The Faith of the Millions | Page 5

reality as dreams are confounded. Then follows the
sixteenth and last revelation; ending with the words: "Wit well it was

no raving thou sawest to-day: but take it, and believe it, and 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