version— Causes and illustrations — Wide range of individual variations. VI. Conversion as the philosophy of religion and history, and the germ of educa- tional systems — Classification of definitions of religion — The wretchedness of primitive man — Tragic guilt and the soteriological function of heroes — Pity and sympathy basal for morals and religion — Characteristics of religious genius — Bible supplemented by other ethnic religions — Mission pedagogy — Alien faiths, like the Old Testament propaedeutic to the New, to be fulfilled and not de- stroyed— The higher Christianity of the future.
WHETHER or not it be a restoration of apostolic concep- tions, the modern idea of a re-birth as essential to the salva- tion of the soul hereafter is chiefly a Puritan and more specifically a New England orthodox Congregationalist idea. Despite the examples of Paul and Augustine, conversion in the Middle Ages and in Catholicism meant adoption of a creed and submission to the authority of the Church, while early Methodism, which did more than any other denomination to develop the personal regenerative formula and motive, came in a little later. The origin of the idea that there must be a change so radical and transforming that it can be definitely 282 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE recognized, and yet wrought chiefly on and not by the subject of it, and that may profoundly reconstruct character and con- duct, can be fully traced in the history of what might be called a culture epoch, beginning about 1735, which is of profound interest and significance for the psychologist.1 The New Eng- land theocracy permitted only church members to hold civil office. To qualify, each must receive the Lord's Supper, and a clergyman who withheld it upon request was liable to prose- cution. The law admitted all who had been baptized, learned the creed and catechism, and had not committed " scandalous crime." The Church had such influence that it often attracted the bad as well as the good into it. Piety declined under this system, and men never converted in the modern sense entered the ministry. Arminianism was wide-spread, and under the free-thinking influences, culminating later in the French Revo^ lution, skepticism was on the increase. The majority who at- tended and supported the Church thought that they could achieve their own salvation by good works which lay within the power of their own wills.
Jonathan Edwards first and alone seems to have grasped the whole situation, and was peculiarly fitted by character and learning to meet it. The alliance of the French Jesuits with the dreaded Indians intensified the hatred for popery. Unbelief was sufficiently wide-spread to suggest the appeal to philosophical principles in justification of biblical standpoints and theological doctrines which he was so well fitted to make, and there is, I think, abundant evidence that he deliberately decided to attempt a new use of the great Protestant prin- ciple of justification by faith alone, to insist on God's abso- 1 Tracy: The Great Awakening; Boston, 1841. R. Baird: Religion in America; 1856; especially chap. vi. H. F. Uhden: The New England Theocracy. W. H. Conant: On Revivals in Colleges, 1859. J. Edwards: On Revivals and the Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God, Narratives of Surprising Conversions, and Thoughts on the Revival of Religion in New England, 1 740. Gil- lies: Memoirs of Whitefield, and Philips's Life and Times of Whitefield. The two Lives of Wesley, by Moore and Southey respectively. W. B. Sprague: Lectures on Revivals; New York, 1833. S. P. Hayes: An Hist. Study of the Edwardean Revivals; Am. Journ. of Psy., October, 1902, p. 550 etseq. See also Porter's Lec- ture on Revivals, Finney's Autobiography and Lectures on Revivals. Earle: Bringing in the Sheaves. Fish's Handbook of Revivals. Hervey's Handbook of Revivals.
ADOLESCENT PSYCHOLOGY OF CONVERSION 283 lute sovereignty and " just liberty of election," and to teach, in place of the current conception of human initiative, the no- tion that all persons not specifically converted are sinners that " have merited and now deserve instant damnation," that this is wholly just, and that there is nothing to do but to call upon God for mercy through Christ. The only indication that God is disposed to withhold eternal punishment is the fact that he gave his Son to die for men, and this alone can be pleaded in prayer. All the virtues of the unregenerate man are vileness and but filthy rags, giving absolutely no claim, and he must be entirely resigned to his own condemnation to hell as the only course possible to a just and sovereign God. If he is saved, it will be an act of pure and spontaneous goodness on the part of Deity, and the belief that this act of mercy will extend to him is iaith. Salvation comes to seem too good for sinners, while their approval of the excellence of God's jus- tice made them " almost call it a willingness to be damned " (Tracy, p. 15), and they were brought to feel that " the glory of his justice should not be sacrificed for their sakes." First there comes the " legal distress," which may continue some time, and then supervenes a holy repose of soul, a sacred dis- position to fear and love God, and to hope for blessings and salvation from both sin and its penalty, and a new aspiration for holiness, which not at first but later is fully recognized as divine grace redeeming the soul and working not only par- don but progressive sanctification.
