Page:Psychology and preaching.djvu/249

 SUGGESTION 23!

to prevent any definite contrary ideas from becoming con scious, until the suggested idea by this cumulative effect can over-bear this blind obstruction. If in this way the obstruction is not soon overcome ; if the process of sugges tion is discontinued so long as to lose cumulative motor effect, one, or perhaps both, of two results will follow. First, the law of habit will intervene to give greater relative strength to the resistance. We say sometimes that a man has become &quot; hardened &quot; to certain influences. His re sistance may not be based upon any definite reasons but he becomes more and more indifferent to such appeals. This blind momentum of his nature, having prevailed again and again against counter influences, has become practically immovable. Second, if the suggestion fails and is discon tinued, there is always the probability that ideas which at first were operative only in a sub-conscious way will rise into clear consciousness and become far more powerful as definite reasons against the suggestion. But this leads to the consideration of a matter which we must now dis cuss in some detail.

Repetition should not be continuous nor occur with too much regularity. In the first place, it soon becomes, under ordinary conditions, intolerably wearisome. I have heard of an evangelist whose entire discourse on one occasion con sisted of the repetition, in different tones of voice and with endless variations of emphasis, of one single passage of scripture which described in terrible terms the perdition of the wicked. The effect was said to have been startling. But in that particular case the religious excitement had been running high for several days and the conditions were extraordinary. Ordinarily such a procedure would prove a fiasco. In the second place, the repetition, if it occurs at such regular intervals as to attract attention to the regu larity, will cause a diversion which will tend to destroy the effect; and it will also excite the suspicion of artful design, which will prevent success. The oftener it recurs regularly without success, the less will be its power. The law of

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