Presence
The hilltop
Historical account — 1902
VBG Archives·Cambridge, US
presencesolitudenightstillnesswonder
Modern language summary…
A minister remembered the exact night -- almost the exact spot on a hilltop -- where, standing alone in the dark, the boundary between his inner life and the world outside seemed to dissolve. He hadn't sought anything; it simply happened. Ordinary awareness faded, replaced by joy he compared to an orchestra's separate notes melting into one chord. The stillness felt occupied. He came down convinced he had stood face to face with God, and said that no argument he heard for the rest of his life ever shook what that one hour settled. (The hilltop's location was not recorded; the account was collected by Edwin Starbuck and published by William James at Harvard, 1902.)
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"I remember the night, and almost the very spot on the hill-top, where my soul opened out, as it were, into the Infinite, and there was a rushing together of the two worlds, the inner and the outer... I stood alone with Him who had made me, and all the beauty of the world, and love, and sorrow, and even temptation. I did not seek Him, but felt the perfect unison of my spirit with His. The ordinary sense of things around me faded. For the moment nothing but an ineffable joy and exultation remained... It was like the effect of some great orchestra when all the separate notes have melted into one swelling harmony... The perfect stillness of the night was thrilled by a more solemn silence. The darkness held a presence that was all the more felt because it was not seen. I could not any more have doubted that He was there than that I was. Indeed, I felt myself to be, if possible, the less real of the two."
Source: William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), Lecture III. Public domain. View source