Edwards did not hesitate to appeal to fear. " If we should suppose that a person saw himself hanging over a great pit, full of fierce and glowing flames, by a thread that he knew to be very weak and not suf- ficient to bear his weight, and knew that multitudes had been in such a circumstance before and that most of them had fallen and perished, and saw nothing within reach that he could take hold of to save him, what distress would he be in! How ready to think that now the thread was breaking, that now this minute he should be swallowed up in those dreadful flames, and would he not be ready to cry out in such circumstances? How much more those that see themselves in this manner hanging over an infinitely more dreadful pit or held over it in the hand of God, who at the same time they see to be exceed- ingly provoked! No wonder they are ready to expect every minute when this angry God will let them drop, and no wonder they cry out at their misery, and no wonder that the wrath of God, when mani- 284 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE fested but a little to the soul, overbears human strength." * Else- where 2 Edwards insists that " there is nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell but the mere pleasure of God." The unconverted belong to the devil, and he is ready to seize them the moment God permits. God is more angry " with many now in this congregation " than with many now in the flames of hell. He tells his people that some of them will, within a year, remember this discourse in hell. "There will be no end to the exquisite, horrible misery. The inhabitants of heaven and all the universe will look on and praise God's justice. No prayer will mitigate God's hate and contempt, for he can no longer pity. You would have gone to hell last night had he not held you like a loathsome spider over the flames by a thread. Every moment of delay accumulates wrath."
Before 1835 revivals had often occurred in America and elsewhere, but they were spasmodic, and their methodology had not been well developed. Stern, doctrinal, and extreme as Edwards was, he lacked and would surely disapprove the ex- travagance of some methods of modern revivalism. The three hundred who joined his church as the result of the six months of awakening in Northampton, manifested a more radical change than had hitherto been insisted on. Henceforth re- pentance was urged as the chief and immediate duty and the supreme necessity of life. It was described as giving the heart to God, accepting the covenant or the promises, becom- ing reconciled with Christ, laying hold on salvation, awaken- ing out of sleep, a change of heart or getting a new one, giv- ing up self, dropping a body of death, fleeing from wrath to love, turning lest we die, passing from death to life, from the power of Satan to God, escaping hell and securing heaven, changing from doubt to belief, admitting the Holy Spirit, con- forming the will to divine law, the fire and hammer breaking the flinty rock, having a visitation from on high, a satisfac- tion of the mourners, anxious seekers, etc.
On his arrival in New England in 1740 Whitefield com- plained that " tutors neglected to pray with and examine the hearts of their pupils, and that most schools and universities had sunk into new seminaries of paganism, that their light 1 The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God (applied to that un- common operation that has lately appeared in the minds of many of the people of this land). Boston, 1741.
8 Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. Works, ed. 1807, vol. vii, p. 486.
ADOLESCENT PSYCHOLOGY OF CONVERSION 285 had become darkness," etc. Harvard was at first impressed; in 1741 the overseers voted to meet and " spend some time in humble thanksgiving to God for the effusion of his Holy Spirit." Later, when he declared that few clergymen were converted, Wigglesworth wrote him, pointing out the dangers of enthusiasm and censuring the " furious zeal with which you had so fired the passions of the people and which hath in many places burnt into the very vitals of religion," and the " sudden and temporary turns of distress and joy." During the great awakening from twenty-five thousand to fifty thou- sand persons were converted and joined the Church, and the piety of previous members was greatly increased. The fervor spread to all evangelical sects, and hundreds of new churches were founded. Itinerant evangelists from without, with in- decent haste for immediate practical results, entered churches and rivaled each other in the number of converts they won. Separatists, like Wheelock and Davenport, arose. Qther parts of Scripture and doctrine were neglected, and exag- gerated and surprising narratives of individual struggles and experiences multiplied; those applying for church membership, and even clergymen seeking ordination, narrated their personal experiences of this change for others to judge of. Nearly all New England churches which did not become Unitarian came to adopt this cult; it colored all the theology of the country, and became the inexorable condition of church membership, and all was ascribed to the form and shape of this special first experience. Believers searched other hearts and their own for inward sentiments, for Edwards's " new idea and new feelings that did not come through the senses," often mis- taking the vane for the compass, and there was giving of testimony and loquacity about experiences of unaccountable origin and abnormal impressionability, while " bodily mani- festations," although much discussed and generally disparaged, were not very strongly condemned, Edwards himself having, from the trancoidal states of his wife, some sympathy with them. Tennent's Log College, from which Princeton grew, Dartmouth, and missions established among the Indians by Brainerd and Sargent, were greatly developed. The reaction was inevitable, as revivalism degenerated, and the mean between enthusiasm and lukewarmness, anarchy and despotism THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE in Church government was sought. In all this history there was very little thought of any relation between age and con- version. Old and young were affected, and no statistics of age are on record.
