, the founder of the Salvation Army, considers
that the first vital step in saving outcasts consists in
making them feel that some decent human being cares enough for
them to take an interest in the question whether they are to
rise or sink."[71:12]

The new state is here one of courage and hope stimulated by the glow of
friendly interest. The convert is no longer "out in the cold." He is
told that the world wishes him well, and this is brought home to him
through representations of the tenderness of Christ, and through the
direct ministerings of those who mediate it. But somehow the convert
must be persuaded to realize all this. He must _believe_ it before it
can mean anything to him. He is therefore urged to pray--a proceeding
that is at first ridiculous to him, since it involves taking for granted
what he disbelieves. But therein lies the critical point. It is peculiar
to the object in this case that it can exist only for one who already
believes in it. The psychologists call this the element of
"self-surrender." To be converted a man must somehow suffer his
surroundings to put into him a new heart, which may thereupon confirm
its object. Such belief is tremendously tenacious because it so largely
creates its own evidence. Once believe that "God, in the long run, means
kindness by you," and you are likely to stand by it to the end--the more
so in this case because the external evidence either way is to the
average man so insufficient. Such a belief as this is inspired in the
convert, not by reasoning, but by all the powers of suggestion that
personality and social contagion can afford.

[Sidenote: Piety.]

Sect. 23. The psychologists describe _piety_ as a sense of unity. One
feels after reading their accounts that they are too abstract. For there
are many kinds of unity, characteristic of widely varying moods and
states. Any state of rapt attention is a state of unity, and this occurs
in the most secular and humdrum moments of life. Nor does it help
matters to say that in the case of religion this unity must have been
preceded by a state of division; for we cannot properly characterize any
state of mind in terms of another state unless the latter be retained in
the former. And that which is characteristic of the religious sense of
unity would seem to be just such an overcoming of difference. There is a
recognition of two distinct attitudes, which may be more or less in
sympathy with one another