PERSUASION VERSUS FORCE
T he world war has done more than anything which has
happened in the history of the world to show us the futility
of force as a means of influencing the human mind. Without going into details or recounting the instances which could be cited, we all know that force was the foundation upon which German philosophy has been built during the past forty years. The doctrine that might makes right was given a worldwide trial, and it failed.
The human body can be imprisoned or controlled by physical
force, but not so with the human mind. No man on earth can control the mind of a normal, healthy person if that person chooses to exercise his God-given right to control his mind.
The majority of people do not exercise this right. They go through the world, thanks to our faulty educational system, without having discovered the strength which lies dormant in their own minds. Now and then, something happens, more in the nature of an accident than anything
else, which awakens a person and causes him to discover where his real strength lies and how to use it in the development of industry or one of the professions. Result: a genius is born!
There is a given point at which the human mind stops rising or exploring unless something out of the daily routine happens to ‘‘push’’ it over this obstacle. In some minds, this point is very
low, and in others, it is very high. In still others, it varies between low and high. The individual who discovers a way to artificially stimulate his mind, arouse it, and cause it to go beyond this average stopping point frequently is sure to be rewarded with fame and fortune if his efforts are of a constructive nature.
The educator who discovers a way to stimulate any mind and cause it to rise above his average stopping point, without any bad reactionary effects, will confer a blessing on the human race second to none in the history of the world.We, of course, do not have reference to physical stimulants or narcotics. These will always arouse the mind for a time, but eventually they ruin it entirely. We have reference to a purely mental stimulant, such as that which comes through intense interest, desire, enthusiasm, love, etc.
The person who makes this discovery will do much toward solving the crime problem. You can do almost anything with a person when you learn how to influence his mind. The mind may be likened to a great field. It is a very fertile field which always produces a crop after the kind of seed which is sown in it. The problem, then, is to learn how to select the right sort of seed and how to sow that seed so that it takes root and grows quickly. We are sowing seed in our minds daily, hourly, nay, every second, but we are doing it promiscuously and more or less unconsciously. We must learn to do it after a carefully prepared plan, according to a well-laid-out design! Haphazardly sown seed in the human mind brings back a haphazard crop!
There is no escape from this result. History is full of notable cases of men who have been transformed from law-abiding, peaceful, constructive citizens to roving, vicious criminals. We also have thousands of cases wherein men of the low, vicious, so-called criminal type have been transformed into constructive, law-abiding citizens. In every one of these cases, the transformation
of the human being took place in the mind of the man.
He created in his own mind, for one reason or another, a picture of what he desired and then proceeded to transform that picture into reality. As a matter of fact, if a picture of any environment, condition, or thing be pictured in the human mind, and if the mind be focused or concentrated on that picture long enough and persistently enough, and backed up with a strong desire for the thing pictured, it is but a short step from the picture to the realization of it in physical or mental form.
This is a principle which we learned of in the lesson on auto-suggestion. The world war brought out many startling tendencies of the human mind which corroborate the work which the psychologist
has carried on in his research into the workings of the mind. The following account of a rough, uncouth, unschooled, undisciplined young mountaineer is an excellent case in point:
Fought for His Religion; Now Great War Hero Rotarians
Plan to Present Farm to Alva York,
Unlettered Tennessee Squirrel Hunter George W. Dixon
How Alva Cullom York, an unlettered Tennessee squirrel hunter, became the foremost hero of the American Expeditionary Forces in France forms a romantic chapter in the history of the world war. York is a native of Fentress County. He was born and reared among the hardy mountaineers of the
Tennessee woods. There is not even a railroad in Fentress County. During his earlier years, he was reputed to be a desperate character. He was wha was known as a gunman. He was a dead shot with a revolver, and his prowess with the rifle was known far and wide among the plain people of the Tennessee hills. One day, a religious organization pitched its tent in the community in which York and his parents lived. It was a strange sect that came to the mountains looking for converts, but the methods of the evangelist of the new cult were full of fire and emotionalism. They denounced the sinner, the vile character, and the man who took advantage of his neighbor. They pointed to the religion of the Master as an example that all should follow.
