revivalists call
"conversion" (p. 21). You are oppressed by "the futility of the
individual life"; you fall into "a state of helpless self-disgust"
(p. 21); you are, in short, in the condition described by Hamlet when
he says: "It goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly
frame the earth seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent
canopy the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this
majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why it appears no other
thing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors." The
condition may result, as in Hamlet's case, from an untoward
conjunction of outward circumstances; or it may be of physiological
(liverish) origin. The methods of treatment are many--some of them
(such as the administration of alcohol in large doses) disastrously
unwise. In some states of society and periods of history, religion is
the popular specific; and there have been, and are, forms of religion
to which alcohol would be preferable. Fortunately, one can say without
a shadow of hesitancy that "the modern religion" lies under no such
suspicion. As dispensed by Mr. Wells, it is entirely wholesome. If it
is found to cheer, it will certainly not inebriate. Indeed, the doubt
one feels as to its popular success lies in the very fact that it
contains but an innocuous proportion of alcohol.

You find yourself, then, in the distressful case described by Hamlet
and Mr. Wells. "Man delights you not, no, nor woman neither." You
cannot muster up energy even to kill King Claudius. You go about
gloomily soliloquizing on suicide and kindred topics. Then, "in some
way the idea of God comes into the distressed mind" (p. 21). It
develops through various stages, outlined by Mr. Wells in the passage
cited. In the modern man, it would seem, one great difficulty lies in
"a curious resistance to the suggestion that God is truly a person"
(p. 22). It is here, no doubt, that faith comes in; at all events, you
ultimately get over this stumbling-block. "Then suddenly, in a little
while, in his own time, God comes. The cardinal experience is an
undoubting immediate sense of God. It is the attainment of an absolute
certainty that one is not alone in oneself" (p. 23). You have come, in
fact, to the gate of Damascus. You have found salvation.

Yes, salvation!--there is no other word for it. Mr. Wells does not
hesitate to use both that word and its correlative, damnation. From
what, then, are you saved? Why