique by which this is accomplished is too subtle, intimate, and variable to put into any set of rules or to describe to another. But certain suggestions can be made to guide the experiment.

One should occasionally take time to look back over his experience and examine himself to ascertain whether he has actually attained this fellowship in some measure. He should endeavor to discover and cultivate in himself those attitudes, that way of approaching and dealing with people, talking and listening to them, which will enable him to enter into organic association with them. Above all, he should have seasons of solitude and private worship to use in the way previously described.

If one earnestly seeks this most precious fellowship we believe he can find it. It will grow with him through the years, transforming the world for him and making all things more dear. Through it he enters into organic fellowship with God who works to make the universe more organic. Through organic fellowship with men and beasts and things a man finds God and lives in God and God in him. It is necessary to the best religion; it is indispensable to us.

Religious Experience through Crisis in Individual Growth and Social Experience
H. N. Wieman

Salvation Through Crisis

1. The Problem of the Crisis

A crisis is dangerous. It will make us or break us. Like a wave we must ride it to victory or be whelmed beneath its flood. One becomes suddenly ill in the midst of an important undertaking. It is a crisis. Out of such illness some men have risen to a great career; others have been dragged down to ruin. The son who has been carefully reared is discovered to have stolen money. It is a turning-point in the life of the family, leading to greater mutual understanding and co-operation, if rightly met, or leading to deeper disaster if wrongly treated. The investment which was to pay for the education of the children vanishes in the bankruptcy of a firm. It calls for a reorganization of life purposes and transformation of habits whereby powers and possibilities are brought to light that might have remained forever hidden; or else the family sinks and sinks. Someone dies under whose love and shelter we have lived. How shall we meet the crisis?

Crisis generally wears the face of disaster. But it is not disaster; it is opportunity, if we make it so. But it rests with us and the way we avail ourselves of God. It is the fateful moment when we must change our ways for good or ill. It is the turning-point whence paths diverge. It is the situation in which old habits no longer suffice to produce desired results. Either they produce no noticeable results at all, or very unexpected and undesired ones.

The chief thing to note about a crisis, from the standpoint of this section, is the fact that it requires a reorganization of our habits. Therein lies its peril and its promise. Our old ways of life are disrupted. We must seek out new ways. How shall we do it? The practical problem, which we always try to formulaie and solve in this section, is expressed in this last question. When old habits no longer work and we are forced to seek new ways, how shall we conduct ourselves in order to find the way of salvation and escape the way of ruin? How to meet a crisis. That is our problem.

2. How Not to Meet a Crisis

There are three wrong ways to meet a crisis. One is to fail to see it. The second is to see it and fear. The third is to be so custom bound and muscle ridden that we cannot change our ways and meet the strange new demands that are made upon us. Let us consider each of these in turn.

Often crises come and go, the backwash sweeping men off their feet, and the men never discover there is a crisis until they find themselves struggling in the wreckage and it is too late. They are so busy doing the little thing that is directly at hand. They do not take time, as every man occasionally should, to draw apart from the continuous succession of one little thing after another, and look deeply into the events of life, and fate abroad, and so be in a state of mind to catch the significance of a crisis when it begins to loom. They do not mount the watch tower of worship. It is easy to become so engrossed in the daily grind that we cannot see the crisis in its beginning. Again, some people are so blindly optimistic that they refuse to see anything which does not sustain them in what they happen at the time to want to do. Blindness to the fact of crisis is probably the most common fault and the most common reason why men are hurt instead of helped by critical situations when they arise. They simply do not see the need of reorganizing their lives and readjusting their habits. They are not alert; they are not sensitive to those changes which betoken the oncoming of a crisis. They may note the signs that indicate a change of weather, as Jesus said, but they do not observe the signs of the times. While Noah builds the ark they laugh him to scorn. So the flood comes and finds them unready.

The second wrong way to meet a crisis is in fear. Sometimes, strange though it may seem, fear is joined with blindness. If we are afraid the easiest way is to hide the head in the sand and ignore what is going on. Sometimes it is something else than the crisis which causes us to hide our eyes in fear and so remain in ignorance of the critical nature of the situation. Again, it may be some sign of the crisis which makes us shut our eyes to any further developments of it.

But this is not always the way fear affects men. It does not always make them shut their eyes to danger. But it has other effects just as harmful or worse. It is never the right way to meet a crisis. While it does not always blind, it probably always distorts the vision and prevents us from seeing things precisely as they are; and crisis is a time when, above all others, we must see things as they are. Fear confuses the mind and renders our thinking inaccurate; but crisis is a time when we must think profoundly, comprehensively, accurately, and swiftly. Fear disorganizes the will and prevents us from reaching a final conclusion and taking definite action. It is likely to throw us back into all sorts of wasteful and vacillating and futile practices just when we need most of all to conserve all our time and strength and resources. Next to blindness, fear is the worst thing that can befall us when we face a crisis. Possibly it is worse than blindness, at times.
 

But when we say that fear is the worst way to meet a crisis we must note a distinction. A crisis ought to stimulate us. It probably always
does when we face it and recognize it for what it is. This state of stimulation might be called a state of fear; that is, it is a state in which our latent powers are aroused, the action of heart and lungs quickened, the blood courses more rapidly through all the arteries, the total rate of metabolism is accelerated. But there is a vast difference between that state of stimulation in which we are given most complete command over all our powers and that state in which there is the stimulation of fear, but a stimulation that confuses and disorganizes the personality. It is this last which we condemn as the worst way to meet a crisis.

The third wrong way to meet a crisis is by persisting in old ways, refusing to modify and reorganize our habits, and, if need be, our total way of life. This may be due to stubbornness or conceit; it may be due to lack of plasticity in our habits, we being physically and mentally muscle bound and rigid; or it may be merely due to lack of imagination. But crisis requires change on our part, oftimes swift and radical change. Except ye turn and become as a little child ye have not the plasticity required to enter the Kingdom of Heaven by way of a crisis.

3. The Right Way

Knowledge of the three wrong ways to meet a crisis helps us to see what is the right way. Rightly to meet a crisis and ride it to victory we must be alert, fearless, and plastic. These three requirements should be stated a little more fully.

To be alert is to be sensitive to changing conditions, keenly aware of the dangers involved as well as of the other possibilities. Can we be sensitive to danger and possibilities of various kinds, surveying the situation in its fulness, face it squarely, feel the full stimulus of it, and yet be free of that fear that distorts the vision, confuses the thinking, and weakens the will? That is the test. These two things must be united if we are to master the crisis. We must face the issue squarely and unafraid.

Then we must be capable of changing our ways. The right thing to do in a crisis always requires some marked change in our manner of living; otherwise it would not be a crisis. Sometimes such a change requires great sacrifice. Also the good to be gained by means of the sacrifice may be problematical, depending on a venture which is by no means certain of its outcome. Furthermore this good to be gained, while it may be beneficial to others, may not be acceptable to us as a good except as we so change, our interests and ways of life as to share in the good of these others. Thus the crisis, demanding sacrifice by us, cannot be met without great capacity for transformation in our total personality and way of life.

To meet a crisis adequately, then, we must have clear vision with alertness and sensitivity; we must be fearless; and must have capacity for transforming the organization of our lives. The problem we have to solve is to discover how these three traits of personality can be acquired; for it is only by means of these that we can meet a crisis in the right way.

4. How to Achieve the Right Way

The way to be alert we have already suggested. It consists in drawing aside from the daily grind at regular intervals in order to survey in thought the total situation in which we live our lives. We must mount the watch tower and look around, figuratively speaking. To do this effectively we must relax and wait in quietness in some solitary place so that there can rise up into our mind any hidden thing which we have been experiencing but not noticing. For there are many things which enter the fringe of consciousness unnoticed, and sometimes these unnoticed bits of experience have tremendous significance for us and others. But we will never come to know them and their significance unless we take these times of quiet worshipful' waiting in which they have opportunity to rise into the focus of consciousness. Words and attitudes and expressions of the face in our associates have been saying something to us but we could not understand their meaning until the relaxation of these quiet minutes allows these experiences to enter our mind with their load of meaning. That is the reason we call this method of retirement a way of mounting the watch tower. It is a way of being alert and of cultivating alertness. If there is a crisis looming up before us, we will discover it quicker this way than in any other. If a crisis is already upon us and we have failed to note it, we will see it when we mount the watch tower.

