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 26O PSYCHOLOGY AND PREACHING

scrupulous as to method, or of desperation, born of con scious inability to carry one s point by the appeal to reason.

In the light of the foregoing discussion a question of very great importance demands an answer: Is the process of psychic fusion conducive to genuine religious experience? A categorical and unqualified answer can not be given with out conflict with the facts. High pressure revivals do result in the improvement of the lives of some persons; but it is quite certain that they result in an equally permanent de moralization and spiritual depreciation of other lives just as we should expect. Not a few people have become so utterly perverted in the moral habits contracted in their in dividual experience, and so abnormally subject to grossly evil impulses, that a powerful counter-stimulation of their emotional nature is necessary in order that better impulses may have any chance at all to influence their choices. But, of course, there is always danger, when this counter-stimula tion is applied through the collective emotion of the crowd, that the reason of the person in question, as well as that of others, will be so paralysed that the resulting action will not represent choice at all; and then there is every reason to believe that the effect upon character is demoralizing, and only demoralizing. The moral pervert returns to his wal lowing in the mire, and his last state is worse than the first ; and meanwhile others who are more normal and who are swept by the same tide of irrational emotion into false pro fessions and relations are religiously &quot; queered &quot; for the rest of their lives. It is probable, however, that a moderate de gree of emotional fusion is usually helpful in religious expe rience. It is quite possible that men in their individual experience have acquired habits or inclinations which, in part, render them inaccessible to spiritual influences. In other words, there may be wrought into the elements that differentiate them from others dispositions or tendencies which render them unresponsive to the spiritual call. It would seem, then, that the fusion process by which the differential elements of their personalities are reduced in

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