Page:Psychology and preaching.djvu/80

 62 PSYCHOLOGY AND PREACHING

meanings may constitute a basis of co-operation in doing some act, while in the larger meanings involved there may be differences or, in extreme cases, opposition. Sometimes it happens that two men agree that a certain thing ought to be done, and associate themselves together for doing it with entirely different or directly opposite ends in view. For instance, two men favour the extension of governmental control over corporations, or the fixing of a minimum wage ; the one because he regards such a measure as a distinct advance toward the socialistic organization of society, the other as a means of warding off socialism and maintaining society on a competitive basis. Two men contribute to foreign missions ; the one because he conceives it to be a process of spreading a higher civilization in this world and redeeming human society, the other in order that some indi vidual souls may be saved from the doom of a world which is beyond redemption. In many cases a wholly different or contradictory system of meanings constitutes the mental background of the same action.

We may see in the religious tendencies of our times a notable exemplification of the principles we have discussed. While the disintegration of authoritative creeds has pro ceeded apace, the groups originally united on the bases of creeds have maintained an effective unity. Institutional forms of activity have grown up in each communion, and while the bonds of common belief have been becoming looser and the actual theological unity has been crumbling, the members have found the institutional activities a practical basis of association and co-operation, although sometimes they engage in these activities with very different concep tions of their real significance. Moreover, as the theolog ical cohesion has become less marked, the emphasis has fallen more and more upon the ethical and social meaning of religion; and groups that once stood aloof from each other as solid theological unions, and whose creeds are now falling into a sort of anarchy of individual convictions, are

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