But how can we rid ourselves of that demoralizing kind of fear which we described previously? This is one of the most important and most difficult things. Yet there is a sure way of overcoming fear. You cannot necessarily keep it from falling upon you; but when it comes you can find a cure that never fails if you learn the method of it. You can recover your self-command, restore ycur nerve, and regain clarity of vision. Fear will occasionally fall upon some of us inevitably, with all its demoralization, but the important thing is to know a method by which to escape from its clutches. We shall try to describe that method.

Stated very simply, the cure of fear is the practice of the presence of God. But that statement is hardly full enough to mean much to one who has never used the method.

One is free of demoralizing fear just as soon as he is ready to accept the facts precisely as they are. Fear of the demoralizing sort is the endeavor to make things seem to be different from what they truly are. It is shrinking, cowering, hiding, in spirit if not in body. That means trying to hide the facts out of sight and make them seem different. As long as one clings to the hope that things may be better than they seem he is subject to fear. There is record of a man who found he was going blind. As long as he clung to his failing eyesight he was fearful and depressed. But when at last he saw there was no hope, resigned himself to inevitable fact, and set to work to cultivate his sense of touch in order to become an expert flour-tester, his fear departed. The man who cannot face the likelihood of defeat and failure, but must keep these out of mind in order to sustain his courage, is still a coward. Cyrano de Bergerac said: "I have never fought with hope to win," meaning that his courage did not depend upon the hope to win. As soon as one is ready to accept the facts and commit himself completely to the course they indicate, surrendering himself to the keeping of reality, he can lift his head unafraid, alert and ready to make every possible use of circumstance, but never shrinking from reality, however grim it may appear.
Now this state of complete self-committal, this total self-surrender to reality, with consequent command over all the resources of personality, is possible when one fills his mind with the thought that underneath all other facts is the basic fact upon which all else depends. This basic fact can be called the structure of the universe or it can be called God. Whenever we commit ourselves in love to God, accepting him with affection and all things else for his sake, we are free of fear. This state of mind requires cultivation. We do ndt have it by nature, or, if we do, the conditions of civilization amid which we live have taken it from us. This state of mind must be cultivated in seasons of worship. The cultivation of this state of mind in which we feel ourselves sustained and moved by the basic fact of the world is what we mean by the practice of the presence of God. It casts out fear.

If in time of crisis one feels that he is losing his nerve, and the disorganizing chill of fear creeps over him, let him retire for a little time and be alone where he can recover this state of complete self-committal to reality for the love of God. If he has never practiced the presence of God in the manner described, he may not be able to do this. But if he has practiced it, he can in every time of need recover his poise. And becoming a master of himself, he can master circumstance. He can even master death in the sense of facing i- fearlessly and making it yield up whatsoever profit it can be made to yield to himself and his fellow-men. Many a godly man, and pre-eminently Jesus, has been able to make his own death serve him well for centuries after he was gone. We remember Latimer calling across to Ridley when the two were being burned to death for their religious faith: "Be of good cheer, Brother Ridley, for we shall this day by the grace of God light such a candle as shall never be put out." They did. Latimer turned that crisis to good account. He met it right.
The third requirement for meeting a crisis, we said, was plasticity. This is something which cannot be achieved at the last moment in the hour of need. It must be cultivated and preserved from childhood. If one has lost it he may be able to win it back by a long slow process; but it. is far better to keep it.

How can one preserve plasticity? By putting himself in the situation where he can feel awe and wonder and reverence; for awe and wonder and reverence are states of consciousness which indicate that one is reacting to something very different from the common matters of routine habit. Awe and wonder and reverence are the exact opposites of rigid routine. They constitute that precious childlike attitude which Jesus said was prerequisite to entering the Kingdom of Heaven. The reason they are prerequisite is very plain. It is because they represent in a man that plasticity which enables him to undergo transformation. Each man must seek out for himself those conditions which arouse in him the attitude of wonder, awe, and reverence. For it is these that represent in him that plasticity without which he cannot find the gateway into the Kingdom of Heaven which is opened before him by a crisis.

Religious Experience through Happiness

H. N. Wieman

The personal problem for experimentation which we have in this study is twofold: (1) How can we increase our capacity for enjoyment? (2) How can we preserve our critical moral judgment and our spiritual aspiration in the midst of these joys? The second part of this dual problem is much more complicated and difficult than the first. It arises out of the fact that joy in things as they are is likely to assume the form of complacency; and complacency is death to aspiration. How can we enjoy what is, without impairing our aspiration toward that better world which God wills to make out of this one. But we shall not treat this second part of our problem until we have first made answer to the question, how to increase our capacity for enjoyment.

1. How to Enjoy the World

Everyone has something he should be able to enjoy. What you have I do not have, and what I have you do not, but everyone has something if he will be appreciative of it. Very simple things we have in mind as well as great things, such as good food when hungry, rest when weary, trees, sky, friends, happy faces, and the like. The list of things to enjoy is endless. One may be sick and not able to enjoy food, but he has something else. Another may not have the kind ministration of affectionate hands when he is ill, but there is another source of joy for him. Our problem is to enter into full appreciation and enjoyment of these good things Our happiness might be many times greater than it is if we had the mental attitudes which enable one to appreciate to the full all the good things round about. Let us mention some of the wrong mental attitudes which must be corrected if we are to enter into the fulness of that JOY which should be ours.

First is the feeling some people have that they are failing to meet some moral or religious requirement when they freely and fully enjoy such simple things as food and clothes and play. This feeling is correct only when the lesser good blinds us to the greater. How to avoid such blindness will engage our attention later. But when such blindness is not incurred there is nothing wrong in the greatest possible enjoyment of simple things. Some people have this mental habit of condemning simple joys so fixed that even when they know it is wrong to condemn them they cannot enter into them with freedom, and so their happiness is marred. This old habit must be rooted out like any other bad habit. There are many methods for overcoming a bad habit, one of which is worshipful auto-suggestion.

A much more common hindrance to enjoyment of that which is good and pleasant is worry and anxiety. We are so anxious about the future that we cannot enjoy the present. We are so fearful lest we lose our health or comfort or friends or security or other good thing that we cannot enjoy these good things while we have them. Or we are like Martha, so cumbered about many things that the one thing needful we miss. The one thing needful is to enjoy the visitor when he is present with us, whether he come in the form of a sunset, or tall tree, or a singing bird, or a child tugging at our hand, or a pleasant fire on a winter evening, or what not.

The most common hindrance of our enjoyment of good things, however, especially in America, is our restless striving after something not yet attained. There are times when we must be preoccupied with striving. A surgeon engaged in a delicate operation cannot at the same time enjoy the sunset. A man struggling to save another from drowning cannot listen to the sweet music of birds. Life must have its seasons of stern struggle when the eyes are turned away from all the sweet and lovely things around us to the end of achieving something which is not yet attained.

But our absorption in that which is not yet attained must not make us permanently unappreciative of what is already given to us. We must not be so absorbed in making the child into a good man that we cannot appreciate and rejoice in the child for what he already is. We must not be so intent on getting to the end of the picture gallery that we cannot enjoy the pictures that we pass. We must not be so preoccupied in making money for a better home that we cannot enjoy the home we already have. We must not be so strenuous in our efforts to bring the tour to a successful end that we cannot enjoy it as we go along. We must not try so hard to achieve some ultimate and unattained success that we destroy the value of every success that we ever do attain.

