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 VERSITY OF

 
 RELIGIOUS LIFE 
 I]N^ AMERICA
 
 RELIGIOUS LIFE 
 IN AMERICA 
 
 A RECORD OF PERSONAL OBSERVATION 
 
 BY 
 
 EKIN^EST HAMLm ABBOTT 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE OUTLOOK COMPANY 
 
 1902
 
 Copyright, 1902, by 
 The Outlook Company 
 
 Published November, 1902 
 
 THE OEVINNE PRESe
 
 TO MY FATHER
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I The Woekingman and the Church . . 1 
 
 II The Church and the Workingman . . 25 
 
 III A Virginia Country Kector .... 51 
 
 IV Keligious Tendencies of the Negro . 79 
 V New Tendencies in the Old South . . 105 
 
 VI New Orleans 141 
 
 VII The Edge of the Southwest .... 171 
 
 VIII Kansas 197 
 
 IX The Eastern West 217 
 
 X The Revolt against Convention . . . 237 
 
 XI The Leaven and the Lump 261 
 
 XII New Sects and Old 283 
 
 XIII Colorado 311 
 
 XIV Satis Superque 339 
 
 vii
 
 PREFACE 
 
 IN the year 1901, at the request of The Out- 
 look, I undertook a journey through parts 
 of the United States for the purpose of making, 
 and recording in a series of articles, observa- 
 tions of religious life in America. This book is 
 the record of that journey. It is not a study in 
 methods of church activity. Nor is it a record 
 of scientific investigation. All possibility of 
 any result at all scientific was at once eliminated 
 by these two conditions of the trip — on the one 
 hand, the field traversed, covering eighteen 
 States of the Union scattered through a territory 
 bounded by Canada, the Atlantic Ocean, the 
 Gulf of Mexico, and the Kocky Mountains; on 
 the other hand, the time, scarcely more than 
 
 three months. Neither is this book an essay on 
 
 ix
 
 X PREFACE 
 
 the deeper spiritual life of the American people. 
 That there is such deeper spiritual life may, I 
 think, be fairly inferred from the facts here re- 
 corded, and its nature may in some degree be at 
 least surmised ; but it would be presumption to 
 suppose that in three months that could be dis- 
 covered in a nation by a traveler which in an 
 individual may be hidden for years from the 
 closest friend. Besides, it will be readily under- 
 stood by readers that it is generally the most 
 significant personal experiences which are not 
 subject for public discussion. We must, 
 then, be content, my readers and I, with cer- 
 tain deliberately accepted limitations: we 
 must not expect to find anything which lies 
 much below the surface, and we must not count 
 on establishing any great conclusion by scien- 
 tific method. Whatever value this book will 
 have must consist in the fact that it is a record 
 of occurrences pertaining to religion in America 
 in the first year of the twentieth century as 
 they were observed by one traveler — as indeed 
 they might have been observed by any one of 
 ordinary learning and discernment.
 
 PKEFACE xi 
 
 To the Rev. F. S. Spalding, rector of St. 
 Paul's Church, Erie, Pennsylvania, I am glad 
 to express my obligation for the idea which sug- 
 gested this journey of observation. Also to 
 the many who, by cordial hospitality, generous 
 offer of time, frank and unreserved expressions 
 of opinion and statements of fact, by coopera- 
 tion indeed in many ways, made it easy for me 
 to carry out the plan of the journey, I renew 
 my thanks. Kot least to the known and 
 unknown correspondents and critics who, by 
 letters, editorial comments, and in some cases 
 speeches, have supplied information on the sub- 
 jects described and discussed in my articles, I 
 acknowledge my indebtedness. This informa- 
 tion has been of value to me in revising the arti- 
 cles for their publication in the present form. 
 Words of commendation and corroboration 
 have in a few instances led me to change state- 
 ments from a tentative to an unqualified form. 
 Certain corrections have enabled me to make 
 changes in the direction of accuracy. And 
 adverse criticisms, some vehement, many in 
 good spirit, and a few delightfully brisk of wit.
 
 xii PEEFACE 
 
 have indicated a number of passages where the 
 meaning evidently was not perfectly clear or 
 the phraseology infelicitous. I have availed 
 myself of these criticisms in modifying or 
 amplifying some statements, so that they will 
 be, I think, more intelligible. 
 
 Now I invite my readers to set out upon that 
 road over which I have journeyed. I hope they 
 may have on the way some of the same enjoy- 
 ment and gain some of the same profit that I 
 
 received as I traveled over it. 
 
 E. H. A. 
 
 CORNWALL-ON-HUDSON, 
 
 October, 1902.
 
 THE WORKIKGMAN AND 
 THE CHURCH
 
 THE ayorki:n^gma^^ akd 
 
 THE CHURCH 
 
 "TTTHEK I reached Baltimore, four facts 
 T T were especially associated in my mind 
 with that city: that it is the center of Roman 
 Catholicism in America; that it is the seat of 
 Johns Hopkins University; that it is famous for 
 the beauty and mise elegante of its women ; and 
 that it is to terrapin and wild duck what Paris 
 is said to be to Americans — the place to which 
 they are sure to go if they are good. It was, 
 therefore, one of the last places to which I 
 should have chosen to go in order to study in- 
 dustrial problems. 
 
 I did stop at Baltimore for the purpose of 
 getting some information from the authorities 
 of the Roman Catholic Church and incidentally 
 of seeing the President of the University; as 
 
 3
 
 4 THE WORKINGMAN 
 
 a matter of fact, I remained several days be- 
 cause of the acquaintance I made with work- 
 ingmen of the city. Most unexpectedly, my 
 visit to Baltimore resulted in my getting one 
 of the points of view of the organized laborers 
 for which I had no such chance in any other 
 place. 
 
 The General Secretary of the Baltimore 
 Young Men's Christian Association put me in 
 the way of meeting a number of men connected 
 with the labor unions of Baltimore. This fact 
 did not occasion in me such surprise as it would 
 have if it had occurred later in my trip, for 
 generally I found the secretaries of these Asso- 
 ciations out of touch (though I believe not out 
 of sympathy) with the workingmen. Here, 
 however, as in one or two other places, I found 
 an exception — a man of evident good breeding, 
 strong personality, businesslike ways, broad 
 sympathies, alert mind — the kind of true gen- 
 tleman we Americans are proud to think only 
 a democracy can produce. It was merely by 
 chance that I happened to go to the Associa- 
 tion, and, when I had met the Secretary, again 
 it was merely by chance that in conversation I 
 inquired about the relation of the workingmen 
 of Baltimore to the Association. He confessed
 
 AND THE CHURCH 5 
 
 that there were but few workingmen among 
 the members. Natm^ally, not many men who 
 worked all day with then* hands would be likely 
 to care for exercise in the gymnasium. A few 
 every year took advantage of the evening 
 classes. Almost none were engaged in the 
 distinctively religious work of the Association. 
 This was a matter of concern to him. That it 
 was due to indifference on his part was con- 
 tradicted by his whole spirit. The very fact 
 that our conversation naturally turned to the 
 subject of the religious feeling of the working- 
 man was sufficient proof of that. There seemed 
 to be a chasm between the Association and the 
 workingman which no devising on his part had 
 yet succeeded in bridging. How natural it was 
 for the workingmen to be found on the one side 
 of this chasm and the Association on the other 
 was brought out by what this Secretary told me 
 of a political controversy then still unsettled. 
 
 There was in Baltimore a rather strict Sun- 
 day law. It forbade almost all sales on Sunday ; 
 it not only prohibited the sale of liquor, but also 
 of cigars, soda-water, and newspapers at the 
 small shops. For some time that part of the 
 law pertaining to the small shops had remained 
 unenforced. Then began a movement for gen-
 
 6 THE WORKINGMAN 
 
 eral enforcement of law — one of those spasms 
 of public virtue characteristic of America — and 
 these small shops were shut up. Thereupon 
 came this curious division of public sentiment. 
 On the one side were the labor unions and what 
 is called the plain people, who desired that that 
 part of the law which pertained to the small 
 shops should be repealed. On the other side 
 were the churches and the ministers and the 
 Young Men's Christian Association, who de- 
 sired to maintain the law on the statute-books 
 unchanged. Here was an issue distinctly joined 
 between what we may call the religious party 
 and the unreligious party. The significance of 
 the issue is in the motives which lay behind the 
 two positions. The religious party did not have 
 any animosity toward the small shops — in fact, 
 they were not by any means united that the 
 shops should be closed; but they were concerned 
 in the preservation of an institution — the Puri- 
 tan Sabbath — and feared the weakening of the 
 law that maintained that institution, preferring 
 to leave the law as it was, partly unenforced, 
 than to endanger the whole law by the repeal of 
 any portion. This was the position of the Sec- 
 retary as he stated it to me. The other party 
 were in opposition to these rehgious people, not
 
 AND THE CHURCH 7 
 
 because they did not care for a quiet, uncom- 
 mercial Sunday, but because they cared more 
 for what they believed to be the welfare of the 
 small shopkeepers, who needed all the custom 
 they could get. Behind one party was the 
 power of the strong public opinion which in 
 America traditionally supports Sunday obser- 
 vance. Behind the other was that more nearly 
 universal power of men's direct interest in the 
 concerns of their neighbors. It is a mistake to 
 think that ethical considerations in every con- 
 flict of this sort are all on one side. Certainly 
 in this instance there was some moral earnestness 
 on each side; only on one side it was the con- 
 scious moral earnestness of men not altogether 
 enlightened fighting to preserve an institution, 
 while on the other side it was the unconscious 
 
 — but therefore perhaps the more praiseworthy 
 
 — moral earnestness of men not altogether 
 enlightened either, but imbued with strong 
 personal human sympathy. 
 
 Aroused as I was by the conversation I had 
 with the Secretary of the Young Men's Chi-is- 
 tian Association, I was glad to accept his sug- 
 gestion that he should put me in the way of 
 meeting some of the leaders among the work- 
 ingmen. For this purpose he introduced me
 
 8 THE WORKINGMAN 
 
 to a Methodist minister whom he knew to be 
 acquainted with members of the trades unions. 
 
 It was Monday morning, the time for minis- 
 ters' meetings. We went together to the gath- 
 ering-place of the Methodists. It was in a 
 small hall over a book-store. As we went up 
 the stairs I heard the sound of loud voices en- 
 gaged in what seemed to be rather violent 
 discussion. As I waited in the anteroom for 
 the Secretary to find the minister we came to 
 see, I could hear a man vigorously making 
 some sort of self-defense. He was frequently 
 interrupted by others in contradiction. When 
 the minister whom we had come to see ap- 
 peared, he at once apologized for the heat of 
 the discussion in which his " brethren " were 
 engaged. 
 
 It transpired that the controversy was about 
 a matter of "transfers." Some of the more 
 " desirable " churches of the city — that is, 
 churches paying the highest salaries and con- 
 taining the most influential people socially — 
 had been filled by men from outside the city. 
 Against this injustice, as they apparently 
 counted it, some of the ministers of less " desira- 
 ble" churches were protesting; they believed 
 that they themselves ought to have these more
 
 AND THE CHUECH 9 
 
 " desirable " places before outsiders. The al- 
 tercation in the hall became so noisy, and its 
 character so distracting, that we found it diffi- 
 cult to carry on any conversation in the ante- 
 room. I have been assured that such an 
 incident ought not to be considered as of com- 
 mon occurrence; and that, moreover, in the 
 eyes of those who value the Methodist polity 
 as an essential in efficient Christian activity, it 
 looked like a fight for principle. To the work- 
 ingman, however, whose interest in machinery 
 does not extend to the ecclesiastical variety, it 
 is not easy to explain that there is a moral dis- 
 tinction between a struggle by ministers for 
 higher salaries and a struggle by workingmen 
 for higher wages. One " outsider," at any 
 rate, thought he found in the controversy at 
 the Monday meeting some light on that chasm 
 between the workingman and the churches. 
 
 In less boisterous surroundings I had a brief 
 conversation with this minister whose distinc- 
 tion was that he actually was well acquainted 
 with some members of the labor unions and 
 understood their point of view. He was per- 
 fectly candid in his opinion that the chief 
 reason for the alienation of most workingmen 
 from the churches was the fact that, as a rule,
 
 10 THE WOEKINGMAN 
 
 ministers were not in sympathy with the under 
 dog. He instanced a great strike there in Bal- 
 timore on the trolley lines. In his opinion the 
 men had a grievance. The question of putting 
 vestibules on the cars was involved. The com- 
 pany brought a number of its employees into 
 the council-chamber where an investigation 
 was being carried on; and when the question 
 was put to them, their hands, bleeding from 
 exposure, went up — against the vestibules. 
 " A most flagrant piece of intmiidation ! " he 
 exclaimed. In spite of such incidents as this, 
 he said, there were only two other ministers 
 besides himself who publicly spoke of it — one 
 of whom was Dr. Babcock, honored there, as 
 later in ]^ew York, for his virility and human 
 feeling. The subject was brought up at the 
 conference, whereupon a " brother " {sic) 
 brushed it aside by saying, " It is our business 
 simply to preach the Gospel." The unions 
 felt, justly or unjustly, that the churches didn't 
 care. In brief, as he put it, he believed the 
 churches of all denominations were " weak 
 between Sundays." 
 
 I must confess this account of ministerial 
 professionalism intensified my dislike of the 
 cant term "brother." It made me wonder
 
 AND THE CHURCH 11 
 
 whether the workingmen would not be justified 
 in asking for a living parable in answ' er to the 
 question, " Who is my ' brother ' ? " Is it the 
 man who on his way to preach the Gospel 
 passes by on the other side? In a later chap- 
 ter I shall relate an experience of mine which 
 shows that in some places in America this 
 answering parable is being embodied in real 
 Ufe. 
 
 What the Methodist minister told me of the 
 workingman's feelings was confirmed in an in- 
 terview he enabled me to have with a former 
 President of the Baltimore Federation of 
 Labor. I was surprised to find that a leader 
 in this movement should seem to be so young 
 a man. He left his work on a linotype machine 
 in the middle of the afternoon to have a talk 
 with me. At first he was very cautious in what 
 he said, for he suspected from a remark I made 
 that I was on a poUtical errand in behalf of 
 Sunday legislation; but as soon as I cleared 
 that up he was very candid. 
 
 " Religion is in a bad way in Baltimore," he 
 said, with the air of a man who has bad news 
 to tell and has given up the attempt to break 
 it gently. " I say frankly that the churches do 
 not welcome the workingmen, and the work-
 
 12 THE WOKKINGMAN 
 
 i]:ignien do not care for the churches. The 
 churches are made up mostly of employers, 
 and they are trying to get all they can out of 
 their men, and don't care for them as men at 
 all." 
 
 " Granted all that," said I, passing by with- 
 out comment the very obvious exaggeration, 
 " suppose that the churches really should want 
 to do something for the workingmen, what 
 would you suggest ? " 
 
 " Why," he replied, quite as eager to propose 
 a positive plan as he was vehement in his 
 censure — " why don't they give lectures on 
 industrial questions on Sunday ? Why don't 
 ministers send out circulars to the leaders of 
 the various unions saying something like this: 
 ' Next Sunday I am going to give a talk on 
 arbitration, and am going to have a number of 
 the most influential capitalists present in the 
 congregation, and I want every union in the 
 city represented there also. I do not intend to 
 take sides one way or the other.' " 
 
 " Would such a proposition be welcomed by 
 the unions ? " 
 
 " I think decidedly it would. But then the 
 ministers in this city would never do such a 
 thing. When there is any strike or labor diffi-
 
 AND THE CHURCH 13 
 
 culty before the public, you do not hear of any 
 sermons about it; the ministers are afraid to ex- 
 press an opinion, for those churches are under 
 the control of the employing classes. You 
 hear sermons about everything else, but you 
 don't hear any sermons about the working- 
 man." 
 
 "I suppose workingmen would expect ser- 
 mons to uphold Socialism? " 
 
 " I don't believe in any ' ism,' " was his 
 prompt reply. " I try to be liberal." His con- 
 ception of Socialism I inferred from his adding: 
 " There are a lot of Polish Hebrews in Balti- 
 more who are Debs men, but they are about 
 all there is to the Social Democracy." 
 
 As to ministers he was as explicit as he was 
 with regard to churches : 
 
 " They go where they get the most salaries. 
 If they can get two hundred dollars more, they 
 go there." 
 
 After my experience at the ministers' meet- 
 ing I was not in the mood to deny that; but I 
 asked : " Is that not true of workingmen as 
 well? Does not the workingman go where he 
 gets more wages? Why shouldn't the minister 
 have the same right?" 
 
 "I don't blame any man," he replied, "for
 
 14 THE WOEKINGMAN 
 
 getting all he can; but when he does it, I want 
 him not to pretend to go for some other reason ; 
 for I call that getting money under false pre- 
 tenses." 
 
 When in the course of our conversation we 
 reverted to the Sunday law, he represented the 
 workingman as considering it an interference 
 with his rightful mode of recreation. 
 
 "To the workingman Sunday is the day 
 when he has a chance to get rest and recrea- 
 tion, particularly Sunday afternoon, when he 
 goes with his family to some of these resorts 
 and spends the afternoon there. By the way, 
 why don't the ministers go to the resorts them- 
 selves? The workingmen are down there, and 
 there isn't one who wouldn't be glad to have 
 a minister come down and hold service and 
 preach. Workingmen all believe in God and 
 justice, but they want sympathy, and feel that 
 they don't get it from the ministers. Another 
 thing the ministers can do is to get a list of the 
 labor unions, and then request the secretary of 
 each union for permission to attend the union 
 meeting, and the union would be glad to have 
 him come and address them and preach on any 
 matter — only not about heaven." 
 
 " What, in your opinion, is the Young Men's
 
 AND THE CHUKCH 15 
 
 Christian Association worth to workingmen?" 
 was another question I asked. 
 
 ""Well," he replied, "it costs six dollars a 
 year to belong, and there's not much charity 
 in that." 
 
 "But do the workingmen want charity?" 
 "l!N^ot a bit of it!" was his quick rejoinder. 
 For a moment, however, he seemed nonplussed. 
 Then he added, as if he wished to remove 
 any impression of antagonism he may have un- 
 intentionally made : " You could really educate 
 the workingmen up to recognizing the advan- 
 tages that such an organization as the Young 
 Men's Christian Association does offer. After 
 all, you cannot do anything unless you tackle 
 the young boys. And let me tell you," he con- 
 tinued, in the most deliberative strain, " that is 
 the strength of the Catholic Church; they get 
 hold of the children, and then put into their 
 ignorant heads the idea that they must contrib- 
 ute to the Church so much for St. Peter's pence 
 and so much for other things; and then they 
 scrape and starve and even steal to do it; and 
 they teach them also that they must confess 
 and so on, and as a consequence when they 
 grow up they are in the Church. You've got 
 to get hold of the young boys. Now, I've got
 
 16 THE WOEKINGMAN 
 
 two young boys, and I've made them join the 
 Young Men's Christian Association." 
 
 The opinions expressed by this labor leader 
 may, I think, be considered fairly representative 
 of the ordinary labor union member's views 
 on the institutions of Christianity. For three 
 reasons. First, there was nothing very origi- 
 nal about them. They came to be familiar to 
 me by repetition in conversations I had with 
 others. Second, this man, as I ascertained 
 later, was ambitious to be a political leader 
 among workingmen, and as he knew he was 
 "talking for publication" (and, by the way, 
 was rather pleased to do so), it may safely be 
 assumed that he was discreet in his account of 
 what workingmen thought. Third, in compar- 
 ing him with the other labor leaders of the city 
 whom I met at a meeting of the Federation of 
 Labor, I should say that both by temperament 
 and by training he was best qualified to state 
 their case with a minimum of intrusive "personal 
 equation." In reporting his views, I do not 
 venture to pass any judgment upon their accu- 
 racy. So far as they are based upon fact, they 
 call attention to conditions which it is the func- 
 tion of the Church to change. So far as they 
 are based upon ignorance of the real attitude of
 
 AND THE CHUKCH 17 
 
 the Church, they call attention to misapprehen- 
 sions which it is the function of the Church to 
 remove. Misapprehensions are quite as potent 
 in alienating men from one another as outward 
 conditions can be. 
 
 At the meeting of the Federation of Labor, 
 to which I have just referred, I was most cor- 
 dially welcomed. Upon the request of several 
 labor leaders and sympathizers, I was per- 
 suaded, rather against my own instincts, to put 
 some questions from the floor. While I waited 
 my turn I was given a seat on the platform. 
 The meeting was characterized by what seemed 
 to me acerbity of feeling, not only in regard 
 to capitalists, but in one instance in regard to 
 one of the federated labor unions. Although 
 it was an open meeting for the transaction of 
 routine business, I felt as if I were at a council 
 of war. After I had put my questions, all per- 
 taining to the workingman and the Church, a 
 delegate rose and, with great dignity and cour- 
 tesy, called the attention of the delegates to 
 the fact that it was contrary to the constitution 
 to discuss any political or sectarian question 
 at a meeting of the Federation. I hastened 
 to remove, if possible, the impression of secta- 
 rianism which the wording of one of my ques-
 
 18 THE WOEKINGMAN 
 
 tions had unfortunately created. A number of 
 the delegates argued in favor of a discussion 
 of the questions ; but the decision was adverse 
 to a discussion. The incident, however, was by 
 no means fruitless. It was noteworthy for two 
 things: first, the disappearance of all sign of 
 acrimony during the presentation and discussion 
 of the questions about religion; second, the un- 
 mistakable and almost eager interest which the 
 delegates evinced throughout. 
 
 After the meeting a number of the men came 
 up and made some further inquiries about my 
 questions. I made special acquaintance with 
 one of these who had been foremost in attempt- 
 ing to have my questions discussed. I had 
 noticed his face and mien as being exceptional 
 for his surroundings. This was partly due, as 
 I discovered, to the nature of his trade, the 
 finer part of photolithography. He accompa- 
 nied me on my way from the hall to the hotel 
 where I had a room. He was greatly inter- 
 ested in the object of my trip, and especially 
 in its bearing on the religion of workingmen. 
 He was inclined to be disheartened concerning 
 industrial conditions, but his discontent was 
 not that of a pessimist, but rather that of an 
 idealist. He told me much about himself, and
 
 AND THE CHUKCH 19 
 
 as he talked his ideahsm showed itself not only 
 in language but also in a quiet emphasis of 
 look and gesture. 
 
 He had been brought up a Roman Catholic. 
 He had found himself, however, remonstrating 
 against the emphasis which that Church laid on 
 patient endurance of wrong. This was con- 
 trary to all his instincts as an American work- 
 ingman. As a workingman he was conscious 
 of unjust social conditions; as an American he 
 was conscious of his right to struggle against 
 them. He could not believe a man could cure 
 injustice by patiently enduring it. He there- 
 fore not only broke away from the Church, but 
 arrayed himself against it as the chief power 
 which paralyzed men's efforts for an ideal 
 social order. He felt, too, the inadequacy and 
 even the perverseness of labor unions as a force 
 for social improvement. "A few years ago," 
 he said, " I was active in the Federation of 
 Labor ; but now, though I am a delegate, I can- 
 not work in the organization with any enthu- 
 siasm. It seems as if workingmen were bound 
 to injure themselves by their own actions. 
 They are blindly selfish and bitter and short- 
 sighted in their organized procedure. They 
 have no proper, suitable, and intelligent lead-
 
 20 THE WORKINGMAN 
 
 ers. This is clue to conditions under which 
 they work. They have no chance to educate 
 themselves or to train leaders from their own 
 ranks. Now, in an ideal state of society that 
 woukl not be possible." This brought him to 
 an enthusiastic statement of his belief in the 
 Single Tax. Henry George was his prophet, 
 and Henry George's idealistic political economy 
 was his theology. He had reacted from the 
 materialism which he saw apparently govern- 
 ing the workingmen with whom he was asso- 
 ciated. In place of it he had this conviction, 
 which, more than anything else he said, may 
 be called his creed: " I believe that mind con- 
 trols matter." 
 
 When I asked him for his judgment of the 
 saloon, his idealism was very evident in his an- 
 swer: " Saloons do harm to the workingmen. 
 They not only create intemperance, but injure 
 men who are temperate. For instance, most of 
 the labor unions meet in halls that are provided 
 by saloon-keepers, who charge nothing for their 
 use. After a labor union meeting is over, all 
 the men go down to the saloon and conscien- 
 tiously remain there and pay for drinks in order 
 to remunerate their benefactor. A great many 
 men who would otherwise not drink at all be-
 
 AND THE CHURCH 21 
 
 come intemperate through this conscientious 
 attempt to repay obhgations." 
 
 The fact that a meeting-place was provided 
 for the unions was a good thing? Yes, he was 
 sure of that. The social element involved 
 helped to further comradeship and harmony? 
 Yes. Was there anything to take the place 
 of the saloon in this service to organized labor? 
 1^0, there was not, and he did not see how there 
 could be. Could a church make provision for 
 a hall and good-fellowship? ISTo, he thought 
 that would be savoring too much of charity — 
 it would come from the outside; it would be 
 unnatural. " Since, then, this is a necessary 
 service," I inquired, " and the saloon is doing 
 it, and you can imagine no efficient substitute, 
 is not the saloon a benefit to the workingman, 
 after all?" 
 
 "Well," was his answer, "it is practically, 
 but not ideally. Perhaps I think too much of 
 ideal states of society. When I speak of a thing 
 as right or wrong, I think of it as it ought to 
 be, not as it is." 
 
 Though politically ambitious and in a small 
 way successful, he had put his idealism into his 
 politics. Though a Democrat and a believer 
 in Bryan, he refused a nomination that was
 
 22 THE WOEKINGMAN 
 
 tendered to him because its acceptance would 
 involve his being expected to vote for Gorman, 
 in whom he had no confidence. 
 
 Strangely, the idealism which he applied so 
 invariably to his moral conceptions and to his 
 politics he had never apparently attempted to 
 apply to religion. In his mind was so firmly 
 embedded his youthful conception that religion 
 was a visible wafer, a smell of incense, an audi- 
 ble confession, a life of submission to material- 
 ism, that it seems never to have occurred to 
 him that religion might be of the same nature 
 with his many ideals, much less that it should 
 be their very flower. It seemed a sad com- 
 mentary on the inefficiency of at least one 
 branch of the Church of Jesus Christ in this 
 twentieth century that a mind trained in that 
 branch of the Church, and possessed of native 
 qualities that at times seemed such as are pro- 
 duced only by the long process of academic 
 education, should, in spite of its inborn ideal- 
 ism, be capable of entertaining such a concep- 
 tion of religion as this: 
 
 "If by religion you mean that which is divine, 
 I don't believe there is any such thing. I don't 
 believe there is any divinity. I believe that 
 religion originated somewhat in this way: A
 
 AND THE CHUKCH 23 
 
 number of years ago there was a man [meaning 
 Jesus] who preached social reforms; and he 
 was so far ahead of his time that his followers 
 attributed to him something divine [referring 
 to the magic of the mass], and that is the way 
 religion began." 
 
 Before we separated I think both of us got a 
 better conception of the religion of Jesus than 
 we had before; for we found it grounded in 
 the universal sense of moral obligation and the 
 universal honor paid to self-sacrifice for others. 
 The rest of our conversation was of the sort 
 that all men instinctively consider confidential. 
 Indeed, though I shall not be likely ever to 
 forget its unpression, its form I did not attempt 
 in any way to preserve. It will be enough to 
 say that it revealed a mind whose idealism, un- 
 trained as it was, seemed to me as much truer 
 and deeper than the transcendental philosophy 
 of Emerson as it was marked by a clearer, more 
 unstudied, more sincere unselfishness.
 
 the church and the 
 avorki:n^gman
 
 II 
 
 THE CHURCH ANB THE 
 WORKmCMAN 
 
 PROBABLY the attention which I shall give 
 to the industrial problem will seem to most 
 readers to be disproportionate to other phases 
 of religions life in America. Certainly the 
 intimate connection between religious life and 
 social problems in America was a surprise to 
 me ; indeed, when I finished my trip, I had the 
 feeling that I had failed in my purpose, and 
 that I had been observing phenomena, not of 
 religion, but of sociology. If any generalization 
 is justifiable from such evidence as I have 
 gathered, it is that religion in America is char- 
 acterized not so much by devoutness as by right- 
 eousness, less by the look upward than by the 
 look outward. 
 
 Carlyle divided the people of Great Britain 
 
 27
 
 28 THE CHURCH 
 
 into two sects, the Dandiacal Body and the 
 Drudges. My observation has led me to believe 
 that this classification can be said to be meas- 
 urably true of America as well. " To the psy- 
 chological eye," Carlyle said, " these sects reveal 
 not only their secular significance, but their re- 
 ligious character as well." Jn America, too, this 
 separation between the "leisure class" and 
 the " working people " has its religious bearing 
 plain to those who look for it. Perhaps the 
 dwellers in Baltimore are too near the subject 
 to avoid strabismus in looking at these two 
 sects in their own city, or to avoid myopy in 
 looking at them as they exist elsewhere. There 
 were three men of the city, however, whom I 
 met that seemed to have pretty straight and 
 clear vision. 
 
 One of these was the pastor of a Methodist 
 church in the poorer quarter of the city. His 
 experiences among working people in England 
 as well as in America were wider and more 
 intimate than those of any other minister I have 
 had occasion to meet. With the possible ex- 
 ception of an Episcopalian clergyman in Au- 
 gusta, Georgia, and a Presbyterian clergyman 
 in St. Louis, no man in active ministerial work, 
 among all those whom I met dm-ing my travels,
 
 AND THE WORKINGMAN 29 
 
 was living as nearly exclusively among wage- 
 earners as he. 
 
 " The peculiarity of the workingmen of Bal- 
 timore," he said to me, "is that their whole 
 mind is directed on food, clothes, and a good 
 time. What is true of the workingman in this 
 respect is true of the whole city of Baltimore. 
 In Boston, it is said, they ask, ' How much do 
 you know? ' in l^^ew York, ' How much are you 
 worth? ' in Philadelphia, 'Who's your father? ' 
 and in Baltunore, ' What is there to eat? ' This 
 materialism in all conditions of life is the worst 
 enemy of the churches. Among workingmen 
 it results not so much in hostility as in indiffer- 
 ence. When men are mainly set upon supply- 
 ing their physical wants, it is not strange that 
 the churches, which in this city are mainly con- 
 cerned not with this life but with the future life, 
 should have no appeal for them. It is the re- 
 ligiosity and the lack of sincerity in the churches 
 that repel the workingmen. As a consequence 
 they go to resorts for sensations. As to the 
 very poor men — and it is among these that I 
 work — they haven't the clothes they think they 
 should wear at church ; besides, they are tired 
 after work. The commercial spirit is driving 
 the working world. In this respect England
 
 30 THE CHUECH 
 
 differs from America; there the close organi- 
 zation of the unions enables the workingmen to 
 work more slowly. Here the intensity of labor 
 which enables Americans to underbid the Eng- 
 lish brings exhaustion to all concerned in it. In 
 this country workingmen are old at forty." (At 
 the meeting of the Federation of Labor I no- 
 ticed the preponderance of young men.) " It is 
 this all-possessing commercial spirit which has 
 put the claims of the Church to one side. 
 Against this the churches of the city are timid; 
 they have in them little brain or brawn, and no 
 grasp of the social life." In his opinion, such an 
 environment had resulted in deadening the spirit 
 of self-sacrifice among ministers to such a de- 
 gree that they scarcely knew what real self- 
 sacrifice was. As the minister of a church in 
 the poor quarter he felt keenly his isolation, in 
 no respect more than in being regarded by some 
 as " an amiable lunatic " for choosing to re- 
 main with his church instead of accepting offers 
 from other churches of larger remuneration. 
 His comment was briefly: "As if the four Gos- 
 pels didn't exist! " 
 
 This is the view of one man who has the 
 " psychological eye." Another man, a gar- 
 ment-cutter and a member of a church — this
 
 AND THE WORKINGMAN 31 
 
 description would be almost adequate for iden- 
 tification — had practically the same view as 
 that of the minister I have just quoted. The 
 third man was a Roman Catholic priest, whose 
 eye I recognized as psychological as soon as 
 he turned it on me, and whose heart I knew to 
 be very human as soon as he had talked with 
 me five minutes. He frankly confessed to me 
 that he was " out of sympathy with the rich." 
 This from a man of commanding influence in 
 his Church. He gave me his explanation of 
 the failure of the Church to hold the working- 
 man. He prefaced his remarks with a state- 
 ment that even in Europe the poor are not to 
 be seen in the churches. 
 
