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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: non-essential, and that the "joyous conviction" can also come by
far other channels than this conception. It is to the joyous
conviction itself, the assurance that all is well with one, that
he would give the name of faith par excellence. "When the sense
of estrangement," he writes, "fencing man about in a narrowly
limited ego, breaks down, the individual finds himself 'at one
with all creation.' He lives in the universal life; he and man,
he and nature, he and God, are one. That state of confidence,
trust, union with all things, following upon the achievement of
moral unity, is the Faith-state. Various dogmatic beliefs
suddenly, on the advent of the faith-state, acquire a character
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