Page:Psychology and preaching.djvu/388

 37O PSYCHOLOGY AND PREACHING

against the natural factors of the environment is largely re sponsible for it, although it should be kept in mind that other equally pervasive and perhaps as powerful forces are working in the same general direction.

The same tendency may be observed in the growing belief in man s control over his spiritual destinies. The evan gelistic appeal places more emphasis upon the decisions of the human will. One listening to the evangelists, today, is struck by the frequency and prominence of such phrases as &quot; making up one s mind,&quot; &quot; deciding for Christ &quot; and &quot; ac cepting or rejecting Christ &quot; ; and this even among those by whom the ancient doctrines of divine fore-ordination and unconditional election are still theoretically retained. Like wise, in the theory of preaching most widely current today, there is an unwonted emphasis upon the influencing of the human will as the definite objective in preaching. The notion is already widespread and rapidlly spreading both among the religious psychologists and the unsophisticated plain people that the religious life is fundamentally a matter of training and education, of surrounding the young with the proper human environment. Even among the most con servative there has been a decided increase in the sense of the importance of the educational process in the genesis and development of the religious life. The eternal destiny of the soul is, today, thought to be in the main the fruition of the individual s own volition plus the influences of his human environment certainly this is far more true now than in any previous age of the world. Heaven and hell are felt to be the issues of human choices and human condi tions, among those who maintain a definite and robust belief in hell for other general causes, mainly of a sociological character, have to a large extent weakened that belief in the popular mind. In general, man s relation to God is thought of as one of co-operation or of opposition far more than in primitive conditions ; and this growing sense of man s con trol over his spiritual destiny seems to have some connection with the consciousness of the range and power of human

�� �