The only way to solve this problem is by the method of alternation. Seasons of striving and aspiration after the unattained must alternate with seasons of enjoying the good things already here. After the surgeon has completed the operation he must take some time when he can enjoy the sunset. After the terrible struggle over the drowning man there must be some time when one can listen to the birds.

This relaxation and enjoyment of the present moment, this quieting of the rush and striving after something which is still beyond us, this joy in the life which is already ours must be cultivated. Perhaps most Americans need this side of life cultivated more than any other. A good method for cultivating it is to go out for a walk in park or open country some pleasant evening, either alone or with some very dear and intimate friend with whom you do not need to talk except as mood may require. Loitering thus together or alone in the quiet dusk of evening is the best time for cultivating the attitude of relaxation. One can give himself regular doses of this kind of treatment. For many of this age it is just as needful as medical treatment in time of physical illness.

A fourth great hindrance to joy is envy. We cannot enjoy our own clothes because they are not as good as another's. We cannot enjoy our work because it does not seem so honorable as another's. Our success seems not as great as another's, hence it is bitterness in the mouth rather than sweetness. We want what another has, and so cannot enjoy our own. Naboth's vineyard, because it belongs to him and not to us, destroys all the joy we might have in our own acres. So we turn away our face and will eat no bread, like King Ahab.

Men have found joy in every kind of condition. If we cannot rejoice in the things which every man has to enjoy, then we are suffering from some perversion of mental attitude. Why do we not get more joy out of life? Why do we not enter into that fulness of joy which Jesus said he wished us to have? The fault is our own. We destroy our own happiness. How? By a mistaken Puritanic habit which will not let us surrender to the joy of the passing hour. Or by some goading anxiety and worry that has got us in its clutches and will not let us go. Or by a habit of strenuous striving which has become so fixed as a mental attitude that we cannot throw it off in periods of relaxation that should alternate with periods of striving. Or by envy of what other people have.

2. How to Cure the Joy-Killing Attitude

We have already suggested some measures for curing mistaken Puritanism and that strenuosity which has become a disease. But we can now lay down the principle for the cure of all four of these ills. The method of cure is to ascertain what is the right attitude which is the exact opposite of your wrong attitude, and pray for it persistently and regularly day by day until it grows up within you. If the wrong attitude is a mistaken Puritanism, the right and opposing attitude would be one of joyous acceptance and appreciation of every good thing. If the wrong attitude is worry, the right would be peaceful adaptation to every changing condition as it arises, with flexible readiness to use and enjoy to the utmost whatever may befall. If the wrong attitude is habitual strenuosity which cannot relax, the right would be restfulness and self-abandon to the hour of relaxation. If the wrong attitude is envy, the right is identifying yourself with the joy and success of the other so that his good becomes yours also.

3. How to Preserve Critical Moral Judgment and Spiritual Aspiration in the Midst Of Our Joys

A life overflowing with joy in the good things of this world, such as we have suggested, will dull the keenness of our moral judgment and drag down the highest aspiration unless in the midst of our enjoyment we meet four requirements.

The first of these four is to keep ourselves intensely conscious of the unfathomable possibilities for good which are inherent in this present world despite all its evil. The second is to be deeply sensitive to the fact that this present actual world is immeasurably degraded and evil as compared to these possibilities for good which are inherent in it. The third requirement is that we use this present world as material out of which to construct that other better world. This means that we must enter into the fullest and richest experience of this world, entering into all its joys as well as its sorrows; for only as we learn to experience it, know it, master it, and use it can we make it better. If we do not enter into full appreciation of the joys of this present world, as well as of its pains and evils, we cut ourselves off from the materials, the standing-ground, the leverage, and the nourishment by which alone that other better world can ever be brought into existence.

The fourth and last and greatest requirement of all which must be met if we are to enjoy the world in a spiritual way is to hold ourselves constantly in readiness to make any sacrifice whatsoever when such sacrifice seems to be the best thing we can do to bring forth that other better world. But we must understand what sacrifice means. It does not consist in being miserable. It consists in just the opposite. It consists in taking pain, sorrow, loss, and death and transmuting these into joy and goodness by making them contributory to the attainment of the best world which is the Kingdom of God. Such is the way Jesus met pain, sorrow, and death, and so could look upon the travail of his soul and be satisfied.

Any sacrifice which is not made as a contribution to the high end of attaining a better world, any sacrifice.which is made merely to demonstrate our own righteousness or to express our condemnation of evil is not only mistaken, useless, and foolish; it is positively evil. The sacrifice which Jesus recommended was, not that we lose our lives, but that we lose them in order to save them. The sacrifice he recommended was never morbid. Never refuse a joy unless the refusing of it will yield a greater joy. That is what is meant by losing one's life to save it.

With this understanding of sacrifice we can say that readiness for such sacrifice on all occasions is needed if we are to enjoy the world in a spiritual way. Without readiness for such sacrifice the joys of the world will distort our moral judgment, pervert our spiritual aspiration, and blind us to those vast possibilities which constitute the Kingdom of God. With this sacrifice, and with this only, can we enter into that full measure of joy which Jesus knew and which he desired us to have.

We have suggested two kinds of personal experiments in religion. One kind had to do with cultivating our capacity for enjoying the good things of life. The other had to do with preserving our moral judgment and our aspiration in the midst of these joys.

Religious Experience through Loyalty to a Great Cause
H. N. Wieman

Experiment in Loyalty to a Cause

1. The Problem

The great cause is the all inclusive enterprise of enlarging and refining the life of man, an enterprise in which we each may have a share. When we consider this cause, and how to make personal connection with it, we are immediately confronted with a practical problem.

Can I be sure that the specific thing which I find to do is wholly and significantly of service to this cause? Can I be sure that I am doing, or can do, anything for the cause which is sufficiently worth while to command my full devotion? The cause is all right, but my part in it -- that is the problem. Can I be sure that I, even with the best intentions and utmost effort, shall not be producing at least some results through my work that positively obstruct the cause? That such results do ensue is evident to anyone who with unbiased mind will carefully observe his own experience and study the historic record. Every specific and definite form of human need in this evil world will, when satisfied by me in so far as I am able to satisfy it, lead to evil as well as good. There is no church or other institution with which I can work which will not involve me in evil. There is no campaign or enterprise or group of men with which I may ally myself which is not tainted and productive of evil. And many times the evil results are greater than the good. Every concrete specific undertaking which men have begun with high hope and great enthusiasm has been disappointing in the end to those who were sufficiently observant, humble, and open-minded to see the evil and futility of their efforts along with whatever good may have resulted.

Men do not necessarily think the matter out in the way we have presented it; they do not analyze their feelings; but their problem with respect to any great cause brought to their attention is often of just this sort. They do not respond with full devotion either because the cause is not sufficiently definite, concrete, and close'at hand so they can make direct connection with it, or else the specific and concrete thing presented has none of that indubitable and overmastering urgency and grandeur that can command their complete loyalty. You and I and most men would respond readily and completely and passionately if we could be sure that the concrete and immediate piece of work accessible to us was altogether pure and glorious, and that our devotion to it would really count for something of importance in service of the great cause. But as soon as a cause becomes embodied in concrete form in this evil and complicated world it ceases to be pure. It cannot command our hearts, and it should not. The evil is so intricately involved in the good, the tares so mixed with the wheat, and there is so much uncertainty concerning just what is the wheat and what the tares, that we cannot make direct connection with the great cause.

Here, then, is our practical problem: How to find the great cause in such form that we can yield our lives to it.

One way to solve this problem is that of the fanatic. He blinds himself. to the evil and tawdry features involved in the enterprise to which he gives his allegiance. He has found a "great cause," to be sure. He may call it Christ or socialism, Kingdom of Heaven or vegetarian diet, saving souls or pacifism. The slogan he uses makes little difference. The point is that he is able to esteem his cause so great, and can give it his unreserved devotion, only because he will not admit what others less prejudiced can plainly see. He will not admit that the cause as served by him is mixed with all manner of worthless and evil things, and in the end may result in as much harm as good. He makes himself think he is engaged in something wonderful when he is not. Such fanaticism is not the transfiguring loyalty which we need and crave. It is not the loyalty which the preceding part of this paper has presented. Yet we can see all about us and read in the historic records that no matter how devoted men may have been, and no matter how sure of serving a great cause, they have always wrought evil as well as good, and often the results of their efforts, when closely examined, can be seen to have been quite futile.