Alva Gets Religion
Alva Cullom York startled his neighbors one night by flinging himself down at the mourners’ bench.
Old men stirred in their seats, and women craned their necks, as York wrestled with his sins in the
shadows of the Tennessee mountains. York became an ardent apostle of the new religion. He became an exhorter, a leader in the religious life of the community and, although his marksmanship was as deadly as ever, no one feared him who walked in the path of righteousness.
When the news of the war reached that remote section of Tennessee and the mountaineers were
told that they were going to be ‘‘conscripted,’’ York grew sullen and disagreeable. He didn’t believe in killing human beings, even in war. His Bible taught him, ‘‘Thou shalt not kill.’’ To his mind, this was literal and final. He was branded as a ‘‘conscientious objector.’’ The draft officers anticipated trouble. They knew that his mind was made up, and they would have to reach him in some manner other than by threats of punishment.
War in a Holy Cause
They went to York with a Bible and showed him that the war was in a holy cause—the cause of liberty and human freedom. They pointed out that men like himself were called upon by the higher
powers to make the world free, to protect innocent women and children from violation, to make life
worth living for the poor and oppressed, to overcome the ‘‘beast’’ pictured in the scriptures, and to make the world free for the development of
Christian ideals and Christian manhood and womanhood. It was a fight between the hosts of
righteousness and the hordes of Satan. The devil was trying to conquer the world through his chosen agents, the Kaiser and his generals. York’s eyes blazed with a fierce light. His big hands closed like a vise. His strong jaws snapped. ‘‘The Kaiser,’’ he hissed between his teeth, ‘‘the beast! The destroyer of women and children! I’ll show him where he belongs if I ever get within gunshot of him!’’
He caressed his rifle, kissed his mother goodbye, and told her he would see her again when the Kaiser had been put out of business. He went to the training camp and drilled with scrupulous care and strict obedience to orders. His skill at target practice attracted attention. His comrades were puzzled at his high scores. They had not reckoned that a backwoods squirrel hunter would make fine material for a sniper in the front line trenches.
York’s part in the war is now history. General Pershing has designated him as the foremost individual hero of the war. He won every decoration, including the Congressional Medal, the Croix de Guerre, the Legion of Honor. He faced the Germans without fear of death. He was fighting to vindicate his religion for the sanctity of the home, the love of women and children, the preservation of the ideals of Christianity, and the liberties of the poor and oppressed. Fear was not in his code or his vocabulary. His cool daring electrified more than a million men and set the world to talking about this strange, unlettered hero from the hills of Tennessee.
His exploits have been given pages in newspapers and magazines. He captured a hundred Germans
and herded them as he would a flock of sheep in his native mountains. He shot Germans as he had
shot squirrels in Fentress County, and with as deadly aim. Some weeks ago, a Nashville newspaper sent a reporter to the mountain home of York’s mother to seek some tidings from the hero of two continents. The aged mother greeted the reporter kindly and replied that she had received a letter from Alva, that he was ‘‘getting along powerful well and getting mighty good pay.’’ He was a private.
All this strange talk about Alva was foreign to her. What was the use of it all? Suppose he had killed lots of Germans and captured more. That was what he went over for. She could not see why they should make such a fuss about the thing like that.
Eyes of World on Alva York
But the eyes of the world are riveted on the plain mountain boy from Tennessee. He presents a study
in those qualities that have come to the surface in great emergencies in American history, set up an
independent nation on the shores of the Western world, conquered the wilderness, and set the flag of
freedom in its most remote fastness. The International Rotary Club has inaugurated a movement to buy and dedicate a farm to the use of York during his lifetime. The editor of a Nashville newspaper, who is president of the Rotary Club of that city, has proposed that the youth from
Tennessee be awarded something more substantial than medals for his heroism. The deed to the farm
will be made out to President Wilson and then transferred to York, according to the plan proposed.
