power of social suggestion. They thus exert an influence that is contrary to the public welfare and contrary to morality. Sixth, elements in the standards of family rivalry that are determined in the first instance by public welfare considerations may be perverted, as objects of rivalry, to such an extent as to promote behaviour that is contrary to the public welfare. Philanthropy thus degenerates when families rival one another in conspicuous philanthropy. The motive of family rivalry is not, therefore, an intelligent motive for social valuation. This involves a conception of the family as an organization for the self-development of its members and for the performance of certain obligations to the community and the state.17 Valuations of behaviour should be made from this point of view and not from the satisfaction the behaviour promises rivalrous impulses. The highest type of family development is that of the family that is individualistic not by reason of its egoism but by reason of its idealism. Between these two types of family there is an inevitable conflict. 17 Ellwood, An Introduction to Social Psychology, 135-136. CHAPTER XXI T THE CONFLICT OF INTERESTS IN ECCLESIASTICAL RELATIONS HE essential ecclesiastical relation is that between minister and people. The God of the Christian is a God of love, and the essential function of the Christian religion is to save man from the control of his egoistic dispositions by giving him personal contact with the God of Love,1 and by fostering those changes in social relations and institutions that are in line with this development of personality.2 The genuine Christian minister exemplifies before the people this effect of Christianity on personality. He is a man of sympathetic intuitions, breadth of view and entire fearlessness on behalf of public welfare interests. 3 This type of clergyman often becomes such through deliberately making a great and intelligent sacrifice on behalf of public welfare interests. The sacrifice means the inhibition of egoistic dispositions for altrusitic. Perhaps he had to give up a high position in the church and take a lowly position, or to suffer even more, thus did he become unworldly through the same experience as his Master. It is this experience of power to control worldly ambition, to banish fear, to choose the hard road, that gives a sense of a power, not his own, that makes for righteousness. The meaning of this power is learned by a progressive experience of it. There is a sense of exaltation, of being saved from the egoistic interests that other men struggle to realize. Hence the renunciation of the monastic orders their plain living, their indifference to the admiration of the other sex, to worldly position, to the praise of men. This power of control gives the Christian a sense of being saved, of freedom in the pursuit of a lofty ideal. He realizes that his salvation has a solid basis in personal experience and his one desire is that others might have the same 1 Brent, Leadership, Lecture, II, "The Power of the Single Motive." 2 The Committee on the War and the Religious Outlook, The Church and Industrial Reconstruction. 8 Hocking, Human Nature and Its Remaking, 20, Chs. XL-XLIII. |