 " The predominant vice of clergy, both Prot- 
 estant and Roman Catholic, is ambition and 
 avarice. This shuts the poor out." Such was 
 the conclusion he had come to after years of 
 directing the Catholic missions to dependent 
 races in America. " State socialism is in- 
 evitable. What can the Church do to provide 
 for the people's material welfare ? Ever 
 since the Reformation the State has taken 
 over these former functions of the Church 
 — hospitals, schools, hbraries, and the like. 
 When in need, the workingman used to
 
 32 THE CHUECH 
 
 turn to the Church, ^ow he turns to the 
 State. It's queer, very queer," he said, as he 
 bade me good-by — and he spoke with feel- 
 ing — " how httle effect Christianity has upon 
 us. The teachings of Christ, the Sermon on 
 the Mount, the parables of Christ — we hear 
 them, we preach them, but we don't practice 
 them." And, with a Hibernian mixture of 
 homely humor and serious and almost pathetic 
 conviction, he added, " They are Hke water on 
 a duck's back." 
 
 To pretend that these statements give a true 
 impression of the general religious conditions 
 of the city of Baltimore would be absurd. I hope 
 I shall not be misunderstood in this respect. The 
 churches in Baltimore are what may be called, 
 in the ordinary understanding of the term, pros- 
 perous. One need only spend a Sunday there 
 to be convinced that a great many people — 
 perhaps an extraordinary proportion of them — 
 attend the services of churches of all denomina- 
 tions. A large number of the churches of the 
 city are doing great good in addition to the ser- 
 vices of worship.^ The old Church of St. 
 Paul's Parish, antedating the founding of the 
 
 1 A monograph on The Church and Popular Education was prepared by 
 the late Professor Herbert B. Adams, of Johns Hopkins University, nearly 
 one-half of which treats of the educational work of Baltimore churches.
 
 AND THE WORKINGMAN 33 
 
 city itself, has not only been a force in the city 
 for generations, but still to-day, with narrowed 
 boundaries and influence circumscribed by the 
 rise of other churches, is doing an ever more 
 widely varying work. The charities of Balti- 
 more, which owe their existence and maintenance 
 to religious motives, are thoroughly well organ- 
 ized; and, in spite of an unjustifiable criticism 
 which I heard a workingman give upon them 
 that they are chiefly for the exploitation of the 
 sentimental rich, are wisely and humanly admin- 
 istered. But, to use the words of a member of 
 St. Paul's Parish, an executive oflflcer not only 
 of the municipal but also of the national charity 
 organization, " the relation between the work- 
 ingman and the Church is not cordial; and it 
 is the Church's fault." That is equally true if 
 in the word " Church " should be included all 
 organized Christian bodies — even, I think I 
 may say, the Salvation Army — and it is about 
 equally true in all the larger cities of America, 
 and in many of the smaller cities ; less true in 
 some, such as Kew Orleans, than in others, as, 
 for example, St. Louis. 
 
 During my trip I met a number of ministers 
 who had gained some reputation for success 
 among workingmen. In most cases I found
 
 34 THE CHUECH 
 
 the reputation resting on rather insecure foun- 
 dation. As a rule, such success has been 
 greatly magnified; or it has been temporary, 
 originating in the excitement of some indus- 
 trial agitation and ending with its subsidence ; 
 or else it has been a success, not with the great 
 mass of self-respecting, progressive working- 
 men, but with the slum-dwellers. 
 
 Most Christian men, whether ministers or lay- 
 men, who have this matter at heart, feel, I 
 think, dismayed at the condition. The fact 
 that they are themselves so keenly aware of the 
 chasm that separates the strong body of labor- 
 ing men from the forces of organized Chris- 
 tianity makes them just as keenly sensitive to 
 the callous and sometimes even complacent in- 
 difference concerning that chasm on the part of 
 the membership of the churches. They recog- 
 nize, too, that the labor organizations have pre- 
 empted the ground which the churches otherwise 
 might occupy; and even if the churches were 
 eager to span that chasm, they do not know 
 what diplomacy should be used for the purpose 
 of getting a site on the other side for a pier for 
 their bridge. The sincerely pious and churchly 
 woman who devoutly kneels in her pew, se- 
 renely heedless of the fact that the stones of
 
 AND THE WORKINGMAN 35 
 
 the'church in which she worships, the wood on 
 which she rests her head, the very prayer-book 
 or hymnal she holds in her hand, were provided 
 by men entirely nntouched by the Church for 
 which they had worked, is as near the solution 
 of the problem as those men in whom serenity 
 is impossible so long as the problem lasts. 
 
 Typical of those who know the problem, and 
 are too disheartened or daunted to start solving 
 it, was the Secretary of the Young Men's Chris- 
 tian Association at Richmond, Virginia. He was 
 a native of Pennsylvania, and had been brought 
 up in the labor districts of that State. 
 
 " Tackling the problem of ' working ' " (he 
 used the word in its religious sense) " among 
 laboring men is very grave," was his opinion. 
 "I've not done it, JPor I've not seen my way 
 clear. It is very difficult to do anything with 
 the laboring men except through their organi- 
 zations. I am not sure that I want to identify 
 myself with any labor organizations." 
 
 "The Christian Association recognizes that 
 its religious work is to be done through the 
 churches," I rephed. " In regard to laboring 
 men, might it not apply the same principles and 
 work through labor unions?" 
 
 " That would be true," he said, " if it were
 
 36 THE CHURCH 
 
 not for the fact that labor unions are often bit- 
 terly opposed to one another — as bitterly as 
 labor is opposed to capital — and I do not think 
 it is right for the Young Men's Christian Asso- 
 ciation to enter into these contentions." 
 
 " Are these contentions any bitterer than the 
 denominational fights which were even more 
 vehement when the Christian Association orig- 
 inated than now? And the Association has 
 never been involved in purely denominational 
 controversy." 
 
 " Perhaps not ; but a great deal of tact and 
 care would be needed." And he left the 
 matter there, just about where everybody else 
 leaves it. 
 
 The Railroad Young Men's Christian Asso- 
 ciation is the only considerable organization 
 that I met with which is at all venturing to put 
 the religious life of workingmen into institu- 
 tional form. Even when it is understood that 
 railroad men are an exceptional body of work- 
 ingmen, separated in industrial organizations 
 and in class feeling almost as distinctly 
 from other workingmen as from capitalists, 
 still the success of the Railroad Young 
 Men's Christian Association certainly should 
 suggest to the Church at large some pos-
 
 AND THE WORKINGMAN" 37 
 
 sible measures. The Railroad Young Men's 
 Christian Association has shown itself to be 
 elastic in adapting itself to the peculiar condi- 
 tions of a railroad man's life. Instead of having 
 a theory and trying to make the men con- 
 form to it, it has studied the environment of the 
 men and conformed itself to that. The train- 
 men must have one regular stopping-place be- 
 sides their homes, at the other end of their route 
 or "run." This fact has determined largely 
 the character of the Railroad Branch of the 
 Young Men's Christian Association. To the 
 trainman it has aimed at being a second home. 
 To that end it has put foremost, or at least most 
 prominent, the comfort of its quarters; it has 
 provided smoking-rooms, for if it is to be his 
 second home it must be free from unnecessary 
 restrictions based on other people's notions of 
 what is expedient for him to do or not to do. 
 There he finds his time-tables; there he has a 
 bedroom; there he even receives his pay. The 
 same liberal policy is adopted, I am told, in the 
 army and navy Associations. As a result, the 
 members mentally associate the Christian spirit 
 with what in the minds of workingmen gener- 
 ally may be said to be their strongest ethical 
 motive — interest in the ph3sical comfort and
 
 38 THE CHURCH 
 
 welfare of the individual, the personal desire on 
 the part of one man that another should be con- 
 tented and happy. To the ordinary working- 
 man " preaching the Gospel " at him conveys no 
 impression of personal interest in him, on the 
 contrary implies censure or at best condescen- 
 sion; but a comfortable substitute for a home 
 away from home is to him evidence, certainly 
 most convincing evidence, of an understanding 
 of his point of view. It is putting the Gospel 
 into his vernacular. At present "the whole 
 state of Christ's Church " undoubtedly forbids 
 the general adoption or adaptation of what is 
 characteristic of the Railroad Young Men's 
 Christian Association, but in some places it has 
 been attempted with varying success. 
 
 In Mississippi I was waiting between trains 
 at a station, when I noticed a dwelling-house 
 designated by a sign as an Association of the 
 Kailroad Branch. I spent a few minutes in 
 talking with the secretary and looking over the 
 house. The office was in the smoking-room; 
 the next room was a reading-room or parlor, in 
 which the religious meetings were held; up- 
 stairs there were bath-rooms, and bedrooms 
 very little but scrupulously clean. The town 
 was a small one, too small to support more than
 
 AND THE WOPvKINGMAN 39 
 
 one Association, and therefore this building 
 answered for the use of the neighborhood as 
 well as for the railroad. The secretary told me 
 that the arrangement worked admirably, and 
 that the freedom from restraint due to railroad 
 influences seemed to give it a local advantage 
 as well. 
 
 Of^ course the fact that the railroad corpora- 
 tions contribute to the financial maintenance of 
 the railroad Associations gives occasion for 
 prejudice against the Associations in the minds 
 of the more bitter among the labor leaders ; but 
 this prejudice has not been effective enough to 
 prevent an amazing growth. I imagine the 
 men have much the same ideas about them as a 
 man with whom I fell into conversation as I 
 was going from Harrisburg to Reading, Penn- 
 sylvania. I found he was a watchman at a cross- 
 ing; he had lost his legs in an accident, and was 
 reduced by his disability to such simple work. 
 His almost naively frank way of talking, and his 
 calmly philosophic way of bearing the inevita- 
 ble in his lot (he said, for instance, that at the 
 time of his accident he never lost consciousness 
 or worried in the least), gave to his opinions 
 the more weight. 
 
 " The P. and R. didn't treat its men very
 
 40 THE CHUECH 
 
 well till lately," he said in answer to a question 
 of mine. " There were two or three accidents 
 the past year or so. On that account all the 
 old bosses were discharged, and now the bosses 
 are all Young' Men's Christian Association men 
 and treat their men much better than the old 
 bosses did. They all expect the men to do 
 right. Yes, I'm an active member of the 
 Young Men's Christian Association. I belong 
 to the Hamburg Methodist Episcopal Church. 
 Only two or three railroad men belong to that 
 church. They say they are too restricted — 
 can't go off from their homes and get drunk and 
 have a good time. Drinking isn't the thing for 
 a railroad man. Mr. Besler, superintendent of 
 the road, is down on drinking. Some of the 
 men like him and some don't. Then, you 
 know, there are some men that want everything 
 and aren't satisfied with that. The way I look 
 at it, in the church everything is going to style. 
 A poor man can't dress as well as a rich man, 
 and his wife gets jealous because the other 
 man's wife looks better than she does. Some 
 men make fun of the churches and the Young 
 Men's Christian Association, because you pay 
 money in and don't draw any out for 'bene- 
 fits.' "
 
 AND THE WORKINGMAN 41 
 
 "How would it be for the Young Men's 
 Christian Association to have a benefit order ? " 
 
 " I don't know. It would be all right if they 
 were all honest in the churches and the Young 
 Men's Christian Association, but there are 
 black sheeps in 'em all." 
 
 This frank-minded workingman, himself a 
 member of a church and the Young Men's 
 Christian Association, felt less distrust of a 
 raih'oad corporation than of Christian institu- 
 tions. 
 
 It is not my purpose to present theories con- 
 cerning any phase of religion in America; but 
 I cannot leave this subject of working people 
 and the Church without setting down certain 
 definite impressions made not merely by the 
 experiences which are here recorded, but also 
 by others for which I have not here the space. 
 I wish I might give these other experiences in 
 full ; they would then be more convincing than 
 they can be in the condensed form into which I 
 am under the necessity of compressing them. 
 
 In the first place, the feeling of workingmen 
 regarding not merely religion, but most spe- 
 cifically institutional Christianity, is not one of 
 apathy. Apparent indifference must be ac- 
 counted for otherwise than by attributing it to
 
 42 THE CHURCH 
 
 deep-seated apathy. Workingmen are indiffer- 
 ent to any presentation of the Gospel which is 
 a theological statement, in either technical or 
 popular terms, of a scheme by which a problem- 
 atical soul may find entrance into a problemati- 
 cal heaven; they are equally indifferent to any 
 presentation of practical religious conduct 
 which amounts to the substitution of some- 
 body else's conscience for their own. But 
 they are not indifferent to religion itself, nor to 
 the Church itself. A few questions, for in- 
 stance, about religion, enough to suggest that 
 somebody, supposedl}^ identified with institu- 
 tional Christianity, is interested in the religion 
 of the workingman, were enough, I learned, to 
 awaken the delegates of all the trades unions 
 of a city to a quick and ingenuous response. 
 The apathetic are not so easily aroused. 
 
 Then it may safely be said that the working- 
 man is perfectly prepared to have religion deal 
 directly and exphcitly with the most perplexing 
 and burdensome problems of his life. Through- 
 out the course of my trip I was constantly meet- 
 ing with this explanation of empty churches — 
 that ministers deal too much with the " live issues " 
 of daily life, which people want to forget, to have 
 banished from their minds by the ministrations
 
 AND THE WORKINGMAN 43 
 
 of the Church. The workingman will never 
 go to church to forget his cares. He convinced 
 me of that by telling me of his knowledge of 
 other pleasanter and more effectual means. If 
 he ever will go to church, it will be when the 
 Church, through its ministers standing in the 
 pulpits on Sundays, declares its acquaintance 
 with his perplexities and its purpose not to 
 gloze them and wheedle him into forgetting 
 them, but to join with hun in getting rid of 
 their cause. The good news of a church set 
 on ridding him of the evils he is suffering from 
 would be a gospel he would be glad to hear 
 preached. 
 
 Furthermore, at present a workingman is ill 
 at ease in church; he feels there more than 
 anywhere else the assertion of social distinctions. 
 As he puts it, in the opera-house he can buy his 
 right to a seat with money as good as anybody 
 else's, or in a beer-garden he can buy as good 
 drinks as anybody can for the sum he is willing 
 to spend ; but in a church — well, he is admitted 
 on sufferance. And he feels these social dis- 
 tinctions quite as much in the missions as he 
 does in the " fashionable churches " that sup- 
 port them. He would never support a Work- 
 ingman's Theater; when he wants to see a play
 
 44 THE CHURCH 
 
 he is willing to go only to the theater. Just so 
 he will be satisfied, not with a chapel, or even 
 a " AVorkingman's Church," but only with The 
 Church. To his thinking the Church Trust is 
 an accomplished fact — well capitalized. This 
 may be purely the figment of his imagination, 
 but it is effectual in excluding him just the 
 same. It is only reporting the substance of 
 what has repeatedly been said to me to affirm 
 that the only way in which this feeling of the 
 wo]*kingman concerning the social aloofness of 
 the Church can be removed is by the Church's 
 forgetting its pride and proving itself by some 
 positive action not guilty. 
 
 Moreover, this trait of social aloofness which 
 the wage-earner attributes to the Church, so 
 far as it exists — and it is not wholly a product 
 of the imagination — is due less to ministers 
 than to laymen. Clergymen are in general far 
 more sensitive to the social and religious aspects 
 of the labor problem, and ai"e more in sympathy 
 with the wage-earner, than are men and women 
 whose views of the relation between employer 
 and employed are likely to be distorted by self- 
 interest. But ministers, convinced as they are 
 of the purity of their own motives and those of 
 the Church at large, seldom realize that promi-
 
 AND THE WOEKINGMAN 45 
 
 nence in a church accorded to one or two 
 laymen of the smug and self-satisfied sort, 
 whose attitude to the laboring classes, so called, 
 is one of irritating patronage, is quite sufficient 
 to counteract all that the minister can say in 
 the pulpit, and all kindly fellow-feeling, little 
 appreciated because but little expressed, on the 
 part of the rest of the church. It is prominence 
 rather than influence that makes the snobbish 
 well-to-do layman figure as the representative 
 of the Church in the mind of workingmen; just 
 as it is prominence rather than influence that 
 makes the irresponsible agitator figure as the 
 representative of workingmen in the mind of 
 many church people. 
 
 Still further : the ideas of the Church, and es- 
 peciall}^ of ministers, which workingmen have, 
 have been formed from the reports of sermons 
 which appear in the newspapers. Time and 
 again workingmen have said to me, "You don't 
 read in the papers of any ministers preaching 
 about this or that," or, " Such and such a view 
 is what the ministers teach, for I always read 
 the sermons in the Monday papers." 
 
 Here I may mention an illustration of the 
 erroneous impressions they are liable to receive 
 from this fact. After my visit to the meeting
 
 46 THE CHURCH 
 
 of the trades-union delegates, described in the 
 foregoing chapter, a reporter interviewed me. 
 The next day I bought a copy of his paper to 
 see what he had said. There, in a conspicuous 
 place, was a headline in heavy-face type, " No 
 Religion," followed in smaller type by the words 
 " Allowed to be Discussed at the Federation of 
 Labor Meeting." From this entirely accurate 
 statement of fact the conclusion was almost in- 
 evitable that the delegates showed antagonism 
 to religion — a conclusion entirely at odds with 
 the cordial interest they from first to last dis- 
 played. The one preacher in Baltimore who 
 seemed to be universally popular among work- 
 ingmen, I found by inquiry, had probably not a 
 single workingman in his church. The most 
 enthusiastic of his admirers with whom I talked 
 had, I believe, never heard him preach. It was 
 apparently only from the newspapers, in which 
 his sermons often appeared, that the working- 
 men had any knowledge of him, and on his 
 newspaper reputation his popularity among 
 them almost wholly rested. 
 
 Without question, the standards which the 
 workingman applies to institutional Christianity 
 are largely materialistic. It does no good, how- 
 ever, to call his religion a Mud Philosophy and
 
 AND THE WORKINGMAN 47 
 
 dismiss it as such. Christianity is a seed; it 
 needs a soil. A cup of cold water is quite as 
 materialistic as anything the workingman 
 craves, and appears quite as unpromising in 
 spiritual results; but it sufficed as a test for 
 Christ to apply to his disciples. I was sorry to 
 find that the workingmen of Baltimore, like the 
 rest of mankind in general, were selfish in their 
 notions of religion. I found the question upper- 
 most in their minds as they think of the Church 
 is the one more than once put to me, " What is 
 there in it for us?" I cannot see, however, 
 that that affords any reason for the Church to 
 turn away from them until they are of better 
 mind. If the Gospels are to be believed, this 
 same question was uppermost in the minds of 
 the twelve Apostles ; but Christ accepted them 
 as material out of which to form his Church. 
 
 Of course, the question why the attitude of 
 the workingmen to the various forms of institu- 
 tional Christianity should be so little one of 
 sympathy and so much one of alienation, not to 
 say hostility, is to a large degree a part of the 
 greater question why the Church and its allied 
 organizations find but little cordial response 
 from the masculine mind. The fact is well 
 known that among all classes of society women j
 
 48 THE CHURCH 
 
 form the majority of the constituents of the 
 Church. This condition is, moreover, by no 
 means distinctive of America. The congrega- 
 tions in the Roman Catholic churches of 
 Europe to all appearance show quite as small a 
 minority of male adherents as do the Protestant 
 churches of the United States. The fact, there- 
 fore, that men who are wage-earners in America 
 are not ordinarily found to be open allies of the 
 Church is only one aspect of a larger fact, 
 which, important though it is, I shall not dis- 
 cuss. It is an aspect, however, which has in- 
 vited special attention, mainly because wage- 
 earners are organized as no other men are. It 
 is the organization of labor that has made the 
 relation between workingmen and the Church a 
 distinct phase of the religious life of America. 
 In Baltimore materialism is certainly in its 
 best estate — from its club dinners, which I 
 thankfully ate, to the financial health of its 
 charities. Surely material prosperity adorns 
 many virtues, such as hospitality (to this I 
 gratefully testify), and public spirit (witness 
 the city's many splendid monuments and beau- 
 tiful streets), and piety (enriched with liturgy 
 and music) ; but also covers, in quite different 
 fashion from charity's way, a multitude of sins.
 
 AND THE WORKINGMAN 49 
 
 It was not mere chance that led me to find the 
 problem of the separation between the Church 
 and the workingman most representatively ex- 
 hibited in the city of Baltimore. It is, therefore, 
 to this aspect of religious life in Baltmiore, 
 rather than to other aspects more cheering and 
 more typical of the city, that I have almost ex- 
 clusively confined these two chapters. 
 
 The only apology I have to offer for devoting 
 so large a proportion of this book to the relation 
 between workingmen and the Church in Balti- 
 more is that in my experiences the industrial 
 problem impressed me as constituting a tremen- 
 dous factor in the religious life of America in 
 these days, and that in Baltimore I found con- 
 ditions largely representative of conditions 
 throughout the country. Further references 
 to the subject in this book will be mainly in- 
 cidental.
 
 A YIRGIOTA COUNTRY RECTOR
 
 Ill 
 
 A yiRGmiA COUNTRY RECTOR 
 
 A LOCAL train running out from Richmond 
 . took me to Doswell. I knew it was only 
 one chance in ten that I should be able to find 
 the Episcopal minister I wanted to see. Cer- 
 tainly as I stood on the station platform and 
 looked about on the wooded, level country, I 
 could get but little encouragement. Off to the 
 right about a quarter of a mile away were a few 
 houses. Opposite the station was a store. The 
 station agent, a young man, greeted me as if he 
 were my host. Did he know Mr. Hepburn? 
 He most cert'nly did know Rev. Hepburn; 
 everybody did. Could he direct me to his 
 house, and how could I go to it? "Well, it was 
 about five miles away along that road, and per- 
 haps I could hire a horse at the store across the 
 way. So across the way I went. Both horses 
 
 53
 
 54 A VIEGINIA COUNTEY EECTOE 
 
 had gone to the mill. Anywhere else to inquire ? 
 ;No. So I started afoot. It was the latter part 
 of February. The brown deadness of a Vir- 
 ginian winter intensified the effect of desolation 
 characteristic of a country suffering from ar- 
 rested development. As I trudged along not 
 very cheerfully, I heard a shout behind me. A 
 colored man was trying to attract my attention. 
 I waited while he walked leisurely up to where 
 I stood. He offered to take me to Mr. Hep- 
 burn's. I gladly made a bargain with him, and 
 off he started with some alacrity to get his 
 horse. While he was gone I strolled over to 
 the neighboring house — or, more properly, 
 cabin. From the small colored boy on the 
 porch I learned a little about the negro churches 
 in the neighborhood, but before I was well 
 under way my colored guide came driving 
 along at a furious pace. Evidently he objected 
 to haste only when it involved exertion on his 
 own part. As we drove away I talked with him 
 about the colored people. From the informa- 
 tion given by the driver and the boy I ascer- 
 tained these facts : that there were two churches, 
 one Baptist, one Methodist; that ahnost all the 
 negroes were members of one or the other ; that 
 there were no services except on Sunday; that
 
 A VIRGINIA COUNTRY RECTOR 55 
 
 the minister of the Baptist church came up 
 every Sunday from Richmond; that the minis- 
 ter was supported by what contributions he 
 could get, not by any stipulated salary. 
 
 When we had gone a couple of miles, we saw 
 a buggy coming toward us. It proved to con- 
 tain Mr. Hepburn himself with his wife. I in- 
 troduced myself. He had not received the let- 
 ter of introduction which, I understood, was to 
 have been sent him by one of his fellow-minis- 
 ters. But he most cordially welcomed me and 
 offered me, stranger as I was, the freedom of 
 his house if I would drive on and wait for his 
 return. I acquiesced in this hospitable proposal ; 
 but after he had gone I reversed my decision, 
 as another plan occurred to me which might be 
 more for his convenience as well as mine. This 
 proved wise. I told my driver we would return 
 to the station. Before we reached there we met 
 Mr. Hepburn returning alone, his wife having 
 taken the train to Richmond. The vacant seat 
 beside him he offered to me, and I at once ac- 
 cepted it. ;Now he was free to make the pas- 
 toral calls he had planned, and I gained an hour 
 more of his company. 
 
 The first impression he made on me was 
 of strength, dignity, virility, and kindliness.
 
 56 A VIRGINIA COUNTRY RECTOR 
 
 As he sat there erect with his blue mihtary cape 
 thrown over his shoulders yet not concealing 
 the clerical coat-collar beneath, with the reins 
 held taut in strong hands that seemed to re- 
 spond with sympathetic control to every ner- 
 vous movement of his high-strung horse, with 
 his felt hat shading a pair of friendly eyes, his 
 hair just tinged with gray, his chin strong and 
 clean-shaven, his neck and face bronzed with 
 exposure to the weather, he looked the very 
 fisrure of what the minister of God in the 
 Church militant should be. 
 
 For twenty years he had been traveling on 
 this circuit in Virginia. Its boundaries had 
 changed in the course of years. Kow it covers 
 a territory sixty miles long and eight miles 
 wide, containing no villages whatever, only 
 scattered houses. It is a region full of historic 
 interest as the scene of the attack on Rich- 
 mond. Within this parish he preaches regu- 
 larly to six churches, in two of them every two 
 weeks, in the others once a month. One of 
 these churches is at Hanover Court-House, 
 made famous by the Civil War. 
 
 In this circuit he had seen within twenty 
 years a great social revolution. The character 
 of the population has absolutely changed. He
 
 A YIEGIXIA COUXTRY EECTOR 57 
 
 used to have for his congregation people of 
 refinement. One in his congregation was a 
 raih'oad manager, another was a judge of the 
 Court of Appeals ; there were law^xrs and other 
 men of high intelligence and education. Xow 
 this element of refinement is no longer domi- 
 nant. He accounted for this change by referring 
 to the introduction of electricity as the cause, 
 which had so displaced the horse that the breed- 
 ing of horses, which once was the source of 
 wealth in the community, had ceased to be 
 profitable. With the disappearance of wealth, 
 leisure disappeared also: and with leisure went 
 the opportunities for mental cultivation. Now 
 the young people have to scramble for their 
 hving, and scrambling does not refine. 
 
 The first house we drove to in the course of 
 the pastoral calls was a visible sjTubol of this 
 vanished prosperity. Mr. Hepburn told me that 
 it had been the mansion house of a Southern 
 major and had been the scene of true old- 
 time hospitality and gayety. Down below, 
 where a level field lay brown and uncultivated, 
 he pointed out to me the place where the train- 
 ing track had been. For all this I had to take 
 his word. To my eye there was no sign of 
 even a past greatness. My mind had formed
 
 58 A VIRGINIA COUNTEY EECTOE 
 
 an image of what a ruined Southern mansion 
 and its place would look like, and, though the 
 image was one of sadness, it was picturesque. 
 On this February day there was nothing pic- 
 turesque in the scene before me. It looked 
 merely poor, unkempt, uninteresting. The 
 present occupant of the house, an old, white- 
 haired gentleman of no kin to the former 
 owner, met us at the gate and bade us both 
 welcome. Here he dwelt with his daughter. 
 The wide, open hallway and the high-ceiled 
 sitting-room were bare and scarcely furnished. 
 There was no more sign of the past within than 
 without. But the way in which the old, courtly 
 gentleman and his gentle-voiced, fair-faced 
 daughter entertained us, with the same courtesy 
 and freedom from apology that they would 
 have shown had their house been a palace, was 
 a sign of the happier and easier past, the more 
 pathetic because of the utter disappearance of 
 all other signs. These people on whom the 
 Episcopal minister made his pastoral call were 
 Methodists. 
 
 From the old, time-disguised mansion we 
 drove to a new and small house, where a son 
 of the old major lives with his family. There 
 he maintains the traditions of the family by
 
 A VIRGINIA COUNTRY RECTOR 59 
 
 raising and training horses. The two negro 
 boys showed us with pride a few of the thor- 
 oughbreds. We then went to the house, where 
 the mistress graciously received us. Her two 
 young daughters were charming in their spon- 
 taneous welcome, not only to their old friend, 
 but also to me, a stranger. These parishioners 
 were " Campbellites," or, as they preferred to 
 be called, " Christians." 
 
 Leaving there, Mr. Hepburn turned his 
 horse's head toward home. Through the bare, 
 silent woods we drove, often over tree-stumps 
 left in the road itself. Sometimes Mr. Hep- 
 burn would wind his way among these stumps 
 as a skipper steers his vessel through a channel 
 full of reefs ; at other times he would " take " 
 a stump with a wheel as a boatman shoots a bit 
 of rapids ; but always the masterful hands that 
 held the reins guided the horse with unerring 
 instinct. Once, as we went with a lurch into 
 what seemed to be a veritable morass, he turned 
 to me and said: 
 
 " You are not used, I reckon, to such a road 
 as this." It is impossible to reproduce his Vir- 
 ginian ways of speech that fell so pleasantly on 
 my Northern ears. " I should never get around 
 my parishes if I did not use such short cuts.
 
 60 A VIRGINIA COUNTRY RECTOR 
 
 I've been driving over these roads for twenty 
 years, and understand them by this time." 
 
 "Have you ever estimated the number of 
 miles you have driven in the course of your 
 duties?" I inquired. 
 
 "A lady once asked me that question, and I 
 told her that I had driven around the world 
 once and was well on my second journey. 
 Ever since then each time she sees me she asks 
 how far I've gone. The last time I told her 
 that I was homeward bound near Wheeling on 
 my third trip." 
 
 One would imagine that twenty years of such 
 persistent labor among a people that had been 
 declining all the time in wealth, leisure, and re- 
 finement might dismay and embitter him. ISTot 
 so. On the contrary, his observation of condi- 
 tions within the limits of his circuit had in- 
 creased his hope and faith. True, with wealth 
 had disappeared leisure; but in former days 
 that leisure, he said, was used for the develop- 
 ment not only of high and charming qualities 
 in the Southern people, but also of moral weak- 
 nesses. It was, he said, the young man who 
 had been brought up in idleness that, with his 
 chivalry and courtesy, had also an uncontrolled 
 passionate nature which found slavery provid-
 
 A VIRGINIA COUNTEY EECTOE, 61 
 
 ing objects for it, and had also the disinclination 
 for useful work which results in shiftlessness 
 and unprovidence. Now with the new neces- 
 sity for occupation there had come an improve- 
 ment in character. In rural Virginia the mind 
 of the young man of to-day is undoubtedly not 
 so cultivated as the mind of the young man of 
 twenty years ago, but his will is more efficient ; 
 he does not appreciate the amenities of hfe so 
 well, but he values more highly its achieve- 
 ments. He has less suavity, more force. 
 
 As we turned into the highway and drove 
 toward his home, Mr. Hepburn recounted an 
 experience of his with a minister of the denom- 
 ination popularly called " Campbellite." The 
 man had come into this Virginia community 
 from the AYest, and brought with him a breezy 
 and aggressive spirit characteristic of his native 
 place and his denomination. He began by a 
 thoroughgoing effort to make proselytes. His 
 field lay in one of Mr. Hepburn's parishes, and 
 his influence was soon felt among some who 
 were communicants in the Episcopal Church. 
 His aim was to gather in a great number at a 
 " baptism." The people of course attended his 
 meetings in large numbers. Among those 
 whom he had persuaded to be immersed were a
 
 62 A VIRGINIA COUNTEY EECTOE 
 
 number of young people whom Mr. Hepburn 
 had baptized in infancy, some of whom indeed 
 he, as a sort of practicing physician, had helped 
 to usher into the world. This, Mr. Hepburn 
 decided, should be stopped. So on one of his 
 parochial, quasi-episcopal tours he called on 
 this " Campbellite " minister to remonstrate 
 with him for undermining the faith of these 
 young people, however mistaken it might seem 
 to him to be, and to give him fair warning that 
 sturdy opposition would be made. Then Mr. 
 Hepburn began a systematic visitation upon 
 the families of all denominations. To those of 
 his own Church he talked no more frankly than 
 to the others. The Baptists he advised to con- 
 sult with the Baptist minister ; the Presbyterians 
 to consult with the Presbyterian minister; and 
 throughout he maintained his friendly relations 
 toward the " Campbellites " themselves. The 
 "Campbellite" minister endeavored to draw 
 him into a public controversy, but in vain. 
 When the "baptism" occurred at last, only six, 
 instead of the twenty-eight advertised, were 
 immersed, and these were gathered rightfully 
 either from " Campbellite " families or from 
 those outside of any church. So ended this 
 unusual denominational fight for interdenom-
 
 A VIRGINIA COUNTEY RECTOR 63 
 
 inational comity under the leadership of an 
 Episcopal minister! 
 