Fred T. Wilson of Houston, who was born in an adjoining county to Fentress, feels a personal pride
in the exploits of his old neighbor. He says he expects to be in Nashville when Alva is given his
homecoming reception. He predicts that the hero will be elected to political office in Tennessee if he
will agree to serve.
Here we have a case of a young mountaineer who, had he been approached from just a slightly different angle, undoubtedly would have resisted conscription and, likely as not, would have become so embittered toward his country that he would have become an outlaw, looking for an opportunity to strike back at the first chance. Those who approached him knew something of the principles
through which the human mind works. They knew how to manage young York by first overcoming the resistance that he had worked up in his own mind. This is the very point at which thousands of men, through improper understanding of these principles, are arbitrarily classed as criminals and treated as dangerous, vicious people.
Through suggestion, these people could have been handled as effectively as young York was handled and developed into useful, productive human beings. In your search for ways and means of understanding and manipulating your own mind so you can persuade it to create that which you
desire in life, let us remind you that, without a single exception, anything which irritates you and arouses you to anger, hatred, dislike, or cynicism is destructive and very bad for you.
You can never get the maximum, or even a fair average of constructive action out of your mind until you have learned to control it and keep it from becoming stimulated through anger or fear! These two negatives, anger and fear, are positively destructive to your mind, and as long as you allow them to remain, you can be sure of results which are unsatisfactory and way below what you are capable of producing.
In our chapter on environment and habit, we learned that the individual mind is amenable to the suggestions of environment, and that the minds of a crowd blend with one another in conformity with
the suggestion of the prevailing influence of the leader or dominating figure. Mr. J. A. Fisk gives us an interesting account of the influence of mental suggestion in the revival meeting which bears out the statement that the crowd mind blends into one, as follows.
Mental Suggestion in the Revival
Modern psychology has firmly established the fact that the greater part of the phenomena of the religious ‘‘revival’’ is physical rather than spiritual in its nature, and abnormally physical at that. The
leading authorities recognize the fact that the mental excitement attendant upon the emotional appeals of the ‘‘revivalist’’ must be classified with the phenomena of hypnotic suggestion rather than with that of true religious experience. And those who have made a close study of the subject believe that instead of such excitement tending to elevate the mind and exalt the spirit of the individual, it
serves to weaken and degrade the mind and prostitute the spirit by dragging it in the mud of abnormal psychic frenzy and emotional excess. In fact, by some careful observers familiar with the respective
phenomena, the religious ‘‘revival’’ meeting is classed with the public hypnotic ‘‘entertainment’’ as a typical example of psychic intoxication and hysterical excess.
David Starr Jorden, president of Leland Stanford University, says, ‘‘Whiskey, cocaine, and alcohol bring temporary insanity, and so does a revival of religion.’’ Professor William James, of Harvard University, the eminent psychologist, says, ‘‘Religious revivalism is more dangerous
to the life of society than drunkenness.’’
It should be unnecessary to state that in this article, the term revival is used in the narrower signification indicating the typical religious emotional excitement known by the term in question, and is not intended to apply to the older and respected religious experience designated by the same term, which was so highly revered among the Puritans, Lutherans, and others in the past. A standard reference work speaks of the general subject of the ‘‘revival’’ as follows.
‘‘Revivals, though not called by that name, occurred at intervals from apostolic times till the
Reformation, the revivalists being sometimes so unsympathetically treated that they left the church
and formed sects; while in other cases, and notably in those of the founders of the monastic orders,
they were retained and acted on the church as a whole. The spiritual impulse which led to the
Reformation, and the antagonistic one which produced or attended the rise of the Society of Jesus, were both revivalist. It is, however, to sudden increase of spiritual activity within the Protestant
churches that the term revival is chiefly confined.
The enterprise of the Wesleys and Whitefield in this country and England from 1738 onward was
thoroughly revivalist. Since then, various revivals have from time to time occurred, and nearly all
denominations aim at their production. The means adopted are prayer for the Holy Spirit, meetings
continued night after night, often to a late hour, stirring addresses, chiefly from revivalist laymen,
and after-meetings to deal with those impressed.
