Page:Psychology and preaching.djvu/337

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OCCUPATIONAL TYPES 319

without saying. In his emotional life he most readily re sponds to the cruder stimuli. In so far, therefore, as the religious motives appeal to him they must be mainly of that sort ; and his emotional responses are likely to be correspond ingly impulsive, demonstrative, unregulated.

But of far more consequence is the fact that, on account of the materialization of his ideals, he is drifting beyond the appeal of spiritual religion; for religion must reach a man through his ideals. Furthermore, he is drifting out of sym pathy with organized religion in general ; for he is persuaded and with some measure of truth, it must be confessed that organized religion stands for the present industrial order. I am quite disposed to believe those who assure us that a reaction has set in ; but if it be true, it is because organized religion gives some evidence of changing its at titude. The injustice of the present industrial system is the uppermost fact in the consciousness of an increasing number of wage earners. Organized religion has come to appear to many of them as an institution maintained by the economic class by which they feel themselves to be ex ploited ; and maintained for the purpose of reconciling them to the exploitation. Believing themselves to be the victims of an unrighteous economic arrangement, their attitude of hostility to the church springs both from their most keenly felt material interest and their sense of righteousness. Now, when conscience and material interest conflict, as they so often do, the result is a more or less unstable attitude; but when these two powerful forces combine to determine a man s attitude the result is a positiveness and aggressive ness which have to be seriously reckoned with. Conscience and material interest pulling together are a powerful team. My purpose here is not to discuss whether, or to what ex tent, this attitude is justifiable; nor to offer suggestions as to how the situation is to be remedied and the disastrous breach is to be healed; but merely to trace its genesis and to indicate how, by natural sequence, it results from the labourer s life conditions. It seems to me that it is the almost

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