have to pay for the massive, and at first unwieldy, enlargement at the top end of the spinal cord, which, when mastered and brought into requisition, becomes such a tremendous tool and organ of spiritual insight. The person is restless to be born into a larger world. Finally, through wholesome suggestions, normal development, helped on perhaps by some emotional stress> or shock, harmony is struck, life becomes a unity, and the person is born into a larger world of spirit.

The Psychological View.

REESE

LIA

UNIVER

OF CALIFOR

The physiological background of consciousness, while it furnishes a basis for understanding conversion, is inadequate of itself to explain it. It is necessary to approach it from the standpoint of the growth and interplay of ideas. In this point of view conversion is the sudden readjustment to a larger spiritual environment when once the norm has been lost, or when it is dimly felt, but not yet attained. We have, then, to consider how life gets awry with its surroundings, how a breach arises between its spiritual impulses and its present attainment, and then how the breach is finally healed. In understanding the discord between the subjective life and the larger possible life, there are at least three things to be considered the growth of ideals, native inertia, and the complexity of environmental forces which tend to call the person into activity.

In the first place, the attainment of that condition which makes conversion necessary has its seat primarily in the anticipatory power of the mind. The mind can forecast experience; on the basis of what is, it can look ahead and divine what might be. The possible is lifted up above the present. An ideal is formed in advance of the real. The experience out of which the ideal arises is usually complex and manifold, so that it is not seen clearly. On the contrary, one has an inkling of it a scent of something better, a feeling after it. From the standpoint of a possible ideal self one can

look back on the present self and judge it. The contrast between them is emphasised, and a chasm forms between the self which now is and that which might be.

This condition is emphasised, secondly, by native inertia. A noted divine has said that 'Sin is laziness.' The push toward enlightenment and righteousness is an uphill process. The moment one relaxes he is in danger of being dragged down by ingrained, instinctive, racial impulses.

The discord is heightened, thirdly, by the variety and complexity of impulses to action, and by the number of forces in one's surroundings which tend to call one out in this way and that. In reply to the questions, 'What acts or faults have you committed which you knew at the time were wrong? Why did you do them?' the answers are instructive. They show the possibility of slipping into inharmonious relationships with one's environment. F. My mother had positively forbidden me to visit one of my friends, and many times I wilfully disobeyed her, because the attraction of my friend's society was stronger than my sense of right.' F. I used to be fond of jumping-rope, but mother forbade me to do it. At school I disobeyed, because I thought mother need never know of it; all the other girls jump ropes without falling dead, and I wouldn't meet with any accident either.' F. 'I refused to sing at a school entertainment because mamma would not let me wear a certain dress. I felt satisfied to think I got out of singing it, but felt an inward voice chiding me. On the whole I thought I was a very bad girl, and did not want to think of it.' Such instances are apparently very numerous. They all illustrate how there are complexities in the subjective life, and also in one's surroundings, which tend to fracture the unity and symmetry of consciousness. The wrong acts performed knowingly were of two classes. First, there were those in which associations and social complications led the person against his or her private judgment or teaching

into a wrong course; for example, in the instance above in which the child was playing between the mother's will, on the one hand, and the sports in vogue in the school and the fascination of doing as the rest did, on the other. A selection of alternatives, either of which may bring discomfort, is necessary. There is a hitch, consequently, in what Mr Spencer terms 'the progressive adjustment of inner and outer relations.' In the second place, there is the complexity of tastes, desires and impulses, any one of which may get the upper hand and assert itself. Often an immediate desire in which wilfulness or an abnormal taste plays a part is stronger than a remote, truer one. In one quotation above, for instance, the attraction of a friend's society was more immediate and pressing than the duty of obedience.