Ultimately it has been found that some of those apparently converted have been steadfast, others
have fallen back, while deadness proportioned to the previous excitement temporarily prevails.
Sometimes excitable persons at revival meetings utter piercing cries, or even fall prostrate. These
morbid manifestations are now discouraged and have, in consequence, become more rare.’’
In order to understand the principle of the operation of mental suggestion in the revival meeting, we must first understand something of what is known as the psychology of the crowd. Psychologists
are aware that the psychology of a crowd, considered as a whole, differs materially from that of the separate individuals composing that crowd. There is a crowd of separate individuals and a composite
crowd in which the emotional natures of the units seem to blend and fuse. The change from the first-named crowd to the second arises from the influence of earnest attention or deep emotional appeals or common interest.
When this change occurs, the crowd becomes a composite individual, the degree of whose intelligence and emotional control is but little above that of its weakest member. This fact, startling as it may appear to the average reader, is well known and is admitted by the leading psychologists of the day; and many important essays and magazines have been written thereupon. The predominant
characteristics of this ‘‘composite-mindedness’’ of a crowd are the evidences of extreme suggestibility, response to appeals of emotion, vivid imagination, and action arising from imitation—all of which are mental traits universally manifested by primitive man. In short, the crowd manifests atavism, or reversion to early racial traits. Gideon H. Diall, in his Psychology of the
Aggregate Mind of an Audience, holds that the mind of an assemblage listening to a powerful speaker undergoes a curious process called ‘‘fusion,’’ by which the individuals in the audience, losing their personal traits for the time being, to a greater or lesser degree, are reduced, as it were, to a single individual whose characteristics are those of an impulsive youth of twenty, imbued in general with high ideals, but lacking in reasoning power and will. Gabriel Tarde, the French psychologist, advances similar views.
Professor Joseph Jastrow, in his Fact and Fable in Psychology, says: ‘‘In the production of this state of mind, a factor, as yet unmentioned, plays a leading role, the power of mental contagion. Error, like truth, flourishes in crowds. At the heart of sympathy, each finds a home. No form of contagion is so insidious in its outset, so difficult to check in its advance, so certain to leave germs that may at any moment reveal their pernicious power, as a mental contagion—the contagion of fear, of panic, of fanaticism, of lawlessness, of superstition, of error. In brief, we must add to the many factors which contribute to deception, the recognized lowering of critical ability, of the owner of accurate observation, indeed, of rationality, which merely being one of a crowd induces.
The conjurer finds it easy to perform to a large audience, because, among other reasons, it is easier to arouse their admiration and sympathy, easier to make them forget themselves and enter into the uncritical spirit of wonderland. It would seem that in some respects, the critical tone of an assembly, like the strength of a chain, is that of its weakest member.’’
Professor Gustave Le Bon, in his The Crowd, says: ‘‘The sentiments and ideas of all the persons in the gathering take one and the same direction, and their conscious personality vanishes. A collective
mind is formed, doubtless transitory, by presenting very clearly marked characteristics. The gathering
has become what, in the absence of a better expression, I will call an organized crowd, or if the
term be considered preferable, a psychological crowd. It forms a single being and is subjected to
the law of the mental unity of crowds.
‘‘The most striking peculiarity presented by a psychological crowd is the following: Whoever be
the individuals that compose it, however like or unlike be their mode of life, their occupation, their
character, or their intelligence, the fact that they have been transformed into a crowd puts them in
possession of a sort of collective mind which makes them feel, think, and act in a manner quite different from that in which each individual of them would feel, think, and act were he in a state of isolation.
There are certain ideas and feelings which do not come into being, or do not transform themselves
into acts, except in the case of the individuals forming a crowd. In crowds, it is stupidity and not
mother wit that is accumulated. In the collective mind, the intellectual aptitudes of the individuals,
and in consequence their individuality, are weakened. ‘‘The most careful observations seem to prove that an individual immersed for some length of time in a crowd in action soon finds himself in a special state which most resembles the state of fascination in which the hypnotized individual finds himself.
