Page:Psychology and preaching.djvu/352

 334 PSYCHOLOGY AND PREACHING

honest, reliable, kind, just, generous? Does it improve them as members of society? If so, the religion is justi fied; if not, its worthlessness is demonstrated. He takes quite seriously the words of Jesus &quot; by their fruits ye shall know them.&quot; His ethical standards, as we have seen, are profoundly influenced and not always for the better by his economic relations and experience; but the ethical quality of life is for him the supreme test of any religion or creed. In the second place, he likes to see measurable, countable results of Christian effort. He is impressed by crowds at church, numerous additions, a full treasury, imposing church buildings, institutions established, etc. These are results which he can most readily estimate by the criteria he is accustomed to applying in business. It is an inevitable defect of this mental type that it is likely not to perceive and appreciate some of the higher and finer spirit ual qualities of character and achievement. It does not measure by the standard to which Browning appeals in Rabbi Ben Ezra:

Not on the vulgar mass

Called &quot; work &quot; must sentence pass,

Things done, that took the eye and had the price;

But all the world s coarse thumb

And finger failed to plumb,

So passed in making up the man s account;

All instincts immature,

All purposes unsure;

That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man s amount;

Thoughts hardly to be packed

Into a narrow act,

Fancies that broke through language and escaped:

All I could never be,

All men ignored in me,

That I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.

(c) After the foregoing it hardly need be added that he is not strongly sectarian. Sectarianism results from a

�� �