does he propose to do it? By calling for the legislative suppression of the most fruitful scientific theory of modern times; and the answer to that call takes the shape of mass-meetings of 60,000 benighted Bible students passing resolutions against the doctrine of evolution. Whoever in this country attempts to mold character by suppressing knowledge, or by clamping a lid on the honest discussion of knowledge and opinions, destroys the molds of character. A church, or a university, if there is any such, which attempts to suppress truth by a majority vote is not molding characters but nursing hypocrites and imbeciles. A religious movement of that sort multiplies the evils which it is intended to cure. It does nothing towards national integration. On the contrary it makes a new division in the nation with the prehistoric minds on one side, and the rest of mankind on the other.

Mr. Bryan is right: we need religion. But Mr. Bryan is wrong: we don't need his brand of religion. The objection to his brand of religion as a binder of our characters is simply this: we don't believe in it. That objection is final. There is no use in trying to bind us with what doesn't hold us. What is religion? Religion is that which binds us and holds us. Religion is that which at heart we do earnestly believe in, whatever it is.

You can't appeal to people effectively, except by reference to what they actually believe in. That is an elementary principle of religious tactics which any book agent could explain to Mr. Bryan. The

book agent comes to the door with a book which he intends to sell to the busy housewife for ten dollars. The busy housewife opens the door three inches and peers suspiciously through the crevice. Does the book agent say: "Good morning! Would you like to buy a book this morning?" Not at all. He knows perfectly well that the busy housewife doesn't believe in books. He keeps his book behind his back, and lifts his hat, and says: "Good Morning! Are there any children in the house?" He knows that the busy housewife believes in children. The door opens another three inches. Through the widening aperture, he asks her whether she is interested in her children, and whether she would deny them anything essential to their welfare. In two minutes he is sitting in the parlor, explaining that for ten dollars she can provide her child with the sum and substance of a university education.

The book agent may be a humbug; but his method is psychologically sound. Mr. Bryan may not be a humbug; but his method is psychologically unsound. The first step towards the awakening and development of a religious sense that will bind up and give unity of purpose to a generation which seems all at loose ends is like the first step of the book agent: it is an appeal to what this generation believes in. The effective first step for the religious leader is not to revive and vamp up the discredited basis of an old religion. Neither, on the other hand, is it to invent and attempt to promulgate a new religion. The important, the effective, thing to do,

is to discover, to uncover, the existing religion, and bring it to the surface and magnify it, recognizing it as the available binding and unifying power of the present generation. By discovering the existing religion, I mean discovering those principles and those objects which men work for, and spend their money for, and appear to find solid and permanent satisfaction in. Whatever these principles and objects may be, these are the molds upon which we must principally rely to shape our national type. When I attempt to formulate reasons for national gratitude, I say to myself: "Come, let us consider what people actually believe in. Let us be concrete and realistic. Let us not be afraid to begin small, nor to speak of apparently ignoble things, provided only that these things are believed in by the great mass of our people, and therefore serve to bind them together in a unity of desire. What are our people today cheerfully spending their money for ?" That is a good opening question; for the spending of money is a primary and tangible act of faith.

Well, all our people live in houses of one sort or another; and the cost of living in houses has risen tremendously since the time of the old oaken bucket, the Franklin stove, and the Saturday night tub. I asked an architect what part of the additional cost of living in houses was due to modern plumbing. He replied: "20%." I ask you: What is the significance of plumbing with reference to religion? Why, it is a great common bond of our civilization. It signifies that every civilized man,

woman and child in the United States believes in being clean, and in what is compatible with that, and disbelieves in being dirty, and in what conduces to being dirty. It is a little point, but it is something that we agree on. The whole pressure of the American community is towards being physically clean. It is a mark of the national type that we intend to produce. A man who is dirty is dirty alone: a man who is clean is clean with the community. It is a little point, perhaps, but I notice that Mr. Kipling, in his latest book, declares that he has not met one man who wore the Victoria Cross "who had not strict notions about washing and shaving and keeping himself decent on his way through the civilized world, whatever he may have done outside it." "Somehow," he adds, "the clean and considerate man mostly seems to take hold of circumstances at the right end." Well, there is something definite that we all believe in; and are thankful for.

I turned in another direction. I inspected the cost of doctor and dentist in the family budget. I noticed the movement of medical inspection and corrective gymnastics in the schools. I observed the wide advertising of institutions to insure health, to prevent middle-aged men and women from getting fat, to restore old men to their youth, and to enable people to live for a hundred years. I asked what the benevolent millionaires were expending their millions for; and I found that they were pouring their millions into research for the extinction

of pestilence, for the wiping out of hook-worm, and yellow fever, and tuberculosis, and cancer, and all forms of communicable disease. And it appeared to me obvious that the American people believe in health and youth, and are anxious and happy to invest heavily in them; and that they disbelieve in whatever is incompatible with health and the preservation of youth. There is another definite point for belief and religious gratitude.

I asked what was the most significant and farreaching enterprise upon which the states of the Union had expended large sums of money during the last thirty years. Obviously, I said, upon the public schools and the state universities, the most inspiring and hopeful phenomenon in America in our time. I don't need to dwell at all upon this. You all know what it means. It means that the American people believe in becoming intelligent just as fast as they can, and that they disbelieve in whatever is incompatible with that. And we may add, that somehow the intelligent man mostly seems to take hold of circumstances at the right end.

I turned in another direction. I asked what large new expenditure the business men have been going in for, from one end of the country to the other. The reply was: They are going in heavily for advertising, for publicity. They believe in publicity. Every enterprising business man wishes to be known to as many as possible of his hundred million countrymen. He wishes his product to be under the national limelight. He wishes as a business man