 " This is where I live," he said, as we turned 
 in at a gate. The road led to a large, old- 
 fashioned house. On either side it was flanked 
 with a row of little one-story cottages. It seemed 
 as if the old house were reaching out its arms 
 with hospitable welcome as we drove up under 
 the trees to the high, wide porch. The place 
 once was Hanover Academy. The old house 
 was the home of the head master. The little 
 cottages, containing a couple of rooms apiece, 
 were the dormitories for the boys. In the back- 
 ground, standing in the middle of a plowed 
 field, I caught a glimpse of the school-house, 
 now fast falling into decay. Once upon a time 
 Thackeray was a guest here. 
 
 While we waited for luncheon to be prepared 
 we chatted together before the open fire in the 
 library. Library I call it, but it contained only 
 one small book-case filled with rather old- 
 fashioned books. Mr. Hepburn studies mainly 
 in the open air; most of his books are living 
 people, and much of what he reads is, after 
 these twenty years, what he himself has wi'itten 
 in their lives. 
 
 After a luncheon of fine Yirginia ham and
 
 64 A VIEGINIA COUNTEY EECTOR 
 
 rice, he took me out to show me his farm, for 
 he raises a large part of what he needs in his 
 own household. He has a few negro servants. 
 In one of the outbuildings was his workshop, 
 with carpenter's bench and blacksmith's forge. 
 There he showed me a sort of derrick he had 
 made with his own hands for lifting invalids 
 from their beds. It was now, as he remarked, 
 itself invalidated by the introduction of trained 
 nurses. All his life he had done a great deal 
 of manual labor. He used, for instance, to 
 cobble the shoes for his family. 
 
 The colored stable-boy brought to the door 
 a beautiful thoroughbred mare, the gift of a 
 friend of Mr. Hepburn's, harnessed to the light 
 buggy in which he made his pastoral tours. 
 We started off to drive over a part of his cir- 
 cuit. Our talk drifted to the negroes who 
 lived in the region. 
 
 " They won't let me do any religious work 
 among them," he told me, " not even preach for 
 them. But they often call upon me to cure 
 their sick and even to pull teeth for them." 
 
 "Have you studied medicine?" I inquired. 
 
 " You see, there is no professional physician 
 in a region like this," and he swept with his 
 hand an arc of the horizon. We were several
 
 A VIRGINIA COUNTRY RECTOR 65 
 
 miles from the railroad station. " So," he con- 
 tinued, " for the sake of my o^\ti family, I had 
 to acquaint myself with the use of medicine. 
 Then the families in ni}^ parishes would call me 
 in in cases of emergency. So I've come to be a 
 sort of physician as well as a minister. I have 
 even had to do surgical work. I don't know how 
 many children and young people there are in my 
 parishes at whose birth I have attended. 
 
 "See how free that mare is! She will go 
 like that all day — and day after day. She will 
 take me forty or fifty miles and she will keep 
 her gait to the last mile. To the end it will be 
 all I can do to hold her. It is endurance that 
 shows a thoroughbred. Do you notice that one 
 of her hips is higher than the other? That 
 is how she happens to belong to me. But it 
 makes no difference for my purposes. AVe Vir- 
 ginians admire an}i:hing that is thoroughbred." 
 
 This explicit expression of his joy in the gen- 
 uine was implicit in all that he said. Admira- 
 tion for whatever is sterling was a part of his 
 religion. 
 
 He told me a story which showed that his 
 knowledge of horses had still another bearing 
 upon his work as a minister. He was once 
 asked to participate in the dedication of a monu-
 
 66 A VIRGINIA COUNTRY RECTOR 
 
 ment in Richmond. On the morning of the day 
 set for the dedication he was to perform a mar- 
 riage ceremony a number of miles from the city, 
 where he could make no connections by train. 
 He calculated his chances of reaching the city 
 on time and accepted the invitation. He ex- 
 plained to the committee of arrangements that 
 he could not be present to join the procession at 
 its formation, but he could meet the procession 
 at a certain point and go from there to the 
 monument. On the committee was a judge who 
 was known to be irreligious, and rather scornful 
 of ministers ; he laughed at the notion that any 
 minister should be man of affairs enough to 
 keep an appointment under such circumstances. 
 When the day came, Mr. Hepburn went to the 
 wedding, performed the ceremony, and then, by 
 using a relay of horses, rode to the place of 
 appointment, reaching it punctually, joined the 
 procession, and made the prayer of dedication. 
 The judge was so impressed with this demon- 
 stration of the truth that a Christian minister 
 could be a man that, for the first time in his 
 life, he gave serious thought to religion, and be- 
 fore he died became a declared Christian. 
 " All because," Mr. Hepburn explained, " I 
 knew the capabilities of a horse."
 
 A VIRGINIA COUNTRY RECTOR 67 
 
 So scattered is the population that rehgious 
 life lacks almost every social element, even the 
 most common, except, of course, the gathering 
 of congregations for worship on Sunday. 'No 
 " church sociables " are held ; and no clubs 
 aside from one or two missionary societies exist 
 in connection with any of his churches. 
 
 His circuit includes two large parishes, St. 
 Martin's and St. Paul's. Within these two par- 
 ishes are six churches, four in one parish, two in 
 another. In two of these six churches, as I have 
 said, he preaches once in two weeks, in the 
 others once a month. The churches of other 
 denominations within the limits of these parishes 
 are also on circuits, and conflict of services is 
 regularly avoided; so that on the Sunday he 
 preaches in any church he has a congregation 
 made up practically of the whole neighborhood. 
 Consequently he preaches regularly to people 
 of other denominations. In one church he has 
 fifty Episcopal communicants out of a total of 
 eighty people ; in another fifty out of a total of 
 one hundred; in another fifteen out of a total 
 of seventy-five. In the latter church, for in- 
 stance, he has not a single male communicant; 
 but people of all the denominations participate 
 in the church service. The organist is a Bap-
 
 68 A VIRGINIA COUNTRY RECTOR 
 
 tist, the choir leader and Sunday-school super- 
 intendent a Presbyterian, The offering is re- 
 ceived by a Methodist and a Baptist. But of 
 all his churches that is the one which has the 
 most churchly service, and that is where the 
 responses are clearest and most enthusiastic. 
 He feels that there more than anywhere else he 
 is expected to conduct the service with dignity 
 and scrupulous adherence to the Prayer-Book. 
 The men who bring forward the offering per- 
 f oi-m their duty with the utmost care. All work 
 in perfect accord. Even in the Mite Society, 
 whose funds are of course turned into Episcopal 
 channels, only two of the members are Episco- 
 palians. 
 
 Mr. Hepburn made it apparent that he had 
 very clear conceptions of the duty of the Epis- 
 copal Church in such a community. In certain 
 respects, he was free to confess, the Methodists 
 and Baptists might reach more people by means 
 of the emotional elements in their religion ; but 
 it seemed to him that those very emotional ele- 
 ments resulted in religious instability. He con- 
 ceived that it was his distinctive duty to stand 
 for orderliness and dignity in religion, for its 
 permanency, its higher ideals, and its vital 
 obligations.
 
 A VIRGINIA COUNTRY RECTOR G9 
 
 As the church just described illustrates the 
 friendliness that existed between the Episco- 
 palians and the other denominations, so another 
 church of which he spoke illustrates the dis- 
 tinctive function of the Episcopalians in this 
 country region. This church is in a neighbor- 
 hood where the other denominations have had 
 constant trouble with the hoodlum element; 
 but in his church, Mr. Hepburn told me, he has 
 had no trouble whatever. He ascribed this to 
 the simple dignit}^ of the service. The boys 
 that sit around the stove quietly disperse as 
 soon as he appears with his surplice in the 
 chancel. Once he invited the clerical club of 
 his part of the State to meet at that very church. 
 He knew that this would bring a great crowd 
 of the country people there, and for once he 
 anticipated some trouble. The church was 
 packed, and he saw that some of these boys 
 were restless. He thereupon selected a few of 
 the more troublesome and made them monitors. 
 There was absolutely good order. I gathered 
 not only from this fact, but also from some 
 stories that were told me about his experiences 
 with such congregations, that his own personal 
 dignity and tact, as well as the liturgy of his 
 Church, were effectual for good order.
 
 70 A VIKGINIA COUNTRY EECTOR 
 
 In one of his congregations Mr. Thomas 
 IN^elson Page, who, it is hardly necessary to say, 
 represents not only literary but aristocratic dis- 
 tinction in Virginia, is a regular attendant. On 
 Sundays, therefore, especially in summer, Mr. 
 Hepburn faces a congregation of which the 
 front row consists of such members of the 
 "F. F. V.s," and immediately behind them 
 people who can neither read nor write. 
 
 "How do you preach to a congregation of 
 that sort?" I inquired. 
 
 " Well," he replied, with a laugh, " I preach 
 at the second row." 
 
 We came to a turn in the road, and there 
 under the trees stood a little old brick church. 
 Quaint, square, bulging brick pillars supported 
 the little porches, one in front and one at the 
 side. An old brick wall with rounded top 
 inclosed the churchyard. 
 
 " It is the Old Fork Church," he said. 
 
 He tied his horse to a tree, went to the side 
 porch, leaned down, and took a big brass key 
 from under the step. 
 
 "Everybody knows it is kept here," he 
 remarked. 
 
 The church was built about 1735, and has 
 been in constant use ever since. It still stands
 
 A VIKGINIA COUNTEY RECTOR 71 
 
 the venerated sacred place of the vicinity, full 
 of historic associations, not only religious, but 
 civil and military. During both the Revolu- 
 tionary and Civil Wars it was occupied by the 
 soldiers. It has seen one sect after another 
 rise and spread throughout the region, and yet 
 remains the sanctuary for people of all creeds 
 and of no creed at all. The interior was 
 strangely unlike an Episcopal church. In the 
 middle of the front wall rose stiffly an old- 
 fashioned wine-glass pulpit. In front of the 
 pulpit stairs on one side was the reading-desk 
 (it could hardly well be called a lectern) ; in 
 front of the stairs on the other side stood the 
 prayer-desk. Between these two, and directly 
 in front of the pulpit, stood what Mr. Hepburn 
 said " no one would call an altar, I reckon — 
 it is a sure-enough table according to the Ru- 
 brics." Before the communion-rail, which was 
 such as one might see in any country Methodist 
 church, stood on a standard a simple marble 
 font. How old this font is is not exactly known, 
 but it antedates the Baptist uprising in Virginia. 
 Even at that troublous time the church itself 
 was unharmed; but this font with its standard 
 was carried away by the Baptists in protest 
 against what they thought a false and perni-
 
 72 A VIRGINIA COUNTRY RECTOR 
 
 cious doctrine. For years it was lost, but at 
 last it was discovered in a cellar, being used as 
 a receptacle for meat. The standard has ap- 
 parently irretrievably disappeared; so now the 
 font rests on a wooden standard painted in imi- 
 tation of marble — the only suspicion of pretense 
 I noticed during my whole day's experience. 
 The wooden pews, the warped old communion- 
 table, even the little wooden foot-stools, are the 
 very ones originally placed in the church, and 
 they remained without paint or varnish until 
 the first year of the twentieth century, when 
 the ladies of the church painted the interior 
 with their own hands. 
 
 It was with reluctance that I left this little 
 old church. As I got my last glimpse of it at 
 a turn of the road it seemed to be an interpreter 
 of Yirginian rural life. In the midst of this 
 country region, apparently so undeveloped as 
 to seem to be new and unsettled, this church 
 stood as a monument to a noble past, a reposi- 
 tory of its best traditions, and a symbol of the 
 reverence and hope of the present. 
 
 Before Mr. Hepburn left me at the station he 
 took me to one other of his churches. It was 
 a sunple, unpretentious wooden structure, ap- 
 parently containing nothing noteworthy. Mr.
 
 A VIRGINIA COUNTRY RECTOR 73 
 
 Hepburn, however, called my attention to a 
 memorial tablet. The man to whose memory 
 it was erected had regularly visited and ad- 
 dressed the Sunday-school for a long term of 
 years, although he was a Baptist; and so it 
 happens that this memorial to a Baptist stands 
 in an Episcopal church. 
 
 If in the course of my trip my observations 
 had led me to fancy that institutional Christian- 
 ity was only another phase of human selfishness 
 and display, and that religion itself was but a 
 part of sociology, this one day's experience 
 would have been enough to convict me of folly. 
 The Episcopal Church is known to stand among 
 Protestant bodies distinctively for the clauns of 
 institutional religion, and is sometimes charged 
 with selfishness, more often with display. 
 That these qualities are not integral parts of 
 institutional religion even in its most pro- 
 nounced form, the life of this Virginian rector 
 is abundant proof. Where reverence needed 
 to be quickened he has brought the dignity of 
 public worship; where consciences needed to 
 be touched he has brought the prod of plain 
 speech; where he has been able neither to 
 preach nor to lead in worship, he has been ready 
 to serve in the guise of a physician; he has been
 
 74 A VIEGINIA COUNTRY RECTOR 
 
 ready to take any path to the human heart, 
 though it were the heart of a self-ostracized 
 negro, and the path led by the devious way of 
 pulling teeth! So much for selfishness and dis- 
 play. And as to sociology, it would be pretty 
 hard to find it in the religious work of a minis- 
 ter whose people are thinly scattered over a 
 territory of four hundred and eighty square 
 miles. 
 
 In the last analysis, every successful religious 
 work that I have seen can be attributed to the 
 same causes that have made Mr. Hepburn's 
 work in a high degree successful — the impact 
 of a dominant personahty. Doctrines, organi- 
 zations, methods, have been the creatures, not 
 the creators, of any religious life I have had 
 the chance to observe. The creator has always 
 been a person. In this case the personality of 
 Mr. Hepburn, though comparatively unaided, 
 was also comparatively untrammeled. 
 
 Such a life as Mr. Hepburn's is not unique 
 in Virginia. In fact, with change of personal- 
 ity and location, it is duplicated all through the 
 South. One rector in the city of Richmond 
 told me that early in his ministry he had a 
 similar rural parish. His church was in the 
 center of population, and there were preaching
 
 A VIRGINIA COUNTRY RECTOR 75 
 
 places eight, ten, thirteen miles away in differ- 
 ent directions. Most of his time, he told me, 
 he spent on horseback. And this was his tes- 
 timony as to the hopefulness of Southern rural 
 life : " There is in the main no sign of moral or 
 religious degeneracy. K^ine-tenths of the theo- 
 logical students come from rural parishes. In 
 the parish I had, six men out of fifty communi- 
 cants have gone into the ministry since I left, 
 eighteen years ago — and it was not a remark- 
 able parish either. 
 
 Another rector in Richmond told me that his 
 first experience in the pastorate was in circuit- 
 riding, all in connection with negroes; and that 
 it involved all sorts of work — going into their 
 cabins, giving them orders on stores, providing 
 them with medicines, and praying with them. 
 
 I have mentioned these Episcopal ministers 
 because I think it is generally believed that 
 circuit-riding is peculiar to the Methodists. As 
 a matter of fact, I found it common in all the 
 denominations in the South. This fact was im- 
 pressed upon me in conversations it was my 
 privilege to have with several students at Rich- 
 mond College, one of whom was a minister's 
 son from Georgia, another from Florida, an- 
 other a resident, I believe, of one of the Caro-
 
 76 A VIKGINIA COUNTRY RECTOR 
 
 Unas. They all told me the same story of 
 cu'cuit-riding. In the course of one of these 
 conversations I heard of one village of five 
 hundred inhabitants — and this goes to show 
 that circuit preaching is not confined to the 
 sparsely settled country regions — which had 
 five churches of different denominations, each 
 with a preacher of its own. Not one of these 
 preachers lived in the village. One had his 
 home in the country about ten miles away, the 
 others all had their residence in the city of 
 Richmond. This village was simply a part of 
 their circuits. And yet some Sundays every 
 church was closed. There at least there seemed 
 to be lacking the saving power of the right 
 personality. 
 
 The student from Florida was the son of a 
 Baptist minister, in whose circuit was the Bap- 
 tist church of Tallahassee, the capital of the 
 State. At first he lived outside of Tallahassee 
 and came periodically to preach in the city. 
 Gradually the church grew, until, now that it 
 had a membership of seventy-five, he had moved 
 to Tallahassee, but had retained charge over a 
 church in another place. He was still a circuit 
 preacher, with his headquarters in the capital 
 of the State.
 
 A VIRGINIA COUNTRY RECTOR 77 
 
 Nothing could better illustrate the fact that 
 in the South rural conditions largely prepon- 
 derate. And if the country rector of whose life 
 I had a glimpse is typical of rural ministry in 
 the South, as I have good reason to believe, 
 there is justification for the hopefulness which 
 I found to be a Southern characteristic.
 
 RELIGIOUS te:n^dekcies of 
 THE :n^egro
 
 TV 
 
 EELIGIOUS TEISDENCIES OF 
 THE IS^EGRO 
 
 IT is not my purpose either to add to the 
 ah-eady numerous descriptions of the pictur- 
 esque in the rehgious life of the negroes in the 
 South, or to attempt any final answer to ques- 
 tions concerning the nature of their religion, 
 but simply to relate some of the experiences 
 that came to me as the result of two queries: 
 First, In what direction and to what point has 
 the best in the negroes' religious life been de- 
 veloping? Second, What do the Southern 
 white people think, not only of the negroes' re- 
 ligion, but also of the relation between their 
 own religion and the race problem ? ^ 
 
 1 With regard to the latter question I wish to call attention to " Race 
 Problems of the South : Report of the Proceedings of the First Annual Con- 
 ference held under the auspices of the Southern Society for the Promotion 
 of the Study of Race Conditions and Problems in the South " (B. F. Johnson 
 Pub. Co., Richmond, Va., 1900). Of these addresses, given from widely vari- 
 ous points of view, several present the religious aspects of the race problem. 
 The more hopeful and courageous of these addresses are more representa^ 
 tive of the opinions of the people of the South I talked with than the two or 
 three that are pessimistic and fearful. 
 
 81
 
 82 EELIGIOUS TENDENCIES 
 
 N^aturally, in looking- for signs of progress I 
 gave my attention chiefly to the negro churches 
 of the cities. If, like the casual traveler, I had 
 gone only to the churches where both in num- 
 bers and in " character " the congregations 
 would seem to be most typical of the colored 
 people, I should have found little evidence of 
 progress. In the cities of the South the great 
 mass of negroes flock together in huge churches 
 which often number two or three thousand 
 members each. The chief service on Sunday is 
 held in the evening, when the colored people are 
 free from their work, which is largely menial. 
 One Sunday evening in Charleston, South Caro- 
 lina, I attended service at one of these churches. 
 The church was Methodist. The building was 
 crowded. The congregation was singing a 
 hymn as I entered. Beneath the quavering ap- 
 poggiaturas that rose and fell at the pleasure of 
 individuals in all parts of the congregation like 
 the spray from waves dashing over shoals, I 
 recognized with difiiculty an old familiar psalm 
 tune. An aged " mammy " in a pew ahead of 
 me was swaying back and forth, with her eyes 
 half closed. Here and there throughout the 
 congregation others were swaying in the same 
 rhythmic fashion. The hymn was ended ; the
 
 OF THE NEGEO 83 
 
 excitement was only begnn. On the platform 
 were half a dozen negro ministers. One came 
 forward and offered prayer. More and more 
 fervent he became ; more and more he pounded 
 the pulpit. Inarticulate cries and shrieks rose 
 from the pews. The prayer ended, then came 
 the first of the collections ; there were three be- 
 fore the end of the service. Another minister 
 preached the sermon. He began colloquially, 
 referring a great deal to himself. Then he 
 urged certain moral precepts. Before long he 
 was as wrought up as his audience ; and finally, 
 with hoarse and screaming voice, he described in 
 imagination his progress across Jordan, up the 
 golden streets, straight to where in the center 
 on one throne sat the Father, to his right on 
 another sat the Son, and to the left on still an- 
 other sat the Holy Ghost, whereupon, with a 
 shout, " I'm here at last ! " he cast himself upon 
 the very throne itself — not merely in imagina- 
 tion, for, amid the frenzy of the audience, he 
 flung himself into one of the pulpit chairs with 
 his legs crossed wildly in the air. 
 
 I had an experience almost paralleling this 
 when I wxnt to a negro prayer-meeting in the 
 heart of the city of Atlanta, Georgia. There, 
 after the minister had finished his shouting and
 
 84 RELIGIOUS TENDENCIES 
 
 gesticulating, the assembled negroes fell upon 
 their knees, and then one of the number, a burly 
 negro with a brutal face, chanted or rather in- 
 toned on two high notes a sort of barbarian lit- 
 any, accompanying himself by rhythmically 
 clapping his hands and pounding the bench in 
 front of him. His words were hardly distin- 
 guishable for the moaning of those all about me, 
 which resembled nothing so much as the lowing 
 of a great herd of cattle. 
 
 It is such exhibitions of uncontrolled and arti- 
 ficially aroused emotion that are referred to in 
 most generalizations about negro religion. But 
 it is to be remembered that even in these pro- 
 nounced cases there was evidence of a strong 
 tendency away from mere emotionalism. The 
 preacher in Charleston felt it necessary to spend 
 a good part of his sermon in very plain speak- 
 ing concerning moral conduct; and the matter 
 of the address made by the Atlanta preacher at 
 the prayer-meeting, however violent his manner, 
 had direct bearing on the lives of his people. 
 And Dr. Du Bois, of Atlanta University, whose 
 published studies of the conditions of his race 
 have entitled his testimony to great weight, told 
 me that all such churches give similar evidence 
 of two factors : one, the old-style darky whose
 
 OF THE NEGRO 85 
 
 religion is of the hallelujah order; the other, the 
 3^ounger generation who are ashamed of these 
 emotional outbreaks. The younger element is, 
 of course, finally going to control. And one 
 especially hopeful fact is to be noted: partly 
 because the church is for the negroes their one 
 racial rallying place, pai-tly because the negroes 
 have been born and bred in a community where 
 among the whites church-going is the rule, not 
 the exception, the great mass of negro working 
 people go to church. I found it generally safe 
 to assume that the colored porter or waiter or 
 driver whom I happened to speak to was an 
 attendant, almost always a member, of a church. 
 Whatever advance, therefore, is to be seen in the 
 colored churches is indicative of an advance made 
 by at least the respectable part of the race abreast. 
 At Tougaloo, Mississippi, where there is a 
 " university " for negroes, the influence of wise 
 religious education was very perceptible. In 
 that country community, where still negroes ask 
 of their Northern teachers assurance that the 
 earth is not round in order to keep their faith in 
 the Bible that speaks of the "corners of the 
 earth," where still many negroes, young and old, 
 are strongly confirmed in their belief that before 
 " getting religion " a person must feel the devil
 
 86 RELIGIOUS TENDENCIES 
 
 depart from some one or other definite part of 
 his anatomy, where still a young negro man 
 recently did not know it was wrong for his 
 pastor to have two wives, I attended services in 
 two colored churches, both Baptist. In each 
 the service was perfectly orderly and devout. 
 The preacher in one church, with rich negro 
 dialect, made a very thoughtful and appealing 
 address. The course of his thought was some- 
 thing like this: God is love. If you are a 
 Christian and have religion, you have God in 
 your heart; therefore you have love in your 
 heart. But if you loved one another you would 
 not be dishonest; we could trust you with our 
 daughters and our wives. The colored people 
 especially need to love one another, because 
 they have no leaders. In the other church the 
 sermon, evidently on Job, was drawing to a 
 close. The "elder" was indicating from the 
 experience of the man of Uz that Christians 
 are not free from the attacks of Satan. 
 
 After the service I talked with a colored 
 farmer-preacher, with the " elder " and others, 
 one after another. They were unanimous in 
 saying that the colored people of the neighbor- 
 hood had improved morally and materially. 
 They gave much credit to the university. One
 
 OF THE Is^EGRO 87 
 
 of them, a former gambler, told hoAV the gam- 
 bling and the demoralizing horse-racing had 
 been done away with, not by violent reform, 
 but by the change of the character of the col- 
 ored people themselves. As the " elder " said, 
 " We is progressing very fast." My driver, 
 a young colored man of twenty-two who 
 modestly expressed his ambition to be a minis- 
 ter, said that even in his short experience he 
 had noted an improvement toward quietness 
 and good order. 
 
 A t}^e of negro church much higher than 
 the Charleston church I have described was one 
 in Baltimore in which I attended a preaching 
 service. The Christian Endeavor meeting 
 which preceded the preaching service showed no 
 trace whatever of emotionalism ; indeed, except 
 in one or two particulars, its success in imitat- 
 ing the most perfunctorily respectable meeting 
 of white " Endeavorers " was almost perfect. 
 The service in the church, on the other hand, 
 was decidedly ejaculatory ; although the use of 
 the decalogue, partly intoned in a crude way, 
 with " gospel hymns " intercalated among the 
 responses, indicated an effort to give dignity to 
 the service. The sermon, which began as a 
 sketch of the history of the denomination,
 
 88 EELIGIOUS TENDENCIES 
 
 ended with a series of loosely joined but fer- 
 vently expressed appeals to race pride, and very 
 candid and explicit exhortations to moral recti- 
 tude on the part of the young people. When, 
 after the service, I spoke to the minister, his 
 race-consciousness changed pitifully from the 
 self-assertive form to the apologetic; and when 
 two days later I called on him in his home, 
 where tokens of his race-consciousness in the 
 form of portraits of colored church dignitaries 
 huns: on the walls to the exclusion of all other 
 pictures, my interview was very unsatisfactory; 
 the frankness of his public speech was gone; 
 because I was a white man I did not have his 
 confidence. The ethical questions he had raised 
 in his sermon he dismissed by saying that the 
 cure for all evils among whites as well as blacks 
 was to " preach Christ and practice what you 
 preach." Like many another man face to face 
 with a big problem, he was willing to accentu- 
 ate its difficulties in justifying himself and 
 others in the same condition, but when it came 
 to analyzing the problem and discussing 
 methods of solution he was content with a 
 generalization. 
 
 In the movement away from an emotional 
 religion unrelated to conduct, the churches I
 
 OF THE NEGEO 89 
 
 have mentioned were evidently not leaders but 
 followers. They therefore represent a much 
 larger number of the colored people than the 
 churches I shall describe in the rest of this 
 chapter. These, I think, may roughly be 
 divided into tAVO classes: those which believe 
 that the emotional character of the negro ought 
 not to be suppressed, but educated and guided; 
 and those which believe that that emotional 
 character should be minimized by the magnify- 
 ing of the intellectual and ethical. 
 
 To the former avowedly belongs the very 
 ritualistic Episcopal mission church for negroes 
 in Baltimore called St. Mary's. It is in the 
 negro quarter, near Mount Calvary Church, 
 which sustains it. I found my way into the 
 church one afternoon. The interior was rather 
 dingy. The altar with its candles was elabo- 
 rate. Around the walls were the pictures of 
 the Stations of the Cross, such as hang on the 
 walls of Roman Catholic churches. On one of 
 the benches lay a ragged negro boy asleep. As 
 I went to the place where an image of the 
 Virgin stood, he roused, and, in answer to my 
 inquiry, told me where I might obtain informa- 
 tion regarding the mission. At the clergy- 
 house, to which he directed me, the chief im-
 
 90 RELIGIOUS TENDENCIES 
 
 pression I received from the white ministers in 
 charge was of their recognition of the moral 
 significance of their work. In place of the un- 
 restrained appeal to the emotions which the 
 Baptists and Methodists made by revivals, they 
 hoped to substitute a regulated appeal by means 
 of the liturgy of the High Church service, with 
 its incense, its lights, its music directed to 
 moral ends. And in the confessional, they 
 were convinced, they had a means by which the 
 religion of the individual negro could be con- 
 nected in a very personal and direct way with 
 repentance from sin and instruction in right- 
 eousness. Both from my observation and 
 from the testimony of High Church Episcopa- 
 lians and Roman Catholics I am persuaded that 
 this appeal has had but little effect; and what- 
 ever success it has had is confined almost ex- 
 clusively to the more ignorant negroes, who 
 are most unlikely to lead in the development of 
 the race. 
 
 As a rule, the Episcopalians of the South do 
 not favor the ordination of colored men to the 
 priesthood, though there is a strong minority 
 that desires it. In the course of my trip I per- 
 sonally met two colored rectors. One, the rec- 
 tor of a small ritualistic church in Charleston,
 
 OF THE NEGEO 91 
 
 I found getting ready for a rehearsal; he 
 teaches his choir the Gregorian music by ear. 
 The other I met in Baltimore, where he is rec- 
 tor of a church neither high nor ritualistic. 
 
 While searching for the colored rector in 
 Baltimore, I called on a barber who was a mem- 
 ber of his church — St. James's. I found him 
 in his shop. His appearance, bearing, and 
 manner had all the pronounced characteristics 
 of a gentleman of the old school. He was full 
 of enthusiasm for his church, proud of the fact 
 that St. James's was the oldest colored vestry 
 and the only independent colored vestry in 
 Maryland, proud of the pamphlets and reports 
 that it had published, proud of its rector, proud 
 of the orphanage it was maintaining. I in- 
 quired whether the churches were merely stand- 
 ing for emotional religion, or helping to create 
 character. His reply had at least the merit of 
 discrimination: 
 
 " That involves," he said, " a mental separa- 
 tion of those who are native from the inroads 
 of Virginia negroes. On the whole there is 
 improvement. What is more, there is increas- 
 ing confidence among the white people in the 
 colored race. For instance, the trustees of 
 the St. James orphanage, called the Maryland
 
 92 RELIGIOUS TENDENCIES 
 
 Home, all colored men, had no experience, but 
 every one of them was a business man — yes, I 
 am one of the trustees. They appealed to the 
 charitable public and were supported from the 
 beginning. There is increasing confidence, too, 
 among the colored people in the educated men 
 of their own race. They are readier now than 
 formerly to go, for instance, to colored physi- 
 cians. As a matter of fact, it all lies within 
 the individual; he has power to create confi- 
 dence." 
 
 In further search for the colored rector of 
 St. James's, I called first at the rectory, which 
 bore no such obtrusively assertive marks of 
 race-consciousness that I had noted in the 
 house of the colored Methodist minister; then 
 at the printing-office where this rector prints 
 with his own hands what is a combined parish 
 paper and church calendar, and also the circu- 
 lars and a weekly paper for his church orphan- 
 age; then at St. James's Church, a small church, 
 smudgy within and without, on a sunless side 
 street; finally at the orphanage, where I found 
 him. He was small, clean-shaven; his face 
 was full of sparkle and animation; his mind 
 was overflowing with ideals and schemes. In 
 this home for friendless colored children was
 
 OF THE NEGEO 93 
 
 tangible evidence that his energy was efficient. 
 He showed me over the building — an ordinary 
 city house adapted for its present use, scrupu- 
 lously clean. The children, some of them 
 picked up from ash-heaps and gutters, were in 
 charge of a colored kindergartner ; they showed 
 clearly the fruits of discipline and good care. 
 In the meanwhile he talked with great anima- 
 tion, not only about his own work, but as well 
 about the practical problems of the race. The 
 fact that the Episcopal Church among the col- 
 ored people was composed of the better-paid 
 and better-educated class made it difficult, he 
 said, to reach the "masses"; for the negroes 
 have very well-defined class distinctions among 
 themselves. At the same time this fact does 
 not bring specially vigorous financial support 
 to the Church. He illustrated it thus: Eliza 
 gets twelve dollars a month, and gives one 
 dollar to the Church. She jumps into a posi- 
 tion yielding fifty dollars. At once she finds 
 herself in a new circle of life; she knows more 
 about balls and parties, more of the require- 
 ments of dress, of reading, of a multitude of 
 things she never had before. So she still pays 
 one dollar to the Church. Her rise seems to be 
 away from her religion; it seems so because
 
 94 EELIGIOUS TENDENCIES 
 
 her life now radiates in so many more direc- 
 tions. In this way the material progress of the 
 race, he explained, does not bring proportionate 
 prosperity to the Chnrch ; and so far from de- 
 ploring it, he seemed to take joy in the financial 
 bnrdens he had to bear, so long as they were 
 brought upon him by an increasingly radiating 
 life for his people. He believed thoroughly in 
 colored ministers for colored churches ; colored 
 teachers for colored pupils; colored leaders for 
 colored people. The existence of white minis- 
 ters over colored congregations encourages the 
 already too great characteristic of dependence 
 in the negro race, he maintained, and it should 
 be recognized by Northerners who are doing 
 religious and charitable work among the ne- 
 groes. As he put it, "We want their advice, 
 not because it is white, but because it is right." 
 He was frank enough to say, in giving a further 
 reason for this, that colored people under white 
 supervision feel irresponsible, and often prefer 
 white supervision in order to be relieved of re- 
 sponsibility, for "no colored man finds it possi- 
 ble to speak with the unreserved friendliness 
 to a white man that he would use in speaking to 
 one of his own race." 
 