The next fifty years were filled with wars and commotions, and only near the close of the last century came the era of modern revivalism. The crimes and passions of man, the ex- cesses of the French Revolution and the skepticism which un- derlay it, and wild and vague expectations among the young of a new order of things with Christianity eliminated, pre- pared the way for a new awakening. In 1797 many churches in Massachusetts and in Connecticut grew more earnest, and the feeling slowly spread. In 1801 a revival of great in- tensity, which was characterized by many irregularities due to the rude state of society, spread over nearly the whole State of Kentucky.
McMaster describes with scant respect a revival, in 1800, at Red River, Ohio.1 At the words of one effective preacher, he says, faces were wet with streaming tears at a pungent sense of sin, and the cries for mercy were terrible to hear. " The floor was covered with the slain. Some found forgiveness, but others went away spiritually wounded, suffering uncontrollable agony of soul. Men fitted their wagons and traveled fifty miles to camp. Crops were left half- gathered, cabins deserted, and camp-meetings multiplied as the rage spread." Services were held for seven days, and sometimes all night. A girl of seven preached from a man's shoulders till she fell ex- hausted, and a lad of twelve exhorted till he fell, and was then held up and continued till the power of speech was lost. The flickering camp-fires and the darkness of the surrounding forest, the sobs, groans, and shrieks of those in the valley of the shadow of death, the songs and shouts of joy of those who had found eternal joy in Beulah, were too much for the excited imagination, and circulation was affected and nerves gave way; in the " falling exercise " many dropped to the ground, cold and still, or with convulsive twitches or clonic contortions of face and limbs, and at Cove Ridge three thousand were laid in rows. At one meeting eleven hundred and forty-five wagons were counted, and it was estimated that twenty thousand persons were present. Many came to scoff, but remained to preach. The crowd swarmed all night from preacher to preacher, singing, shouting, laughing, some plunging wildly over stumps and benches into the forest shouting " Lost, lost! " others leaping and bounding about like live fish out of water; others rolling over and over on the ground for hours; others 1 A History of the People of the United States, vol. ii, p. 578 etseq.
ADOLESCENT PSYCHOLOGY OF CONVERSION 287 lying on the ground and talking when they could not move; and yet others beating the ground with their heels.
As the excitement increased it grew more morbid and took the form of " jerking," or in others it became the " barking exercise," and in yet others it became the " holy laugh." The jerks began with the head, which was thrown violently from side to side so rapidly that the features were blurred and the hair almost seemed to snap, and when the sufferer struck an obstacle and fell he would bounce about like a ball. Saplings were sometimes cut breast-high for the people to jerk by. In one place the earth about the roots of over fifty of them was " kicked up as if by a horse stamping flies." One scoffer mounted his horse to ride away when the jerks threw him to the earth, whence he arose a Christian. A lad who feigned illness to stay away was dragged there by the spirit and his head dashed against a wall till he had to pray. A skeptic who cursed and swore was crushed by a falling tree. Men fancied themselves dogs and gathered about a tree barking and yelping — " treeing the devil." They saw visions and dreamed dreams,, and as the revival waned, it left a crop of nervous and hysterical disorders in its wake.
