Page:Psychology and preaching.djvu/224

 206 PSYCHOLOGY AND PREACHING

public speakers have been notable in this respect. Their powerful impulses enable them to stir an audience ; but their equally powerful self-restraint, while making the impression of reserved force, checks unhealthy excesses. They make a balanced and proportionate appeal to the emotional and in tellectual faculties of their hearers. They react with great energy upon their audiences, but they react upon the whole nature of those under their influence.

The preacher should aim above all else at eliciting a vol untary response from those to whom he appeals. The lawyer before a jury seeks a verdict that will acquit or con demn, according to his relation to the prisoner. He is not interested primarily in the mental processes by which the jurors reach the desired decision. He is interested in the jury only as an instrumentality by which an end is to be reached which lies wholly beyond them. Too often the pol itician also seeks to secure a response from the people with out any concern as to the character of the mental processes involved. This is the specific mark of the demagogue. Some times the same spirit of demagogism invades the pulpit and the minister seeks a response from his congregation with little solicitude as to the character of the mental processes by which he secures &quot; results.&quot; Visible results are the end. But he may not be aware that visible results secured by cer tain methods may be accompanied by very disastrous in visible results. The preacher is interested, and interested primarily, in the character of the psychical processes by which he gets results, because his &quot; jury &quot; is not a means to an ulterior end ; the development of character is his objective, if he is a true minister. If any ulterior motive sways him he should instantly leave the pulpit.

Popular applause, excited demonstrations, numerous pro fessions of religion do not necessarily imply that men have been stimulated to the intelligent consideration of great ethi cal and religious issues and to choices which have turned their lives in new directions. These visible results have often been accomplished in ways which hindered the char-

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