 In this he was strangely confirmed by what
 
 OF THE NEGKO 95 
 
 the priest who is the head of the Catholic Mis- 
 sions to Negroes and Indians remarked to me. 
 Although an Irishman, he was the most vigor- 
 ous partisan of the negro I met in the course of 
 my trip. "It is significant," he said, "that 
 everything that has been done against the negro 
 has turned out to his advantage: the Missouri 
 Compromise, the Ku Klux Klan, the War 
 against the Union, and now negro disenfranchise- 
 ment. It is not surprising that no white man 
 has the confidence of the negro. Why, I have 
 worked among them for years, and yet a young 
 negro who comes fresh into this seminary will 
 know more in a day about the colored people 
 whom I come in contact with than I am able to 
 find out in a lifetime. It is hard to persuade the 
 Catholic Church to ordain negroes to the priest- 
 hood ; but we must have them. That we have 
 not is due to race prejudice ; but to show how 
 unreasonable and inconsistent that prejudice is, 
 these same people that object to negro priests 
 took up a little while ago the fad of going to 
 confession in Washington to a regular corn-field 
 nigger priest." 
 
 In reply to my inquiry whether colored choirs 
 could be trained to sing the Gregorian music, 
 he replied:
 
 96 EELIGIOUS TENDENCIEiS 
 
 " Colored churches don't need choirs. Yon 
 know the proverb we have, God Ahnighty at 
 one end of the church and the devil at the other. 
 Well, it doesn't apply to them. The negro has 
 his own music, and it's an ornament to his char- 
 acter." 
 
 In Washington I called on Dr. J. L. M. 
 Curry, Agent of the Peabody and Slater Funds. 
 I found him immersed in a mass of correspon- 
 dence, and very busy. When I stated to him that 
 my errand was to look into the religious condi- 
 tions of the South, he interjected between di- 
 rections to his private secretary, " Well, young 
 man, if you are going South to study the nigger 
 question, you might just as well start for the 
 moon." ]N^othing could better illustrate the 
 fact that every problem in the South seems to 
 the Southerner to be the race problem ; and in- 
 cidentally that the Southern people, even the 
 most patient and catholic, have become wearied 
 of the long years in which they have borne the 
 inroads of self-complacent IS^ortherners with 
 theoi'ies about the negro. On the other hand, 
 when I stated more fully my purpose and pre- 
 sented letters of introduction from The Outlook, 
 Dr. Curry's cordiality was unbounded; he left 
 his pressing work to give me such invaluable
 
 OF THE NEGRO 97 
 
 information and assistance as only his wide ex- 
 perience and liberal mind could give. This was 
 typical of my experience in the South. One 
 young Southerner left his office and spent hours 
 with me, urging with hot, impetuous language 
 the immediate necessity for the education of the 
 negroes. His nervous energy seemed to justify 
 his optimism, too. Through him I got a glimpse 
 of that not inconsiderable number of young 
 Southern men who are putting their minds and 
 their strength into the solution of the race prob- 
 lem, not with academic theories, but with prac- 
 tical determination and with joy in the conflict 
 that would gladden the heart of a Roosevelt or 
 a Kiis. He spoke highly, by the way, of the 
 work that the Presbyterian Church is doing to 
 give the negroes religious training out of their 
 usual emotionalism. 
 
 The lowly, compassionate Jesus, who ate with 
 publicans and sinners and did not hesitate to 
 talk with a Samaritan woman, has no sincerer 
 and more truly democratic followers than the 
 Christian people of the South. Ko inquiry into 
 religious conditions of America could easily 
 omit the query. What do these Southern 
 Christians say to the social ostracism of the 
 black race? That was a question I found it
 
 98 RELIGIOUS TENDENCIES 
 
 difficult, as a Northerner, to propound without 
 a tone of seeming self-righteousness. Ask it I 
 did, however, with as much candor and tact as 
 I could. Two answers I think it worth while to 
 report. One was from a Methodist minister of 
 Virginia. At first he was rather reticent, but 
 volunteered to say, " What phase are you seek- 
 ing for?" and then added, "We give contri- 
 butions for the support of colored churches, and 
 have a kindly feeling for the race. The South 
 understands the negro better than the North, 
 and treats hun better," and so forth in the usual 
 strain. 
 
 "But how about the practical side of their 
 life? Clerkships, for instance?" 
 
 " Why, they can have them in their own 
 stores," he replied magnanimously, "but not 
 in white stores. The thinking portions of the 
 race do not want such positions and would be 
 uncomfortable in them. So with social posi- 
 tion," and he cited Booker Washington, with 
 strong praise. 
 
 " But," I persisted, " if a man should attempt 
 personally to practice Christ's precepts by 
 mingling with the colored people?" 
 
 " He would be cured in a week, not only 
 by ostracism, but by flooding himself with a
 
 OF THE NEGEO 99 
 
 lot of negroes physically, socially, and morally 
 offensive." 
 
 That the sacrifices thus involved might be a 
 part of the discipleship of Christ did not seem 
 to be worth considering by this minister. He 
 later gave a more plausible reason when he 
 likened social equality for the negro to a razor 
 in the hands of a child. 
 
 The other answer was given by a lady of 
 great personal charm, of profoundly democratic 
 convictions and sympathies, who belonged by 
 right of inheritance and of personal experience 
 more to the South as a whole than to any one 
 State : 
 
 " The attitude of the Southern people toward 
 the negro would be defended by the Southern 
 Christian on the ground that it was for the best 
 good of the negro. To recognize socially a 
 cultivated negro and his wife would work an 
 injury to the colored race by creating false ex- 
 pectations on the part of the unfit. Moral 
 ])rotherhood is recognized, but not equality ; the 
 relation of helper to helped, but not the relation 
 of reciprocity." 
 
 Except in the Roman Catholic churches of 
 the South, it is very rarely that negroes worship 
 in the same churches with the whites. This
 
 100 RELIGIOUS TENDENCIES 
 
 was not the case before the war, I was told, in 
 many parts of the South. A Baptist church of 
 Charleston still reserves, according to its ante- 
 bellum custom, one gallery for colored people. 
 It is usually well occupied, and their rights are 
 scrupulously maintained by the church, even 
 when the seating capacity is taxed to its utmost. 
 Most of the colored people who attend are 
 members of colored churches, but they come to 
 the service in this white church because they 
 feel that they are getting from the preaching 
 there something which they could not get from 
 their own ministers. 
 
 With one of the colored Baptist ministers of 
 the city I had an interview. His chief concern 
 about his people was for their education. As 
 he said, "It is hard to make good Christians of 
 them when they are ignorant." He was there- 
 fore maintaining a school for negroes, modeled 
 in a humble way after Tuskegee. He spoke 
 with dignified intensity of the low moral condi- 
 tion of the negroes in Charleston. "Every 
 time I get a chance I talk about it, though the 
 colored people don't like to hear about it. Yes, 
 licentiousness too." "When I saw him he had 
 just had a revival in his church, and he was 
 giving his attention to the young converts by
 
 OF THE NEGEO 101 
 
 trying to give them something to do. He com- 
 plained, however, that there was no way of 
 setting them to work because they were igno- 
 rant. He thus reverted to the supreme need 
 of education. 
 
 One gentleman with whom I talked had the 
 distinction of being at the same time a South- 
 erner through and through, the son of a slave- 
 owner, and the head of an institute maintained 
 by the Methodist Church South for the higher 
 education of negroes. As a young man, I was 
 told by one who knew him well, he felt the 
 burden of the ignorance of the newly freed 
 slaves, and, sacrificing the life of refinement 
 for which he had pronounced taste, and facing 
 probable ostracism, he took up the burden. As 
 a matter of fact he has not been ostracized, 
 though necessarily isolated. After years of 
 experience it was his deliberate opinion, ex- 
 pressed in his conversation with me, that al- 
 though most of the Southern white people 
 know the traits and general character of the 
 mass of the colored people better than the peo- 
 ple of the !N^orth could possibly know them, 
 the}^ were utterly unacquainted with the grow- 
 ing class of educated negroes, knew nothing 
 of their manner of life, their attainments, their
 
 102 PvELIGIOUS TENDEXCIES 
 
 ambitions, tbeii' religion. AMiatever intimacy 
 there has been in the past between the races 
 has been that gi'owing out of the relation of 
 servant to master. T^'herever that relation has 
 ceased the intunacv has disappeared. As a 
 consequence the significant unprovement in the 
 religious life of the negroes is coming, like 
 the rest of the kingdom of heaven, not with 
 observation. 
 
 The chm-ch which, better than any other I 
 happened upon, represents those leaders of the 
 negroes who are guiding the race away from a 
 merely emotional religion, was a colored Con- 
 gregational church of Atlanta. "^Mthout ex- 
 ception, white or black, it was apparently the 
 most progressive and best organized church I 
 saw in the South. The minister is a gi-aduate 
 of Fisk Universitv and Yale Di^initv School. 
 Connected with the church is a Men's League, 
 resembhng somewhat a "lodge" without se- 
 crecy or insm-ance, a Literary Society, which, 
 as I happened casually to see it at one of its 
 meetings, resembled such a literary society as 
 mig-ht be found in a Xew England town, and a 
 Young People's Society. But the distinguish- 
 inof characteristic of the church is the fact that 
 the whole chmx-h itself is organized into what
 
 OF THE XEGEO 103i 
 
 are called Circles of Help. Each cii'cle consists 
 normally of ten members, every one of whom 
 has a distinctive dutv. Xumber one in each 
 circle is chau'man, through whom the circle re- 
 ceives the pastor's directions; nmnber two is 
 assistant chah-man; number three keeps the 
 records and corresponds with absent members 
 of the cux-le; number four, the treasurer, is re- 
 sponsible for raising chmx-h funds within his 
 circle; number five promotes the devotional 
 life; number six promotes social life, and espe- 
 cially drives off the demon of sanctimony; 
 number seven sees that attention is given to 
 the sick; number eight sees that members visit 
 one another; number nine sees to the rehef of 
 poverty; number ten is general promoter of 
 new methods. The minister receives monthly 
 reports from the circles, and when I talked 
 with hun was planning to have an occasional 
 meeting of the same "numbers,"' all the 
 " sevens," for instance, for the consideration 
 of their special work. Although the church 
 has barely four hundred members, it is far 
 more influential than some of the negi'o churches 
 with a membership of two or three thousand. 
 
 Dm'ing my visit at Atlanta I had occasion to 
 call with this minister at the homes of some of
 
 104 TENDENCIES OF THE NEGEO 
 
 his people. Of such homes among the negroes 
 as these the white people know very little. 
 The door is locked on both sides — on the side 
 of the whites by their dictum of social separa- 
 tion; on the side of the educated negroes by 
 their already achieved race pride and race 
 exclusiveness. 
 
 In conclusion I am reminded of the Irish- 
 man's saying that in one respect all women are 
 alike — in that they are all different. My one 
 generalization concerning the religious life of 
 the negroes in the South is that without qualifi- 
 cation it is impossible to generalize.
 
 KEW TENDENCIES IN THE 
 OLD SOUTH
 
 Y 
 
 :t^W TEXDEXCIES IX THE 
 OLD SOUTH 
 
 IX most of the sermons and religious addresses 
 I heard in the South the conception of re- 
 ligion seemed to be that of a preparation for a 
 world to come rather than a mode of earthly 
 life. The matter for chief concern seemed to 
 be, not for the relation of the individual Avith 
 his God and his fellow-men, but rather the 
 condition of his soul after death. In respect, 
 therefore, to religion which did not deal pri- 
 marily with the affau's of a rational existence 
 in this Avorld, congregations seemed to be ex- 
 pected to suspend their reasoning power and 
 put in its place an unquestioning credence — 
 called faith — in the formulas, always purport- 
 ing to be derived directly from the Bible, which 
 
 set forth the way to attain a happy eternal des- 
 
 107
 
 108 NEW TENDENCIES 
 
 tiny. It would be a mistake to infer from this 
 that I found reUgion divorced from morahty. 
 On the contrary, nowhere have I heard moral 
 precepts more explicitly, even dogmatically, 
 asserted than by Christian people of the South. 
 But these precepts seemed to be regarded either 
 as tests for ascertaining the sincerity of conver- 
 sion or as rules more or less arbitrarily imposed 
 upon believers. Religion was considered to be 
 not so much motive infusing all life as one of 
 the departments, though to be sure the chief 
 department, of existence. 
 
 This view of religion may account for the 
 fact that I found religion easily alluded to 
 under all sorts of circumstances. A group of 
 men in a Georgia city club, their " high balls " 
 being all the while brought to them in rapid 
 succession by the waiter, were as ready to men- 
 tion, and dismiss, the subject of religion as the 
 subject of college education or initiation into 
 the ancient order of " Buffaloes." 
 
 The prevalence of this view of religion makes 
 it easy to understand why there is so large a 
 proportion of church membership to the popu- 
 lation in the South. It is much simpler to 
 forego the right of rationalizing religion and 
 keeping aloof from the Church if one is assured
 
 IN THE OLD SOUTH 109 
 
 that by joining the Church one need substitute 
 unquestioning credence only in regard to a fu- 
 ture life considerably removed from every-day 
 affairs. In Richmond, Virginia, the Secretary 
 of the Young Men's Christian Association, a 
 Pennsylvanian, told me that it was almost im- 
 possible to find men who would do personal 
 religious work. On the other hand, both from 
 testimony and from direct evidence, I was con- 
 vinced that both church attendance and church 
 membership were natural and expected. The 
 secretary I have just mentioned, in the same 
 breath in which he deplored the lack of spiritu- 
 ality of the young men of Richmond, declared 
 that it was " the thing " there for men to belong 
 to the Church. Others more intimately asso- 
 ciated with the city — one, for instance, a physi- 
 cian, whose conversation leaned more naturally 
 to the race prol^lem in its pathological aspects 
 and to politics than to religion — told me without 
 qualification that this was true. On the Sunday 
 that I spent in Richmond I attended the morn- 
 ing service of a Baptist church. The congre- 
 gation filled the pews. I was ushered to a pew 
 toward the front, where I was shown every 
 courtesy by the occupants. It was Communion 
 Sunday, and as the church practiced " close
 
 110 NEW TENDENCIES 
 
 Communion," I withdrew at the end of the 
 preachmg service; but, for the first time in my 
 life under those circumstances, I found myself 
 in the minority. The majority of the congre- 
 gation — and I do not think my judgment re- 
 garding this is at fault — remained for Commu- 
 nion. This experience helped me to understand 
 why it happened that there were lying on the 
 table in my room at the hotel two books which 
 I had at first thought to be the forgotten pos- 
 sessions of a former occupant of the room, but 
 soon discovered to be a Book of Common 
 Prayer and a Testament and Psalms, the prop- 
 erty of the hotel. 
 
 About this ingenuous regard for the externals 
 of religion there is the same elusive charm that 
 hovers over Southern hospitality. It defies 
 analysis, but it is very persuasive. An incident 
 told me by a I^Torthern man describes this better 
 than any one experience I had. With another 
 I^ortherner, he was guest at the table of an old 
 Virginia family. When the dessert had been 
 served, the old negro serving-man brought in, 
 on the same tray on which he had brought the 
 dishes, a prayer-book. The hostess and mother, 
 an elderly lady, then read a psalm, and after- 
 ward, with the whole family, knelt there at the
 
 IN THE OLD SOUTH 111 
 
 table and read the beautiful form of prayer pre- 
 scribed for use in families. In these simple but 
 formal devotions the two ^Northern guests 
 joined, of course. Then the}^ all withdrew to 
 the drawing-room for their coffee. To these 
 two men in their own homes this procedure 
 would have been embarrassing. There it seemed 
 to be a part of the gracious hospitality that had 
 been extended to them. And as religious ob- 
 servances are in the South as naturally included 
 in the hospitality of the home as anything else, 
 so, conversely, hospitality in the South is an 
 integral part of the church services. In the 
 hotel at Richmond I was standing in front of 
 the church register on Sunday evening, trying 
 to decide which of the Presbyterian churches I 
 should attend, when a young man approached, 
 and, as I turned, offered to me, with some apol- 
 ogy, a card of the Brotherhood of St. Andrew, 
 and invited me to attend Grace Episcopal 
 Church. He explained that he was not accus- 
 tomed to doing this sort of thing, but undertook 
 to act as a substitute for a friend of his. He 
 had ventured to speak to me because I was look- 
 ing at the bulletin of churches. How could I help 
 accepting his invitation, so courteously and per- 
 sonally given? At the church, as I was stand-
 
 112 NEW TENDENCIES 
 
 ing alone in the vestibule, a gentleman of mili- 
 tary bearing entered, and, at once seeing that I 
 was a stranger, bade me welcome as if I were a 
 guest at his own house, and proffered me a seat. 
 Soon afterwards I was greeted by another host; 
 I had been welcomed to the church, now I was 
 welcomed to the pew. They may have "hos- 
 pitality committees " in the South ; if they do, 
 they count " hospitality " the genus, and " com- 
 mittee" the species. It is the reverse in the 
 !North, where there are committees for every- 
 thing, and incidentally for welcoming strangers. 
 IS^orthern church hospitality is a system; South- 
 ern church hospitality is an instinct. 
 
 At Petersburg, where I spent only a part of 
 one day, it happened that I felt more of the his- 
 toric religious atmosphere than anywhere else 
 in the South. Perhaps that was due to the 
 sight of the ruined old Blandford Church, which 
 stands on the hill overlooking the city, guard- 
 ing the graves of Confederate dead and bear- 
 ing the scars that it received while in the line 
 of fire from the Federal troops. A ruin always 
 suggests history. It was built before 1731, but, 
 unlike the old Fork Church I saw near Hanover, 
 it had long been out of use. It represented, 
 however, the old parish which from 1650 on-
 
 IN THE OLD SOUTH 113 
 
 ward for many decades was the ruling power. 
 The Church of England in those days was sup- 
 ported by glebe. The vestry had rights over 
 property and even over life. From where I 
 stood I could see the "crater" made by the 
 explosion of the Confederate magazine; the 
 place where Butler's troops faced Lee's and 
 Jackson's; and off toward the sea the place 
 where, three generations before, Lafayette had 
 been stationed. Every foot of ground seemed 
 to have been harried first by British, then by 
 Federal "invaders." And the history of re- 
 ligion there seemed to be of conflict, too: the 
 Scotch Presbyterians, who were the first set- 
 tlers; the more aristocratic families of the 
 Anglican communion ; the Baptists, zealous for 
 doctrine; the Methodists, rising against the fox- 
 hunting, carousing Episcopal parsons; the 
 Disciples, forming a new sect in remonstrance 
 against sectarianism; finally, Bohemians from 
 Prague and Pilsen, who were all Poman Catho- 
 lics — one ecclesiastical army after another has 
 made of this battle-ground of two wars a spirit- 
 ual battle-ground as well. Land so plowed 
 and harrowed does not furnish much of a crop — 
 principally " ground-peas " and doctrines. My 
 host and guide, an intense Virginian, well
 
 114 NEW TENDENCIES 
 
 versed in local history, had not much to say of 
 distinctively religious conditions; what he did 
 say I may briefly summarize as follows: Two 
 old Presbyterian churches, which were built 
 when the women brought in their aprons the 
 sand for the mortar, still stand; the Episco- 
 palian churches, which in the old days of the 
 glebe were under a rector and curate, are com- 
 bined in a circuit under one rector; Methodists 
 and Baptists are numerically strong; and the 
 Catholics are segregated locally and racially. 
 In one respect this is a picture of all of the 
 South that I saw : a country still suffering from 
 the desolating effects of civil and spiritual 
 war. 
 
 This sectarian spirit is partly due to the 
 regard for externals I have referred to; for 
 there is bound to be disunion where there is 
 more allegiance to the uniform than to the 
 Leader; but it is also partly due to the indi- 
 vidualism of the South. The peculiar charac- 
 ter of Southern individualism I have not yet 
 been able, even measurably, to analyze. As I 
 saw it, however, its distinctive quality seemed 
 to be institutional. The personal individualism 
 of the 'New England Puritan, whose prophets 
 are Emerson and Thoreau, and whose types
 
 IN THE OLD SOUTH 115 
 
 throng the stories of Miss Wilkins and Miss 
 Jewett, seemed to me to be conspicuously 
 absent; but in its place there was an institu- 
 tional individualism connoted everywhere. The 
 part was assumed to be greater than the whole: 
 in politics, the State than the [N^ation, and the 
 city than the State; in religion, Protestantism 
 than Christianity, and the denomination than 
 either. The more individual the institution, 
 the more did I hear of insistence on its rights. 
 But not an iota further did individualism go. 
 In the democracy of the South, which in many 
 respects is more distinctively American than 
 that of any other portion of the Union, the unit 
 is something larger than the individual voter. 
 The ordinances of secession were passed, with 
 but one exception, without being submitted to 
 the people, and this year of 1901 has seen one 
 Southern State establish a new Constitution, for 
 the express purpose of asserting the individual- 
 ism of that State, without popular ratification. 
 In much the same way in the Protestantism of 
 the South, it is the hberty of the denomination 
 rather than that of the individual soul that is 
 asserted. Doctrinal dissent of any kind, of 
 which any denomination is sponsor, I found to 
 be more in evidence in the South than anywhere
 
 116 NEW TENDENCIES 
 
 else; but I do not think I met a single South- 
 erner who openly confessed to skepticism. 
 
 Wh^n I left Richmond, the air was raw and 
 chill; when, the next morning, I arrived in 
 Charleston, the air was as balmy as the quiet 
 breeze of a June day in my Maine home under 
 the pines. Every breath I drew proved to me 
 that during the night I had been whisked into a 
 new world. And as I drove through the streets 
 every sight told me of an unfamiliar land. 
 Everything looked grizzled, weather-beaten, 
 ancient. The houses were low and large, with 
 wide, high-pillared piazzas, one above another. 
 The full-leaved magnolias and the tropical 
 palmettoes in the door-yards emphasized the 
 strangeness. Soon I was wandering about the 
 city; under the portico of old St. Philip's 
 Church, in the belfry of which each night there 
 shines a beacon to guide the sailors in the har- 
 bor; past the quaint old Huguenot Church, the 
 only one existing in America; along the South 
 Battery that looks out to Fort Sumter ; then up 
 Meeting Street to St. Michael's Church. As at 
 St. Philip's, the sidewalk runs beneath the por- 
 tico; like almost every other building in the 
 city, the stucco has fallen in great patches from 
 its walls. Beneath the pavement not only of
 
 IN THE OLD SOUTH 117 
 
 the churchyard walks, but also of the vestibule 
 itself, lie the dead whose very names mean 
 South Carolina — Rutledge, Pinckney, De Saus- 
 sure. The sexton, a comparatively young man, 
 proudly showed me the church, which for nearly 
 a century and a half has survived in spite of 
 British artillery and Federal cannonading, of 
 cyclone and earthquake. More eloquent of con- 
 servatism than the old "Governor's pew," once 
 " occupied by General Washington," or the old 
 organ made in 1767, or the pulpit panel stolen 
 by some one who followed the army of occupa- 
 tion in 1865 and some years later anonymously 
 returned, or the service of altar plate stolen 
 from its refuge in Columbia during the war, of 
 which only two pieces, a flagon and a cover, 
 were recovered, one from a I^ew York pawn- 
 shop, the other from somewhere in Ohio, was 
 the simple statement of the sexton that he had 
 held his ofl^ice for ten years, that his father, uoav 
 dead, had been sexton for fifty years before 
 him, that his mother, now eighty-seven, still cut 
 the bread for Communion, and that the old bell- 
 ringer who had lately died had rung the chimes 
 for sixty-one years. 
 
 To this historic past the Huguenot Church is 
 even a more impressive monument. Its building
 
 118 NEW TENDENCIES 
 
 is only a half-century old; but its organization 
 dates probably from the very year of the found- 
 ing of the city. Gradually, with the loosing of 
 the bond of a distinctive language, the Hugue- 
 not families became absorbed into the Episco- 
 pal which was the established church, and the 
 Huguenot Church grew weaker and weaker. 
 But with the change from the use of Frencb to 
 English the church revived, and to-day it re- 
 mains, the only one of its name in this land. It 
 was my privilege to attend the service there 
 Sunday afternoon, and to join in the simple, 
 impressive liturgy which, unchanged almost 
 wholly except in tongue, preserved the form of 
 worship used by the Huguenots of Neuchatel 
 and Yalangin. It was a still greater privilege 
 to know the venerable and revered pastor of the 
 church. Dr. Vedder, and be enriched not only 
 by the genial hospitality of himself and his 
 gracious wife, but also by his store of know- 
 ledge of the city and its life. 
 
 Much of what elsewhere is regarded as es- 
 sential to human nature seems to have been 
 dispensed with in Charleston. The participa- 
 tion of Charleston in the project of secession I 
 can now regard only as an act of supereroga- 
 tion ; for, though the city is now a loyal portion
 
 IN THE OLD SOUTH 119 
 
 of the Union, to all intents and purposes it 
 seems as separate from the United States as if 
 it were an independent municipality. In no 
 respect is this isolation shown in better light 
 than by the contempt which the highest society 
 of the city displays toward the plutocrat. Al- 
 though at its most exclusive functions may be 
 seen a sempstress or a street-car conductor whose 
 family, impoverished by " the AVar between the 
 States," has in no way lost its social status, the 
 merely rich are inexorably excluded, '^o news- 
 paper there would venture or care to print an 
 account of these exclusive assemblies. The 
 social set that provides the standard of social 
 taste and tone for the city would not tolerate 
 the sycophancy of the "yellow journals," or 
 indeed journals of other hue, that devote whole 
 columns to what rich women wear at the IS^ew 
 York Horse Show. Charleston has a human 
 nature of its own, in this respect so admirable 
 that it is worthy of mention in an account of 
 religious life in America. Paradoxical as it 
 may sound, Charleston is thus undoubtedly 
 typical of the "Old South." From such a 
 human nature there naturally grows a religious 
 conservatism, not polemical or self-assertive, as 
 in the !North, but when undisturbed affable.
 
 120 NEW TENDENCIES 
 
 when controverted merely cold, like the con- 
 servatism of an English university. 
 
 In one respect, however, human nature in 
 Charleston is like human nature in other places : 
 ministers recuperate from Sunday by getting 
 together and talking " shop " on Monday ! — on 
 the principle, I suppose, of similia similibus 
 curantur. To this meeting I was invited. The 
 paper read was on methods to be used in visit- 
 ing the sick in hospitals. Both that and the 
 discussion following connoted a vast deal of 
 patient, tactful, merciful labor of love among the 
 sick poor. When the subject of the next meeting 
 was announced, there were a number of inquiries 
 as to what it meant. The subject was Social Set- 
 tlements! It was finally stated that the real 
 name was College Settlement, but just what it 
 was only one minister present seemed to know. 
 He was the young minister of the old Circular 
 Church — a Congregational church (the only 
 white one in the State) founded in 1690. I had 
 a conversation with this Congregational min- 
 ister, who, though a Southerner by birth, was a 
 Westerner by training — his speech betrayed 
 him — and was originally a Methodist. He 
 told me he had introduced the subject for the 
 purpose of enlightening his brother ministers.
 
 IN THE OLD SOUTH 121 
 
 (To the credit of those same brother ministers, 
 every one Avith whom I spoke was pleased to be 
 enlightened, and seemed to take fraternal pride 
 in this young minister's bustling ways.) I 
 found that he was keenly aware of the social 
 aspect of Christianity, and was greatly inter- 
 ested in workingmen, and was proud of the 
 fact that not only had his church increased in 
 membership in spite of a decrease in the white 
 X^opulation of the city, but that its increase had 
 come from the working classes. 
 
 " Do you find any opposition to this from the 
 people of old families in your church? " 
 
 " Not exactly opposition. But one day after 
 Communion, when some of the common people 
 were admitted to membership, a rich lady came 
 up to me and said, ' But remember, it is quality 
 we want, not quantity.' That expresses their 
 attitude." 
 
 Here is typified one of the new religicus 
 tendencies in the Old South — to accept, 
 conservatively and with some remonstrance, it 
 may be, the leadership of men who, though 
 alien in training and in sentiment, are genuine 
 and not presumptuous. The surprisingly recep- 
 tive and adaptable spirit of most of the South- 
 erners I met helped to explain to me the
 
 122 NEW TENDENCIES 
 
 tremendous recuperation of the South, both 
 commercial and educational, since the war, and 
 made deeply significant of possible results such 
 occasional presentations of the " social gospel " 
 as were given by this enthusiastic minister from 
 the West. 
 
 A second religious tendency in the South is 
 to experiment within the safe limits of evangeli- 
 cal theology with extraordinary religious ideas. 
 An illustration of this occurred to me while I 
 was in Charleston. It was at a meeting of peo- 
 ple of various denominations interested in 
 '' Anglo-Israelism " — the theory that the so- 
 called " lost ten tribes " of Israel are perpetu- 
 ated in the Anglo-Saxon peoples. On the 
 previous Sunday in a church I had heard a ser- 
 mon in which this theory was incidentally advo- 
 cated. This evening the address was by a clergy- 
 man of a different denomination. The hall was 
 small, the audience was smaller. The voice of 
 the speaker, however, was suited not to the size 
 of the auditorium so much as to his conception 
 of the bigness of his subject, and that was very 
 big indeed. He started by saying that the 
 identity between the Saxon tribes and lost 
 Israel was indisputable, and that we should lay 
 aside preconceived ideas, for in a progressive
 
 IN THE OLD SOUTH 123 
 
 age it was unfortunate to be so conservative as 
 to avoid this conclusion! Then, taking Abra- 
 ham, his servant, and his son as types of the 
 Father, the Holy Ghost, and Christ, he con- 
 cluded that Christ must take his Bride the 
 Church from his own kin, that is, some tribes 
 of the Hebrew people — " otherwise these types 
 cannot be preserved " ! Promises thus given to 
 Israel must be fulfilled by Israel; they are 
 being fulfilled by the English-speaking people: 
 therefore the English-speaking people are 
 Israel. We are consequently the elect, the 
 conquering race. Patriotism and religion are 
 identical; supremacy of the race must be main- 
 tained ; Queen Victoria and President McKin- 
 ley are leaders of God's elect; all our history, 
 all our life, is sacred. Before he closed he de- 
 clared : " The very belief that Christ died for 
 me is not more buoyant and vitalizing than this 
 assurance that I am one of God's elect." Ob- 
 viously absurd as this doctrine is, it is more 
 reasonable than the notions that have served to 
 sustain some new sects in the Korth and the 
 West, and has evidently proved more efficacious 
 than other and perhaps sounder beliefs in lead- 
 ing some people to waken to certain moral and 
 spiritual truths of which before they had been
 
 124 NEW TENDENCIES 
 
 wholly unaware. There are, moreover, three 
 things in particular that ought to be said about 
 this before it is judged unworthy of much con- 
 sideration. The first is that although the 
 number of Anglo-Israelites seemed small, the 
 serious and judicial consideration their theory 
 received from the few clergymen and the one 
 representative layman with whom I had the 
 opportunity of referring to the subject was 
 impressive. (One minister, however, told me 
 that he " preferred to take his Higher Criticism 
 straight.") The second is that this is only one 
 of a number of such movements, among which 
 I had occasion more than once to note the 
 " Holiness " doctrine as important. The third 
 is that, like the " Holiness " doctrine, this theory 
 of Anglo-Israelism arouses in many minds, 
 accustomed to the idea that religion has almost 
 exclusively to do with an intangible soul and a 
 future heaven, the dormant sense of the sacred- 
 ness of this present life; and, besides, shifts 
 the object of their religious loyalty (at least on 
 the human side) away from the narrow sphere 
 of the denomination to the broader one of the 
 race. 
 
