uggests to them all that she desires them to be.
It is interesting to note how perfectly adapted the rituals of historic
Christianity are to this end, of provoking the emergence of the
intuitive mind and securing a state of maximum suggestibility. The more
complex and solemn the ritual, the more archaic and universal the
symbols it employs, so much the more powerful--for those natures able to
yield to it--the suggestion becomes. Music, rhythmic chanting, symbolic
gesture, the solemn periods of recited prayer, are all contributory to
this, effect In churches of the Catholic type every object that meets
the eye, every scent, every attitude that we are encouraged to assume,
gives us a push in the same direction if we let it do its rightful work.
For other temperaments the collective, deliberate, and really ceremonial
silence of the Quakers--the hush of the waiting mind, the unforced
attitude of expectation, the abstraction from visual image--works to the
same end. In either case, the aim is the production of a special
group-consciousness; the reinforcing of languid or undeveloped
individual feeling and aptitude by the suggestion of the crowd. This,
and its result, is seen of course in its crudest form in revivalism: and
on higher levels, in such elaborate dramatic ceremonies as those which
are a feature of the Catholic celebrations of Holy Week. But the nice
warm devotional feeling with which what is called a good congregation
finishes the singing of a favourite hymn belongs to the same order of
phenomena. The rhythmic phrases--not as a rule very full of meaning or
intellectual appeal--exercise a slightly hypnotic effect on the
analyzing surface-mind; and induce a condition of suggestibility open to
all the influences of the place and of our fellow worshippers. The
authorized translation of Ephesians v. 19: "_speaking to yourselves_ in
psalms and hymns and spiritual songs," whatever we may think of its
accuracy does as it stands describe one of the chief functions of
religious services of the "hearty congregational" sort. We do speak to
ourselves--our deeper, and more plastic selves--in our psalms and hymns;
so too in the common recitation, especially the chanting, of a creed. We
administer through these rhythmic affirmations, so long as we sing them
with intention, a powerful suggestion to ourselves and every one else
within reach. We gather up in them--or should do--the whole tendency of
our worship and aspiration, and in