Page:Psychology and preaching.djvu/309

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OCCUPATIONAL TYPES 29!

and to conform to a type is a fact of common experience; but such types are somewhat indefinite and hard to describe. Indeed, individual variations within the same type are so numerous and so great, and there are so many individual exceptions, that no generalizations can be made which hold good absolutely and always. And yet these types are very real, and every one who seeks to influence men generally should study them. It would be interesting theoretically to study in detail the various psychological types which result from the many specialized activities of men ; but for our practical purpose we need consider only three.

I. THE MINISTERIAL TYPE

Of course, it is not the intention to intimate that all minis ters are alike. As has just been suggested, not all persons engaged in any occupation conform completely to the type which that occupation tends to produce; and variety in modes of thought and mental attitudes is in no class more strikingly obvious than among ministers. But experience teaches us that the ministerial occupation does tend to de velop certain habits of mind. The average minister uncon sciously and almost inevitably assumes such characteristic attitudes that he can nearly always be correctly classified, after a little conversation, by any intelligent stranger. His way of looking at things which are even remote from his daily work, the general run of his ideas, his " manners," his tones, his speech all betray him. Sometimes the minis terial flavour of his personality is too subtile to be described, but can readily be perceived. If calling attention to these things succeeds only in making him self-conscious, the result will be nothing better than an added awkwardness ; but the intelligent minister will find benefit from studying his own occupational type because it will enable him to check himself up and correct in some measure a strong tendency to a one sided development of his personality.

i. Consider the breadth of his occupation. If we should try to define the occupation of the modern minister by rea-

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