The conscious personality has entirely vanished; will and discernment are lost. All feelings and thoughts are being in the direction determined by the hypnotizer. Under the influence of a suggestion, he will undertake the accomplishment of certain acts with irresistible impetuosity. This impetuosity is
the more irresistible in the case of crowds, from the fact that, the suggestion being the same for all the
individuals of the crowd, it gains in strength by reciprocity. Moreover, by the mere fact that he
forms part of an organized crowd, a man descends several rungs in the ladder of civilization. Isolated,
he may be a cultured individual; in a crowd, he is a barbarian—that is, a creature acting by instinct.
He possesses the spontaneity, the violence, the ferocity, and also the enthusiasm and heroism of
primitive beings, whom he further tends to resemble by the facility with which he allows
himself to be induced to commit acts contrary to his most obvious interests and his best known habits. An individual in a crowd is a grain of, and amid other grains of, sand, which the wind stirs up at will.’’Professor Frederick Morgan Davenport, in his Primitive Traits in
Religious Revivals, says:
‘‘The mind of the crowd is strangely like that of a primitive man. Most of the people in it may be far
from primitive in emotion, in thought, in character; nevertheless, the result tends always to be the same. Stimulation immediately begets action. Reason is in abeyance. The cool, rational speaker has little chance beside the skillful emotional orator. The crowd thinks in images, and speech must take this form to be accessible to it. The images are not connected, by any natural bond, and they take each other’s place like the slides of a magic lantern. It follows from this, of course, that appeals to the imagination have paramount influence.
‘‘The crowd is united and governed by emotion rather than by reason. Emotion is the natural bond,
for men differ much less in this respect than in intellect. It is also true that in a crowd of a thousand
men, the amount of emotion actually generated and existing is far greater than the sum which might
conceivably be obtained by adding together the emotions of the individuals taken by themselves.
The explanation of this is that the attention of the crowd is always directed either by the circumstances of the occasion or by the speaker to certain common ideas—as ‘salvation’ in religious
gatherings; and every individual in the gathering is stirred with emotion, not only because the idea or
the shibboleth stirs him, but also because he is conscious that every other individual in the gathering believes in the idea or the shibboleth, and is stirred by it, too. And this enormously increases the volume of his own emotion and, consequently, the total volume of emotion in the crowd. As in the case of the primitive mind, imagination has unlocked the floodgates of emotion, which on occasion may become wild enthusiasm or demoniac frenzy.’’
The student of suggestion will see that not only are the emotional members of a revival audience subject to the effect of the ‘‘composite-mindedness’’ arising from the ‘‘psychology of the crowd’’
and are, thereby, weakened in the resistive power, but that they are also brought under the influence of two other very potent forms of mental suggestion. Added to the powerful suggestion of authority
exercised by the revivalist, which is exerted to its fullest along lines very similar to that of the professional hypnotist, is the suggestion of imitation exerted upon each individual by the combined force of the balance of the crowd.
As E´ mile Durkheim observed in his psychological investigations, the average individual is ‘‘intimidated by the mass’’ of the crowd around him, or before him, and experiences that peculiar psychological influence exerted by the mere number of people as against his individual self. Not only does the suggestible person find it easy to respond to the authoritative suggestions of the preacher and the exhortations of his helpers, but he is also brought under the direct fire of the imitative suggestions of those on all sides who are experiencing emotional activities and who are manifesting them outwardly.
Not only does the voice of the shepherd urge forward, but the tinkle of the bellwether’s bell is also heard, and the imitative tendency of the flock, which causes one sheep to jump because one ahead of him does so (and so on until the last sheep has jumped), needs but the force of the example of a leader to start into motion the entire flock. This is not an exaggeration—human beings, in times of panic, fright, or deep emotion of any kind, manifest the imitative tendency of the sheep, and the tendency of cattle and horses to ‘‘stampede’’ under imitation.
