MENTAL EPIDEMICS 289
spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets." * That is to say, if the emotion passes the bounds of self-control it loses its religious value. The false notion that the Divine Spirit is especially present in high emotion, every generation of constructive religious leaders has had to combat. If religion perishes of drought in the arid sterility of intellec- tualism as it certainly does it is overwhelmed and drowned in the tidal waves of pure emotionalism. It may be thought that the danger lies today in the direction of in- tellectualism. Granting that this may be true as to a small section of the population, it is by no means a general danger. But the evidence seems clear that we are passing out of the era of virulent mental epidemics, and that fanaticism, ter rors, manias, wild and dehumanizing emotional convulsions of every variety, are diminishing factors in modern life. It would certainly be too much to claim that we are beyond the danger of their recurrence. Here and there in peculiar cir cumstances and under the unfortunate leadership of men who have extraordinary power to arouse emotion without any counter-balancing appeal to the intelligence, religious excitements may yet be developed to the point of demoraliz ing excess. But we should be encouraged by the fact that such mental excitements, as in more primitive times occa sionally swept the land like a West Indian storm, become less intense, less extensive and of shorter duration. Nor should we fear that genuine religious revivals will become a thing of the past. Man will always be an emotional being, but in his upward development his emotions will be more thor oughly incorporated in the unity of a rational personality and organized into sentiments and ideals. Communities will always be subject to waves of common feeling, which will prompt to united action ; but collective action will be less spasmodic and irregular, more rational, ethical and or derly. The religious revival will more than gain in moral significance and social value all that it loses in wild ex travagance and abnormal demonstration. 1 1 Corinthians, Chap. 14.
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