Thoughts on Religious Experience

On Monday it was up to the Pastors Academy again (with Alffi the dog) for the Pastors Academy reading group. We like to read old books as well as new and I had suggested the 1841 work by Archibald Alexander Thoughts on religious experience. (The above image shows the original Banner cover. My copy was bought in 1980). Around six of us were present and we had a decent time. The book covers such a vast range of topics that it was difficult to cover everything and it was not easy to formulate questions for discussion but we had a stab at conversion, death and depression. So not the best time we've had but okay. In June we hope to tackle Mark Meynell's When Darkness Seems My Closest Friend partly prompted by the previous volume. (Best source ICM Books). Do join us if you can. Details will appear shortly on the Pastors Academy website.

Some quotations

Conviction, then, is no part of a sinner’s salvation - but the clear practical knowledge of the fact that he cannot save himself, and is entirely dependent on the saving grace of God.

In judging of religious experience, it is all important to keep steadily in view the system of divine truth contained in the Holy Scriptures; otherwise our experience, as is too often the case, will degenerate into enthusiasm. Many ardent professors seem too readily to take it for granted that all religious feelings must be good. They therefore take no care to discriminate between the genuine and the spurious, the pure gold and the tinsel. Their only concern is about the ardour of their feelings; not considering that if they are spurious, the more intense they are the further will they lead them astray.

There is no necessity for any other proof of native depravity than the aversion which children early manifest to religious instruction and to spiritual exercises.

Of two persons under conviction of sin, one of whom has had sound religious instruction, and the other none, the former will have an unspeakable advantage over the latter in many respects.

There is a common practical error in the minds of many Christians in regard to this matter. They seem to think that nothing has any relation to the conversion of the sinner but that which immediately preceded this event; and the Christian is ready to say, I was awakened under such a sermon, and never had rest until I found it in Christ; making nothing of all previous instructions and impressions. So, when a revival occurs under the awakening discourses of some evangelist, people are ready to think that he only is the successful preacher whose labours God owns and blesses; whereas he does but bring forward to maturity feelings and convictions which have been long secretly forming and growing within the soul, but so imperceptibly that the person himself was little sensible of any 

change.

We know very little, however, of what is passing in the minds of thousands around us. The zealous preacher often concludes and laments that there is no impression on the minds of his hearers, when, if the covering of the human heart could be withdrawn, he would be astonished and confounded at the variety and depth of the feelings experienced. Those impressions which manifest themselves by a flow of tears are not the deepest, but often very superficial; while the most awful distresses of the soul are entirely concealed by a kind of hypocrisy, which men early learn to practice to hide their feelings of a religious kind from their fellow-creatures.

If there be a truth established beyond all reasonable question by uniform experience, it is that lovers of pleasure are the enemies of God.