The Faith of the Millions | Page 5

keep thee therein, and comfort thee therewith and trust thereto, and thou shalt not be overcome." Then during the rest of the same night till about Prime next morning she is tempted against faith and trust by the Evil One, of whose nearness she is conscious; but comes out victorious after a sustained struggle. She understands from our Lord, that the series of showings is now closed; "which blessed showing the faith keepeth, ... for He left with me neither sign nor token whereby I might know it." Yet for her personally the obligation not to doubt is as of faith: "Thus am I bound to keep it in my faith; for on the same day that it was showed, what time the sight was passed, as a wretch I forsook it and openly said that I raved."
Fifteen years later she gets an inward response as to the general gist and unifying purport of the sixteen revelations. "Wit it well; love was His meaning. Who showed it thee? Love. Wherefore showed He it thee? For love."
Having thus sketched the circumstances of the revelations, we may now address ourselves to their character and substance.
There is nothing to favour and everything to disfavour the notion that Mother Juliana was an habitual visionary, or was the recipient of any other visions, than those which she beheld in her thirty-first year; and of these, she tells us herself, the whole sixteen took place within a few hours. "Now have I told you of fifteen showings, ... of which fifteen showings, the first began early in the morning about the hour of four, ... each following the other till it was noon of the day or past, ... and after this the Good Lord showed me the sixteenth revelation on the night following." Speaking of them all as one, she tells us: "And from the time it was showed I desired oftentimes to wit what was in our Lord's meaning; and fifteen years after and more I was answered in ghostly understanding, saying thus: 'What! wouldst thou wit thy Lord's meaning in this thing? Wit it well: Love was His meaning.'" But this "ghostly understanding" can hardly be pressed into implying another revelation of the evidently supernormal type.
We rather insist on this point, as indicating the habitual healthiness of Mother Juliana's soul--a quality which is also abundantly witnessed by the unity and coherence of the doctrine of her revelations, which bespeaks a mind well-knit together, and at harmony with itself. The hysterical mind is one in which large tracts of consciousness seem to get detached from the main body, and to take the control of the subject for the time being, giving rise to the phenomena rather foolishly called double or multiple "personality." This is a disease proper to the passive-minded, to those who give way to a "drifting" tendency, and habitually suffer their whole interests to be absorbed by the strongest sensation or emotion that presents itself. Such minds are generally chaotic and unorganized, as is revealed in the rambling, involved, interminably parenthetical and digressive character of their conversation. But when, as with Mother Juliana, we find unity and coherence, we may infer that there has been a life-long habit of active mental control, such as excludes the supposition of an hysterical temperament.
Perhaps the similarity of the phenomena which attend both on extraordinary psychic weakness and passivity, and on extraordinary energy and activity may excuse a confusion common enough, and which we have dwelt on elsewhere. But obviously as far as the natural consequences of a given psychic state are concerned, it is indifferent how that state is brought about. Thus, that extreme concentration of the attention, that perfect abstraction from outward things, which in hysterical persons is the effect of weakness and passive-mindedness--of the inability to resist and shake off the spell of passions and emotions; is in others the effect of active self-control, of voluntary concentration, of a complete mastery over passions and emotions. Yet though the causes of the abnormal state are different, its effects may well be the same.
In thus maintaining the healthiness and vigour of Mother Juliana's mind, we may seem to be implicitly treating her revelation, not as coming from a Divine source, but simply as an expression of her own habitual line of thought--as a sort of pouring forth of the contents of her subconscious memory. Our direct intention, however, is to show how very unlikely it is antecedently that one so clear-headed and intelligent should be the victim of the common and obvious illusions of the hysterical visionary. For her book contains not only the matter of her revelations, but also the history of all the circumstances connected with them, as well as a certain amount of personal comment upon them, professedly the fruit of her