The Varieties of Religious Experience

James’s 1901-02 Gifford Lectures, and still the most useful book on religion for people who want to understand it rather than adjudicate it. He sets doctrine and institutions aside and studies individual experience: conversion, saintliness, mysticism, the sick soul and the healthy-minded, drawing on first-hand accounts. A psychologist’s approach to faith, sympathetic without believing, and written with unusual clarity for its period.