Where and how shall we find our cause, we who refuse to deceive ourselves and follow the fanatic? How can we catch the transfiguring devotion without surrendering to fanaticism?

2. The Proposition

This world has some possibility for maximum good which can be achieved through right adjustment of the different factors which enter into the making of it. What this possible maximum good may be we do not know. Eye hath not seen it nor ear heard, neither hath it entered the heart of man in the form of any dream or vision. Our thoughts concerning its nature may be mistaken. Indeed, our ideas of it in great part must he mistaken, else we would not disagree about it so radically and violently. And our ways of serving that cause must be mistaken in great part else we would not so commonly work at cross-purposes. But despite these facts it is a self-evident truth to say that among all the possibilities for good and evil which are inherent in this universe there is one or more which is the maximum good. This genuine possibility for maximum good inherent in the universe may be called the cause of Christ, the will of God, the Kingdom of Heaven, the utmost welfare of mankind, etc., but its specific nature and the best way to promote it is something about which only the fanatic is sure; and he is probably most mistaken of all.

There is no straight-cut and definite course of action known to us which will lead directly to the actualization of this possible maximum good. It is too mysterious, too ill defined in our own minds; the processes of life are too intricately interwoven, and we are too ignorant of the outcome of any suggested course of procedure. There is, however, one course of procedure and one way of living in which we can give our whole lives in complete loyalty to that unknown good.

3. The Method

The intelligent method of loyalty to the supreme but unknown good consists in throwing the light of observation and experimental investl gation over all the processes of life. That means first of all that we shall examine ourselves and constantly observe ourselves to see what habits, what impulses, what mental attitudes produce what consequences, and try to ascertain the value of these consequences.

Secondly, it means that we shall constantly observe what customs, what mutual adaptations within our own family and between ourselves and other intimate associates, yield deeper community of heart and mind and greater co-operation. Thirdly, it means that we shall constantly observe and investigate what consequences result from what social customs, and other conditions generally in the world round about us. Of course no man can cover all these fields of investigation. But every man can take his own special line of endeavor, whatever it may be, and make it a field of constant and searching observation and experimental investigation to the end of ascertaining what results for good or ill may ensue. Also, every man can make his own personal conduct in dealing with his own intimate associates a matter of search' ng inquiry.

What constitutes the significance of this method? Its significance lies in this: that we rest our hope for the ultimate actualization of supreme good, not on the success of any specific practical enterprise, but upon the slowly garnered wisdom which is yielded by this method of indefatigable observation. It means that we shall turn our very failures and worst disasters into tools for the achievement of this ultimate good, inasmuch as such failures and disasters yield the largest harvest of wisdom if we constantly keep in the clear light of consciousness, just so far as we can, all the factors which led up to the failure or disaster.

Seasons for cultivating and practicing most intensely this observation are seasons of worship. Where are we going? What have we been doing? What attitudes on our part and on the part of humankind have produced what results, and what are the values of these? Such questions ought properly to find some answer in the season of worship. For worship ought to be a mountain top whence we can survey our lives and the lives of men. We are not saying this is all there is to worship; but this is an essential part of it. Of course, however, the observation of life cannot be limited to worship. Our whole point is that it must be constantly practiced. But nothing can be constantly practiced unless we set aside certain times for its special cultivation. Worship is such a time.

Some may object to this proposed method of observation, thinking that it will destroy the great joys and enthusiasms of life. Sometimes, they say, we must abandon ourselves to some "fine careless rapture," and disregard consequences. Now it is true that constant, critical observation of self and others and life as a whole does destroy joy and enthusiasm except as this constant critical examination is made the embodiment and expression of passionate devotion to the supreme cause. And that is precisely what we are proposing.

We suggest this method of solving the problem of how to make personal connection with the great cause: (1) constant, searching, critical, and experimental observation in everything we do to promote the good; (2) measure our service to the good not merely by objective achievement but by the wisdom gained in how to do good. Thus we shall transmute our very failures, disappointments, disillusionments, and difficulties into gain. We can begin by applying this method and assuming this attitude in any minor undertaking which we have begun or are about to begin. (3) We can take certain seasons of worship for special examination of what we have done, how we have done it, and also for reaching conclusions on the grounds of these observations.

The results to look for as tests of this method are: (1) change in the kind of things we undertake; (2) change in the wav we go about doing it; (3) increase in the final value of what we do; (4) transfer of our highest loyalty and deepest enthusiasm from the special task to that unknown good which we serve by slowly bringing it to light through the accumulated wisdom of history, our chief service being assimilation of, and contribution to, this wisdom of life. In this way lives which fail magnificently may be great successes. Perhaps this kind of failure is the genius of Christianity and the spirit of Christ.

Religious Experience through the Struggle of Life
H. N. Wieman

Experiments in the Religious Experience of Struggle

1. The Practical Problem of Struggle

The preceding part of this study has demonstrated the importance of struggle. The greater goods of life have rarely been attained save in those circumstances where men have been forced to struggle. The greatest goods and the ever higher levels of good can be attained only when men continue to struggle after they are no longer forced to it by danger and deprivation.

Here we have the great practical problem which is becoming ever more urgent and vital as our civilization makes life more easeful and luxurious. The problem is twofold: (1) How can men be induced to struggle for ever greater goods when necessity no longer compels them; (2) how can they keep on when discouraged, weary, or depressed with sense of failure. The first of these two parts of the problem is not so widely recognized as the second, but we believe it is much more serious. The old sad story of civilizations reaching a certain height of excellence and then sinking back into decadence; the old story of fathers struggling up from low levels of life only to see their sons become flabby and weak, if not vicious and dissipated; of individuals achieving a noble success, but at the age of forty or fifty beginning to decay morally, mentally, physically this old story will continue as long as we fail to keep up the great struggle of life after the scourge of necessity no longer whips us into the fight. This applies especially to the most highly endowed. These gifted men can often get what they want without one-tenth the effort others expend. So they live their lives without making that great contribution to human welfare which they could make if they exerted themselves, and all human life is impoverished thereby.

Here, then, is the twofold vital problem involved in struggle: How can we keep it up when comfortable or when discouraged?

Let us first state how it cannot be accomplished. It cannot be accomplished merely by making up our minds to do it. Resolution is not enough. Resolution may produce spurts of effort, bult it can never keep us striving with that persistency and dauntless drive which is the only road to the highest goods. The futility of all such moral volition arises out of the fact that persistent and potent struggle depends upon the release of personal energy; and personal energy can be released only when the individual is rightly stimulated. Only those situations that arouse intense desire or fear or anger or other such deep-seated emotion can release within us that amount of energy which is required for great struggle. In scientific terms, it is a problem of organic chemistry. Energy is locked up in the organism. It must be unlocked before struggle, long-continued and powerful, is possible. No matter how conscientious, no matter how high minded, idealistic, and spiritual a man may be, if the needed energy is not unlocked within him by the required stimulation, he simply does not have it in a form available for struggle.

Here is where science steps forward to show the futility of morality, culture, and education without religion when it comes to this problem of struggle. The utmost moral good will in the world cannot keep one struggling if he does not have the energy. Psychology and history of religion and the testimony of deeply religious people indicate that religion can release energy in great quantity. It is very certain that morality without religion cannot do this. One of the chief reasons why people so commonly put their trust in morality, culture, and education rather than religion is because they fail to see this basic truth about human nature. Food-getting, sex, fear, anger will release energy. But when we are at ease or when we are discouraged, how shall we get it? That is the great problem. Religion is the answer.

