258 PSYCHOLOGY AND PREACHING
tense, social convulsions in other lands. When the concep tion of liberty is positive, men may be deeply stirred by appeals to their desire for self-realization; but in this case the sentiment is more highly developed, and the emotions called forth are of a higher order, more ethical and amenable to rational considerations. As the impulse to unregulated living has been replaced by the desire for self-realization, so the emotion evoked by appeal to this sentiment has been transformed into moral enthusiasm. In religion the pas sion for liberty grows stronger every day; but it does not seek satisfaction so much as formerly by blatant denial of religious verities and the contemptuous ridicule of the re ligious sentiments so characteristic of the " infidels " of the last, and especially of the eighteenth, century. On the con trary, it is more and more clearly perceived that true re ligious liberty is found in the interpretation of the universe as religious and the voluntary acceptance of the law of God as supreme. The appeal to this sentiment by the preacher receives a deep emotional response which is rationally con trolled and profoundly ethical.
I shall mention but one more of the emotional dispositions which are available to the orator as specially efficacious means of unifying and mastering an audience. That is the sentiment of conservatism or attachment to that which is old. It has its base in the conservative disposition, which was once nearly all-powerful. But the rapidly changing conditions of modern life have greatly weakened it, and must weaken it yet more. Indeed, our life has become so varied and changeful that some people are in danger of fall ing victims to the passion for novelty. The stimulation of change has become a habit with them and forms the basis of a craving for the continual repetition of the sensation which the unexpected produces. That is the only sort of repetition which they will endure. But notwithstanding this tendency, the attachment to the old and the customary still retains a strangely potent sway over the average human mind. Through long ages the monotonous conditions of
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