To the student experienced in the experimental work of the psychological laboratory, there is the very closest analogy observed in the respective phenomena of the revival and hypnotic suggestion.
In both cases, the attention and interest are attracted by the unusual procedure; the element of mystery and awe is induced by words and actions calculated to inspire them; the senses are tired by monotonous talk in an impressive and authoritative tone; and finally, th suggestions are projected in a commanding, suggestive manner familiar to all students of hypnotic suggestion. The subjects in
both cases are prepared for the final suggestions and commands, by previously given minor suggestions, such as ‘‘stand up’’ or ‘‘look this way,’’ etc., in the case of the hypnotist, and by ‘‘All those who think so-and-so, stand up’’ and ‘‘All who are willing to become better, stand up,’’ etc., in the case of the revivalist.
The impressionable subjects are thus accustomed to obedience to suggestion by easy stages. And finally, the commanding suggestion, ‘‘Come right up— right up—this way—right up—come, I say, come, come, COME!’’ etc., which takes the impressed ones right off their feet and rushes them to the front, are almost precisely the same in the hypnotic experiment or se´ance, on the one hand, and the sensational revival on the other. Every good revivalist would make a good hypnotic operator, and every good hypnotic operator would make a good revivalist if his mind was turned in that direction.
In the revival, the person giving the suggestions has the advantage of breaking down the resistance of his audience by arousing their sentiments and emotions. Tales depicting the influence of mother,
home, and heaven; songs telling, ‘‘Yes, mother, I’ll be there’’; and personal appeals to the revered associations of one’s past and early life tend to reduce one to the state of emotional response, and render them most susceptible to strong, repeated suggestions along the same line. Young people and hysterical women are especially susceptible to this form of emotional suggestion.
Their feelings are stirred, and the will is influenced, by the preaching, the songs, and the personal
appeals of the co-workers of the revivalist. The most sacred sentimental memories are reawakened for the moment, and old conditions of mind are reinduced. ‘‘Where Is My Wandering Boy Tonight?’’ brings forth tears to many a one to whom the memory of the mother is sacred, and the preaching that
the mother is dwelling in a state of bliss beyond the skies, from which the unconverted child is cut off unless he professes faith, serves to move many to action for the time being. The element of fear is also invoked in the revival—not so much as formerly, it is true, but still to a considerable extent and more subtly. The fear of a sudden death in an unconverted condition is held over the audience,
and ‘‘Why not now—why not tonight?’’ is asked him, accompanied by the hymn, ‘‘Oh, Why Do You Wait, Dear Brother?’’ As Davenport says:
‘‘It is well known that the employment of symbolic images immensely increases the emotion of an
audience. The vocabulary of revivals abounds in them—the cross, the crown, the angel band, hell,
heaven. Now vivid imagination and strong feeling and belief are states of mind favorable to suggestion as well as to impulsive action. It is also true that the influence of a crowd, largely in sympathy with the ideas suggested, is thoroughly coercive or intimidating upon the individual sinner.
There is considerable professed conversion which results in the beginning from little more than this form of social pressure, and which may never develop beyond it. Finally, the inhibition of all extraneous ideas is encouraged in revival assemblies both by prayer and by speech. There is, therefore, extreme sensitiveness to suggestion. When to these conditions of negative consciousness on the part of an audience there has been added a conductor of the meetings who has a high hypnotic potential, such as John Wesley or Charles Grandison Finney, or who is only a thoroughly persuasive and magnetic personality, such as George Whitefield, there may easily be an influence exerted upon
certain individuals of a crowd which closely approaches the abnormal or thoroughly hypnotic.
When this point is not reached, there is still a great amount of highly acute, though normal,
suggestibility to be reckoned with.’’