The purpose of the personal experiment in religion to be described later will be to discover that way of practicing religion which will release energy for struggle. But before we present that experiment we must look a little more closely into the sources of personal energy in order to make plain that personal experiment in religion is the only possible way to find how to get energy for struggle when we are at ease or discouraged.

2. The Sources of Personal Energy

The amount of personal energy available for struggle depends upon two conditions, one physiological, the other psychological. The physiological condition is stimulation of visceral processes, pre-eminently the endocrine glands. The psychological condition is freedom from mental conflict, in other words, peace. Let us briefly examine each of these in order.

When the endocrine glands are stimulated and the visceral adjustments are made through which maximum energy is released, the whole process produces a mental state called emotion. Fear, anger, and the emotional phases of desire, aspiration, hope, joy, exultation, excitement generally, are examples. But the important thing, be it remembered, is not the conscious state called emotion; the important thing is the visceral readjustments, glandular processes, and consequent release of energy. The conscious state, the emotion, simply serves to inform us that the energy is now released and made available for struggle. When this energy is drained off immediately and completely in some struggle that is going on, one does not experience the emotion to any marked degree, even though energy is being released in great quantities.

Men vary greatly with respect to the amount of personal energy at their disposal. Some are so constituted organically that they constantly have more energy than others. This organic constitution cannot, so far as we know, be changed by training or stimulation. But given this organic constitution, a man may be subjected to such stimulation as to release far more energy than he otherwise would. Religious stimulation can do this, perhaps, more powerfully than any other. It cannot change the organic constitution, but it can stimulate that constitution so that it will yield all the energy of which it is capable.

Let us turn now to the second source of energy, the psychological. It is not so much a source as a determining condition. It is mental harmony; it is dynamic peace. It is that plastic organization of responses such that each impulse supports the others and none frustrates the others. If there is conflict in our minds between two or more opposed desires, one or both of which may be subconscious, our energies will be consumed in this conflict and hence rendered unavailable for struggle with things outside ourselves. If all our energy is consumed in struggle between our own impulses we have none left for struggle with environmental difficulties. Hence our wishes and desires must be harmonious with one another if we are to have sufficient energy for the greater struggles. This inner conflict appears in consciousness, in the form of worry, fret, anxiety, melancholy, excitement, and, in extreme forms, delusion and insanity. One may suffer from this mental conflict and not know what is wrong with him. The conflict may be subconscious in part or whole.

We can now see the nature of the problem which we have to solve by personal experiment. We must find some way (i) to stimulate those glandular and other processes through which energy is released, and (2) bring peace of mind by removing those mental conflicts which waste and divert our vital energies.

3. Personal Experiment in Religion for Release of Energy

Let us call to mind that the aspect of the universe called God is a pervasive aspect constantly and intimately operative in our lives and in the world round about us. In so far as we yield ourselves to it, indescribable possibilities for good hover over us and loom before us. But in so far as we yield ourselves to the destructive aspects of the universe great evils hang over us and open before us. At regular seasons of worship let us cultivate this sense of divine presence, with the attendant possibilities for good and evil.

But I we must not stop with this sense of divine presence and vivid apprehension of the attendant possibilities. Each of us must recognize, and through regular seasons of meditation clarify, the definite part which he is fitted to play in bringing the divine aspect of the universe into dominance, with all the consequent good , and in reducing the evil aspects with their consequent disasters. Each of us, by reason of unique individuality and circumstance, has a definite part in this vast process. This part should be formulated by us as clearly as possible. It should be put into words and repeated in seasons of meditative worship, changing the wording as our vocation grows clearer with the passage of time. Thus a life purpose will grow upon us. Within this life-purpose specific objectives should be verbally defined in so far as we are able. This should be continued at regular seasons of worship until we Attain a sense of destiny and become possessed of a passion. With some this sense of destiny and drive of passion will be much stronger than with others. But I believe everyone can achieve a driving purpose in life by practicing regularly and for a sufficient length of time the method described. A certain season set apart each Sabbath day might be used in this way. Occasional vacations could be spent in like manner. We can imagine no better way of spending a vacation than in such meditation and worship.

What we have described must be carefully distinguished from mere resolution or moral determination. The method before us consists in exposing one's self to the stimulus of certain facts until they have worked in us the physiological and psychological readjustments through which personal energy is released. It is not resolution; it is remaking of the personality through exposure to the stimulation of supremely significant facts. The consequent state of body and mind can become a permanent disposition by regular re-exposure. This exposure is a kind of worship.

There are other problems involved in struggle besides finding the required energy. There is the problem of directing the energy to worthy ends. One may struggle to do trivial or evil things. There is the problem of efficiency. One may expend his energy in waste motion. There is the problem of keeping gracious, sympathetic, and appreciative toward persons and undertakings outside one's own work. He who struggles is often harsh and even cruel in his zeal. We have not discussed these three problems, but we believe they are automatically solved in the practice of religion which we have proposed. The same experiment in religion which releases energy will guard against these dangers also.

The practice we have described should give rise to a growing passion. It is the passion that results from finding one's destiny and surrendering to the clutch of it. Passion means maximum release of energy. Historical records indicate that no matter how frail in body one may be, such passion and sense of destiny releases energy. One may turn to flame and burn up, but as long as he lasts he has the energy needed for struggle which cannot be choked by ease nor quenched by discouragement.

Religious Experience through the Influence of the Beautiful
H. N. Wieman

Experiments in the Religious Experience of Beauty

1. The Religious Experience of Beauty

There are four ways to experience beauty. One is the way of the aesthete; the second the way of the artist; the third the way of the moralist; the fourth, the religious way. The same person may experience beauty in all four of these ways at different times according to his mood. But he can scarcely have all four experiences at the same time; and generally he will experience beauty in one of these ways rather than the others unless he specially cultivates some other. We wish to suggest a method for cultivating the religious way of experiencing beauty. Our first step must be to clarify and distinguish the religious way as over against these others.

The aesthete finds an ecstacy in the experience of beauty which is for him the supreme good. He seeks nothing more; he wants more. This state of feeling is the end result for him. He seeks beauty where it may be found, but he does not create it. He cultivates his capacity for his appreciation that he may enter more deeply into the experience. But he does nothing more about it. When he has attained the highest ecstacy there is nothing more save to prolong that state of feeling.

The experience of the artist is very different. He is inspired by beauty to create a beautiful object. The joy of beauty is for him constructive. It is the stern joy of wringing from out the raw materials of nature a thing of beauty. It may be beautiful sound, as in music, or beautiful movement, as in the dance, or beauty of rhythm and imagery, as in poetry. But there is a strenuosity and drive in the experience of the artist that is not found in that of the aesthete.

The moralist finds still another good in beauty. Beauty stirs him to strenuous and constructive endeavor. In this respect he is like the artist and different from the aesthete. But his endeavor is not with the materials of any fine art. It is with the materials out of which we construct the good life. Beauty helps him immensely in his endeavor to achieve the good life. It makes the good life more alluring. When moral ideals are clothed in beauty, as in Tennyson's Idylls of the King, and in many songs and sermons, they inspire to moral endeavor as they could not do in any other guise.

But the most profound experience of beauty is religious. The aesthete misses it; so does the artist and moralist, except as these become religious. When we say that the aesthete, the moralist, and the artist must become religious in order to have the most profound experience of beauty, we do not mean that they must subscribe to any creed, nor join a church, although they might well do this. All we mean is that this most profound experience of beauty is religious, and he who has it thereby to that degree becomes religious.

What is this most profound and religious experience of beauty.? We must try to indicate its character, at least to the point where it can be recognized.

In this most profound experience beauty makes us aware of a reality which is richer and deeper and more marvelous than anything we can dream or conceive. This reality is not anything we perceive in the beautiful object. It is not anything we fancy. We do not here refer to bright visions that may come to us as we listen to music or to a story or contemplate any other beautiful thing. This reality which enters our awareness when we are under the spell of beauty is quite unimaginable. It is beyond the reach of our dreams just as truly as it eludes our sentences. We feel it like a ghostly presence. It seems almost to be right there, and yet it is nowhere.

