if we weep!
For it is then as if our tears broke through an inveterate inner dam,
and let all sorts of ancient peccancies and moral stagnancies drain
away, leaving us now washed and soft of heart and open to every nobler
leading. With most of us the customary hardness quickly returns, but
not so with saintly persons. Many saints, even as energetic ones as
Teresa and Loyola, have possessed what the church traditionally reveres
as a special grace, the so-called gift of tears. In these persons the
melting mood seems to have held almost uninterrupted control. And as
it is with tears and melting moods, so it is with other exalted
affections. Their reign may come by gradual growth or by a crisis; but
in either case it may have "come to stay."

At the end of the last lecture we saw this permanence to be true of the
general paramountcy of the higher insight, even though in the ebbs of
emotional excitement meaner motives might temporarily prevail and
backsliding might occur. But that lower temptations may remain
completely annulled, apart from transient emotion and as if by
alteration of the man's habitual nature, is also proved by documentary
evidence in certain cases. Before embarking on the general natural
history of the regenerate character, let me convince you of this
curious fact by one or two examples. The most numerous are those of
reformed drunkards. You recollect the case of Mr. Hadley in the last
lecture; the Jerry McAuley Water Street Mission abounds in similar
instances.[148] You also remember the graduate of Oxford, converted at
three in the afternoon, and getting drunk in the hay-field the next
day, but after that permanently cured of his appetite. "From that hour
drink has had no terrors for me: I never touch it, never want it. The
same thing occurred with my pipe.... the desire for it went at once and
has never returned. So with every known sin, the deliverance in each
case being permanent and complete. I have had no temptations since
conversion."

[148] Above, p. 200. "The only radical remedy I know for dipsomania is
religiomania," is a saying I have heard quoted from some medical man.

Here is an analogous case from Starbuck's manuscript collection:--

"I went into the old Adelphi Theatre, where there was a Holiness
meeting, ... and I began saying, 'Lord, Lord, I must have this
blessing.' Then what was to me an audible voice said: 'Are you
willing to give up everything to the Lord?' a