Page:Psychology and preaching.djvu/317

 OCCUPATIONAL TYPES

eye of a physical pathologist and, therefore, sees many evi dences of physical weakness and deficiency where ordinary people see none, just because he is judging every man in the light of an ideal physical manhood; so the preacher habitually regards men from the moral and spiritual point of view and measures them against his moral and spiritual ideal.

Now, this ideal is likely to be far more influenced than he realizes by the fact that his function is, as a rule, per formed in and through an institution, the church. Every institutionalized function tends to develop an ideal of life into which loyalty to the institution enters as a very im portant factor; and the tendency is for that to become the chief factor in the ideal. For instance, the political leader comes quite naturally to judge the character of men by the standard of loyalty to the party. The jurist tends to have an exaggerated idea of the law as a standard of righteousness and of conformity to the law as the criterion of character. It is also true of the business man. Likewise the minister may easily fall into the habit of judging men too much ac cording to their attitude toward the church. His ideal of righteousness tends to become churchly. The man who attends church regularly, supports it with his means, and up holds the minister in his eccelsiastical function, is the good man. His dereliction in other relations is likely to be min imized. If in his church relations he is beyond criticism, does not the minister often treat his failures in other re spects as venial ? Certainly the preacher s ideal of righteous ness may, if he is not careful, be narrowed to the point of having its ethical vitality destroyed, by reason of the fact that he is engaged in an institutionalized function. Preach ing can hardly cease to be an institutionalized function ; but the preacher should with all his might resist having his ideal standard of conduct whittled down to mere loyalty to an institution, even though that institution be the church. This charge is so often and, it is to be feared, so truthfully made against preachers that it is well to emphasize that he is

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