Two questions must be answered concerning this experience: (1) Is this sense of unimaginable reality an illusion? (2) In what sense and under what conditions is it religious?

Answer to the first question will be found through an examination of the psychology of this experience. In this profound experience of beauty the object is so formed and so contemplated that it arouses in us a multiplicity of plastic and subtle and tentative and novel responses. Now any response aroused in us which is strange and new, especially if it consist of a complicated interplay of many tentative and novel responses, will give us this sense of strange and wonderful and unimaginable reality.

The sense of unimaginable reality which comes to us in this psychological state is not an illusion if we understand this reality to be that wholly different world which would be ours if we so reconstructed ourselves and our environment that interaction between self and environment would be very different from what it now is. The spell of beauty does not engender illusion because this profound religious experience of beauty is precisely the experience which makes a wholly different world possible. It does so because it arouses innumerable subtle, tentative, and novel impulses. These impulses provide ' the necessary psychological material out of which new and different habits can be formed. This possibility of new and different habits makes possible that reconstruction of self and environment which would bring about a different world. Since beauty engenders that psychological state out of which the required habits might be developed, it makes new and different and unimaginable worlds a genuine possibility. The psychological state induced in us by beauty is the first prerequisite to the achievement of a different world.

So we conclude that the sense of unimaginable reality which comes to us under the spell of beauty is not an illusion if it be regarded as awareness not of something actual, but of something possible.

In the presence of great beauty one becomes as a little child. A little child is capable of great modification of behavior and development. Therefore the doors of possibility stand wide open before him. With advancing age these doors close one after another. But the religious experience of beauty, by arousing many plastic, novel, and tentative impulses, preserves our youth. It keeps us plastic. It preserves and it restores our capacity for growth and for multiform adaptability. It opens many a door that was closed even for the child. It causes the man to turn and become as a little child; and thereby his entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven becomes a possibility. Beauty does truly usher us to the borderland of unexplored reality.

But we have not yet explained how this experience is religious. Merely to become aware of genuine but unimaginable reality is not in itself religious. It becomes religious only when one goes forth to seek that new and different world by living the life of faith.

The life of faith may mean either one of two things: It may mean waiting in the hope that death will take us into that other world; or it may mean the aggressive search and striving for the ways and means by which to achieve that other world here on earth. This search and striving requires experimental ventures in ways of conducting one's life, which is one form of faith. Also it means searching after the best relations with God, because God is that factor or character in the universe which will bring the best possible world into actuality when we establish the required relations with him. We know God will do that because God is that by definition. No matter how one conceives God, he always thinks of God as that particular being who will bring the greatest good to mankind when men establish right relations with him.

Therefore we say the experience of beauty is religious when it does two things: (1) when it gives us a sense of richer, deeper reality than we can conceive or imagine, but a reality which constitutes a truly possible world; (2) and when it inspires us to shape our whole lives in such a way as to make that adaptation to God through which the best unattained but possible world shall be brought into existence.

How does this differ from morality? In morality we strive to do what we know is right. Religion includes that, but goes on beyond it. Morality is trying to live according to the best ideals of this world. But the religious living which issues from the experience of beauty tries to discover the ideals of that other possible world, which may be wholly different from the ideals of this world.

The aesthete, the artist, the moralist, and the prophet all find their inspiration and their insight in beauty. Beauty stirs them each to a strange unrest and 'sets them to climbing toward high places. The aesthete climbs toward that ecstacy which awaits the sensitive soul in the presence of beauty. The artist climbs toward the creation of those forms that come to haunt him after beauty has visited him. The moralist climbs toward those ideals which beauty has rendered radiantly alluring. But the religious prophet climbs a path more perilous, more mysterious, than the others. He goes forth in the attempt to wring from out the immensities of the universe that other world, wholly different from this, which visits him in ghostly presence when he gazes on the face of beauty.

2. How Beauty Leads to God

Beauty is not confined to works of art. Art provides us with only a small part of the beauty of the world. Nature, including unpremeditated human behavior, is full of beauty. The most profound and stirring beauty steals upon us unawares without the intervention of human handiwork. just as we pass around the point of a hill we perceive for the first time a tree standing in a meadow with the autumn haze beyond it and clinging dimly about it, and we are face to face with beauty. Or we pass through a strange dense wood and suddenly come upon a waterfall, the foaming water plunging from a granite height, a little rainbow at the foot, and there in the dark pool a great globule of scarlet reflected from a flower upon the bank. Or we lift our eyes to the cold blue mountains in the distance, their peaks streaked with gleaming white, and for a moment the ecstacy is ours.

The beautiful object, whether of art or nature, not only opens to us the vast realm of possibility. It also makes us aware of the depth of richness in the concrete actual world, and does this beyond any other kind of experience. The beautiful object is so fashioned that we can be simultaneously responsive to its many different parts and qualities. The ordinary object which is not beautiful, or the beauty of which is not appreciated, has only one or two features to which we react. We ignore it in all respects save those one or two qualities in it which happen to make it useful to us. The ugly object, on the other hand, has many different features to which we react; but our responses conflict, one tending to inhibit the other. Only the beautiful object is so formed that we can respond to its many parts and qualities all at once and yet do so without inner conflict or distress.

Thus beauty makes us aware of the rich fulness of the actual as well as the great realm of possible worlds. For this reason it brings us into intimate association with God. For God is that which (1) gives the rich fullness of reality to the actual world and (2) determines the scope and limitation of the possible transformations which this actual world can undergo. Whoever discerns the richness and depth of the actual world, and also the realm of possible worlds into which this actual world can be transformed, is very close to God. Since beauty gives us this experience it brings us into the presence of God. It can do this, however, only when we have that profound experience which we have described as the religious experience of beauty. The aesthete, the artist, and the moralist, unless they undergo this religious experience, do not have that awareness of unimaginable reality which constitutes the religious significance of beauty.

3. A Personal Experiment with Beauty

Seek out that form of beauty that stirs you most deeply. For most people, perhaps, great music will do this best. Before going into the presence of beauty prepare yourself by worship. Go where you can be completely alone. Relax and try to sense the all-encompassing presence of God. Remember that in adaptation to him you may attain to wholly unknown possibilities of good. Then examine yourself to discover what readjustment of your total personality is needed to enter into the fullest possible appreciation of that beauty which you are shortly to experience. Repeat quietly and trustingly many times this required readjustment. Then end the season of worship in the state of passive relaxed awareness of God. Having thus prepared yourself, go to that place where you can surrender yourself to the most profound experience of your chosen form of beauty. After it is past note whether you had in any way or to any degree the sense of unimaginable reality which has been described. Has it deepened your sense of the presence of God? Does it increase the zest and eagerness of your quest of a better world?

To complete the experiment you should make your life a great venturesome search for that other possible world, wholly different from this, which hovered so mysteriously near you under the magic spell of beauty. But such an experiment would far exceed the scope of a short course like this. Only after centuries have passed can the result of such an experiment be reported. Only when ages are done shall we fathom the mysterious possibility that beauty brings so dimly near.

Religious Experience through Communion, Meditation, and Worship
H. N. Wieman

How to Get the Benefit of Private Worship

The method of worship best adapted to one person is not always best for another. And the same person in different moods and circumstances will modify his method of worship to suit his need. Hence the suggestions we are about to make must not be taken as rigid rules. We can help one another by making these suggestions. But each must work out his own method. No study of rules and instructions ever enabled a man to swim the first time he jumped into deep water. He had to learn by practice. The same is true of worshipful meditation and communion.

Let us mention first three general conditions or preconditions which are helpful to worship.

