That the exercise of the emulative and lower animistic proclivities are
substantially useful for the devout purpose seems to be placed beyond
question by the fact that the priesthood of many denominations is
following the lead of the lay organizations in this respect. Those
ecclesiastical organizations especially which stand nearest the lay
organizations in their insistence on practical religion have gone some
way towards adopting these or analogous practices in connection with the
traditional devout observances. So there are "boys' brigades," and other
organizations, under clerical sanction, acting to develop the emulative
proclivity and the sense of status in the youthful members of the
congregation. These pseudo-military organizations tend to elaborate and
accentuate the proclivity to emulation and invidious comparison, and so
strengthen the native facility for discerning and approving the relation
of personal mastery and subservience. And a believer is eminently a
person who knows how to obey and accept chastisement with good grace.
But the habits of thought which these practices foster and conserve
make up but one half of the substance of the anthropomorphic cults.
The other, complementary element of devout life--the animistic habit
of mind--is recruited and conserved by a second range of practices
organized under clerical sanction. These are the class of gambling
practices of which the church bazaar or raffle may be taken as the type.
As indicating the degree of legitimacy of these practices in connection
with devout observances proper, it is to be remarked that these raffles,
and the like trivial opportunities for gambling, seem to appeal with
more effect to the common run of the members of religious organizations
than they do to persons of a less devout habit of mind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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