The persons who show signs of being influenced are then ‘‘labored with’’ by either the revivalist or his co-workers. They are urged to surrender their will and ‘‘leave it all to the Lord.’’ They are told to
‘‘Give yourself to God, now, right now, this minute’’ or to ‘‘Only believe now, and you shall be saved’’ or ‘‘Won’t you give yourself to Jesus?’’ etc. They are exhorted and prayed with; arms are placed around their shoulders, and every art of emotional, persuasive suggestion is used to make the sinner ‘‘give up.’’
Edwin Diller Starbuck in his The Psychology of Religion relates a number of instances of the experiences of converted persons at revivals. One person wrote as follows: ‘‘My will seemed wholly at the mercy of others, particularly of the revivalist. There was absolutely no intellectual element. It was pure feeling. There followed a period of ecstasy. I was bent on doing good and was eloquent in appealing to others. The state of moral exaltation did not continue. It was followed by a complete relapse from orthodox religion.’’
Davenport has the following to say in reply to the claim that the old methods of influencing converts at a revival have passed away with the crude theology of the past: ‘‘I lay particular stress upon this matter here because, while the employment of irrational fear in revivals has largely passed away, the employment of the hypnotic method has not passed away. There has rather been a recrudescence and a conscious strengthening of it because the old prop of terror is gone. And it cannot be too vigorously emphasized that such a force is not a ‘spiritual’ force in any high and clear sense at all, but is rather uncanny and psychic and obscure. And the method itself needs to be greatly refined before it can ever be of any spiritual benefit whatever.
It is thoroughly primitive and belongs with the animal and instinctive means of fascination. In this bald, crude form, the feline employs it upon the helpless bird and the Indian medicine-man upon the ghost dance votary. When used, as it has often been, upon little children who are naturally highly suggestible, it has no justification whatever and is mentally and morally injurious in the highest degree. I do not see how violent emotional throes and the use of suggestion in its crude forms can be made serviceable, even in the cases of hardened sinners, and certainly with large classes of the population the employment of this means is nothing but psychological malpractice. We guard with
intelligent care against quackery in physiological obstetrics. It would be well if a sterner training and
prohibition hedged about the spiritual obstetrician, whose function it is to guide the far more delicate
process of the new birth.’’
Some who favor the methods of the revival, but who also recognize the fact that mental suggestion plays a most important part in the phenomena thereof, hold that the objections similar to those advanced in this article are not valid against the methods of the revival, inasmuch as mental suggestion, as is well known, may be used for good purposes as well as bad—for the benefit and uplifting of people as well as in the opposite direction. This being admitted, these good folks argue that mental suggestion in the revival is a legitimate method or ‘‘weapon of attack upon the stronghold of the devil.’’
But this argument is found to be defective when examined in its effects and consequences. In the first place, it would seem to identify the emotional, neurotic, and hysterical mental states induced by revival methods with the spiritual uplift and moral regeneration which is the accompaniment of true religious experience. It seeks to place the counterfeit on a par with the genuine—the baleful glare of the rays of the psychic moon with the invigorating and animating rays of the spiritual sun. It seeks to raise the hypnotic phase to that of the ‘‘spiritual-mindedness’’ of man. To those who are familiar with the two classes of phenomena, there is a difference as wide as that between the poles existing between them.
As a straw showing how the wind of the best modern religious thought is blowing, we submit the following, from the recent volume entitled Religion and Miracle, from the pen of Rev. Dr. George A.
Gordon, pastor of the New Old South Church of Boston: ‘‘For this end professional revivalism, what its organizations, its staff of reports who make the figures suit the hopes of good men, the system of
advertisements, and the exclusion or suppression of all sound critical comment, the appeals to
emotion and the use of means which have no visible connection with grace and cannot by any
possibility lead to glory, is utterly inadequate.
The world waits for the vision, the passion, the simplicity, and the stern truthfulness of the Hebrew
prophet; it awaits the imperial breadth and moral energy of the Christian apostle to the nations; it
awaits the teacher who, like Christ, shall carry his doctrine in a great mind and a great character.’’