 The two religious tendencies of the South 
 which I have mentioned — the one to accept new
 
 IN THE OLD SOUTH 125 
 
 leadership provided it is genuine, enthusiastic, 
 and not presumptuous, the other to experiment 
 within the confines of formal orthodoxy with 
 novel, sometimes fantastic, and even preposter- 
 ous religious theories and inventions — are both 
 pronounced and extensive. Another religious 
 tendency in the South, the third and last that I 
 shall mention, is that away from a mechanical 
 toward a vital theology on the one hand, and on 
 the other hand away from a purely indi\adual- 
 istic toward a social Christian activity on the 
 part of Southern religious leaders themselves. 
 This I regard as the most important and wide- 
 spread of these tendencies. To my experiences 
 which illusti'ate this tendency I shall devote the 
 remainder of this chapter. 
 
 An acknowledged leader in education in the 
 South gave me very frankly his opinion that 
 Southern men of influence do not dare to express 
 their thoughts as against the predominating 
 dogmatic beliefs, not because they are unheroic, 
 but because they know it would be useless. 
 But gradually, for instance through the libraries 
 into which books of the modern sort are intro- 
 duced without protest, there is increasing an 
 undercurrent of thought that is sweeping past 
 the old dogmas. The stage of development at
 
 126 NEW TENDENCIES 
 
 present he described as that of the separation 
 between theory and practice. When I asked 
 him as to the soundness of the hopeful spirit of 
 the South, he was inchned to be dubious. " It 
 is not based on the historic sense ; that is wholly 
 lacking. People here [mentioning his own 
 State] are not like those of Virginia or the 
 [N^orth; they are great fighters, but they don't 
 know how to retreat; when they have to give 
 up they are in rout. I find evidence of this 
 among the young men in college. When they 
 fail, they don't try for a new opening, but go 
 home. That is why I believe that when the South 
 wakes up to the new thought it will have to go 
 through the stage of superficial infidelity." 
 
 Partly in confirmation of this opinion and 
 partly to indicate the influences at work in the 
 South which, if triumphant, will make the stage 
 of superficial infidelity unnecessary, I quote in 
 part a conversation with the pastor of a prom- 
 inent Baptist church of Charleston. 
 
 " We are starting a church library," he told 
 me, "containing not only Sunday-school but 
 also general reference books, and religious 
 books for use in studying the Bible and other 
 religious topics. In this library are included 
 many books that are not sound from the Baptist 
 point of view. Such a book went into one
 
 IN THE OLD SOUTH 127 
 
 man's family. He read it and disapproved; 
 but, instead of making a disturbance, he sent his 
 check for twenty-iive dollars and bought the 
 set to which the volume belonged (the set was 
 worth about ten dollars), simply to remove 
 them from the library. But even such conser- 
 vatism is disappearing. Another distinction of 
 this church is that there is somewhat more than 
 the usual proportion of men." 
 
 " How do you account for that? " 
 " In the first place, the church is centrally 
 located. In the second place, the pastors have 
 always been accustomed to deal with current 
 topics fearlessly when there was an unmistak- 
 able religious phase to them. The church has 
 grown sixty per cent, in the ten years in which 
 the city has lost five thousand in white popula- 
 tion." 
 
 When it is remembered that it is difficult to 
 speak of any current topic in the South without 
 becoming involved in the race question,^ to 
 
 1 Unquestionably the existence of the race question in the South has had 
 a great deal to do in inducing the churches there to avoid the ethical and 
 social aspects of Christianity, and to lay chief emphasis upon its doctrinal 
 and theological amplifications. Under such conditions it is only natural 
 that ministers who find a " simple Gospel " (as they call the most abstruse 
 speculations about the Gospel which do not happen to touch by any chance 
 upon practical life) a much easier and safer subject to preach about than 
 "morality" or "sociology" (as they call all treatment to-day of men's re- 
 lations to one another, no matter how Christlike the motive or spirit) are 
 qviite emphatic in declaring that the Church should not concern itself with 
 anything but the " plan of salvation."
 
 128 NEW TENDENCIES 
 
 which the Southern mind is of course extremely 
 sensitive, this statement as to the character of the 
 preaching and the growth of the church has spe- 
 cial significance. Here was exemplified, in a city 
 church, the blending of two phases of the most 
 hnportant tendency I noted in the South — to- 
 ward a larger Uberty of thinking and a greater 
 emphasis on the Gospel in relation to the social 
 life. How this tendency is affecting the Church 
 in the small towns and the country regions of 
 the South I had a good opportunity of observ- 
 ing in a trip I took with a Methodist presiding 
 elder. 
 
 My companion was a man of stocky build 
 and of a countenance that at once invited con- 
 fidence. Before the train was well under way 
 he was telling me stories of his experiences, 
 mingled with most cheerful tales of negroes 
 and accounts of the places through which we 
 were passing. I found him to be a man of very 
 open mind. Though there was no touch of 
 radicalism in his thought, he was not unac- 
 quainted or unsympathetic with the modern 
 movements in theology. In the midst of his 
 breezy stories there was an occasional sugges- 
 tion, all the more emphatic because entirely 
 unconscious, of a most spontaneous spirit of
 
 IN THE OLD SOUTH 129 
 
 Christian self-sacrifice. I was glad to see that 
 a man of such personality had been chosen by 
 the Methodist Church South to be a presiding 
 elder, a teacher of teachers, a preacher to 
 preachers. Because I have not hesitated to 
 record some observations of ministerial self- 
 interest and ambition, I want to emphasize the 
 unselfishness and the serene indifference to 
 anything like personal advancement which I 
 found so apparent in this man of influence in 
 the Methodist Church. His attitude of amused 
 contempt for the ecclesiastical place-hunter he 
 expressed a day or so later when, as we alighted 
 from a carriage, I took up his valise. "It is 
 entirely too early to do that sort of thing," he 
 said, jokingly, " even if you do want a transfer 
 from Maine to South Carolina; ministers don't 
 treat the presiding elder in that fashion until 
 about Conference time, when the new appoint- 
 ments are to be made. Until then the presid- 
 ing elders all carry their own valises." 
 
 His appreciation of the sociological aspect of 
 church work may be suggested by an incident 
 he i-elated. Part of his district includes the 
 mill region. He chose two of the most active 
 and promising young men under his charge to 
 work there among the operatives. The editor
 
 130 NEW TENDENCIES 
 
 of a religious paper remonstrated with him. 
 " What do you mean," he asked, " by putting 
 such men as those doivn there ? " " I want just 
 such men as those to study the question of 
 industrial conditions." In spite of the editor's 
 remark, " It will never do; they won't stay," it 
 did do and they stayed. 
 
 We got off the train at a small factory town, 
 and were welcomed by the Methodist minister 
 and the superintendent of the mills. We were 
 made the minister's guests. Although he was 
 a Southerner born and bred, he had something 
 of the Western eagerness for self-development 
 and Northern readiness "either to tell or to 
 hear some new thing." As we sat before the 
 open fire he turned the conversation uTCsistibly 
 to modern religious books. The fact that I was 
 from the I^orth aroused all his appetite for 
 information; and instead of my questioning 
 him I found myself put to it to answer his 
 questions as to the most recent books on such 
 subjects as the Hebrew Prophets, Christianity 
 and Sociology, Evolution, and the " New The- 
 ology." It came out in the course of the 
 evening that, in lieu of having at hand popular 
 works on the subject of evolution and religion,
 
 IN THE OLD SOUTH 131 
 
 he had turned to and written and published a 
 book on the subject himself. 
 
 At the meeting in the church that evening 
 the small audience comprised twice as many 
 men as women. This was partly explained by 
 the fact that a Ladies' Bible Class was in ses- 
 sion at the same tune. The service, conducted 
 by my hospitable guide, was not extraordinary 
 in any way; it was simply helpful. The church, 
 I was told, was made up largely of mill opera- 
 tives. The superintendent of the mill, a jN^orth- 
 ern man now a thorough and enthusiastic 
 convert to the South, a man too of whose help- 
 ful, unostentatious friendship for the poor and 
 friendless I heard many accounts, contributed 
 to the democratic atmosphere of the church, 
 and, so far as I could see, did not assume to be 
 even j^rimus iyiter pares. 
 
 The next day the presiding elder and I drove 
 in a buggy through three mill districts, past a 
 ramshackle little group of houses occupied 
 by negroes, which boasted of two churches, 
 one of which bore on its steeple the only sign 
 of paint I saw in the whole settlement, then 
 over a dull, dreary stretch of land where negroes 
 were plowing with mules, until we reached a
 
 132 NEW TENDENCIES 
 
 little meeting-house under the edge of the 
 " piny woods." That we were half an hour 
 late seemed to disturb none of the dozen or fif- 
 teen that were assembled. At the service, which 
 was not quarterly meeting as expected because 
 of the absence of certain laymen, the presiding 
 elder again spoke simply but without the sign 
 of intellectual alertness that sparkled in his con- 
 versation. At the close of service we were 
 made the guests of a clergyman, formerly a 
 Methodist preacher but now superannuated on 
 account of nervous ill health. Another guest 
 was the local preacher in charge of this and one 
 or two other churches. He took me for a drive 
 about the country in the afternoon. He proved 
 to be open-minded, like his ecclesiastical supe- 
 riors, and well aware of the problems presented 
 by the gradually decreasing population, though 
 by no means certain as to the solution of them. 
 As we talked over the subject of his sermon for 
 the morrow, on the text " Behold the Lamb of 
 God! " he responded eagerly to the conclusion 
 which was developed in the course of our con- 
 versation, that the sacrifice of Christ was the 
 consequence not of an arbitrary fiat but of a 
 universal law which throughout all life makes 
 the redeemer the chief sufferer in the process of
 
 IN THE OLD SOUTH 133 
 
 redemption. Our host, though exhausted by a 
 fight with a forest fire which he had kept a 
 secret from us until he had gotten it under con- 
 trol, was not only as suave and delightful as he 
 would have been under circumstances of ease 
 and leisure, but, like the others of this exceed- 
 ingly interesting group of ministers, most broad 
 in his intellectual sympathies. 
 
 The next day, Sunday, I went with the family 
 to the services. During Sunday-school I pur- 
 posely remained outside to get a chance to talk 
 with the farmers. I am afraid I kept them 
 from the session of the school, and for recom- 
 pense I found little to enhghten me on their 
 view of religious conditions. One of the re- 
 plies I received is, however, worth recording. 
 We had been discussing the condition of the 
 outward observance of religion in that country 
 conmiunity. Remembering the frequency with 
 which I had noticed in the rural town in Maine 
 where I live the farmers getting in their hay or 
 hauling the corn to the canning-factory on Sun- 
 day, I inquired whether men there in South 
 Carolina worked on Sunday more now than 
 formerly. One of the men who had spoken dis- 
 couragingly of the regard for Sunday looked up 
 surprised at my question and rather puzzled, and
 
 134 NEW TENDENCIES 
 
 replied, " No one ever does farm work on Sun- 
 day; people here are careless, but they are not 
 sacrilegious." 
 
 The quarterly meeting followed the morning 
 service. In the administration of the Communion 
 at the close of this meeting, I, though not a 
 Methodist, was asked to participate. Then, 
 after a necessarily hurried luncheon, we drove 
 back to the factory town, where quarterly meet- 
 ing again was held. At each occasion the 
 presiding elder made an address smiilar in 
 spirit to the preceding addresses. One might 
 attend church services in the South for a con- 
 siderable period without discovering any intel- 
 lectual spontaneity — either of origination or of 
 receptivity — among the ministers ; but one 
 could scarcely fail to see signs of such intel- 
 lectual spontaneity in almost any minister 
 through personal conversation. This, at least, 
 was indicated not only by my experience on 
 the occasion I have just described, but also 
 throughout my whole Southern trip. What- 
 ever ferment may be occasioned by the leaven 
 of modern theological thought and social con- 
 sciousness in the church life of the South is 
 beneath the surface. Probably on that very 
 account it is more widespread, and as a result,
 
 IN THE OLD SOUTH 135 
 
 possibly, the country churches of the South will 
 not be the last to be affected by larger religious 
 conceptions. 
 
 In a previous chapter I have already referred 
 to the heroic and successful work of Mr. 
 George Williams Walker, a thorough South- 
 erner, in carrying on, in Augusta, Georgia, a 
 Southern Methodist institute for negroes. I 
 cannot close this chapter on new religious ten- 
 dencies, intellectual and social, without referring 
 to another heroic work done in the same city. 
 When I was told of the work being done by 
 the clergyman of an Episcopal church in the 
 mill district, I called upon him at his house. 
 He cordially assented to my suggestion that I 
 accompany him on his pastoral calls. In ac- 
 cordance with this plan we started out on 
 bicycles for a tour of the district. There are 
 a nmnber of cotton-mills along the canal just 
 outside of the city limits. The houses of the 
 employees form a settlement on the low land 
 bordering this canal. The first house we en- 
 tered (consisting of two rooms and a kitchen) 
 was occupied by a widow and her eight chil- 
 dren. The family was supported by the earn- 
 ings of the three oldest daughters, which 
 amounted to about fifty cents apiece each day
 
 136 NEW TENDENCIES 
 
 they could work. In this single household 
 during the past winter there had been several 
 cases of chickenpox and of measles, at least 
 one case of malarial fever, nine cases of grippe, 
 and three cases of typhoid fever, due chiefly to 
 the unsanitary environment of the company's 
 house which they had occupied. The clergy- 
 man took from his medicine-case, which he told 
 me he always carried with him, some mild 
 remedy for one of the little girls who was still 
 sick. The woman at whose house we next 
 stopped was in more comfortable circumstances 
 than most of her neighbors, for her husband 
 was a policeman. She was a woman of evi- 
 dent intelligence and force of character, though 
 she could neither read nor write. So from 
 house to house we went; sickness, destitution, 
 misery, were not the exception, but the rule; 
 the wretchedness of congested population was 
 combined with the desolation of illiteracy and 
 vacant minds. To the other sources of woe 
 was added the prevaihng custom of the em- 
 ployment of children. How young? "Oh, I 
 don't know," was one pitiful answer ; " power- 
 ful little bits of children." In one household 
 we visited a little boy had recently died. He 
 had not lived to be ten years old, and he had
 
 IN THE OLD SOUTH 137 
 
 worked in the factory ever since he had come 
 from the country, a year and a half before. 
 Most of the families were from the country — 
 mainly from " Car'lina." The reasons given 
 for leaving their rural homes were widely 
 various: "because we lost our 'plantation' "; 
 " because my wife was lonely " ; " because the 
 darkies came in." Various, too, was the testi- 
 mony as to the result: some declared they had 
 improved their conditions ; others that they had 
 ruined what good fortune they had had. At 
 the best they were hopeless. Most of them 
 confessed that they had abandoned the church- 
 going habits of theii' country life. Being 
 Protestants, their illiteracy made the personal 
 devotional life among them difficult and rare, 
 since they had recourse to neither priest nor 
 book. Out of this population of "poor white" 
 mill hands this clergyman had built up a church, 
 in spite of the fact that they were naturally 
 non-Episcopalian. In addition he was enabled 
 to raise money to build a parish house, which 
 at the time of my visit was to contain a small 
 assembly-room for lectures and entertainments, 
 a library, a reading-room, and a room for a 
 (Caretaker. He put special value upon the pro- 
 posed lectures and entertainments, because they
 
 138 NEW TENDENCIES 
 
 would provide for the great proportion of the 
 population a source of relaxation and instruc- 
 tion which, because of their illiteracy, they could 
 not get through books or periodicals. Besides 
 this he had raised during the past year a sum 
 equal to his own salary to be used in relief of 
 distress. One novel method he used in raising 
 this sum consisted in providing a special train 
 to run out of the city to a point where an 
 eclipse of the sun could be easily viewed. By 
 making arrangements with the railroad com- 
 pany, he managed to clear a considerable profit. 
 This charitable fund he so expended that it 
 became a strong influence for the independence 
 of the beneficiaries. In some instances it was 
 used as loans; in most other cases for purchase 
 of supplies. As a consequence every family 
 that was helped received aid in a constantly 
 diminishing quantity. 
 
 As a slight digression, I quote here what was 
 more than once told me, not only in Georgia, 
 but also in South Carolina (especially in Charles- 
 ton), that the reason the Episcopalian clergy- 
 men in the South do not cooperate with other 
 ministers is not on High Church grounds (for 
 the Episcopal Church is predominantly Low 
 Church in the South), but because of social dis-
 
 IN THE OLD SOUTH 139 
 
 tinctions. This makes apposite a story that was 
 told me of a lady newly come to live in a city 
 of Yirginia. She was asked what church she 
 attended. " Oh," she replied, " in doctrine I'm 
 a Presbyterian, but socially I'm an Episcopa- 
 lian." From this feeling, of course, the minis- 
 ter whose work I am describing would suffer 
 only indirectly. 
 
 It was not from this clergyman that I learned 
 that he had practically no real assistance from 
 the strong churches of the city — apart from 
 financial contributions. That I learned from 
 other sources; and it was corroborated by the 
 clergyman himself, only reluctantly, and with 
 explanations that did credit to his charitableness. 
 At the Young Men's Christian Association I 
 was told that in an address before the Associa- 
 tion he had spoken on labor questions, and had 
 thus not found favor with some of the "con- 
 servative people of Augusta." That he had 
 found favor with some other people, whose 
 favor I should value more highly, I surmised 
 by the cordial and admiring response the men- 
 tion of his name called forth as I was chatting 
 with a street-car conductor. 
 
 This may seem to be a gloomy picture. One 
 side of it is; but not the other side, which
 
 140 NEW TENDENCIES IN THE SOUTH 
 
 shows a man of fine fiber, both in mind and 
 taste, single-handed bringing to a forlorn and 
 destitute people, stricken with ignorance and 
 disease, the gospel not only of words but of 
 deed, the good news of health, knowledge, com- 
 fort, recreation, comradeship. If that is gloomy, 
 so is the Parable of the Good Samaritan.
 
 iN^Ew orlea:n^s
 
 VI 
 
 :n'ew orlea:n^s 
 
 THERE is a game — the psj^chologists call it 
 an experiment — which may be named for 
 short Redintegration. The psychologist calls 
 out a word and you reply with another word 
 expressing a related idea, and, lo! the "struc- 
 ture of your soul " is revealed. Suppose the 
 word is " subject." If you answer " cadaver," 
 you are proved to be a medical student; if 
 " predicate," then you are certainly a student or 
 teacher of grammar; but if "text," then you 
 are without doubt a minister. In the same way, 
 if " ]^ew Orleans " be suggested, the IN'ew Eng- 
 land housewife will think "molasses"; the 
 Grand Army veteran will think " Butler "; per- 
 haps somebody inclined to the legendary will 
 be naive enough to say " spoons ! " But most of 
 us will be apt to think " Creole." So at least it 
 
 143
 
 144 NEW OELEANS 
 
 was with me. As soon as I decided to go to 
 ^STew Orleans it was the old French Catholic 
 atmosphere that I expected to breathe. That is 
 why, as soon as I reached the city, I started off 
 toward the French quarter across Canal Street. 
 The width of this great dividing street, with its 
 broad strip in the center reserved for the sev- 
 eral electric car tracks, accentuated the lowness 
 of the buildings on either hand. Growing by 
 the side of these tracks was a four-leafed clover, 
 which I picked and sent to my wife, not only as 
 a sign of summer in the time when snow is 
 deepest in Maine, but also as a symbol of the 
 leisureliness of Southern life. A city in whose 
 central thoroughfare a four-leafed clover can 
 flourish must be characterized by a repose not 
 distinctively American. And again I said to 
 myself " Creole." 
 
 A narrower street in the French quarter soon 
 led me between two high walls. I turned to the 
 left and went through a gate. I found myself 
 in what seemed to be a miniature city of brick, 
 stucco, and marble. DoAvn the center ran a 
 street, grass-grown, deserted. The buildings 
 on either side looked like dwarf temples, the 
 highest towering several feet above my head. 
 It seemed as if some pygmean race had here
 
 NEW ORLEANS 145 
 
 built and then abandoned a sacred city. It was 
 the old St. Louis Cemetery. The temples were 
 tombs. On their fronts were inscribed, in most 
 cases in French, the names of the dead. Here 
 and there hung the faded remnants of wreaths 
 and bunches of flowers. 
 
 Many of the tombs, so the inscriptions indi- 
 cated, were built and maintained by associations 
 formed for the purpose of providing entomb- 
 ment for their members. Here certainly was a 
 contrast to that individualism evident among 
 other white people in the South. In this sign of 
 the social instinct, strong even in death, there 
 was a reminder once more of that insistent word 
 " Creole." 
 
 On Sunday morning I went to high mass at 
 the French Cathedral of St. Louis. On my way 
 there I noticed tacked on the trees printed slips 
 of paper with borders in black. They were 
 announcements — with few exceptions they 
 were in French — of the death of various indi- 
 viduals. On each of these there was a list of 
 families whose attention was called to that 
 special obituary notice. Pride of lineage, the 
 social instinct, and religion were all blended on 
 these bits of paper. 
 
 On I went through the narrow streets where
 
 146 ITEW OELEANS 
 
 children played in the doorways and on the 
 pavement, until I came out at Jackson Square. 
 There stood the old Cathedral looking out to- 
 ward the levees. I entered, and at the entrance 
 to the gallery paid five cents to the doorkeeper. 
 I found that I was on the side over the pulpit. 
 So I descended, crossed over, paid another coin, 
 and entered the gallery on the other side. To 
 a non-Catholic, service in every Catholic church 
 seems much the same. In each there is the same 
 atmosphere of sanctity and mystery; the same 
 unstudied reverence in the worshipers, that 
 makes the Puritan wonder at the stiffness of 
 his own knees; the same vestments and lights 
 that somehow seem regal and courtly, as well 
 as religious and almost histrionic ; the same in- 
 definable influence — is it of the music? — that 
 makes religion seem not something merely in- 
 tellectual, as does the ultra-Protestant " meet- 
 ing," nor something celestially pure, as does the 
 Anglican liturgy, but something intensely hu- 
 man, terrestrial, dramatic ; the same wail in the 
 Kyrie Eleison; the same militant confidence 
 in the Credo; the same sudden, awesome, shud- 
 dering silence at the sound of the bell; the 
 same sudden awakening to the normal health- 
 fulness and buoyancy of life upon egress to the
 
 NEW ORLEANS 147 
 
 open air and sunlight. Perhaps in this uni- 
 formity of service lies one of the secrets of the 
 power of the Roman Catholic Church; for it 
 seems as if the Catholic worshipers, especially 
 in this land where education, politics, and even 
 languages and races are in constant flux and 
 conflict, must be impressed everywhere with 
 the unity of his unaltered and, outwardly at 
 least, unalterable Church. It was impossible 
 for me at least to differentiate the religious 
 characteristics of the Catholic services of such 
 widely differing cities, for instance, as Balti- 
 more, Kew Orleans, and Little Rock. The 
 one contrast, of course — and that chiefly an 
 external one — was in the language used for 
 the gospel, epistle, and sermon, which in Kew 
 Orleans was French. There was, however, a 
 difference in congregations. In Baltimore the 
 people at the service showed by their clothes 
 and carriage that they were, most of them, 
 wealthy; in Little Rock they were distinctly 
 from the humbler ranks — most of them might 
 have been servants. Here in the Cathedral at 
 Kew Orleans the congregation seemed much 
 less homogeneous. In an obscure gallery near 
 the altar were a number of nuns. In the body 
 of the church the people seemed to represent
 
 148 NEW OKLEANS 
 
 a variety of the grades of life. There was, 
 however, no display of wealth. On the other 
 hand, there was an indefinable trace of aris- 
 tocracy in the faces and bearing of some of 
 the people. Many of the women wore deep 
 mourning. A number of negroes were present, 
 seated on benches along the walls. A man in 
 some sort of uniform with epaulets was moving 
 about the church showing people to their seats 
 and inspiring the doorkeepers with zeal for 
 keeping people quiet; he was apparently the 
 verger. When the sermon was about to be- 
 gin, many negroes on the side aisle pressed 
 up near the pulpit. One old lame black man 
 hobbled forward with the rest and stood through- 
 out the sermon, leaning on his cane and looking 
 intently up into the preacher's face. When the 
 sermon was finished, they all returned to their 
 places for the rest of the service. 
 
 As the congregation passed out I went to 
 find Pere Mignot, to whom I had a letter of in- 
 troduction. Up the narrow little alley beside 
 the cathedral I went, and knocked at the door to 
 which I was du-ected. I found him very busy. 
 He was short and stout — the cassock he wore 
 extended to his feet; a beard, such as the mem- 
 bers of his order are entitled to wear, long and
 
 NEW OELEANS 149 
 
 gray, gave to his round, happy face a quahty of 
 f atherlmess ; and his eyes had a benignant light 
 that invited confidence. When, a few days 
 later, I called on him again, he was freer to 
 talk and walk with me. He took me upstairs 
 to where hung the valued portraits of the first 
 Bishop, and the first Pastor, and the Founder 
 of the Parish of Kew Orleans. Pere Mignot's 
 ecclesiastical dress seemed to link him in time 
 with these dignitaries of the past, and his 
 French, which he exchanged for broken English 
 as he talked with me, seemed to place him in 
 the Old World. I felt as if I were crudely 
 modern — out of place and time. He said he 
 would show me the Convent of the Holy Family, 
 a convent for colored nuns. We had been talk- 
 ing about the French and Spanish negro Catho- 
 lics, and as we went along he told me that some 
 of these were leaving the Catholic Church. 
 "They find the Church too strict," he said, 
 " and they go off to the Baptists and others 
 where they can dance and shout. Some of 
 them leave because they are sensitive al)out 
 being with white people in church, and they be- 
 come Protestant so they can go to a church 
 where all are of one color." 
 
 I asked him if the Catholic Church in Kew
 
 150 NEW ORLEANS 
 
 Orleans was giving the negroes industrial train- 
 ing in the schools — and explained what I 
 meant by referring to Booker Washington. 
 Pere Mignot had not heard about Booker Wash- 
 ington. It was evident that, beyond the usual 
 instruction in sewing and cooking, and some 
 minor occupations like the putting together of 
 artificial flowers, as later I observed, he knew of 
 no industrial education in the Catholic schools. 
 At the Convent of the Holy Family, which 
 Pere Mignot told me was first established over 
 fifty years ago for free negroes, the placid faces 
 of the colored nuns in their hoods of black and 
 white, and their quiet, mellifluous voices, were 
 like a benediction. The next day Pere Mignot 
 accompanied me to the school taught by the 
 Sisters of the Sacred Heart. I expect never to 
 be confronted with a stronger argument for 
 parochial schools than that given by the bright- 
 ening faces of the children at the sight of his 
 genial, fatherly presence, their eagerness for his 
 blessing, and their glad, quiet, ingenuous de- 
 voutness as they knelt to receive that blessing 
 before his departure. I felt better for kneeling 
 with those Creole children in their school-room. 
 Of very different type was a young Creole 
 priest whom I had the pleasure of meeting. I
 
 NEW ORLEANS 151 
 
 first saw him in his room in the house adjoining 
 his church. He might well have sat, or rather 
 stood, for a portrait of Giuseppe Caponsacchi; 
 and when he spoke, his seemed to be " the 
 steadfast eye and quiet word o' the Canon of 
 the Pieve ! " Only it was not in Italian but in 
 the soft legato English of the Creole that he 
 spoke. In his conversation, as in his face, there 
 glowed the devotional mysticism that suggests 
 Faber, and Thomas a Ivempis, and Bernard of 
 Clairvaux. He asked me to be seated near where 
 stood a prie-dieu over which hung a crucifix. 
 
 " Some Protestants have strange ideas of the 
 Catholic religion," he said in the course of his 
 conversation. He told me thereupon that once 
 a young Protestant woman had asked him how 
 Catholics defended their worship of the Holy 
 Virgin; and he explained that they did not wor- 
 ship the Mother of Jesus as they worshiped 
 God. " There on my desk stand two pictures : 
 one is 'of my mother," he said, "the other is of 
 the Blessed Yirgin. I adore my mother " — he 
 had a way of using English words with a 
 French significance — " and I adore the Blessed 
 Virgin. I can go to my mother and confide in 
 her and get help; so I believe I can go to the 
 Mother of Christ and get help.
 
 152 NEW OELEANS 
 
 " Here in Kew Orleans " — I cannot quote 
 his exact words — "there are three old Latin 
 elements among the population: the French, 
 the Spaniards, and the Italians. You call all 
 Italians ' Dagos ' ; but really the Dagos are 
 simply the Sicilians. I^ow, my work is chiefly 
 among the French." 
 
 " Are they good Catholics? " I asked. 
 
 " Yes," he answered; "but with them religion 
 is very much a matter of routine." 
 
 With somewhat of a digression, I quoted 
 what some Catholic workingmen had said to 
 me. 
 
 " Catholic workingmen do not believe all 
 they say against the Church. When sickness 
 comes, or death, they say then what they be- 
 lieve; though sometimes a man on his death- 
 bed, if others are present, will say to the priest 
 that he will see him, not as a priest, but as a 
 friend. One priest, who was pastor for thirty- 
 six years, said that in all that time only six or 
 seven resisted him at the point of death." 
 
 "What happens if they get well?" 
 
 " Habitually they practice religion. But " — 
 with a smile — " they go off fishing Saturday 
 nights and do not return till Monday, and they 
 get out of the way of going to mass." There
 
 NEW ORLEANS 153 
 
 was a tone of pity in his voice as he said this; 
 as if he sympathized with men who had temp- 
 tations to which he, as a priest, could not 
 by circumstance and temperament be hable. 
 " CathoHcs, especially in America, have a great 
 deal of reverence for the Church and for the 
 priest. A priest who came from France to 
 visit this country told me he was astounded at 
 the respect, indeed friendship, shown to priests 
 by the people. Even in ]N^ew York as he 
 walked along the streets many people, strangers, 
 would touch their hats as they met him. So in 
 the hotels and even in railroad trains. This 
 would not be so in France. In New Orleans it 
 is even more than this — it is friendliness. In 
 France, and among the old French people here 
 who have been educated in France, it is always 
 ^monsieur Vahhe^ but among the Creoles it is 
 always '' 'pere? 
 
 " In the religion of the Creoles there is some- 
 thing more than this reverence for the Church. 
 It is the — the — how do you say it? — respect 
 Jiumain.'''' 
 
 "Deference for public opinion?" I sug- 
 gested. I could think of nothing better than 
 this clumsy English phrase. 
 
 " Something like that," he said hesitatingly.
 
 154 NE\Y ORLEANS 
 
 "You hardly know what it is; it doesn't exist 
 so much among the Enghsh; it is a Latin 
 trait. A great deal of religion among the 
 Creoles is due to that. It is that which makes 
 their religion seem like routine." 
 
 I think I know what he meant: the sense of 
 honor, as Brownell in his " French Traits " 
 points out — a kind of conformity to the en- 
 lightened opinion of the race, substituted for 
 conscience as the guide of conduct. This, it 
 may be inferred, saves the Creoles, as it does the 
 French, from fanaticism — though not neces- 
 sarily from intolerance — for the fanatic is one 
 who tries to extend the sovereignty of his con- 
 science beyond the bounds of his individual 
 conduct, its rightful domain, to the conduct of 
 others. On the other hand, even the fanatic is 
 not always free from subservience to popular 
 opinion; and I remarked that even in 'New 
 England this respect liumain sometimes causes 
 people to act more in accordance with what 
 other people think than in accordance with what 
 they are sure is right. 
 
