ost emphatic
sense of the word, often coming suddenly, and as suddenly gone; and yet
neither seen, heard, touched, nor cognized in any of the usual
"sensible" ways. Let me give you an example of this, before I pass to
the objects with whose presence religion is more peculiarly concerned.

An intimate friend of mine, one of the keenest intellects I know, has
had several experiences of this sort. He writes as follows in response
to my inquiries:--{59}

"I have several times within the past few years felt the so- called
'consciousness of a presence.' The experiences which I have in mind
are clearly distinguishable from another kind of experience which I
have had very frequently, and which I fancy many persons would also
call the 'consciousness of a presence.' But the difference for me
between the two sets of experience is as great as the difference
between feeling a slight warmth originating I know not where, and
standing in the midst of a conflagration with all the ordinary senses
alert.

"It was about September, 1884, when I had the first experience. On the
previous night I had had, after getting into bed at my rooms in
College, a vivid tactile hallucination of being grasped by the arm,
which made me get up and search the room for an intruder; but the sense
of presence properly so called came on the next night. After I had got
into bed and blown out the candle, I lay awake awhile thinking on the
previous night's experience, when suddenly I FELT something come into
the room and stay close to my bed. It remained only a minute or two.
I did not recognize it by any ordinary sense and yet there was a
horribly unpleasant 'sensation' connected with it. It stirred
something more at the roots of my being than any ordinary perception.
The feeling had something of the quality of a very large tearing vital
pain spreading chiefly over the chest, but within the organism--and yet
the feeling was not PAIN so much as ABHORRENCE. At all events,
something was present with me, and I knew its presence far more surely
than I have ever known the presence of any fleshly living creature. I
was conscious of its departure as of its coming: an almost
instantaneously swift going through the door, and the 'horrible
sensation' disappeared.

"On the third night when I retired my mind was absorbed in some
lectures which I was preparing, and I was still absorbed in these when
I became aware of the actual presence (though not of the COMING)