These extremes were unusual, and were condemned by all sane religionists; but the revival cult was established, and, on the whole, with great efficacy for good. In 1802, Yale Col- lege was visited, and the salvation of the soul became the chief topic of conversation. One-third of the students were con- verted, and during the next forty years there were fifteen re- vivals there. Princeton was no less favored. The traditions of revivalism long lingered, and are yet strong in some of the older American colleges. Durfee makes the early history of Williams College to consist chiefly of efforts to secure the con- version of students. Its dark periods are years of spiritual drought, when " professors were hardly distinguished from the great body of the unpenitent," and he describes with great personal detail the seasons of awakening, as in 1825, when there were " twenty converts in thirty days." Edward Hitchcock, in his Reminiscences of Amherst, says: " The re- ligious history of Amherst is more important and interesting than anything pertaining to it; " he enumerates fourteen re- vivals up to 1863, and estimates that three hundred and fifty began their religious life there. It was very hard to introduce the study of morals or ethics into these colleges, for it implied distrust of the Holy Spirit. Even the semi-theological ethics of Mark Hopkins was a dangerous innovation to President 288 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE Griffin, who thought conversion, which he could exhort so powerfully, was better. " Works " were filthy rags, and Cot- ton Mather was appealed to, who, in his diary in 1716, called ethics " a vile form of paganism " — " impietas in artis formam redacta" 1 Very important for this study is the age of most fre- quent conversions. In answer to a request for information concerning this topic, kindly inserted for me in the leading weekly papers of the Methodist, Baptist, Congregational, and Presbyterian denominations at various times during the last few years, several score of valuable replies from clergymen and evangelists have been received, containing individual opin- ions, statistics of single churches, results of inquiries made at educational institutions and at religious meetings.
The following are representative. Revivalist D. L. Moody wrote me that he thought most conversions occur between the ages of ten and twenty; that he had noticed no difference in age between the/ sexes, but that nearly all the members of the Northfield school are converted before they enter. Bishop D. A. Goodsell informed me that it was his custom on crowded occasions of admission to full con- ference membership to ask all converted at or under fifteen, ministers and laity, to rise. " The proportion varies but slightly in different parts of the country among whites, about three-fifths of all present ris- ing at this call. I then ask those converted between fifteen and twenty to stand with them. There are then few left. Recently in Newark and Philadelphia, in audiences of seven thousand to eight thousand, this preponderance was maintained with great unanimity." Rev. E.
E. Abercrombie writes that at the Holyoke Conference, held in April, 1893, in an audience of about five hundred Christian men and women, a similar test showed that about two-thirds were converted before twenty. Revivalist E. P. Hammond writes: " I frequently ask audi- ences to testify at what age they were converted, and I find that most of them became Christians before they were twenty." Evangelist G.
F. Pentecost, now of Yonkers, has kept no statistics, but writes: " In an experience of thirty years of pastoral and evangelical work my observation has been that three-fourths of all the conversions occur be- tween the ages of twelve and twenty, the proportion of male to female being about two to three. Comparatively few are converted after thirty years, and beyond that period the number falls off very rapidly. My further experience is that the best after-results in life and service are found in those who have been converted early." H. K. Carroll, of the Independent, thinks that " a large majority " of conversions i See my Hist, of Am. College Text-Books in Ethics, etc. Proc. Am. Anti- quarian Soc., 1894, p. 137 et seq.
ADOLESCENT PSYCHOLOGY OF CONVERSION 289 occur " before or soon after fifteen." Dr. J. L. Hurlbut, who has a wide knowledge and experience in the Methodist Episcopal Church, writes that in his opinion " far the larger number profess Christ under twenty years of age, a smaller number between twenty and thirty, and a very small number between thirty and forty." Editor J. M. Buckley, of the Christian Advocate, who has knowledge of the very rich literature of the Methodist Church, which has always paid great attention to the conversion of children, writes that " all our ministers, except a very few, were converted before they were twenty, and the large majority of them before they were eighteen." Evangelist M. S. Kees often takes tests which show that " the great majority " of converts are between ten and twenty.
