in every
class of human beings. The age is the same, falling usually between
fourteen and seventeen. The symptoms are the same,--sense of
incompleteness and imperfection; brooding, depression, morbid
introspection, and sense of sin; anxiety about the hereafter; distress
over doubts, and the like. And the result is the same--a happy relief
and objectivity, as the confidence in self gets greater through the
adjustment of the faculties to the wider outlook. In spontaneous
religious awakening, apart from revivalistic examples, and in the
ordinary storm and stress and moulting-time of adolescence, we also may
meet with mystical experiences, astonishing the subjects by their
suddenness, just as in revivalistic conversion. The analogy, in fact,
is complete; and Starbuck's conclusion as to these ordinary youthful
conversions would seem to be the only sound one: Conversion is in its
essence a normal adolescent phenomenon, incidental to the passage from
the child's small universe to the wider intellectual and spiritual life
of maturity.

"Theology," says Dr. Starbuck, "takes the adolescent tendencies and
builds upon them; it sees that the essential thing in adolescent growth
is bringing the person out of childhood into the new life of maturity
and personal insight. It accordingly brings those means to bear which
will intensify the normal tendencies. It shortens up the period of
duration of storm and stress." The conversion phenomena of "conviction
of sin" last, by this investigator's statistics, about one fifth as
long as the periods of adolescent storm and stress phenomena of which
he also got statistics, but they are very much more intense. Bodily
accompaniments, loss of sleep and appetite, for example, are much more
frequent in them. "The essential distinction appears to be that
conversion intensifies but shortens the period by bringing the person
to a definite crisis."[101]

[101] E. D. Starbuck: The Psychology of Religion, pp. 224, 262.

The conversions which Dr. Starbuck here has in mind are of course
mainly those of very commonplace persons, kept true to a pre-appointed
type by instruction, appeal, and example. The particular form which
they affect is the result of suggestion and imitation.[102] If they
went through their growth-crisis in other faiths and other countries,
although the essence of the change would be the same (since it is one
in the main so inevitable), its accidents would be different. In