While there have undoubtedly been many instances of persons attracted originally by the emotional excitement of the revival, and afterward leading worthy, religious lives in accordance with the higher
spiritual nature, still in too many cases the revival has exerted but a temporary effect for good upon the persons yielding to the excitement and, after the stress has passed, has resulted in creating an
indifference and even an aversion for true religious feeling. The reaction is often equal to the original action. The consequences of ‘‘backsliding’’ are well known in all churches, after the spirited revival.
In others, there is merely awakened a susceptibility to emotional excitement, which causes the individual to undergo repeated stages of ‘‘conversion’’ at each revival, and a subsequent ‘‘backsliding’’ after the influence of the meeting is withdrawn.
Moreover, it is a fact known to psychologists that persons who have given way to the emotional excitement and excesses of the typical revival are rendered afterward far more suggestible and open
to ‘‘isms,’’ fads, and false religions than before. The people flocking to the support of the various pseudo-religious adventurers and impostors of the age are generally found to be the same people who were previously the most ardent and excitable converts of the revival. The ranks of the ‘‘Messiahs,’’ ‘‘Elijahs,’’ and ‘‘Prophets of the Dawn,’’ who have appeared in great numbers in this country and
England during the past fifty years, have been recruited almost exclusively from those who have previously ‘‘experienced’’ the revival fervor in the orthodox churches. It is the old story of the training of the hypnotic subject. Especially harmful is this form of emotional intoxication among
young people and women. It must be remembered that the period of adolescence is one in which the mental nature of the individual is undergoing great changes. It is a period noted for peculiar development of the emotional nature, the sex nature, and the religious nature. The existing conditions at this period render the psychic debauchery of the revival, se´ance, or hypnotic exhibition particularly harmful.
Excessive emotional excitement, coupled with mystery, fear, and awe, at this period of life, often results in morbid and abnormal conditions arising in after life. As Davenport well says: ‘‘It is no time for the shock of fear or the agony of remorse. The only result of such misguided religious zeal is likely to be a strengthening in many cases of those tendencies, especially in females, toward morbidity and hysteria, toward darkness and doubt.’’
There are other facts connected with the close relation existing between abnormal religious excitement and the undue arousing of the sexual nature, which are well known to all students of the subject, but which cannot be spoken of here. As a hint, however, the following from Davenport will serve its purpose:
‘‘At the age of puberty, there is an organic process at work which pushes into activity at nearly the same time the sexual and the spiritual. There is no proof, however, of the causation of the latter by the
former. But it does appear to be true that the two are closely associated at the point in the physical
process where they branch in different directions, that at that critical period, any radical excitation of
the one has its influence upon the other. A careful consideration of this important statement will
serve to explain many things that have sorely perplexed many good people in the past, in
connection with revival excitement in a town, camp meetings, etc. This apparent influence of the
devil, which so worried our forefathers, is seen to be but the operation of natural psychological and
physiological laws. To understand it is to have the remedy at hand.’’
But what do the authorities say of the revival of the future—the new revival—the real revival? Let Professor Davenport speak for the critics—he is well adapted for the task. He says:
‘‘There will be, I believe, far less use of the revival meeting as a crass coercive instrument for
overriding the will and overwhelming the reason of the individual man. The influence of public
religious gatherings will be more indirect, more unobtrusive. It will be recognized that hypnotization and forced choices weaken the soul, and there will be no attempt to press to decision in so great a matter under the spell of excitement and contagion and suggestion. The converts may be few. They may be many. They will be measured not by the capacity of the preacher for administrative
hypnotism, but rather by the capacity for unselfish friendship of every Christian man and woman. But
of this I think we may be confident—the days of religious effervescence and passional unrestraint
are dying.
The days of intelligent, undemonstrative, and self-sacrificing piety are dawning. To do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with God—these remain cardinal tests of the divine in man. ‘‘Religious experience is an evolution. We go on from the rudimentary and the primitive to the rational and the spiritual. And, believe Paul, the mature fruit of the spirit is not the subliminal up rush, the lapse of inhibition, but rational love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness—self-control.’’
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