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Experiments in Personal Religion
Excerpts from a study course by Henry Nelson Wieman

This study consists of materials contributed by Henry Nelson Wieman to a book titled, "Experiments in Personal Religion" which was published in 1928 by the American Institute of Sacred Literature in Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. An editorial note at the beginning of the original text comments that the fourfold purpose of this course is "to help people to think more clearly concerning the nature and function of religion, to quicken their powers of observation in their customary contacts with the religious life of others, to cultivate skill in the evaluation of the results of observation, and to foster a deeper religious life in themselves and others."

In preparing the following excerpts for web publication it is hoped that the purpose of the original publication will bear additional fruit in a new generation of truth seekers.

Study I: Religious Experience through the Outer World of Nature
       The Method of Religious Experience
Study II: Religious Experience through Communion, Meditation, and Worship
       How to Get the Benefit of Private Worship
Study III: Religious Experience through the Influence of Beauty
       1. The Religious Experience of Beauty
         2. How Beauty Leads to God
         3. A Personal Experiment with Beauty
Study IV: Religious Experience through the Struggle of Life
       1. The Practical Problem of Struggle
         2. The Sources of Personal Energy
         3. Personal Experiment in Religion for Release of Energy
Study V: Religious Experience through Loyalty to a Great Cause: Experiment in Loyalty to a Cause
       1. The Problem
         2. The Proposition
         3. The Method
Study VI: Religious Experience through Happiness
       1. How to Enjoy the World
         2. How to Cure the Joy-Killing Attitude
         3. How to Preserve Critical Moral Judgment and Spiritual Aspiration in the Midst of our Joys
Study VII: Religious Experience through Crisis in Individual Growth and Social Experience: Salvation through Crisis
       1. The Problem of the Crisis
         2. How not to Meet a Crisis
         3. The Right Way
         4. How to Achieve the Right Way
Study VIII: Religious Experience through the Church: The Method of Spiritual Fellowship
       1. Sympathetic and Instrumental Association
         2. Organic Association
         3. Organic Association as Adjustment to God
         4. The Personal Experiment