The first of these we mentioned earlier. One must be living earnestly. One must not shirk the heavy responsibilities. One cannot swim in shallow water. One must venture out to depths where wading is difficult. If one is to worship successfully he must venture out into the depths. That does not mean that one must do something conspicuous before the world, or seek trouble. It merely means that one shall assume the tremendous responsibilities that await everyone who takes life seriously. It means, for example, if one is a parent, that he shall not treat his child merely as a plaything, but shall assume the enormous responsibility of that child's highest development. No matter how apparently circumscribed one's life may be, the great responsibilities are there for him to bear if he will shoulder them.

The first precondition of effectual worship is, then, that you take life seriously.

The second is sincerity. That means you will not take into your worship any beliefs concerning which you have any doubts. For example, suppose you doubt there is a God. Then do not try to believe there is a God. You can worship better without that belief if you are not absolutely sure of it. Discard any belief and every belief which you cannot hold with complete sincerity. Whenever any belief puts you under a sense of constraint, or gives you a feeling of unreality in your worship, pitch it out. Absolute sincerity, complete honesty with yourself, is indispensable to helpful worship.

A third precondition to worship is seclusion. Even a worshiping group should seclude itself. That is what a church building is for. But in private worship the individual should be alone. Of course one may achieve this required solitude of mind in physical association with others.

But it is best to go to some place where you can be completely alone, preferably at night just before retiring or soon after arising in the morning, or both. The ideal place would be a mountain top at night. That was where Jesus went for his private worship. But for most of us most of the time that is impossible. Some room will serve, especially if you can so shut yourself in that you need not fear others will hear you even when you speak aloud.

This need for solitude for worship arises out of the nature of private communion and meditation. To worship in this fashion means to cease the conduct of ordinary affairs in order to give your whole attention to that feature of your total environment which is supremely important for all human living. It means to turn from the lesser things in order to give the whole attention to God. If one does not believe in God one can call him by another name. I have a little son whom others call Robert, but whom I call Bobby. If you prefer to call God by another name, no harm is done. If the word God brings up doubts, then think of that behavior of the universe, whatever it may be, whether known or unknown, which is most helpful to human kind when we make right adjustment of our own activities to it. God is the supremely important object for all human living, whether or not you call him by that name. To worship is to give your whole attention to this supreme thing. To do this it is necessary to isolate yourself in order not to be distracted by lesser things.

What we have mentioned thus far-earnestness, sincerity, isolation -are the preconditions of worship. Let us now enter into the act of worship itself.

1. The first step in the act of worship is to relax and become aware of the all-encompassing presence. It is difficult to describe just what we mean, as difficult as to describe the acts by which you swim or walk or breathe. Another way of saying it is that we empty the mind and cease to think about anything in particular, yet are not in a state of stupor. It is a state of awareness. Awareness of what? Of that total encompassing presence which sustains you and shapes you and in adaptation to which all your life is lived in so far as it is lived well, and in so far as the greatest goods of life are attained by you. This presence is God; but if you have doubts about God, call it a certain behavior of the universe, or ozone, or electricity, or ether, or innumerable atoms, or any other misconception of God you may prefer. (We are trying to explain how one can worship and at the same time cast out every belief concerning which he has doubts.) Better let belief in God force itself into your mind against your will than try to hold it when it seems to be slipping away. Whatever you do, be honest.

This first step in the act of worship, then, is relaxed and empty-minded awareness of the all-encompassing presence.

2. The second step is to think of how this total process of atoms or electricity or ether (of course it is God) is working upon you and in you and through you to shape the cells of your body and the impulses of your mind into the likeness of Jesus Christ when you make right adjustment to it. If this thought about Jesus gives rise to any doubts, then think of that noblest kind of personality, that highest degree of health, that clearness of mind and greatness of purpose which may be yours when you make right adjustment to this total process of God. No matter how you may doubt your own possibilities, at least there is a maximum of nobility, a maximum of health and mentality and purpose of which you are capable, however small that maximum may be.

When we say one thinks about it, we do not mean one must know what that maximum is nor what shape it will assume. In fact one does not know except as he can see the maximum realization of these possibilities in some historic form as in Jesus. But you do not need to know what your highest possibilities are to think of them in the sense here indicated. You need merely to hold in mind that there are such possibilities for you, however, undefined and unexplored, and that they are to be attained through the working of this all-encompassing Reality.

This second step in the act of worship is, then, to call to mind the fact that you have a total maximum of possibility for good which God will accomplish in you and for you in so far as you make right adaptation to him.

3. The third step is to face the chief problem with which you are struggling. If you live earnestly you are always struggling with a problem which taxes your powers. You are in deep water where wading is difficult. So, in this third stage, after you have become aware of God (called by another name if you prefer) and of your own maximum but undefined possibilities through God, then face your major problem. Survey it as comprehensively and acutely as possible to find what most needs to be done.

4. The fourth step is to analyze yourself and find what mental attitude or habit of any kind needs to be corrected and readjusted in yourself in order that your activities may so fit into the behavior of things that the problem can be solved. What habits, not only of word and overt deed, but of inner attitude and secret impulse, must be changed in yourself in order to fit yourself into the working of the all-encompassing Presence. Your task is to adapt your activities and total personality in such a way that you can "mesh in" with that behavior of the universe through which the greatest good can be attained.

But one must face the fact that this survey and analysis of self in face of his major problem may lead to radical change, or even total abandonment, of that program which he has been following. One may find that he is seeking the wrong things or has mistaken his problem. To make such a discovery is one of the great goods achieved through the worship we are describing. As a result of such worship one may turn right about and go in another direction. However, this is by no means the necessary result. The more common result, perhaps, is to find a way to carry through the task one has undertaken.

5. When you have discovered what readjustment is needed in yourself in order to make right connection with the behavior which is God, you must formulate this personal readjustment in positive terms. You must never stop with a merely negative attitude. The overcoming of a fault is always a positive constructive operation. It always consists of making some right adjustment in order to correct the wrong adjustment. This right adjustment must be formulated in mind as clearly, concisely, and accurately as possible. Put it into words. For example: "I am sensitive and sympathetic to the thought and feeling of others." Or: "I remember every detail when it is needed." Or: "I am calm and winsome and adaptable." Or whatever your need may be.

Some one may say: But the chief problem that engages me in worship has nothing to do with myself. I am praying for some one in Africa or otherwise far removed from anything that I can say or do or feel. No adjustment in myself can be of any avail whatsoever. My answer is: Anything which deeply interests you does have something to do with yourself. It has everything to do with yourself. If you pray about it, then it is through wh'at you do, i.e., through your prayer, that any good is accomplished. Either your prayer is effective or it is not. If it is effective then it is because you pra I yed. That means it is effective because of the personal adjustment which you make to the potent working of your total environment. Let no one think genuine prayer is merely a mouthing of words with no adjustment of the total personality to the total environmental working of God.

So we say the fifth step in worship is positive statement to yourself of the required adjustment of your personality in light of the major problem which concerns you, so that God can work his good.

Some will wish to take a sixth step, that of verbal repetition, preferably spoken aloud to yourself, of this required adjustment of your
personality. "I am quick to see and feel the need of another." "I am simple and honest in all my dealings." "I think profoundly, comprehensively, and accurately." I am this or that, or I feel some way or another toward certain things or persons. What it is you repeat and the numb--r of times you repeat it will, of course, depend on what you have found to be the required adjustment of your total thinking, feeling, willing, doing personality.

The words repeated are not necessarily prayers to God, although one may so apply them to God if he chooses. The communion with God has already been accomplished in the earlier stages of the worship as previously described. What one is now doing by this repetition is to reap the benefits of that worship and enter into a realization of the possibilities which it has opened up. Through this repetition of words you are simply establishing as an enduring habitual attitude of the total personality that adjustment to God which you have attained through worship. You are sealing, conserving, "nailing down" the benefits of that worship.

This repetition of words by which a personal attitude is established is the last stage in the complete act of worship. It should not be done with any sense of strain or anxiety, but in the spirit which the preceding worship has engendered.

We suggest the foregoing program as an experiment in personal religion. If you will try it every night just before retiring for three or four weeks we believe you will note some very marked results.