President Thwing, of Adelbert College, a few years ago addressed a letter asking the age of conversion and admission to the Church of each member of the quite composite American Board of Foreign Mis- sions, an exceptionally representative body of Christian men. From 149 replies it appeared that 29 were converted " very young," 21 be- tween eight and twelve,»26 between twelve and fifteen, and 132 before twenty. At a large meeting Evangelist B. Fay Mills asked all who had been converted under twenty to rise, and over 1,100 rose. The call for those converted between twenty and thirty brought 180 to their feet; between thirty and forty, there were 35; between forty and fifty, 14 stood; between fifty and sixty, there were 8. He writes that not only by far the most, but the most active Christians, are converted in the teens. At a recent Sunday-school convention at Hillsdale, Mich., 98 workers were found to be converted at or before twelve, 41 between twelve and twenty, 13 between twenty and forty, and 2 later.
Spencer1 states that out of every 1,000 cases, 548 are converted under twenty, 37 between twenty and thirty, 86 between thirty and forty, 25 between forty and fifty, 3 between fifty and sixty, and i be- tween sixty and seventy. Rev. Th. Simms, of South Manchester, Conn., writes that at a session of the New England Conference, Rev. C. M. Hall found, as the result of a census of 200 clerical members of that body, that 173 of them were converted before twenty years of age, 89 before fifteen, and 17 at or under ten, the average for all being a trifle over fifteen years. Dr. Davidson thought more con- verted before thirteen than after thirty. Dr. R. E. Cole, of Oakland, Cal., ascertained the ages of those converted during a three weeks' series of revival meetings in that place as follows: 109 from five to ten, 372 from ten to fifteen, 283 from fifteen to twenty, 68 from twenty to thirty, 29 from thirty to forty, 16 from forty to fifty, 11 from fifty to sixty, 4 over sixty.
Brockman 2 found the age of most frequent conversion to be 1 Sermon by Rev. Ichabod Spencer, D.D., vol. i, p. 392.
*A Study of the Moral and Religious Life of 251 Preparatory School Students in the United States. Fed. Sem., September, 1902, vol. ix, pp. 255-273.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE seventeen; from thirteen to fourteen the increase in frequency, and from eighteen to nineteen the decrease, was greatest. He also found in 244 students that seventeen was the age of greatest responsiveness to religious ideas.
More specific are the data presented in the following table: jj y jj 1 1 Age.
\ jj 1 i d 1 Total.
M.
M.
M.
M.&F.
F M.
F.
34 12 5i 4 9 13 56 81 53 37 96 7 4 18 60 85 32 7 ii 18 47 64 62 52 9 i7 10 ii 34 56 46 20 30 4 12 25 59 7 25 16 II 16 89 47 5 29 6 6 5 7i 60 ii 17 3 7 9 57 48 ii 17 i 9 8 49 47 2 10 2 i 39 34 O 8 i 5 3 23 15 99 2 9 2 3 5 16 ii 6 ii 2 4 3 8 4 55 i 68 10 i 3 6 6 -- 53 27 -- 59 33 3 -- 6 4 3 3 i 26 27 3 3 i i -- i7 -- 18 3 -• 4 5 IOO IOO The first four columns of the above table added in totals represent males. The first column is compiled for me by Librarian Louis N. Wilson, from the Alumni Record (i869~'95) of Drew Theological Seminary, which states the age of con- version of nearly all those who were students there during the quarter century comprised in the report. As only those would be likely to enter upon a course of theological study who were converted early in life, the ages here probably average younger than those of male converts generally. The same is doubtless true of the results of the questionnaire circulated by Luther Gulick among members of the Y. M. C. A.1 Mr. Ayres's column was compiled for me from the M. E. minutes of the meeting of the fall of 1890 and represents clergymen; it shows an age of conversion which is also doubtless too young. Dr. Star buck's 2 column is based 1 The Association Outlook, December, 1897. 8 A Study of Conversion, by E. D. Starbuck.
Am. Jour, of Psy., January, ADOLESCENT PSYCHOLOGY OF CONVERSION 29 l Coe's * curves, like those of Starbuck, are quite irregular. In one, where ninety-nine men report their own religious awakenings aver- aging two each, the ages of most frequency are thirteen, seventeen, and twenty; fourteen, e. g., showing hardly half as many as thirteen. In eighty-four decisive conversions that could be dated, the age of seventeen showed most frequency, nearly four times as great as four- teen. Coe's average age of 1,784 men was 16.4 years. In fifty men reporting a second religious experience, Coe shows the following ages: '