 " It is too much that," said the abbe^ simply. 
 
 He admitted regretfully that the Creoles as 
 a distinctive people are dying out. The Creole 
 children, he told me, were mingling with chil-
 
 NEW OELEANS 155 
 
 dren on the other side of the city; they were 
 learning a smattering of English and losing 
 some of their French. As a consequence, he 
 said, there were some young people who really 
 knew no language. Whether in the process 
 they were losing their religion he did not, and 
 I suppose could not, say. 
 
 There was no sign of religious decadence, 
 at any rate, at the Benediction of the Most 
 Blessed Sacrament, which I attended the next 
 evening. It is true it was in Lent; but it was a 
 Thursday — not a Sunday — evening. I arrived 
 some time before the service began. By the 
 kindness of the priest I was given a seat on one 
 side near the altar, where chairs were placed 
 facing across the church, in what I should call 
 the chancel. In order to reach the seats on the 
 side where I sat the people had to pass around 
 behind the altar. Each man — there were no 
 women in this part of the church, I think — as 
 he approached the altar made a genuflection. 
 Before the service began every seat, so far as I 
 could see, was taken. A somber tone was given 
 to the congregation by the prevalence of black 
 in the gowns of the women. A sense of so- 
 lemnity pervaded the whole church. The sensi- 
 tive type of countenance predominated in old
 
 156 NEW ORLEANS 
 
 and young. Plain folk they were, yet bearing 
 the marks of gentility. Most of them must 
 have come from good homes. There were not ' 
 lacking those who bore evidence of living by 
 the labor of their hands. The old man who 
 knelt next to me was callous of hand, rough of 
 dress, rugged of feature. But distinctions, of 
 which at most there was but little sign, seemed 
 lost in the feeling of common dependence upon 
 the God whose presence they felt in the Sacra- 
 ment which the priest took out from the altar 
 and held up in the sight of them all. And as 
 the choir sang the O Salutaris and the altar-boy 
 swung the censer so that the smoke of the 
 incense floated out over the kneeling people, 
 through every possible physical avenue to the 
 soul, supplanting all distractions, came the one 
 appeal to heed and worship a God revealed in 
 sacrifice. And when the sermon was preached 
 and the service ended and the people had all 
 left the church, at least one Protestant was 
 wondering whether these Creoles, even if their 
 religion was routine, and even if they were not 
 well convinced that God is in all life and may 
 be worshiped in all places and times, were not 
 in a better way than many who are more rational 
 and more conscience-driven, and yet who, intel-
 
 NEW OELEANS 157 
 
 lectiially assenting to God's presence, never 
 with the heart or head acknowledge it, and who 
 never bend the knee even to Baal. 
 
 Still, however picturesque and interesting 
 the Creoles are, they are very far from com- 
 prising all of New Orleans. Indeed, across 
 Canal Street from the French quarter, so dis- 
 tinctively Roman Catholic, there is a life as 
 distinctively Protestant. Somebody had said 
 to me, " The farther South you go the more 
 Southern you will find it"; and so I did find it 
 in some of my experiences in New Orleans. 
 Indeed, it ought not to have been surprising to 
 meet there people who had reacted to the fur- 
 thest extreme against the Latin sense of morality 
 and religion. In that city, where theaters are 
 open Sunday evening, I heard views concerning 
 the observance of Sunday expressed which were 
 not less than Sabbatarian. It was in New 
 Orleans that I heard a prostitute confess that 
 she went regularly to mass, though she indig- 
 nantly and with convincing sincerity denied 
 that she went there to ply her trade. On the 
 other hand, it was also in New Orleans that I 
 heard horror expressed that a clergyman should 
 go to the opera during Lent. To this Protes- 
 tant element belong those who even to-day are
 
 158 NEW OELEANS 
 
 living in the memories of the Confederacy, with 
 whom it is as impossible for a Northerner to 
 discuss the negro problem as it is for a South- 
 erner to discuss it with an unreconstructed 
 Bostonian; who also, to their high credit it 
 should be said, are most keenly afraid of the 
 spirit of commercialism that may possibly fol- 
 low the industrial rejuvenation of the South — 
 the commercial spirit that tempts churches to 
 pride themselves on the wealth of their congre- 
 gations, and universities to measure their value 
 by the amount of their endowments; that 
 preaches the " Gospel of the Million Dollars." 
 If there was one moral trait emphatic in these 
 ultra-Southern Protestants, it was their whole- 
 some hatred of smug holiness. 
 
 Some of the Protestants in 'New Orleans 
 whose acquaintance it was a delight to make 
 were Episcopalians. There were two matters 
 in which I think they were generally agreed: 
 first, that they had had more effect upon the 
 Catholics than the Catholics had had upon 
 them — and in this I am convinced that they 
 particularized a general truth concerning the 
 relation between Catholics and Protestants 
 throughout the country ; second, that, notwith- 
 standing this fact, the presence of a large and
 
 NEW ORLEANS 159 
 
 influential Catholic population in the city had 
 made impossible any considerable ritualism or 
 even High Church feeling among the Episco- 
 palians, the inference being that the people who 
 found the undiluted article available had no 
 taste for that article diluted. 
 
 Influential both in point of numbers and by 
 strength of character, the Presbyterians form an- 
 other important body among the Protestants; 
 and of them the acknowledged leader in 'New 
 Orleans, and virtually in great measure through- 
 out the South, is Dr. Benjamin Morgan Palmer.^ 
 Even before I reached ISTew Orleans I heard many 
 tributes to the magnetism of his personality, to 
 the effectiveness of his doctrinal leadership, and 
 to his human interest in the race problem; then, 
 in New Orleans itself, again and again from men 
 of most widely various points of view, I heard 
 him spoken of with admiring veneration. If the 
 one sermon I heard hmi preach was typical of 
 his eloquence — and I was informed by my com- 
 panion at the church that it was — his power on 
 an audience lay, not in fervent, glowing rhetoric, 
 often characteristic of Southern preachers, but 
 rather in forceful, perspicuous statement which 
 
 1 Since this chapter was written the death of this venerable minister, 
 resulting from a street-car accident, has caused widespread personal grief.
 
 ;i60 NEW OELEANS 
 
 goes from premise to conclusion with unswerv- 
 ing logic, reinforced by a remarkably incisive 
 personal vigor. The whole structure of his 
 thought was theological. As an illustration I 
 venture to state in brief the process of thought 
 in a portion of his sermon. In speaking of 
 faith, he said that the question is sometimes 
 raised. How can a race be saved by a single 
 act of faith? For an answer he took his con- 
 p-re2:ation to the "foot of that tree where the 
 tempter brought up the issue of the veracity of 
 God"; there God based his promise of redemp- 
 tion upon the condition that man should retract 
 his charge against God and simply believe ; this 
 means the withdrawal of self-assertion. It is 
 the same self-assertiveness that characterized 
 our first parents which keeps men out of the 
 Church to-day. " God says, ' You must be 
 saved my way, not your way; accept the sub- 
 stitute I offer, or die in your sins. You 7mist 
 be saved by grace,' " otherwise men cannot be 
 saved at all. This theological structure had 
 for its foundation the historicity of that scene 
 in the Garden of Eden ; without it the struc- 
 ture apparently would fall to the ground. And 
 yet I think the real force of the sermon was 
 due rather to the preacher's knowledge of hu-
 
 NEW ORLEANS 161 
 
 man nature and of the moral inflexibility of the 
 character of God than to skill of sermon con- 
 struction or even to the mechanical exactitude 
 of doctrinal statement. In this evening con- 
 gregation, which was not large, the men out- 
 numbered the women in the proportion of three 
 to two. 
 
 When, the next day, I called upon Dr. Palmer, 
 the secret of his power over not only a whole 
 city but over a large portion of the South re- 
 vealed itself as it did not in the pulpit. The 
 fine dignity, the warmth and courtesy of his 
 manner, the youthful vigor of his eighty years 
 and more, and his overflow of sympathy for all 
 things human, characterized everything that 
 he said. The contrast between the great wealth 
 and the mean poverty that exist side by side 
 even in newly settled America seemed to him 
 to be the alarming factor in the industrial situ- 
 ation. He expressed a very personal interest 
 in the movements of the workingmen. Proud 
 as he was of his connection with the Confed- 
 eracy, he was even prouder of being a loyal 
 citizen of the Union ; as he expressed it, he was 
 " an American from top to toe." He was en- 
 thusiastically interested in the vast agitation of 
 China, and expressed joyfully his satisfaction
 
 162 NEW ORLEANS 
 
 at the triumph of our country's diplomacy there. 
 He was sanely hopeful regarding the solution 
 of the negro problem. Relief of the poor by 
 organized effort, cure of the sick by hospitals 
 and dispensaries, education of children by 
 schools and kindergartens, have no more inter- 
 ested sympathizer than Dr. Palmer. But all 
 this interest on his own part, all this effort on 
 the part of others, he defined to me as being 
 merely "humanitarian." When I asked him 
 what the Presbyterian Church was doing in all 
 this, he replied: "You know we believe that 
 this is not a part of the Church's business. It 
 is right for Christian people to organize char- 
 itable societies; but the duty of the Church is 
 limited to doing the Lord's work in the Lord's 
 way." In brief, it was his belief that the 
 Church should devote itself exclusively to pro- 
 claiming the Gospel, or rather a plan of salva- 
 tion ; and that the Church would not be doing 
 the Lord's work in the Lord's way by mingling 
 organically with the organic life of working- 
 men, or by undertaking as an institution to 
 relieve sickness, poverty, or ignorance. I won- 
 dered, as I ended my interview, whether I had not 
 discovered why, on the one hand, I had heard 
 such praise of the man, and, on the other, none 
 whatever of his church.
 
 NEW ORLEANS 163 
 
 On the same square with the Presbyterian 
 church to which I have referred was a building 
 devoted to a very different conception of Chris- 
 tianit}^ One rainy afternoon on a week-day as 
 I passed this church with its doors grimly shut 
 and with a chain and padlock on the gate, un- 
 mistakably keeping people out, I noticed this 
 other building; for a large sign announced that 
 it w^as a lodging-house and that it belonged to 
 the Salvation Army. There was no shelter for 
 me even under the eaves of the church, but I 
 knew that, stranger though I was, I should be 
 welcome at the lodging-house. So I entered. 
 The " ensign " in charge, Mr. Scott, showed 
 me the building, from the dormitory rooms at 
 the top to the baths and disinfecting-rooms at 
 the bottom. The cleanliness and order were 
 conspicuous. Like his house. Ensign Scott 
 was manifestly clean clear through ; and he had 
 a sensible, genuine way of speech. Fear he 
 did not seem to know in any form, and work he 
 seemed to covet. On the use of philanthropy in 
 religious work his testimony was explicit. He 
 told me he had engaged in both the " spiritual " 
 and the " social " work of the Army — to quote 
 the terms which the " Salvationists " use to dis- 
 tinguish the work done by means of preaching, 
 singing, prayer, and personal conversation for
 
 164 NEW OKLEANS 
 
 the making of converts from the work in rehef 
 of all kinds of destitution — and without hesi- 
 tation he asserted that he had had more success 
 in reaching men religiously in the " social " 
 work than in the " spiritual " ; and explained 
 how right there in that lodging-house he had 
 opportunities of presenting Christ to men in a 
 very practical way; how also lie could keep a 
 guiding as well as a protecting hand on the 
 untried confessor, and how he could set the 
 new disciple to work for his Master. Before I 
 went out again into the rain I sat down in the 
 reading-room and fell into conversation with a 
 man who had drifted over Nicaragua, Mexico, 
 California, Arizona, and I know not where else. 
 He represented a floating population which find 
 in New Orleans a convenient gathering-place 
 between the South and Central American 
 countries and the radiating territory of the 
 United States. For religious influence the 
 position of this modest Salvation Ai-my lodging- 
 house was strategic. 
 
 One church, at any rate, which through the 
 efforts of its Northern rector has come to rec- 
 ognize its own strategic position, is making re- 
 ligion real for this floating pojDulation by the 
 homely means of a wood-yard. As the result
 
 NEW ORLEANS 165 
 
 of its success it has established a lodging-house, 
 the superintendent of which was himself one of 
 these floaters who had come to the wood-yard 
 for work. Besides aiding these men from South 
 America, this church is doing good by such simple 
 means to two other classes : the " hoboes," who 
 have no future and want none, and men w ho are 
 temporarily out of work. Through the super- 
 intendent, the rector, Mr. Warner, has been able 
 to come in contact with these three classes of 
 men and know their needs. He told me that 
 from his experience he had come to believe that 
 the South was virgin soil for all kinds of " in- 
 stitutional work" (as the phrase is). He had 
 devoted his energy to this kind partly because 
 he had found it more difficult to approach the 
 organized laborers on account of the selfishness 
 of their organizations. 
 
 For this conclusion I could find good reasons 
 out of my own experience. The old organization 
 of the Knights of Labor was to this extent un- 
 selfish, that in any labor difficulty a committee 
 of workmen might be made up of men from 
 various trades, and thus the sense of brother- 
 hood was fostered. But in the present domi- 
 nant organization, the Federation of Labor, 
 the autonomy of the various trades unions tends
 
 166 NEW OELEANS 
 
 to selfishness. This change in the spirit of or- 
 ganized labor was concretely described to me 
 by a Kew Orleans minister who had been a 
 member of the Knights of Labor, but who now, 
 under the present conditions, had encountered a 
 new obstacle. In fairness I add that one man 
 who had been a member of both the Knights 
 and the Federation expressed his opinion that 
 the former were just as selfish as the latter, 
 though he added that his opinion might be 
 grounded on his own individual experience, 
 which in the case of the older organization had 
 been exceptionally bitter. 
 
 Of the wage-earners whom I have encoun- 
 tered in the course of my trip those in Kew 
 Orleans seemed to be, nominally at least, the 
 most closely connected with the Church. One 
 of these, a recognized leader of the laboring 
 men of the city, described a great many others 
 besides himself when he said to me, "I'm a 
 Catholic by trade, but I don't follow my pro- 
 fession very closely." 
 
 My conversation with this labor leader was as 
 full of constructive suggestion as any I have 
 had. 
 
 " The workingman goes to church, and pays 
 a nickel," he said, " and then he hears the
 
 NEW ORLEANS 167 
 
 priest preach a sermon on ' bear your cross,' and 
 he decides that it isn't worth a nickel. But, 
 just the same, the Church could be the greatest 
 power for educating and uplifting the working- 
 men. Employers are never against organized 
 labor when they understand it to be simply self- 
 defense. IS^ow the Church, without compromis- 
 ing itself in preaching destruction of property, 
 could help labor by making employers under- 
 stand it." 
 
 "When he mentioned self-defense, I asked 
 him whether he thought that the change in the 
 nature of labor organization had not increased 
 the spirit of selfishness. 
 
 I had not thought of that," he admitted; 
 perhaps so. This is something the preachers 
 could preach against and help about, if they 
 wanted to." 
 
 As our conversation turned to the relation of 
 organized labor to strikes he spoke very dispas- 
 sionately, and though he had himself been 
 prominent in one of the great strikes, he con- 
 sidered them to be an evil to be avoided, and 
 believed in organized labor to that end. Then, 
 speaking of the need of moral instruction, he 
 continued : 
 
 " If only the pulpit would take this up and 

 
 168 NEW ORLEANS 
 
 educate the workingman ! — for now employers 
 are afraid to have their workmen organized be- 
 cause they are ignorant. The workingmen 
 could be educated and the employers could be 
 informed by the Church. If any prominent 
 divine would take this up, I 'd go through the 
 city as a missioner with him. The South pre- 
 sents a better chance for the churches than the 
 ^orth in this respect, because the workingmen 
 are not so far alienated here as there; and that 
 is mainly due to the fact that there are not so 
 many foreigners among the workingmen of the 
 South. There is no reason why capitalist and 
 laborer should not get together ; after all, it is 
 the hog idea that keeps them apart; and that is 
 one great thing the Church can do — it can root 
 out that idea. The Church without any doubt 
 has a far better chance to educate both the 
 workingmen and the employers than any other 
 organization. For instance, when Debs was 
 here to address an open meeting of workingmen, 
 as a matter of fact there were as many employ- 
 ers present as workingmen. IS^ow of course 
 that was a good thing, but Debs represented 
 only one side. !Now, if there had been a priest 
 or preacher standing there speaking on behalf of 
 good feeling, it would have been far more eff ec-
 
 NEW OELEANS 169 
 
 tive; because the Church isn't supposed to 
 stand for either the workingman or the employer. 
 I believe in religion. I don't know what we 
 should do without it." 
 
 Another Catholic workingman said to me, 
 significantly, " The best Catholics are the best 
 workmen." In that phrase he expressed con- 
 cretely one of the tests to which religion of 
 every form was subjected by all sorts of men 
 whom I fell in with in the course of my trip. 
 The fruit by which they knew the religion they 
 admired was not peace of mind but good works. 
 
 It was a matter of regret to me that I saw so 
 little of the Jews of New Orleans, who form a 
 distinguished and influential body in the popu- 
 lation of the city. The slight glmipse I did 
 have made keener my regret that I could not 
 see more. My impression can perhaps be best 
 given by an anecdote which a Jewish gentleman 
 of especially fine filler and spiritual character 
 told me. He said that a Yankee, in the course 
 of a conversation with him, made frequent use 
 of the expressions " Christian forbearance " and 
 " Christian charity." After a while this Jewish 
 gentleman amusingly protested with the ques- 
 tion, " That is very well, my friend, but how 
 about Jewish charity and Jeimsh forbearance?"
 
 170 NEW OELEANS 
 
 The Yankee stopped suddenly, as if struck by a 
 new idea, and was silent. The next day, how- 
 ever, he called on the Jew, and, taking his 
 hand, said simply, "My Christian friend!" 
 
 When I left New Orleans, I carried with me 
 the mental picture of a city very different from 
 that which my expectant imagination had 
 painted before I had arrived. Instead of a 
 quaint replica of an old French town, I had 
 seen a marvelously interesting cosmopolitan 
 city. And as I later recalled my experiences in 
 !New Orleans, the word " Creole " actually did 
 not again suggest itself until I began to write 
 this record of my visit there.
 
 THE EDGE OF THE SOUTHWEST
 
 yii 
 
 THE EDGE OF THE SOUTHWEST 
 
 IT was in a slow accommodation train run- 
 ning from Memphis to Little Rock. Many 
 times during the long morning the train was 
 emptied and filled again with country people 
 and traveling salesmen. Mile after mile we 
 rumbled past long stretches of swamp-land, 
 covered with its charred forest of spindling 
 trees burnt to save the labor of felHng, and its 
 monotonous string of lonely, dissolute little 
 hovels, where lazy family groups of negroes 
 lolled and stared. Under some circumstances 
 even people cease to be interesting; and I was 
 heartily glad when the tedium was broken by a 
 change of cars. I found myself crowded with 
 a number of " drummers " in the compartment 
 of one of the rear passenger coaches. Strewed 
 over the floor of the car were valises and sam- 
 
 173
 
 174 THE EDGE OF THE SOUTHWEST 
 
 pie-cases in confusion. The conversation 
 among the men was mainly of the various 
 " houses " they " represented." Finally one of 
 the " drummers " opened his valise, pulled out 
 a l)ottle of whisky, and handed it about to his 
 brothers in trade. His manner was that of a 
 general who was summoning his forces prelim- 
 inary to making his coujp de main. 
 
 " Gentlemen," said he, " I have here the best- 
 selling article I ever handled." 
 
 Out of the confused pile of baggage he 
 extricated a small leather case. He pressed a 
 spring, and the case lay open on his knees. 
 " This is the greatest panoramic chart of Bibli- 
 cal history ever made. Here are some cards 
 describing it. Keep them." He had the undi- 
 vided attention of the whole group. "In the 
 center space you will see the illustrations of 
 Bible scenes; in the left-hand space the Scrip- 
 ture text giving in inspired language the state- 
 ment of the historical facts. In the right-hand 
 space appear the subjects, with the dates accu- 
 rately noted. Here, for instance, is the picture 
 of Creation, modeled closely after the Biblical 
 language, so that we can know just how it 
 looked — Scripture texts from Genesis on the 
 left, date on the right. Insert this adjustable
 
 THE EDGE OF THE SOUTHWEST 175 
 
 crank, and you have the next scene — Adam 
 and Eve in the Garden of Eden — Scripture 
 text on the left, date on the right. A child can 
 manage it and understand it; at the same time 
 it is instructive to the most learned Biblical 
 scholars. Look at these indorsements from the 
 most eminent divines and theological professors 
 of all denominations. IsTothing like it. I make 
 a hundred and fifty dollars a month with it 
 right here in Arkansas ; I ask nothing better." 
 
 " It is certainly the best device I ever saw 
 for making Bible study easy," remarked a 
 rather flashily dressed member of the brother- 
 hood. 
 
 " Why, gentlemen," declared the man with 
 the Bible chart and the whisky, " I am ready to 
 say that I have been a student of the Bible all 
 my life; but I never learned so much about 
 Bible history as I have since I have been sell- 
 ing this wonderful illustrated panoramic chart, 
 the most remarkable work ever published in 
 the interest of religion." 
 
 This incident could not have happened in the 
 IS^orth, nor in the extreme South. In the 
 Korth that sort of religious publication would 
 not have been so commercially profitable, and, 
 ])esides, no Northern man would have dared to
 
 176 THE EDGE OF THE SOUTHWEST 
 
 assume such s^nnpathy on the part of a chance 
 group of men in a railroad train. On the other 
 hand, in the extreme South, though the rehgious 
 conceptions of this man of Arkansas might 
 have been congenial, his aggressiveness would 
 have been entirely out of place. 
 
 To many readers the incident I have related 
 of the man in the train may seem to be exag- 
 gerated, or at least extreme. It was, however, 
 a striking confirmation of what was told me by 
 the Secretary of the Young Men's Christian 
 Association in one of the most important of the 
 cities of the Southwest. I had arrived there 
 late in the evening. People were coming into 
 the city by train-loads to attend the races. On 
 my arrival, instead of going to one of the hotels, 
 I went directly to the Young Men's Christian 
 Association. I had learned, by that time, of 
 the great value of the Associations as sources 
 of information and help to strangers. There is 
 no more practical benefit which the Associa- 
 tions throughout the country are conferring 
 than simply making it known that they are 
 ready to give welcome and counsel to any man 
 who finds himself in their neighborhood without 
 friends to turn to. Though the Secretary in 
 this instance was very busy, he left his direc-
 
 THE EDGE OF THE SOUTHWEST 177 
 
 tors' meeting to give me advice as to lodging 
 for the night, telephoned to one hotel after 
 another, and then finally, when answers from 
 each place came, " Every room full, on account 
 of the races," offered me, half humorously, 
 half seriously, a place on one of the reading- 
 room tables for the night. Thanks to him, I 
 did finally find a supper and a real bed. In the 
 meantime, while I was hesitating to go out into 
 the storm, he talked to me very frankly about 
 certain phases of the religious life of the city. 
 
 " The churches here are after the individual. 
 There is a recognized need for more social 
 work. The ministers here recognize this weak- 
 ness; but they feel more especially the lack 
 of spirituality in the churches themselves." To 
 illustrate this lack of spirituality he spoke of 
 the way in which all church work suffered 
 during the racing season. To his personal 
 knowledge, " women who are church members 
 go to the races and instruct their children how 
 to bet. One deacon," he said, "was called in for 
 help on Association work, and sent word that 
 he had a sick headache — result of losing thirty 
 dollars (a small sum, but the deacon, though 
 
 rich, was ' close ') at the races. Yes, is a 
 
 tough place — not because of open vice, but
 
 178 THE EDGE OF THE SOUTHWEST 
 
 because of low standards among church 
 people." 
 
 Certainly the city and indeed the whole 
 region for scores of miles around seemed to be 
 horse-mad; and I could well believe that what 
 the Secretary told me, after making all allow- 
 ance for possible personal bias in moral judg- 
 ment, was not unfair. Those churches in the 
 South and Southwest which especially pride 
 themselves on the fact that they are stalwart in 
 doctrine are not, so far as I could see, strong in 
 moral fiber or rich in spiritual life. There are 
 thi'ee elements that ought to be well balanced 
 in all religious life: a measurable degree of 
 intellectual certainty, moral conduct based on 
 fundamental principles, and that sense of per- 
 sonal relationship to God which is usually 
 termed spiritual experience. In the Southwest 
 intellectual certainty was very manifest ; moral 
 conduct was emphasized, but seemed to be 
 determined by more or less dogmatic precepts 
 generally acquiesced in rather than by unifying 
 principle ; and spiritual experience was confined 
 to a vague assurance that the future condition 
 of one who maintained his intellectual certainty 
 and followed the accepted moral precepts would 
 not be endangered. In other words, the re-
 
 THE EDGE OF THE SOUTHWEST 17^ 
 
 ligion of the Southwest seemed to be the 
 rehgion of the South largely stripped of its 
 charm. 
 
 At the beginning of my trip some one told 
 me that there was no better reflector of the 
 religious life of the Southern people than the 
 provincial religious papers. My experience 
 confirmed this. The reason for this fact is not 
 far to seek. The Southern people are not great 
 readers. Even the clergymen of St. Louis, so 
 I was told at a denominational book-store, buy 
 but few books. The dwellers in the small 
 towns and the country regions of the South, 
 whose access to literature is more difficult and 
 whose means for purchase are small, are the 
 more dependent for their reading upon their 
 denominational papers. 
 
 I came across one of these clearing-houses of 
 religious thought in one of the important cities 
 of the Southwest. It was the office of a Bap- 
 tist weekly paper. When I entered, the editor, 
 an elderly man with a long gray beard, looked 
 up at me over his spectacles. I stated my 
 errand and the name of the paper I represented. 
 At the mention of The Outlook his face grew 
 grave and somewhat severe. Very courteously, 
 however, he gave me one or two copies of his
 
 180 THE EDGE OF THE SOUTHWEST 
 
 paper and presented me with some statistics 
 concerning his denomination in the State; but 
 as for vouchsafing any expression of his ideas 
 or point of view — not a word. He was as reti- 
 cent as a diplomat. Soon a young man en- 
 tered. The editor introduced him as his son, 
 and put me into his hands. The son was no 
 more communicative than his father, though 
 equally courteous. At last, as if he could no 
 longer withhold, he roundly said: 
 
 "We used to read The Outlook with great 
 pleasure, when it was liberal: but now it has 
 flopped on public questions." 
 
 This frankness broke the ice. For the rest 
 of the morning there was no diplomacy. The 
 trouble he took in giving up his work to talk 
 with me and in taking me from one place to 
 another to introduce me to representative men 
 was one of the many demonstrations I have 
 had that people are responsive to any one who 
 they believe is trying to see from their point of 
 view. Before I left the oflice both the editor 
 and his son expressed a very genuine and cor- 
 dial interest in the purpose of The Outlook 
 to give, not an array of religious statistics, but 
 a series of pictures of religious life in America. 
 
 In the conversation of these men there was no
 
 THE EDGE OF THE SOUTHWEST 181 
 
 suggestion of interest in what is called spiritual 
 life. There was not even any use of cant terms, 
 which may be called the blank cartridges of the 
 Church militant; no hint that religion had to do 
 with character, except as it involved stalwart 
 adherence to a faith that had once for all been 
 delivered to the saints. ]S^or was there any 
 recognition of the effect which religion might 
 have on the social hfe of men. Indeed, when I 
 made an inquiry on this point, I was told that 
 there were no social problems there! Happy 
 city of over thirty thousand, without a social 
 problem to disturb its Christian people! This 
 was the reason given for the fact that the 
 churches devoted all their attention to the con- 
 version of the individual. This "conversion" 
 was attained when the individual intellectually 
 accepted certain dogmas and publicly identified 
 himself with some church. Under these two 
 divisions, doctrine and organization, could be 
 included all that I found characteristic of the 
 religious life of the Southwest, as expressed not 
 only by what these two editors said, but, with 
 perhaps one or two exceptions, by what I heard 
 on every hand. The political ideas of my inter- 
 locutor consistently reinforced his religious con- 
 ceptions. He was, of course, a Democrat, and
 
 182 THE EDGE OF THE SOUTHWEST 
 
 was an active member of his party organization. 
 He measured political life, first, by political 
 doctrines — the formulas of faith that had once 
 for all been delivered to the fathers of the Re- 
 public — and, second, by his party, which appar- 
 ently could do no wrong. His religious creed 
 was like his political platform — not subject to 
 interrogation. Any one who questioned either 
 was "more liberal," or, as he preferred to say, 
 "looser" — both terms of opprobrium. His 
 Church was, like his party, the embodiment of 
 righteousness and safety. Those who belonged 
 to other parties and other churches were mis- 
 taken — that was all that need be said about 
 them. As for those who belonged to no party 
 and no church — well, we did not discuss such 
 people. To hold an intellectual position involv- 
 ing self-contradiction seemed to cause him no 
 mental disturbance. At best, if there was to 
 be any reconciliation between theory and fact, 
 it was the facts that had to be brought into 
 conformity with the theories, not the theories 
 to the facts. He was urgent that the Filipinos 
 be given at once full political rights ; and when 
 I asked him to harmonize that opinion with the 
 suppression by his party of the rights of the 
 negroes, he replied, " Oh, the negro has his po-
 
 THE EDGE OF THE SOUTHWEST 183 
 
 litical rights here." It happened that that day 
 was election day ; and the paper reported nearly 
 six times as many Democratic as Republican 
 votes. I wanted to find out what had become 
 of the negro vote. So the next day I inquired 
 of a negro, who had the confidence of the Avhite 
 people because he was emphatically not a poli- 
 tician, whether he ever voted. " Kot now," he 
 answered. "Would you be allowed to vote?" 
 "Yes," he said with hesitation; "but," he 
 added discreetly, "you know I don't want to 
 go into politics." " Do the negroes here gen- 
 erally vote?" I persisted. "Yes." "Are their 
 votes counted?" "Yes." "Out?" "Yes"; 
 and he shrugged his shoulders, smiled, and 
 changed the subject. 
 
 N^ow, the young Baptist editor had no inten- 
 tion of misrepresenting facts to me; but his 
 political doctrine needed certain facts for its 
 support, and therefore, he inferred, such the 
 facts must be. In religious matters his mental 
 attitude was the same. His theory of what his 
 denomination ought to do was firmly established. 
 Inasmuch as that theory was that the denomina- 
 tion should concern itself only for bringing 
 about individual conversions, there could be no 
 social problems. To make up for his lack of
 
 184 THE EDGE OF THE SOUTHWEST 
 
 interest in the actual facts of life which affect 
 religion (regarded as a spirit of life or a Christ- 
 like spirit in the life of to-day), he evinced a 
 very great deal of interest in the maintenance of 
 the most minute details of doctrine. Baptism, 
 of course, was, according to his belief, essential 
 to Christian discipleship^; and also, of course, 
 it was not baptism unless it was immersion. 
 But even thus stated the doctrine was too gen- 
 eral. " Southern Baptists, you know," he said, 
 " are strongly opposed to alien immersion — 
 that is, we deny the validity of the rite as per- 
 formed by ' Disciples.' There is no laxity on 
 this point. Northern Baptists are looser in this 
 respect; but, partly because they are good- 
 
 1 This phrase " Christian discipleship," though expressing precisely what I 
 mean, is evidently open to misunderstanding, as a number of letters I have 
 received since the first publication of this chapter have indicated. I there- 
 fore take this opportunity of saying — what seems too obvious to be incorpo- 
 rated into the text — that " Christian discipleship " is not here used as a syno- 
 nym of "conversion " or "regeneration," but includes open and adequate 
 acceptance and confession of the lordship and authority of Christ. Every 
 rigorous Baptist insists that baptism is an indispensable part of even ele- 
 mentary obedience to Christ, and that church membership, of which bap- 
 tism is a prerequisite, is an indispensable part of open confession of Christ. 
 It is not surprising, however, that Baptists have protested against the idea 
 which they have read into my statement, for that is the very point on which 
 they take issue with the " Disciples." The latter — at least those of the ex- 
 treme type — declare that baptism is a prerequisite to " regeneration," while 
 the former owe their origin and existence as a sect largely to their protest 
 against all forms of the doctrine of "baptismal regeneration" on the 
 ground that it is a superstition. The letters I have received on this subject 
 afford illustration of the intensity of doctrinal controversy between the 
 sects in the region I have designated as the Edge of the Southwest.
 