The ability to forecast experience, together with this complexity of impulses, complicates the situation still more. The will is paralysed, in the presence of many possibilities of action. The something-to-be-said-onboth-sides, of Will Wimble, whose dilemma is not serious enough to check the flow of his vitality, may grow into the perplexity of a Hamlet when the conflicting possibilities of action are vital and momentous. This is one aspect of the mal-adjustment of life that may come with growth. Each impulse to action is inhibited by others which have equal right to express themselves.

Enough has been said to show clearly the possible causes leading up to conversion. There are forces in human life and its surroundings which tend to break the unity and harmony of consciousness; and its unity once destroyed, the contrast between what is, and what might be, gives birth to ideals and sets two selves in sharp opposition to each other. This fracture in consciousness which gives rise to the ideal set off against the present self is frequently beneath the threshold of consciousness, and shows itself as an organic discontent, a struggling in the dark, a reaching out after an inde

finable ideal. There are many instances, however, in which the person is conscious of the vacillation between two lives. As in the classic instance of Paul, there are two members warring against each other. F., 14. ‘I had an anxiety to come out on the Lord's side, with conflicting doubts and distrust as to being able to reach and maintain the standard of excellence.' F. 'I would tell myself, "You ought to join the church"; then I would say, "No, you can't be good enough."' M., 23. 'During my sickness (two years previous to conversion) I determined to be a better boy. I did live a better life, but often yielded to wrong. Two years later I was listening very attentively to the song, "Come home, come home, your Father calls, Come home." I seemed to see, as by the light of a flash of lightning in darkest midnight, the holiness of God, of Heaven, of the Father's house, etc., and the uncleanness of my poor heart, its diseases, its pollution and corruption.' The following instance is a type of immature natures, in which the duality and conflict are at first felt in an organic way, and objectified as the anger of God and the fear of punishment, but with the growth of self-consciousness the two selves stand off against each other: F., 12. ‘I do not remember the time when I did not feel that I ought to be a Christian, but was not willing to yield. I felt that God was angry with me on account of my sin, and would punish me if I did not repent. My conversion was simply giving up my own will and being willing to be guided by God's will. At first there was a feeling of peace, then began the strife between good and evil. The roots of bitterness were still there. seemed as if the evil had only been stirred up and turned loose, as it were. I was practically two people. I wanted to be good, but could not. I would continually do things that I did not want to do, but could not help doing them.' This is an illustration of the condition which normally precedes conversion, and which the change of heart must heal. Conversion is suddenly forsaking the lower for the higher self. In terms of the

It

neural basis of consciousness, it is inhibition of lower channels of nervous discharge through the establishment of higher connections and identification of the ego with the new activities. In theological terminology it is Christ coming into the heart and the old life being blotted out-the human life swallowed up in the life of God.

The method nature employs in healing the breach between the two selves is usually not to lessen the conflict but rather to heighten it. It is the nature of the mind to emphasise contrasts. It dwells on the far-awayness of the ideal life and the extreme unworthiness of the old life. The effect is cumulative even when the person is left alone, as in the instance quoted previously, in which the person felt she would die that very summer unless the sought-for relief came, or in another one, in which the man's sense of sin rapidly grew into a dreadful fear that he had grieved the Holy Spirit. This seems to be nature's way of making the changed attitude significant when it comes. Religious workers take advantage of this tendency in the methods they employ. The method of one of the most successful revivalists in convicting of sin is shown by this extract from an address. At the close of a recent meeting a lady came to me and said, "Mr Moody, I have been a professing Christian for five years, and I am more irritable, I have less patience and less control over my temper than I had five years ago. Don't you think that is wrong?" "Wrong?" I said; "that is a sin." She thought it was a kind of weakness. I went to work to convince her that it was a downright sin for her to be short-tempered and all that. . . . The work of the Holy Ghost is to convict of sin. O that the power of conviction might come right here! . . . There is no power on earth like a quickened church, and it won't be quickened until we begin to think of sin.' Evil is uncovered and shown in its true character, together with the fatal consequences which impend if the present course is continued. The person is exposed as the