Research Paper on:
Comparative Analysis of Works by William James and Robert Orsi

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more recent volume by Robert Orsi, Thank You, St. Jude, each address issues in regards to religion and religious devotion and the role that this plays in the lives of  adherents. While separated by decades and widely different in style, largely due to James now rather antique turn of phrase, an examination of these two volumes indicates that these  two authors are very similar in their positions toward religious experience and their psychological perspective on religious observance. James James book takes its form from the text of the  lecture series that he delivered at the University of Edinburgh in 1901 and 1902. James health, which was already poor, suffered due to the effort it took to collect the  two hundred personal narratives that make this work a "thick stew" of "facts of experience" rather than a "genteel consomm? of philosophical speculation" (Zaleski, 2000). James begins Varieties  by clearing away intellectual obstacles. During his era, the trend was to explain religious fervor as a "form of autointoxication" brought about by such things as "disordered digestion" or "nerves"  (Zaleski, 2000, p. 60). On the other hand, James, Americas leading psychologist, was not willing to discount mystical insight. He stated, "For aught, we know to the contrary, 103 or  104 degrees Fahrenheit might be a much more favorable temperature for truths to germinate and sprout in than the more ordinary blood-heat of 97 or 98 degrees" (Zaleski, 2000, p.  60). As this suggests, James is inclined to make personal experience the arbiter of truth in regards to religious experience. He delineates his topic as "the feelings, acts, and  experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relations o whatever they may consider the divine" (Zaleski, 2000, p. 60). Through his