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 154 PSYCHOLOGY AND PREACHING

tions have been frequent in the history of religion, and especially so in recent times. Sometimes again, a man will entertain a belief of the credulous or the rational type, which has comparatively little influence upon his practical life until some powerful stimulation of his instinctive nature vivifies it and converts it into a vital assurance which pro foundly modifies his conduct. Many a man accepts the ex istence of God through social suggestion, or as a result of reasoning; but the belief remains to a large extent formal and inoperative so far as the more important aspects of con duct are concerned, until in some great crisis his vital long ing for divine support and fellowship is awakened and the realization of God becomes the source of his deepest satis faction and the controlling influence in his conduct.

The distinction between these types of belief must not be understood to imply that feeling is not operative in the formation of all of them. The distinction lies, first, in the different degrees and modes of influence exerted by the in tellect and the feelings in their formation; and, second, in the operation of a special class of feelings in the production of vital assurances. Feeling has comparatively little to do with what is accepted by the credulous mind under the in fluence of suggestion; although it is not an insignificant factor. In rational conviction the intellect plays a far more positive role than in credulity and a far less dominant role than in vital assurance; though feeling has a more definite and important part in it than in credulity. In vital assurance, as already indicated, a special class of feelings which spring from the deepest depths of our nature is the controlling factor. The sponsor, the guarantor, of vital assurance is neither external authority nor the intellectual system, but the fundamental needs of human nature voicing themselves in powerful emotions when deep instincts are excited.

One s real religious belief, stripped of all the remnants or accretions of credulity, belongs to the class of vital assur ances. It is the affirmation of the reality of the super-

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