Page:Psychology and preaching.djvu/176

 158 PSYCHOLOGY AND PREACHING

as belief. Evil habits of life often give rise to feelings which repel a religious conception of the world, and in fluence the intellect to question the existence of a holy Su preme Being and the moral order of the world. The debauche, the thief, the murderer have powerful reasons, not of the intellectual but of the emotional type, for wishing that the world were without a moral meaning or a moral ruler; and in this region of the mental life, more absolutely than in any other, &quot; the wish is father to the thought.&quot;

V. In conclusion, some paragraphs must be given to the consideration of the practical question toward which this discussion has looked from the. beginning, namely, the preacher s relation to religious doubt. The question as it relates to the preacher s own doubts cannot now be consid ered in detail; though it may be remarked in passing that his attitude toward other doubters will be necessarily in fluenced by his own experience.

Every case of doubt is clearly a special problem and should be dealt with as such. Personal idiosyncrasies figure largely in each, and only general rules can be laid down. But in any case the preacher s primary duty is to understand. It is the especial function of preaching to present religious truth in such a way as to secure its intelligent and whole hearted acceptance, and through genuine belief to influence conduct in right directions. But if the preacher be igno rant of the nature of doubt and of the conditions under which it arises, his dealing with it will be unintelligent, misdirected and often disastrous. In general it may also be said that sympathetic treatment alone is appropriate and effective. Denunciation, while it has its limited function in preaching, should never be used to bring the doubter to the belief of the truth. The preacher who in such cases in dulges in denunciation, with the notion that he is following the example of Jesus, makes a capital mistake from which a knowledge of the nature of doubt would have saved him. Those cases which called forth the lightning-like denuncia tions of Jesus were typical examples, not of doubt, but of the

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