 THE EDGE OF THE SOUTHWEST 185 
 
 humored, those who come here fall into our 
 ways, and, by correspondence with friends at 
 home in the ^N'orth, produce a reflex influence 
 there for greater doctrinal soundness. The 
 insistence on doctrine is continued here un- 
 abated." 
 
 This hint at the controversial origin of this 
 dogmatic spirit of the Southwest was character- 
 istic. It was illustrated by a conversation I had 
 with a cultivated lady who had been born and 
 bred in Kentucky, but had lived in another 
 State to the south and west for many years. 
 She told me that her father and mother were 
 Disciples, or " Christians " (as the followers of 
 Alexander Campbell are variously called). As 
 is generally known, " Campbellities " (the 
 name which, though repudiated by themselves, 
 is the only one that is distinctive) declare that 
 they are not a denomination ; that they have no 
 creed but the New Testament and no doctrines 
 but the commands of Jesus. They are, how- 
 ever, as insistent upon immersion as are the 
 Baptists, and have very decided opinions about 
 the relation between repentance and faith. 
 Under the influences of this form of belief this 
 lady was educated. Her parents gave her a 
 New Testament and told her to read it and
 
 186 THE EDGE OF THE SOUTHWEST 
 
 determine for herself what her belief should be. 
 In that region the Baptists were the other ag- 
 gressive sect. Just because these two denom- 
 inations were so nearly alike in general matters 
 of belief, their differences in details of doctrines 
 made them and still make them the more intense 
 in theological conflict. She exercised her right 
 of private judgment, not by formulating her 
 own faith, but by deciding between the tenets 
 of opposing sects. And she chose the dog- 
 mas of the Baptists. Her belief was, therefore, 
 the outcome of theological conflict, and, like a 
 conqueror who has won new territory only after 
 battle and privation, she guarded her hard-won 
 spoils with severe and jealous vigilance. In 
 her belief, Christianity was a Law to be obeyed 
 — not a new motive to form character and 
 determine conduct, ^but an external command 
 which required unquestioning submission. Her 
 chief interest in talking with me was, as she 
 phrased it, "to find out what a thoughtful 
 Pedobaptist would say in defense of his belief." 
 When I began to tell what I thought such " a 
 Pedobaptist would say," I found her ready with 
 her proof -texts and her answers; until I soon 
 felt myself, too, growing eager for the en- 
 counter. For that moment I understood and
 
 THE EDGE OF THE SOUTHWEST 187 
 
 entered into the spirit of the rehgion of the 
 Southwest. How tragic the outcome of such a 
 spirit may be, those who have read James Lane 
 Allen's "Reign of Law" can understand. 
 Sometimes the outcome is not only tragic but 
 almost grotesque, as was the case of a man 
 whom I met in the extreme South. He had 
 been bred in this Edge of the Southwest, and 
 had been imbued with its spirit; but, finding 
 nothing beautiful in it, rejected it in toto, and in 
 doing so rejected Christianity itself. But so 
 strong was the influence of his early training 
 that he continued to find his most delightful 
 avocation to consist in writing controversial 
 essays on New Testament exegesis, and to-day 
 has some considerable reputation as a theolo- 
 gian. 
 
 As a consequence of this atmosphere of con- 
 troversy, an evangelist who disregards distinc- 
 tions of dogma and makes his appeal both 
 intellectually sunple and frankly emotional is apt 
 to be very effective in the Southwest. This was 
 illustrated by an experience of mine in Little 
 Rock, Arkansas. I had dropped in one even- 
 ing at a prayer-meeting in a Baptist church. 
 There were very few present; apparently I 
 was the only stranger. An elderly gentleman
 
 188 THE EDGE OF THE SOUTHWEST 
 
 with a patriarchal beard and a very benignant 
 face took charge of the meeting in the absence 
 of the pastor. After reading a psahn he turned 
 toward me and asked me to offer prayer. With 
 this unexpected request I of course wilUngly 
 comphed. Two or three took part in the 
 meeting, one of whom was a very young man of 
 somewhat self-important bearing, who uttered 
 a most rhetorical jeremiad against the Chris- 
 tians of the city because they did not go to 
 prayer-meeting, and closed with a threat that 
 God in his wrath would burn them all up. At 
 the close of the meeting the elderly gentleman 
 who had been the leader at once came to me, 
 welcomed me, inquired who I was, and, after 
 hearing of my purpose, greatly to my astonish- 
 ment offered me the hospitality which he and 
 his gracious wife later extended to me in their 
 sumptuous home. He was a former Governor 
 of the State and a prominent officer of his 
 church — indeed, had been ordained as a Baptist 
 preacher. 
 
 " May I ask how you had the confidence to 
 call on a stranger for prayer? " I asked. 
 
 " Oh," he replied, " any one who comes into 
 a little prayer-meeting like this may be pre- 
 sumed to be able to lead in prayer." (That
 
 THE EDGE OF THE SOUTHWEST 189 
 
 and the incident of the drummer with the Bible 
 chart tell a great deal about religious condi- 
 tions in the Southwest.) " But," the Governor 
 protested, " you must not judge us by this little 
 meeting. There's a revival going on in the 
 Methodist church, and most of our people are 
 over there. I should advise you to go." 
 
 AVhen I reached the church, I found it 
 crowded. People were standing in the aisles. 
 On the platform a big man, with a voice that 
 had the volume of a diapason and the timbre of 
 a hautboy, was exhorting the audience. He 
 had the instincts of a dramatic orator, and he 
 showed them as he told a very sunple story. 
 Grown men throughout the audience were wip- 
 ing their eyes with their handkerchiefs. The 
 charming young girl in the story had divested 
 herself of her finery and had made the old folks 
 comfortable, had touched their hearts by her 
 affection, and then had bidden farewell, when 
 the evangelist turned, and, with his face and 
 arms uplifted, declared how much richer, fuller, 
 more self-denying was the love of Christ, and 
 then, reaching out toward the congregation, 
 seemed to single out here and there an indi- 
 vidual to whom he appealed to accept this love 
 and become Christ's. Then, after a hymn.
 
 190 THE EDGE OF THE SOUTHWEST 
 
 came the " after-meeting," when he called upon 
 his hearers to confess their faith. With homely 
 illustration, and without a reference to theologi- 
 cal formulas, he insisted upon the simplicity of 
 Christianity. While the choir and congrega- 
 tion sang softly, he continued his appeals, and, 
 as one by one many people came forward — 
 men, women, and children — he took them by 
 the hands and asked for them the prayers of 
 believers. That many of his methods were 
 meretricious and most of his ethical appeals 
 were fanatical did not weigh for an instant 
 against the simplicity of his gospel and its em- 
 phasis upon the personal — yes, and, if you will 
 have it so, the emotional — relationship between 
 the human life and God. It was to hear this 
 that people had fled in throngs from the discord 
 of sects. But back to the atmosphere of con- 
 troversy they had to go — it may be imagined 
 with what confusion of mind. 
 
 Between the I*^orth and East on the one hand 
 and the Southwest on the other, the city of St. 
 Louis is a great commercial, industrial, moral, 
 and religious vortex. The produce of the great 
 central plains of the continent gathers there for 
 distribution to Southern markets. Factories 
 send their wares out to a varied population.
 
 THE EDGE OF THE SOUTHWEST 191 
 
 The ethical ideals of South and North, West 
 and East, there find spontaneous expression. 
 The religious conceptions of foreign-born 
 Roman Catholics, of Western pioneers, of 
 Southern conservatives, and of l^ew England 
 Puritans mingle and sometimes blend. It was, 
 therefore, ahnost inevitable that there I should 
 find expressed in its most extreme form the 
 reaction from the individualism dominant and 
 relentless in the Southwest. The group of 
 men with whom I lunched one day — an editor, 
 a manufacturer, a clergyman, a librarian, and a 
 mechanic (one a product of the slums, another 
 of the hemp-fields, another from the East, an- 
 other from Scandinavia) — each unlike the others 
 in nativity, training, occuj^ation, and creed — all 
 agreed that religion was something very differ- 
 ent from that which the churches represented; 
 that it was wholesome and normal only as it 
 impelled men to live more wholesomely and 
 normally with their fellow-men. As one of 
 them — it was the editor, I think — put it, 
 " The Bible begins in a garden and ends in a 
 city. Not Eden, but the New Jerusalem, is the 
 ideal." The " social gospel " was the only 
 gospel they believed in — the " two or three 
 gathered together.''''
 
 192 THE EDGE OF THE SOUTHWEST 
 
 One of these men, whom I have called a 
 mechanic, began life in Kentucky. By his 
 parents he was brought up to be a stalwart 
 " Disciple." On the corner of his father's 
 farm was erected a meeting-house of the 
 Disciples, to be a beacon in the midst of a 
 region overwhelmed by the darkness of Bap- 
 tist error. He told me that from the time he 
 was eight years of age he carried about in his 
 pocket a copy of the 'New Testament — not for 
 devotional reasons, by any means, but for pur- 
 poses of self-defense, so that whenever he met 
 a Baptist he could whip it out and supply to his 
 adversary proof -texts in support of the faith 
 that was in him; and valiantly did he wield this 
 sword of the Spirit. As he grew older he left 
 the farm to prepare himself for the ministry of 
 the Disciples ; and at last became a preacher in 
 full standing. After an experience in various 
 pulpits, he was forced to the conclusion that the 
 churches were not influencing the real workers 
 of the world — or at least of his world; were 
 not even acquainted with their lives. So, with- 
 drawing from the ministry — not because he 
 lacked sympathy with the Church, but in order 
 to be sure that he would be no burden to his 
 denomination — he turned to manual labor as a
 
 THE EDGE OF THE SOUTHWEST 193 
 
 means of supporting his family. He went into 
 Arkansas, with a library consisting of Shake- 
 speare, Dante, Homer, and the Bible, and 
 "farmed it." Of his life there he had many 
 amusing stories to tell. From one occupation 
 to another he went in his search for knowledge 
 of humanity. When I met him, he was an ap- 
 prentice in a machine-shop. In the evening he 
 superintended a Jewish social settlement. He 
 was president of a society for excavating mam- 
 moth remains. He told me that one of his 
 sons, a boy of sixteen or thereabouts, wanted to 
 keep a peanut-stand; he gave his consent, and 
 the boy set up his stand in one of the roughest 
 places of the city. He feared no harm for his 
 son, because he had faith in the boy's home 
 training, and he believed his acquisition of real 
 knowledge of the city life would do him good. 
 All this time this man has kept his membership 
 in the little " Disciple " church on his father's 
 farm in Kentucky, has contributed to its sup- 
 port, and at least once a year goes there to 
 preach. ^Never have I met a man who has 
 adjusted himself and has kept himself adjusted 
 to so many grades of society, who has had a 
 larger range of interests, and who has had a 
 simpler, surer faith. As we strolled from one
 
 194 THE EDGE OF THE SOUTHWEST 
 
 place to another in the city — now in a little 
 restaurant where he knew the proprietor and 
 his family, now in the " Reform Rooms," where 
 we argued with some acquaintances of his 
 about Socialism and Single Tax, now in one or 
 two quiet saloons which he showed me as typi- 
 cal " workingmen's clubs," now in the basement 
 lodging-house of the Salvation Army, to which 
 we took a poor deaf and dumb young fellow — 
 he kept throughout his imperturbable spirit, his 
 unchangeable sanity of mind and Christian 
 feeling. 
 
 It was in St. Louis, also, that I met a man 
 who had come to this same point by a road 
 from an exactly opposite direction. He had 
 been a newsboy on the East Side of Xew York, 
 and afterwards a mechanic in a factory. He, 
 too, saw that the workers of Ms world were 
 not known by the churches. So, as one who 
 at least knew the point of view of workingmen, 
 he decided to become a minister, that he might 
 brino; the life of Christ into the life of artisans 
 and mechanics. Simple in heart and very 
 modest, he would tell me little about himself; 
 but on Easter evening, when I attended the 
 service at his mission, joined the crowded con- 
 gregation of the poor, heard his very human
 
 THE EDGE OF THE SOUTHWEST 195 
 
 account of the death and resurrection of Jesus, 
 listened to the music rendered under the direc- 
 tion of his gifted wife — music that was far 
 better in real musical value than the more 
 ornate choral service I had heai-d in a wealthy 
 uptown church that very morning- — and met 
 some of his congregation after the service, I 
 learned more from him than he could tell, or 
 perhaps could know. 
 
 These two men represent the hope of the 
 Southwest for a real and a growing religious 
 Ufe.
 
 KAJN^SAS
 
 yiii 
 
 . KANSAS 
 
 THE wide main street of the little city was 
 lined with farm horses and wagons, coated 
 up to flank and hub with mud. It was Satur- 
 day, and the sidewalks were crowded with farm- 
 ers. The men and boys were such as may be 
 seen any day waiting for the mail on many a 
 village corner in Maine. They showed the 
 same signs of clean, honest labor in the sun 
 and on the soil; they had the same set mouths 
 that can very well say " I will " or " I won't," 
 but can convey that idea just as well without 
 speaking; the same lines about the eyes that 
 betoken equal shrewdness in swapping either 
 stories or horses; the same bearing that suits 
 equally a hoe and a rifle, and that for practical 
 purposes has borne comparison with the military 
 swagger of the Hessian and the Spaniard. One 
 
 199
 
 200 KANSAS 
 
 can generally recognize the veritable Yankee, 
 whether he is raising potatoes in Aroostook 
 County, Maine, or making butter in a valley of 
 the Catskills, or driving a reaper in a Western 
 wheat-field. I saw scores of him that dismal 
 Saturday afternoon in this Kansas town. 
 
 I had just come into Kansas from Missouri. 
 There was nothing to remind me that I was in 
 the same country except the- mud; but even 
 in this respect there was a difference — in Kan- 
 sas the mud was deeper. In the presence of 
 this one ubiquitous evidence of unimproved 
 Kature it was possible to understand why 
 Kansans feel justified in thinking so well of 
 themselves. In their State it is only Nature 
 that is vile. Even in the neighborhood of the 
 railroads everything that bears the human 
 mark — house or sidewalk, cultivated field or 
 shop — speaks of cleanliness, order, and indus- 
 try. Except for the street lights of natural 
 gas (which it is cheaper to leave burning all 
 day than to extinguish and relight) and the 
 scarcity of trees, any one of the villages I 
 passed through would be inconspicuous in 'New 
 England. The nearness of Missouri has by its 
 contrast contributed to a certain self-compla- 
 cency characteristic of Kansas. It is the
 
 KANSAS 201 
 
 quality of piety in Kansas to thank God that 
 yon are not as other men are, beer-di4nkers, 
 shiftless, habitually lynchers, or even as these 
 Missourians; you work six days in the week, 
 and pay taxes rather than let saloons pay 
 licenses. 
 
 Down the street among these transplanted 
 Yankees, I made my way to the office of a 
 lawyer of the city. Like other Kansans, I 
 found him thinking of religious life in terms 
 of concrete moral problems. He had not a 
 word to say about doctrines. I have actually 
 forgotten to what denomination he belonged. 
 His strongest religious feelings found expres- 
 sion in his support of prohibition. He argued 
 for it, not mainly on the ground of expediency, 
 but on the ground of conscience. For this 
 reason his opinions were not in the least af- 
 fected by the fact, which he frankly admitted, 
 that in some cities of the State the law was 
 openly violated. Prohibition was essentially 
 right, a part of the moral law, and had the 
 sanction of all who supported religion. He 
 disbelieved in the principle of local option 
 because it put the burden of recurrent agita- 
 tion upon the "temperance people"; in his 
 opinion it was unfair to put this burden upon
 
 202 KANSAS 
 
 the people who were right, depriving them of 
 just so much time from " legitimate business." 
 Under prohibition, even unenforced, the burden 
 of positive agitation was laid upon the liquor- 
 dealers, who were manifestly wrong, and who 
 therefore ought to bear the burden. 
 
 This illustrates the contrast between Kansas 
 and the contiguous Southwest. The difference 
 is not that between the dogmatic and the un- 
 dogmatic. In the Southwest religious life is 
 marked, as I have described in a previous arti- 
 cle, by doctrinal dogmatism. In Kansas re- 
 ligious life is marked by dogmatism also; only 
 it is not doctrinal, but moral. There is another 
 difference. In the Southwest religious dogma- 
 tism is a choppy sea; for doctrines of one sect 
 conflict with the doctrines of another. In 
 Kansas religious dogmatism is a strong cur- 
 rent, for church people of all names are prac- 
 tically agreed as to what moral courses are 
 unquestionably Christian. It is true that 
 Kansas is not by any means wholly free from 
 the dogmatism of creed. It is also true that 
 one of the most relentlessly dogmatic asser- 
 tions as to moral conduct which I have ever 
 heard was made in Arkansas. But in the main 
 the " Higher Criticism " is the representative
 
 KANSAS 203 
 
 heresy of the Southwest, while that of Kansas 
 is Beer. 
 
 When I inquired what the churches were 
 doing to supply a substitute for the saloon, I 
 could find no positive information. As in doc- 
 trine so in morals, it is much easier to combat a 
 heresy than to construct a faith. The lawyer 
 of whom I have spoken had others to agree 
 with him that in constructive moral effort the 
 churches were weak. Kansas, however, is an 
 essentially rural State, and therefore does not 
 feel the need of public centers of social life. 
 Most boys in Kansas, I was told, can grow to 
 manhood without knowing what a saloon is. 
 The general impression which I received from 
 many people and various experiences as to the 
 moral and religious life in the rural communi- 
 ties (which dominate the State) may be ex- 
 pressed in the words of a business man, a 
 fellow-townsman of the lawyer: 
 
 " Some of the young people are leaving the 
 country — even the best of them — but those 
 that remain on the farms are doing well. 
 Until two or three years ago there was a 
 decline in prospei'ity; but now the young men 
 have taken hold, and are paying off debts, and 
 in an amazingly short time are making great
 
 204 KANSAS 
 
 profits. The churches are also growing; inter- 
 est in religion is increasing. Often churches 
 are crowded — a hundred where you might 
 expect forty. I think that the hard financial 
 times were responsible for a great deal that 
 was thought to be dishonest. ISTow, however, 
 moral life, in the widest sense, is improving. 
 Whether all this moral and religious improve- 
 ment is simply the result of prosperity or not 
 it is hard to say, but I believe it is real." 
 
 It was a Presbyterian minister who first told 
 me that I should find among the Methodists the 
 most typical country churches, and introduced 
 me to a Methodist minister, who very kindly 
 arranged a short tour with a local preacher. 
 The dismal drizzle of the afternoon turned into 
 rain, and when nine o'clock came with no sign 
 of the local preacher I was about to conclude 
 that weather did not permit. Just then, in the 
 darkness, the local preacher drove to the door. 
 He was a student from a Methodist college, 
 who spent his Sundays and vacations in minis- 
 tering to the scattered population of neighbor- 
 ing districts. 
 
 " I am afraid it will be impossible for me to 
 take you along," he said. And, sure enough, 
 the mud on the wheels of his buggy banished all
 
 KANSAS 205 
 
 thought of making his pony draw us both. 
 Finally, after agreeing to provide a pair of 
 horses for the trip, and to speak to his people 
 in his place on the morrow (for his reluctance 
 to preach in the presence of a stranger proved 
 to be as much of an obstacle to the plan as the 
 mud was), I prevailed upon him to take me 
 with him. When I expressed my hesitation at 
 intruding myself on the hospitality of his peo- 
 ple, he laughed me out of my fears. Any one 
 of the homes in his district, he told me, was 
 always ready to receive him at any time, and 
 anybody he might happen to have with him. 
 That was the way he lived on Sundays and 
 during vacations. He had no parsonage or 
 regular boarding-place. He had his traveling- 
 bag, his horse, and his buggy. As he drove 
 around the region, any house near which he 
 happened to be at meal-time or night he would 
 make his home for the time being. This time, 
 he said, we should stay at the County Infirm- 
 ary (what in ^N'ew England is called the Poor 
 Farm), the superintendent of which was a pa- 
 rishioner of his. So off we drove our hired 
 horses through the dark, with no sign of road 
 on the flat country to guide us ; except as we 
 felt the jar of turning out of the deep ruts,
 
 206 KANSAS 
 
 there was nothing to indicate that we were not 
 driving over a pathless prairie. 
 
 At last the gleam of light from the Infirmary 
 reached us through the darkness. At the door 
 we were warmly bidden welcome. The Super- 
 intendent was a tall, well-knit man, clean shaven ; 
 his face would have satisfied Rembrandt. He 
 had been a veritable pioneer. Starting from the 
 East in his boyhood, he went westward by 
 degrees, always keeping just ahead of the rail- 
 road until it overtook him in Kansas ; there he 
 settled for life. It was the incidental in his 
 narrative, which he told with a certain quiet 
 dignity that was very convincing, that expressed, 
 more forcibly than any explicit statement could 
 express, his stalwart faith. And as he told little 
 tales and anecdotes about the inmates of the poor- 
 house and about the unfortunates who applied 
 there from time to time for food and shelter, his 
 religious feeling showed the sort of tenderness 
 and human sympathy that is possible only in 
 the most virile natures. His view of the pres- 
 ent religious conditions in his State was most 
 hopeful; his confidence in the character of the 
 younger generation was buoyant. In this 
 respect he was representative of almost all 
 whom I met in Kansas. The Xew England
 
 KANSAS 207 
 
 country Yankee is apt to be a religions hypo- 
 chondriac ; he spiritually " enjoys poor health" ; 
 he is reminiscent of the good old times, and 
 finds a doleful pleasure in predicting general 
 religious catastrophe. The Kansas Yankee — 
 such is the force of environment — is his direct 
 opposite. When, for instance, my host the 
 Superintendent told of the days of the anti- 
 slavery struggle, his eyes brightened and he 
 drew himself together as if ready for a renewal 
 of it; but when he spoke of the young peo- 
 ple of his acquaintance and their efforts and 
 achievements, he showed in his quiet way even 
 greater assurance and enthusiasm. 
 
 Sunday broke clear and sunny. We had 
 three miles or so to drive to Wesley Chapel. 
 Never have I seen such mud. The ruts were 
 no deeper simply because the hubs refused to 
 let the wheels sink lower. When we were yet 
 a mile from the chapel there was a snap, and 
 the horses stopped with a jerk. The whiffle- 
 tree had broken. In a few minutes my com- 
 panion, the local preacher, had the fracture 
 bound with a strap from my camera-case. 
 When we resumed our journey, I inquired 
 whether, with the road in such condition, it was 
 worth while to go on. Would there be any-
 
 208 KANSAS 
 
 body there? I was assured there would be a 
 very fair-sized congregation. But there was 
 no village or settlement near by? Ko; the 
 people lived in isolated farm-houses. When 
 the chapel came into view, I could see horses 
 and wagons standing near it; and when we 
 approached it, I discovered that they lined the 
 road on either side for several rods. Among 
 them were several saddled horses. The con- 
 gregation within the little chapel was l)y no 
 means a small one. There was a surprisingly 
 large proportion of young people. There was 
 also a conspicuously large proportion of men. 
 In decorum and in intelligent attention the 
 congregation was remarkably superior to the 
 ordinary country congregation of ^ew England. 
 Upon inquiry after service I learned that, with 
 the exception of the members of one household 
 who had walked from their home half a mile 
 distant, all in this congregation had driven or 
 ridden — many of them for three miles or more 
 — over those wretched roads. I never heard of 
 a present-day 'New England community which 
 could match that. Yet I was convinced by 
 many kinds of testimony that this was by no 
 means a remarkable Kansas community. 
 
 We were entertained, together with two
 
 KANSAS 209 
 
 other guests — one of them the son of a "Pro- 
 fessor of Typewriting" — in the neighboring 
 tiny and rather primitive farm-house. The 
 rotary cream separator in the dining-room be- 
 tokened the progressive farmer. Sunday was 
 evidently no bugbear to the three small boys of 
 the family. The Sunday atmosphere of this 
 home that day was surcharged with a very 
 wholesome, happy spirit. Perhaps the result 
 can best be described by saying that it was a 
 combination of Puritanism and the prairie. 
 
 The trait of expectancy, if it may be so called, 
 which is characteristic of the religious feeling I 
 noticed in the distinctively rural portions of 
 the State, was equally marked in its colleges. 
 Kansas is dotted with colleges, mainly, of 
 course, denominational. In them the churches 
 exert an mfluence very much concentrated, and 
 at scarcely one remove. Under these circum- 
 stances it is not to be expected that education 
 would result as yet in skepticism, and until the 
 skeptical spirit appears there is nothing in Kan- 
 sas to attack the spirit of religious hopefulness. 
 The State University is an exception in that it 
 has a reputation for irreligion. So far as I 
 could ascertain, this reputation has been fos- 
 tered mainly by the denominational colleges.
 
 210 KANSAS 
 
 most of which find the State University a for- 
 midable competitor, and is undeserved. Justi- 
 fication, however, for that reputation was many 
 times offered to me on the ground that in the 
 University at Lawrence there was no compul- 
 sory chapel, and that the churches were not 
 moved by self-interest, as in the case of denom- 
 inational colleges, to make the religious training 
 of the students their business. My visit to the 
 University of Kansas, brief though it was, en- 
 abled me to see that these two facts were quite 
 as favorable as detrimental to religion. The 
 optional system of chapel attendance, so both 
 officers and students testified, had operated to 
 create sincerity and spontaneity in religious life. 
 I admit that I possibly gave credence to this 
 testimony the more readily because it accorded 
 with my previous conviction; but that, of 
 course, does not alter in the least the fact of 
 the testmiony. As to the influence of the 
 churches upon the life of the students, it was 
 evident that the relation between the University 
 and the churches, as described to me, was closer 
 there than I had found to exist in any college 
 town I had then visited on this trip. The fact, 
 as reported to me, that during the summer, when 
 the students had left for the vacation, a number
 
 KANSAS 211 
 
 of the churches were seriously weakened, was 
 creditable alike to the churches and to the Uni- 
 versity. 
 
 Illustrative of the spontaneity of the students' 
 religious life was the character of the Univer- 
 sity Young Men's Christian Association. A 
 benefactor of the University had given the As- 
 sociation two small brick houses. With these 
 in its possession the Association wisely saw its 
 opportunity to supply a need that the lack of 
 dormitories occasioned; so it decided to make 
 of its "plant," not the ordinary Association 
 rooms, but club-houses similar to those main- 
 tained by college fraternities. In order, how- 
 ever, to avoid the formation of a religious-social 
 clique, the managers, with evident tact, chose as 
 residents representative students of the Univer- 
 sity. As the rooms were in every way desirable, the 
 beneficial effect of this broad-minded policy was 
 immediately felt. As a consequence, the Young 
 Men's Christian Association became a leading 
 factor in the development of the entire college 
 life; and religion, far from being accepted as a 
 separate segment in the life of the University, 
 has become identified with wholesomeness in 
 athletics and other recreation and with sound- 
 ness of scholarship. The Y^oung AYomen's
 
 212 KANSAS 
 
 Chi"istian Association has likewise achieved 
 leadership in the life of the women of the Uni- 
 versity. The officers of this Association whom 
 I met united with their ingenuous religious 
 earnestness rare personal charm, while the rep- 
 resentatives of the Young Men's Christian As- 
 sociation were thoroughly vigorous fellows, 
 who bore none of the familiar pietistic scars on 
 their Christian faith. 
 
 The man who, of all whom I met in Kansas, 
 seemed to have the best-formulated understand- 
 ing of the State was a professor in a Congre- 
 gational college. A native of the East, a 
 graduate of Yale, he looked at facts in their 
 perspective. After my talk with him I was 
 more than ever impressed with the truth that 
 the present religious and moral character of 
 Kansas was only the persistence of the temper 
 that was wrought into the people during the 
 days of Eli Thayer's Emigrant Company, the 
 Wakarusa War, and the Lecompton Constitu- 
 tion. The settlers of the State had for their 
 purpose primarily to make, not a fertile soil 
 fruitful, but an unsettled soil free. They were 
 not content with talking about anti-slavery; 
 they were first of all intent on doing something 
 to resist slavery's encroachments. To-day the
 
 KANSAS 213 
 
 same spirit exists. Even the most talkative 
 Kansas idealist — and the talkative one in my 
 experience was an exception — can always be 
 found to have his idealism firmly fastened to a 
 peg driven deep in the earth. The Beecher 
 Bible and Rifle Company still in the spirit 
 hovers over Kansas like the horses and chariots 
 of fire round about Elisha. 
 
 An opportunity I valued highly was afforded 
 me in a conversation with a man who through 
 his position had intimate acquaintance with the 
 intellectual, moral, and religious life of the State. 
 He was full of racy and brisk expressions. 
 
 "You cannot understand Kansas without 
 seeing a railroad map of the State. The Santa 
 Fe system is spread out like fingers; it has the 
 State under its hand. That is Kansas to-day. 
 But when I was eight years old, Topeka was 
 nothing but straggling, scrawny topography. 
 The Santa Fe may not be a moral force, but it 
 explains the State. Scarcely more than a gen- 
 eration ago the only inhabitants here were 
 wolves, prairie-dogs, and grasshoppers. Why, 
 every tree that you see anywhere here is an ar- 
 tificial product." I thought of the shady lawn- 
 bordered streets of Lawrence. "Every brick 
 and pavement that goes down, every board that
 
 214 KANSAS 
 
 you see, has come from outside the State. We 
 haven't centuries behind us. We are a thing 
 of yesterday, and not very early in the morning, 
 either. We haven't had time to do anything 
 but build our 'plant.' Men haven't had time 
 to formulate their ideas; even in towns they 
 think more about plows than anything else. 
 And we are still in the process. Almost any 
 day you will see a little house on wheels being 
 moved out to the edge of the city. It has been 
 sold to a negro; the man who built it is busy 
 putting up a better one in its place. But when 
 the time for settling intellectual problems comes, 
 they will be settled wholesomely, not tackled in 
 the mulish fashion as in Missouri. There's too 
 much beer in Missouri; they work there too 
 much in the breeching. That's another handi- 
 cap. We're behind Missouri, a big, hulking 
 barrier between here and the East, and every- 
 thing comes through or around. On the other 
 side Kansas has turned mother for the free 
 lands of Oklahoma. The western part of Kan- 
 sas, besides, is like another State — mostly un- 
 inhabited. Crops there are uncertain. Curious 
 weeds grow there that drop round seed-balls 
 that are rolled along by the wind. You see a 
 line of these rolling weeds moving steadily over
 
 KANSAS 215 
 
 the ground, like a line of cavalry, until they 
 come bump against a wire fence. They look 
 like kobolds and trolls of the under- world ; they 
 start you into uncontrollable laughter like that 
 of Homer's gods. It is the eastern part of the 
 State that is the real Kansas." Mr. Sheldon, 
 who gained wide repute a few years ago as 
 setting forth the question, "What would Jesus 
 do?" as the supreme interest of the Christian, 
 he cited as typical of the State. "As soon as 
 Mr. Sheldon gets the tugs on he wants to get 
 them hitched to a cart filled with 'niggers' 
 from Tennesseetown. He wants to switch men 
 off from speculative questions to the practical — 
 from ' are there few to be saved?' to ' strive to 
 enter in at the strait gate.' It's a mean man 
 that would suspect his motives." 
 
 This I found corroborated in the brief inter- 
 view I had with Mr. Sheldon. Personally he 
 was extremely modest, but in his moral convic- 
 tions absolutely confident as to just what Jesus 
 would drink, just how Jesus would conduct a 
 newspaper or manage a church. Indeed, he has 
 the courage of his convictions, and has been 
 willing to undertake to show to others by his 
 own actions just what particular things the 
 Christian life involves. In Kansas this is
 
 216 KANSAS 
 
 saved from being pharisaism by the fact that 
 Kansas people think in the concrete and accept 
 this method as the normal way of expressing 
 truth. 
 