Religious Experience through the Outer World of Nature
H. N. Wieman

The Method of Religious Experience

In this study we want to do two things. We want to learn how to prepare for religious experience and profit by it, and we want to pool our experiences so that we can learn from one another. The art of how to prepare for religious experience and profit by it is one of the great practical arts of human living. Like every other art it must be developed. The only way to develop any art is for people to tell one another what they have learned through their experiences and efforts. Cannot we all, who have a share in this course, co operate in the enterprise of improving the art of entering into and profiting by the religious experience? Wonderful possibilities for increasing joy and mastery in living are attainable through proper use of religious experience. Indeed, its proper use is the master art in life, for through it all the other arts of living can be improved.

We crudely talk about air and water and food and social group as the factors upon which we must depend for our welfare and improvement. But these are mere fragments in that vast, mysterious, mighty Working which operates in us and upon us and around us throughout all nature. In religious experience there is some conscious awareness of this mighty and blessed Working. When we come into the presence of some great manifestation of nature we may suddenly become aware of this all-sustaining Working. We may feel ourselves borne up by it, or see it gazing up at us in the face of a flower, or towering over us in the mountains, or feel it encompassing us with the greenery of the wood.

But this sense of the mighty Working does not always come to us in the presence of nature. There may be some to whom it never comes. Others it may visit very rarely.

Here we are face to face with a subtle and loathsome temptation. It is the temptation to make ourselves think that we have this exalted experience when we do not have it. Our minds run something like this: It is the proper thing to have this experience in the presence of nature. Poets and prophets and many great souls have had it. I guess I can too. Then we go through all the motions of having the experience and really make ourselves think that we have it.

Can, then, one cultivate this experience? No, not directly. But one can prepare himself for it. One may put himself in the way of having it. It is like love. One cannot make himself love his brother. But the great contagion is likely to infect him if he is receptive to it and puts himself in situations where it is likely to befall him. So religious experience must come of itself, often quite unexpectedly; but one can conduct his life in such a way that it is likely to befall him. That is part of what we mean by the art of preparing for religious experience.
But when the experience comes it may have no value save to provide the luxury of a pleasant or stirring emotion. To have conscious awareness of this all-sustaining Working does not bring one any closer to it, for one is always as close to it as he can get. There are some natures who can enter frequently and deeply into genuine and vivid awareness of God and yet live weak, futile, slovenly lives. To have conscious experience of God does not necessarily help a man at all. To conduct ourselves in such a way that religious experience not only may befall us but that it may have beneficial results for us is the whole of what we mean by the art of preparing for religious experience and profiting by it.

Great living depends on making proper adaptation to that Working upon which all life is dependent. If conscious experience of that Working helps one to make better adaptation to it, his life will be better. But merely to have a vivid and exalted consciousness of that Working will not help him if the experience does not enable him to make better adaptation. On the other hand, a man who does adapt himself to the working of God, even though he may have no conscious experience of God, will live a great life. Through the teaching of others, and through results of careful experimentation, a man can learn how to adapt to many things of which he has never had any conscious experience. This applies to the working of God as well as to other matters. But religious experience may be of great help to a man in making better adaptation to that Working upon which human life is dependent for its greatest goods. In fact, this is the only enduring and practical value religious experience can have. If it does not do this its value is purely sentimental. It is quite easy to be unduly sentimental and rapturous about religious experience for its own sake.

There are, then, two very urgent and very practical questions pertaining to religious experience: (i) how to put one's self in the way of having the experience; (2) how to use the experience in such a way as to attain better adaptation to the working of God as he operates throughout space and time. Let us reduce these two questions to one: how to prepare for religious experience in such a way that it will bring us into better adjustment to God.

We answer this question under four points.

1. One must face the chief difficulties and perplexities of his life and wrestle with them. He must take life seriously. He must draw on his every resource of physical endurance and mental agility and nervous energy and dogged determination to master circumstance and make human life more satisfactory for himself and others. This strain and burden-bearing, this taking of life seriously, is necessary preparation for profitable religious experience. The frivolous and superficial generally do not have great religious experiences. Some of them, however, do; but when they do, their experience is only the luxury of a sweet and exalted emotion such as we described above.

2. But earnest wrestling with the serious problems of life is only preparation for profitable religious experience. Such wrestling does not ordinarily in itself yield the experience. Rather the experience is likely to come when one stops the fight for a breathing spell and a short period of relaxation. One goes off, let us say, where he can be alone with nature, in a scene quite different from that in which he has been trying to solve his difficult problems.

This, then, is the second requirement for entering into a profitable religious experience. One must leave the struggle of life, occasionally, for a little spiritual relaxation. In this month's study we suggest turning to nature. Further suggestions for the use of this time of relaxation will be made in later lessons. In this period of relaxation, if rightly conducted, the religious experience is most likely to come.

3. The experience that comes in the interval of relaxation should provide some insight toward the solution of the problems which have been engaging one's attention in the struggle of living. Here we have the chief function of religious experience. It is an experience through which discoveries are made concerning how to live more effectively and more abundantly; how to achieve mastery over difficulties and mount to higher levels; in a word, how to live in better adaptation to the working of God. Religious experience should be the moment of profound insight and new adjustment to the total environment. Great conversions occur in such experiences. All the famous conversions, from Paul's down, have occurred through such experiences. A conversion is simply the discovery and adoption of some new way of living in better adaptation to the Working which is God. But conversion is not the only form of moral and spiritual discovery and initiation that may occur through religious experience. After "conversion" one may make further discoveries. Often the new insight is of such a nature that you cannot word it. You simply have found out how to live with peace and power you never had before.

4. The fourth requirement is that this new way of living which has come to one in the religious experience must be carefully, observantly, and patiently tested by living it. A new way of living is not necessarily successful at the very start. Generally it is not. And often its success is not apparent to any save those of deepest insight. But one must be teachable in the conduct of his new way of life. He must modify and adapt and reshape it to fit the conditions with which he has to deal. No one is worse than the hair-brained fanatic who will not learn from the results of trial and error, but insists that his way is unalterably right because he got it from God.

It is even possible that one's new way of life, discovered through religious experience, may be a mistake. The human mind is always fallible, and it does not cease to be human even when it undergoes religious experience. He who must have an iron-clad guaranty that he will make no mistakes can have no share in great living whether through religious experience or otherwise. But the great insights, the great transformation of personality and human history, have been initiated in such experiences.

The whole value of religious experience, we repeat, aside from the luxury of emotion, is that through it we discover how better to adapt our human lives to the Working upon which we are dependent for the greatest good. It should enable us to make better adjustment to God.

Two final points must be clear. The experience need not be highly emotional. The important thing is the insight that is attained concerning how better to live with God. There may or may not be a thrill and sense of exaltation. Secondly, the insight may not be something that will revolutionize human history. Generally it is not. It may be a discovery of how better to deal with your child; or how ro win the good will of your neighbor; or how to make better use of your time; or how to get over some nagging perplexity which is important to you personally, although it may never be known to any other.

And we must remember that anything which truly and in the long run benefits human life is, ultimately, a better adaptation to the vast and mighty Working which lifts us to the highest when we find how to yield ourselves to its lifting power.

Keeping in mind, therefore, the nature of religious experience, the possibility of placing one's self in the way of it and the resultant effect upon the art of practical living, can we, after our observations of the experience of historical characters, turn our eyes upon our own immediate environment, and learn to recognize the results of religious experience in others, and to recall some data regarding our own religious experience.

It will be a good plan to keep a notebook with this course, jotting down observations, memories and new experiences which seem to you to have some bearing upon the question, this month especially observing the extent to which contact with the world of external nature may foster and suggest a religious experience, always distinguishing those experiences which will stand the test of the points raised in this portion of our study. Students of the course are invited in addition to answering the review questions to report sach observations and experiences. On the following page will be found an outline of work for those who desire to have criticism by correspondence.