332 PSYCHOLOGY AND PREACHING
phasized as they now are in personal relations. As the business man s life has become sharply differentiated into corporate and personal conduct, the ethical standard of the former has in some important respects fallen while that of the latter has on the whole probably risen. As man to man, he is, as a rule, lenient or even indulgent in his judgment of others, courteous, kind, self-sacrificing, ready to help, with an ear always open to the cry of need. Never, per haps, have these virtues been so much in the ascendant in personal relations as they are today when the business man is dominant. Of course, it will be borne in mind that the effort is to characterize a class, a type to which there are many individual exceptions. But certainly as general prop ositions the foregoing statements can hardly be called in question.
(3) Most important of all, for our purpose, are the business man s religious peculiarities. These, however, may be considered as the outgrowth of his intellectual and moral qualities.
(a) He is non-mystical. Being accustomed to deal with things which are substantial and can be measured, weighed, counted, there is little mysticism in his mental make-up. Its vagueness baffles and offends him. To the type of mind formed in economic-experience, mystical-experience appears unreal, a dealing with shadows nay, not shadows, for shadows are cast by substantial realities but rather ghostly figments, to which nothing actual corresponds. The typical economic man would spell the word a little differently, but to his mind more appropriately misticism. And yet mysti cism is very deeply rooted in the mental life of man, and it is very hard to eradicate it altogether; and sometimes it co exists with a decidedly economic turn of mind. But strictly speaking it is not consistent with this mental type; and I venture to affirm that the mystical type of Christian experi ence has declined in proportion as the economic type of mind has become general and dominant.
(b) He is non-theological. To him theology seems the-
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