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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: 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
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