Page:Psychology and preaching.djvu/325

 OCCUPATIONAL TYPES 307

modern industry and the increasing consumption of goods, which results from the astonishing accumulation of wealth and the constantly rising standards of living, more than overcome, it seems, the tendency to the economy of human labour ; and as a consequence the labouring class is a steadily enlarging one. The problems of that class are coming to be the most acute in our present-day civilization. The con sciousness of this fact is evident in our political life, and not a whit less so in our religious life. The problem of the labouring man is a most imperative challenge to the preacher. If our preaching can not win him to a religious life, it is a failure in one of its most important tasks. If the preacher and the labouring man are drifting farther apart, as is so frequently alleged, it means that the ministry is unsuccessful in the effort to relate its message vitally to the most acute problem of our age. Surely the situation is grave enough to call for a most careful study of the labour ing man from the homiletical point of view.

i. Consider the conditions of his life as affecting his in tellectual development.

(i) As to his work.

(a) His labour is physical. It requires comparatively few thought reactions in his brain, but develops quite dis proportionately the motor centres and tends to form certain fixed habits of physical movement. It is long continued and exhausting. The margin of leisure is small and the margin of surplus energy is equally so. His work has, therefore, not only given him little preparation for intellectual occupa tion or entertainment in his brief leisure, but has in consid erable measure positively unfitted him for it. Furthermore, as industry becomes more extensive and machinery more in tricate, the tasks of labour are more and more subdivided, and each individual gives his attention to a more limited proc ess or phase of a process. Hence, in his labour he is not required to think the whole process. His intellectual fac ulties lack, therefore, even the stimulation that would come from &quot; thinking together &quot; or correlating all parts of the

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