 There is nothinor abstract about Kansas. Even 
 ideality there becomes concrete. There are 
 signs of an approaching time when Christianity 
 there will be identified with motive and spirit 
 rather than with precept. In the meantime 
 those ministers and lajanenwho are magnifying 
 specific reforms as the substance of Christianity 
 are serving a highly useful purpose, for they 
 are using concrete terms, which everybody who 
 hears them understands, and making them 
 religious.
 
 THE easter:n^ west
 
 IX 
 THE EASTERN WEST 
 
 WHAT is your impression of our State? " 
 was the question asked of me in almost 
 every State I visited. To that question I for- 
 mulated no answer until I came to loAva. There, 
 after I was assured that my frank opinion was 
 desired, I was ready to answer in one word — 
 " Monotony." 
 
 " Yes," came the reply ; " we lowans believe 
 in the virtue of uniformity?'' 
 
 Although I accepted the rebuke as to choice 
 of words, I secretly continued to think Iowa 
 somewhat monotonous as well as merely uniform. 
 Granting, however, the modification in language 
 which the rebuke suggests, I believe that that 
 answer can be applied, in somewhat less degree, 
 to the religious life of all that part of the coun- 
 try called the Middle West. True religion and 
 
 219
 
 220 THE EASTERN WEST 
 
 undefiled, in the eyes of the dwellers in that 
 part of the West, is to conform to certain stan- 
 dards of thought and conduct. Such religion 
 is displayed in the services of the churches. 
 Among Episcopalian churches, on the one hand, 
 ritualism flourishes ; in non-ritualistic churches, 
 on the other hand, there thrives an equally 
 strong conventionality, though of opposite ap- 
 pearance. The surplice is inadequately replaced 
 by the white tie ; the vaulted nave by the semi- 
 circular auditorium with opera-chairs; images 
 of the saints by blackboards, maps, and stereop- 
 ticon screens; Gregorian tones by an easily 
 recognizable type of anthems furnished by pub- 
 lishing houses at so much a month. These and 
 other like symbols of religion which I might 
 name are not all found in every church, but 
 they might be combined to form an ideal to 
 which most of the churches which I saw are 
 tending. In religious thinking, too, conformity 
 is the rule. The questioning spirit which will 
 not down even in the Southwest exists also in 
 this land of broad acres and growing cities, but 
 it is on the defensive. When it becomes too 
 active, it crystallizes into one of numerous new 
 and strange sects, of which the land yields more 
 than its share, and ceases to have any portion in
 
 THE EASTEEN WEST 221 
 
 religion pure and undefiled. Eloquence, of a 
 sort that must meet the test of the summer as- 
 sembly platforms which are within reach of most 
 of the people, rather than thought, is the pri- 
 mary essential in making a sermon acceptable. 
 The successful minister must have business en- 
 terprise. The preacher who " warms up to his 
 subject" and is efficient in raising a debt 
 " challenges admiration." 
 
 The most illuminating comments made to me 
 on these conditions were those of a young 
 clergyman who understood them better than 
 either most visitors to the Middle West, who 
 have perspective but no sympathy, or most 
 dwellers in the Middle West, who have sym- 
 pathy but no perspective. This clergy- 
 man understood these conditions sympatheti- 
 cally, because his early life had been spent 
 among them ; but he had gained perspective by 
 his course of study in the East and in Germany, 
 and his successful ministry in the pioneer re- 
 gions of the Northwest. 
 
 " In my little church," he said to me, " I have 
 the attention and support of the thinking peo- 
 ple ; but that is not enough. When you divide 
 a small church like this, you've weakened your 
 working force. One of my deacons told me
 
 222 THE EASTERN WEST 
 
 that the trouble with my sermons was that I 
 didn't get ' hot under the collar ' I " The fact 
 that this deacon, a representative man in the 
 community, could not see the grotesqueness of 
 his suggestion that a man of such absolute sin- 
 cerity and real earnestness as his minister should 
 work himself up into a pseudo-oratorical dis- 
 play, was of itself enough to explain why 
 thoughtful earnestness and open-minded sin- 
 cerity are not (to use an appropriate commercial 
 phrase) a very valuable ministerial asset nowa- 
 days in the Middle West. 
 
 The combination of formalism and enterprise, 
 of conventionality and " hustle," is what gives 
 distinctive character to this large region which 
 may be called the Eastern West. It has come 
 into its enterprise by inheritance, for not long 
 ago it was pioneer country. But with the 
 years its unconventional manners have become 
 stereotyped and developed into new conventions. 
 The nonconformist has made of his noncon- 
 formity a new conformity. It is the history over 
 again of the Protestant freeing himself from an 
 infallible Church only to set up in its place an 
 infallible Bible — of the Puritan fleeing from 
 an estabhshed Church in England only to set 
 up an establishment of his own in America.
 
 THE EASTERN WEST 223 
 
 So far as this conventionalizing process ad- 
 vanced that it ah'eady bears some of the marks 
 which a similar process in the East bears. In 
 several small towns of Illinois and Iowa I heard 
 stories of the decrease of young people, of 
 moral and religions indifference and even de- 
 generation, and of what may be called anaemic 
 civilization, which bore very close likeness to 
 what I had observed in small towns and yW- 
 lages of New England. The star of empire, as 
 it makes its way to the westward, seems to be a 
 comet, and its tail is convention.^ 
 
 An extreme case of this combination of con- 
 ventionality and " hustle " was a service I at- 
 tended in a United Presb^t-erian church. As 
 is well known, the people of this denomination 
 are extremely conservative in their theology. 
 The one distinctive tenet, however, for which 
 
 • In a letter concerning this statement, a minister of the Middle West 
 declares that he knows of no section in which the churches are " more free 
 from convention than in this very region," and adds, in support of his 
 statement, that the churches there are "ready for new ideas and new 
 methods." In other words,'this minister expresses the not uncommon idea 
 — especially prevalent in the Middle West — that enterprise is equivalent to 
 unconventionality. This, of course, is to confound conventionalism with 
 traditionalism. Traditionalism is conformity to a usage or an idea because 
 it is sanctioned by age ; conventionalism'is conformity to a usage or an idea 
 because it is sanctioned by general concurrence. One of the ways in which 
 conventionalism shows itself is in extreme readiness to adopt novelties. An 
 ultra-fashionable woman adopts a new fashion without regard to its intrinsic 
 beauty because she is conventional ; she adopts it when it first makes its ap- 
 pearance because she is also enterprising. Similarly some of the most enter- 
 prising churches are also the most conventional.
 
 224 THE EASTERN WEST 
 
 they are most generally known is their belief 
 that no hymns should be used in divine wor- 
 ship — none but the Psalms of the Old Testa- 
 ment. The argument is something like this: 
 The Psalter is incomparably the best hymn-book 
 ever written; the exclusive use of it bars out 
 trivial and sectarian hymns; and, more than 
 all, God has commanded its use, or, in the 
 words of one of the denomination's accredited 
 defenders, " Doesn't it look like God had given 
 us a hymn-book to sing from as well as a Bible 
 to preach from, and that we have no more right 
 to supplant the one than the other with a book 
 of our own composing? " Therefore only the 
 inspired language of the Psalms should be used 
 in singing praise to God. In this church which 
 I attended the hymn-book was made up of met- 
 rical versions of the Psalms set to tunes gener- 
 ally familiar in most American churches. The 
 service, except for the hymns, was in no way 
 remarkable. The pastor of the church was a 
 young man, eminent in his denomination, so I 
 was told, for one of his years. His sermon 
 was on the deity of Christ, and consisted of a 
 series of coordinate propositions, each purport- 
 ing to prove his main point and each supported 
 by Scripture texts, which he quoted and cited
 
 THE EASTERN WEST 225 
 
 by chapter and verse as a lawyer cites cases in 
 addressing the judge. His citations averaged 
 about one a minute. Now for the evidence of 
 business enterprise. When the notices had 
 been given out, the pastor placed a blackboard 
 beside the pulpit and announced that he wanted 
 one hundred dollars raised that morning. He 
 then wrote " $100 " on the blackboard and 
 waited for contributions. A man in the con- 
 gregation rose and stated that he would give 
 ten dollars. The minister thereupon announced 
 the man's name, drew a line through the "$100," 
 and wrote underneath " $90." The first pledge 
 proved to be the largest. With each pledge 
 thereafter the minister placed a new figure on 
 the board, indicating at each step the amount yet 
 needed. When the last dollar was crossed off, 
 the minister continued the service, and at the 
 end of his sermon called on the man who had 
 subscribed ten dollars to lead in prayer. In the 
 Sunday-school as in the church service, metrical 
 versions of the inspired Psalms were exclusively 
 sung, but the music set to them was as unin- 
 spired as those which any hack writer of Sun- 
 day-school jingles ever perpetrated. There 
 being no infallible standard of divine music, 
 there seemed to be no need of following any
 
 226 THE EASTERN WEST 
 
 standard whatever. The brisk competition of 
 other Sunday-schools evidently had to be met. 
 Less traditional and more enterprising was 
 another church in the same city — the " Central 
 Church of Christ," colloquially called " Camp- 
 bellite," much to the displeasure of its members. 
 This denomination, variously known also as 
 " Christians " and " Disciples," ^ is one of the 
 most aggressive of all religious bodies in the 
 United States. In the city to which I have 
 just referred, the Congregationalists had "the 
 start," but their numbers, so I was told, had 
 actually decreased; the Disciples, on the other 
 hand, had established ten churches in eleven 
 
 1 It is not my purpose in this book to go into denominational distinc- 
 tions ; but in the case of this denomination it is almost imperative to 
 do so. The name " Campbellite " is distasteful to those to whom it is 
 applied, because they claim to be followers, not of a man, but of the New 
 Testament. They therefore want no distinctive name, desiring to be 
 known only as Christians, Disciples of Christ, and as constituting 
 Churches of Christ. The fact, however, that others, who repudiate this 
 movement started by Alexander Campbell and hold rather to the teach- 
 ing of a man by the name of Stone, have the desire to be similarly 
 known makes it necessary to use a distinctive name. Inasmuch as the 
 feeling between the followers of Stone and the followers of Campbell 
 is intense to the degree of bitterness (as may easily be discovered by reading 
 the journals of either sect), the terms " Campbellite " on the one hand, and 
 " Stonite " or " New Light " on the other, have naturally arisen, and form 
 convenient^denominational designations. It would be easier to use a more 
 acceptable name if either party had a uniform use as to name. The fact is, 
 however, that the denomination called " Campbellite " is, for instance, in 
 Ohio called "Disciples," in Illinois "Christians," in Iowa " Church of 
 Christ " ! yet it is not three denominations, but one denomination. 
 " Campbellite "is the only distinctive title that applies to the denomination 
 everywhere. In this chapter I shall use the term " Disciples," though it is 
 neither distinctive nor universal.
 
 THE EASTERN WEST 227 
 
 years, and they were then all flourishing. The 
 spirit of the Disciple ministers may be indicated 
 by an anecdote told me by one of them about 
 another. The clergyman was asked whether 
 he were pastor of the biggest Protestant church 
 in the country. He replied, " I don't know and 
 don't care ; I wish simply to be a servant." A 
 few moments later he was asked what the mem- 
 bership of his church was. He replied instantly : 
 " Two thousand three hundred and fifty-one 
 this morning!" The growth of the Disciples 
 cannot be explained altogether by this eager- 
 ness for numbers, for, though it is especially 
 characteristic of this denomination, it is very 
 evident in other denominations — not least 
 among Congregationalists. IN^either can this 
 growth be attributed to the denomination's 
 polity, for each local church of the Disciples, 
 like each local church of the Congregational- 
 ists, is supreme law unto itself. It can only be 
 attributed to the spirit of the Disciples, which 
 may be termed parochial unselfishness. Among 
 Congregationalists the local church is preemi- 
 nently living unto itself. It may, and usually 
 does, give largely to missions, but its chief 
 interest is in its own prosperity. A small 
 Congregational church almost invariably feels
 
 5 
 
 228 THE EASTERN WEST 
 
 the competition, rather than the assistance 
 of a neighboring rich church 'of its own de- 
 nomination. Its organist, if markedly effi- 
 cient, is Hkely to receive from the richer 
 church the offer of an increased salary; its 
 social life is likely to suffer in comparison with 
 the very distinct social life of its more elegant 
 neighbor; its activities are likely to conflict 
 with the activities of the church with larger 
 resources. The parish of the larger Congrega- 
 tional church is seldom determined by geograph- 
 ical lines, but usually extends into the domains 
 of other and smaller churches of its own de- 
 nomination. This parochial selfishness of Con- 
 gregational churches is not by any means 
 confined to the Middle West; I could cite 
 cases of it which I have observed in every part 
 of the country I have visited where Congrega- 
 tional churches abound; but it is peculiarly 
 noticeable where it stands in contrast with the 
 parochial unselfishness of those which may be 
 denoted by the rather inaccurate term Disciple 
 churches. The Central Church of Christ is a 
 marked example of this parochial unselfishness 
 and its reward. Each of the other ten churches 
 of the denomination has been organized by 
 members of the Central Church, and by the
 
 THE EASTERN WEST 229 
 
 assistance of that church has become a new 
 center for the activity of Disciples. As the 
 pastor of the church said to nie, " I could have 
 had three thousand members here, but I could 
 not have done anything with them. This 
 church is really stronger because it mothers 
 other churches." While this Central Church 
 has grown from 380 to 1600 in sixteen years, 
 the total number of Disciples in the city has 
 increased from 380 to 5300 in that time. As a 
 consequence, this small army of Disciples pre- 
 sents a solid front, while the other denomina- 
 tions are periodically stirred up over their 
 " proselyting." 
 
 At the time I was in the city, the periodical 
 embroilment had just been created by the pres- 
 ence of a Disciple evangelist. Just " to show 
 that there was no hard feeling " the ministers 
 of the city invited this evangelist to address 
 them at their weekly Monday meeting. Begin- 
 ning his address with pleasant generalities 
 about the unity of the Church, he skillfully led 
 up to an argument in justification of the dis- 
 tinctive tenets as to church union held by his 
 denomination. By this flank movement the pa- 
 rade-ground seemed suddenly transformed into 
 a battlefield. Before the opposing forces had
 
 230 THE EASTERN WEST 
 
 time to rally, he made a new attack with the 
 weapon of prayer, beseeching the Lord that the 
 assembled ministers should not seek to save 
 their own souls, but only those of others. There- 
 upon, apparently in order to meet this last at- 
 tack first, some one started the hymn, 
 
 A charge to keep I have, 
 
 A God to glorify ; 
 A never-dying soul to save, 
 
 And fit it for the sky. 
 
 Then, as if to protest that this was, after all, 
 only a sham battle, some one else started 
 
 Blest be the tie that binds 
 Our hearts in Christian love. 
 
 After the hymns the meeting adjourned, the 
 Disciple theological students, who were there in 
 some numbers to support their champion, exult- 
 ing over the " vindication " of their undenomina- 
 tional denomination, the ministers generally dis- 
 cussing their helplessness when such tactics 
 were employed. 
 
 This Central Church of Christ, besides beget- 
 ting a large family of churches, has shown more 
 activity within its own parish than any other 
 church of the city. I called on its pastor in his
 
 THE EASTERN WEST 231 
 
 office — rather than study — in the " Institute " 
 connected, organically and locally, with the 
 church. He was sitting at a roll-top desk, on 
 which there rested a telephone. Several times 
 while I was there he had to excuse himself to 
 answer the bell and converse with some one who 
 needed his advice or other assistance. Each 
 tmie, as he hung up the receiver, he would turn 
 to me and resume the conversation, where it had 
 been interrupted, with businesslike clearness 
 and incisiveness. Many little incidents revealed 
 his almost detective-like capacity for getting at 
 facts, understanding situations, and " sizing up" 
 men. He afforded another of the many illus- 
 trations of the truth that religious life, like all 
 other life, is determined more by personality 
 than by methods or doctrines or anything else. 
 He showed himself at once a profound sympa- 
 thizer with all who are feeling the pressure of 
 hard social conditions, and a keen questioner as 
 to the duty of the Church toward the relief of 
 those conditions. That he had practical methods 
 for getting acquainted with the view^s of organ- 
 ized laboring men, and of employers and busi- 
 ness men, he showed by the letters he had 
 received, the questions he had circulated for 
 information, and the topics he had preached on.
 
 232 THE EASTERN WEST 
 
 His church was evidently a busy one. A lay 
 assistant was in charge every day all day long. 
 The building contained two reading-rooms, each 
 with its own function; a recreation-room, with 
 games; class-rooms for the use of the Bible 
 school, week-day classes, and various church 
 clubs ; and a gymnasium, besides the pastor's of- 
 fice, the church auditorium, and the lecture-room. 
 " The church may be called semi-institu- 
 tional," said the pastor. " We find we have to 
 give up some things. Language classes were 
 advertised ; enough pupils applied, but we found 
 they were the kind that could go elsewhere. So 
 we substituted other work; for instance, that 
 for cash-l3oys. We got them by approaching 
 the proprietors of the stores in which they 
 worked. Result was very successful. In the 
 suburban church the problem is how to use sur- 
 plus energy; here all our energy can be used. 
 Something is going on here all the time. We 
 have a group of people who go to the Mis- 
 sion, another to the Old Women's Home, an- 
 other to the Settlement. Our library has been 
 made unnecessary by the establishment of the 
 city library near by; so we have sent our Sun- 
 day-school books to the missions, and keep only 
 religious literature for use in the study of the
 
 THE EASTEEN WEST 233 
 
 Bible. Our gymnasium woik, on the other 
 hand, has not interfered with the Young Men's 
 Chi'istian Association, for we take boys it won't 
 or can't take. Through the gymnasium we have 
 had a number of boys come into the church. Is 
 there a wide difference of theological opinion in 
 the church? It is not discussed or emphasized; 
 but there is absolute freedom, except as to the 
 divinity of Christ. I know there is difference 
 of belief about future punishment — pi'obation, 
 restoration, and brimstone. Baptism would 
 seem to be an exception " — the Disciples are 
 very strong advocates of immersion — " but that 
 is really due to catholicity, for everybody agrees 
 that immersion is baptism, but not everybody 
 accepts sprinkling as valid. We advocate the 
 form that is universally acknowledged." He 
 expressed opinions that were in full accord with 
 modern developments of theological thought, 
 according to the discoveries of evolution and 
 literary criticism of the Bible. " We have a 
 course of Bible lectures," he added ; " one of 
 the speakers, a consummate Bible lecturer, 
 stirred up the people to thinking." His empha- 
 sis, however, was all upon the practical work of 
 relief of distress, effort for social betterment, 
 and education.
 
 234 THE EASTEEN WEST 
 
 This church is a type of the churches that are 
 winning their way in the conventionalized por- 
 tions of the West. Another church of the same 
 type, but not by any means so obviously suc- 
 cessful, I saw in a Wisconsin city. I had made 
 an appointment to meet the pastor at the church, 
 but missed my appointment because, when I 
 reached the place to which I had been directed, 
 I could see no sign of a church. After a fruit- 
 less search, I returned to the place and discov- 
 ered that what I had taken to be an elegant 
 club-house or apartment-house was in fact the 
 church. Within, except for the main audito- 
 rium, the l^uilding was appi'opriate to its exte- 
 rior — tasteful parlors, a good library, convenient 
 class-rooms, two kitchens, office-rooms for the 
 pastor and officers of the church, and a small 
 theater, with stage complete. Its comparative 
 inactivity was due to at least two causes ; one 
 was that, being a Congregational church, it did 
 not have the cooperation of other churches ; the 
 other was that its success had in some respects 
 threatened its ruin, for one after another of its 
 projects had so outgrown the capacity of the 
 church that separation became necessary, and 
 energy formerly exercised under the church 
 organization had necessarily been withdrawn.
 
 THE EASTERN WEST 235 
 
 The very appearance, therefore, of inactivity 
 was in this instance a demonstration of the vahie 
 that this church had in the community. Like 
 the Disciple church I have described, l)ut in far 
 greater degree, this church was a leader away 
 from conventional theological thought. 
 
 The direction from which constructive move- 
 ments in religious thought and life in the Middle 
 West are likely to come is indicated b}^ certain 
 signs of revolt against convention which form 
 the subject of the next chapter.
 
 the eeyolt agaiis^st 
 co]s^ye:n^tio]n^
 
 X 
 
 THE EEYOLT AGAINST 
 COIS^VENTION 
 
 "/~\F all the men I've ever come across," re- 
 V^ marked a commercial traveler who hap- 
 pened to be my seat-mate in a Western train, 
 " ministers have the poorest sense of right and 
 wrong". With one exception, in all the dealings 
 I've had with ministers, I've come ont at the 
 little end." 
 
 The conversation was occasioned by the pub- 
 lication in a newspaper which one of us had of 
 a report made by a number of clergymen who 
 had gone to a military garrison to investigate 
 the effects of the abohshmentof the "canteen." 
 The " investigation " had consisted lai-gely in a 
 violent wordy altercation between the com- 
 mander of the garrison and the clergyman who 
 Avas chairman of the connnittee, during which 
 
 239
 
 240 THE EEVOLT 
 
 the chairman stated emphatically that he would 
 never favor the resumption of the canteen even 
 if its abolishment had proved detrimental to the 
 troops. The report, which all the clergymen 
 but one had signed, was, of course, adverse to 
 the canteen. It was the wilhngness of these 
 clergymen to be partisans in trying to uphold 
 a conventional morality that had aroused m}^ 
 fellow-passenger's ire. Their partisanship was 
 to him the more contemptible because it in- 
 volved ignorance of facts which wei'e not only 
 famihar to him, but, in his opinion, easily ascer- 
 tainable by any fair-minded man. When it 
 transpired that the committee based its report 
 in the main on the testimony of some saloon- 
 keepers whose self-interest led them to agree 
 with the clergymen in favoring the abolition 
 of the canteen, my companion exclaimed, " That 
 makes me hot under the collar ! " 
 
 A railroad train is not a good place for gath- 
 ering facts or statistics, but it is not a bad place 
 for discovering specific illustrations of human 
 nature. The very fact that neither of us ex- 
 pected to meet the other again left us both free 
 to disregard those considerations of the future 
 that are the chief cause of modifying or pre- 
 venting the frank expression of opinion. In
 
 AGAINST CONVENTION 241 
 
 this case, at any rate, I found in my fellow- 
 traveler a type of a great number of men, as I 
 had met them and talked with them, Avho find 
 in the conventional forms of religious life and 
 thought little with which to sympathize and 
 much with which to be irritated. Not that 
 such men are uninterested in religion, nor 
 even in the Church and its ministers. This 
 commercial traveler, for example, exasperated 
 as he was by this instance of ministerial nar- 
 rowness, volunteered expressions of high praise 
 for two ministers of his acquaintance. The fact 
 is, I found surprisingly little of that uncom- 
 promising prejudice against ministers and the 
 Church, which is often supposed to exist among 
 men of my traveling companion's stamp; on 
 the other hand, I found a generally prevalent 
 habit of judging ministers and the Church, not 
 by their conformity to conventional standards, 
 but by their fruits. 
 
 This does not mean that such men are greatly 
 impressed by numbers. The rapid growth of 
 Christian Science interests them, but does not 
 even begin to persuade them of its value. 
 Evidence, however,, that Christian Science has 
 affected for good the character of some one 
 they know does more than interest them; it
 
 242 THE REVOLT 
 
 arouses in them a respect for that cult and opens 
 the door to persuasion. My seat-mate, for in- 
 stance, remarked: " I have no use for the evan- 
 gehst and that sort who rant around ; I don't 
 mind their warming up some, but this stamping 
 and shouting does no good." 
 
 "People come out in crowds for it," I sug- 
 gested. 
 
 " Yes," he said with a shrug, " but how long 
 does it last? That's the question. :N'ow you 
 take the Salvation Army; they keep looking 
 after their converts." 
 
 It is this honest desire for what is called in 
 the Western dialect " the real thing " that is 
 the chief impulse of the insurgents against 
 convention in all its forms. Certain forms of 
 conventionality are of course necessary when- 
 ever men act in concert. Conformity to tactical 
 reg-ulations can never cease to be essential to 
 the efficiency of an army; but ultimately it is 
 efficiency, not conformity to tactics, that saves 
 an army from being a mere military organiza- 
 tion. So some form of worship and of polity 
 is essential to the efficiency of a church ; but it 
 is efficiency that saves a church from being a 
 mere ecclesiastical organization. The revolt 
 against conventionality in rehgious life as I
 
 AGAINST CONVENTION 243 
 
 noted it in the Middle West was not against 
 forms and ceremonies as such, but against that 
 conventionahsm, whether in ceremony or behef 
 or conduct, which is substituted for " the real 
 thing." And this revolt is by no means con- 
 fined to the territory of the Church. The "keen 
 business Christian," who has " tact, push, and 
 principle," is losing his hold on many of the 
 Western Young Men's Christian Associations. 
 A Sunday afternoon service, such as I attended 
 in an Iowa city, devoted wholly, except for the 
 hymns, to addresses and prayers about raising 
 money for a debt, is not quite so characteristic 
 of a Western Association as it once was. In 
 the work of the Associated Charities and simi- 
 lar societies the revolt against conventionalism 
 is very marked. Some statements made to me 
 by an oflicer of a charitable organization in that 
 Iowa city may illustrate how practical that 
 revolt is: 
 
 " Until recently there was an annual charity 
 ball given in the city. Now that that has been 
 given up, we have better relations with all sorts 
 of people, and charitable work has less per- 
 functory and more real support. Nevertheless, 
 there are people who donate to churches and 
 colleges, and yet gouge their washerwomen and
 
 244 THE EEVOLT 
 
 underpay their coachmen. It was discovered, 
 for instance, that one wealthy woman, who gave 
 to charity, was paying fifty cents a dozen for 
 the hemming of napkins. Awhile ago a man 
 telephoned to our office asking for relief for a 
 poor woman. The society made an iuA^estiga- 
 tion, and discovered inunediately that this man 
 was in debt to the woman! As soon as he 
 found out that some one was interested in her 
 rights, he paid up half his debt and will pay the 
 other half. On the other hand, a certain work- 
 ing-girl became acquainted with a needy woman 
 wdth several children. She persuaded the wo- 
 man to share a room with her ' on halves,' and 
 began to learn ' fancy washing ' with her. They 
 soon became adept, and as there is a great 
 demand for that kind of work well done, they 
 had a fairly comfortable income before long. 
 That girl gave nothing, but did something. 
 That is the kind of charitable work we are in- 
 terested in." 
 
 If the churches are the last to feel the effect 
 of this revolt from conventionalism, it is because 
 conventionalism finds its strongest hold in the 
 minds of the rank and file in the churches. The 
 clergyman in the Middle West more than any- 
 where else, unless it is in the remoter quarters of
 
 AGAIXST COXYEXTIOX 245 
 
 Xew England, is required by a public opinion, 
 which he could not withstand if he would, to con- 
 form to certain standards of thought (or at least 
 public expression) and of conduct which his con- 
 gregation set up for him. Under this tacit super- 
 vision many of the clergymen, especially among 
 the younger men, are more restive than they 
 like to admit. The more conscientious a vouns: 
 minister is, the more he objects to have people 
 who are certainly no more thoughtful and no 
 better trained than he designate what his men- 
 tal processes should be; and the more he also 
 objects to have people who are certainly no 
 more morally responsible than he decide just 
 what things are right and wrong for him to do. 
 Consequently there is a certain proportion of 
 ministers who are in sympathy with the revolt 
 against religious conventionaUsm. It so hap- 
 pened that the men that I met who were keenly 
 alive to the spu-it of revolt were mainly, on the 
 one hand, men outside the Church, and, on the 
 other hand, ministers. The one man who was 
 an indubitable exception was the clerk of a 
 church which had caught the spirit of revolt 
 from the stunulatiug personahty of its minister. 
 Such a church,^however, is an exception, because 
 such a minister is rare. Most of the insurgents.
 
 246 THE EEVOLT 
 
 as I saw them, were, therefore, either the so- 
 called "unchurched" or ministers at the mercy 
 of their congregations. 
 
 This explains the experience of a young 
 clergyman as he told it to me. He had been in 
 charge of a church in one of the Dakotas. In 
 that region conventionalism has not yet obtained 
 the sway it has in more settled regions. Al- 
 though the members of the church were con- 
 ventional enough, they depended for the support 
 of the church to some degree upon the com- 
 munity at large. The minister was therefore 
 measurably his own master in thought and con- 
 duct. As a result his experience proved to him 
 that his steadiest support, both moral and ma- 
 terial, came from men who were members of no 
 church. The result to the active religious life 
 of his church was highly beneficial. Circum- 
 stances like these, however, which enable the 
 two extreme classes of insurgents to join forces 
 to increase genuine religious life, are very 
 uncommon, and in the Middle West almost 
 impossible. 
 
 Ministers who have the impulse to be out- 
 spoken in their revolt against convention may 
 be roughly divided into four categories, accord- 
 ing to the way in which they yield to that im-
 
 AGAINST CONVENTION 247 
 
 pulse — or resist it. Into one class may be put 
 those who through circumstance, or more likely 
 their own tactlessness, find themselves adrift. 
 Some of these go into other professions. I was 
 told by one man, himself an ex-minister, who 
 was promoting a new " fraternal benefit order," 
 that he had received forty applications for ap- 
 pointment to agencies from ministers alone. 
 Others, who can be said to form the second 
 category, preferring to remain in the pastorate, 
 restrain their tendency to outspokenness, become 
 conformists in order to secure support for their 
 families, and as they lose their genuineness 
 gradually cease to chafe under their limitations. 
 Occasionally may be found a minister who be- 
 longs by right to a third category — one who 
 proves strong enough, and forgets himself suf- 
 ficiently, to go to work, without domineering, 
 for the education of his people in the wholesome 
 hatred of shams. I met one such minister, but 
 he did not live in the real domain of conven- 
 tional religion. Any young minister with cour- 
 age and without egotism might find it a high 
 and yet reasonable ambition to achieve a place 
 among men of this third category. There are, 
 however, in a fourth category, some ministers 
 who, choosing to remain in the pastorate as the
 
 248 THE REVOLT 
 
 best place in which to fight the battle for reality 
 in religion, accept the risk of being adrift most 
 of the time, face the obloqny which is visited 
 upon ministers who are " without charge," and 
 then proceed to be themselves, rather than try 
 to be their deacons or pew-holders, in what they 
 think and do. Naturally, they have egotism 
 as well as courage. 
 
 It was my good fortune to spend some time 
 in the company of a minister who had this spirit 
 of willingness to face the consequences of his 
 convictions. Though not one of those minis- 
 ters who by virtue of exceptional strength and 
 self-forgetfulness become real leaders, he was 
 representative of a certain class of men who by 
 their outspokenness are doing much to cast dis- 
 credit upon the spirit of religious convention- 
 ality. At the time I met him he was pastor of 
 a Congregational church in a small Iowa town. 
 He was a big, broad-shouldered man, who 
 showed the vigor and frankness of his character 
 in every movement. I wish I could reproduce 
 the impression of candor and facile strength 
 that he gave as he talked, not so much of him- 
 self or his work as of the people in the places 
 where he had lived and their conditions of 
 life. On the way to his town of T , I
 
 AGAINST CONVENTION 249 
 
 spoke of the couiitry through which we were 
 passing. 
 
 " Most of the farms are occupied by tenants 
 who hire their laborers. The Iowa farm-hand 
 works six weeks in the spring and then six 
 weeks more later in the year, and then is ' fired ' 
 — about the most unsatisfactory life possible. 
 Within my memory the Iowa farm-tenant has 
 developed much like the Irish tenant. The 
 farmers of a generation ago made their money 
 and then moved to town. These retired farmers 
 are niggardly — they've gotten into penurious 
 habits — and they don't do any good to the 
 towns they live in. Then they rent their farms 
 to poorer men, and require full payment. The 
 existence of these absentee landlords means a 
 lot of poor devils just scraping along. I know 
 one man who at the end of the year didn't have 
 enough corn to feed his team, and yet he had a 
 binful which he couldn't touch. That man 
 hates everybody and has no use for religion." 
 
 "What shall toe do?" said a friend of mine 
 who was traveling with us. "What will the 
 seer say? " 
 
 "That's the question. It is simple: adopt 
 some just way of renting land to the man who 
 uses it, and some way of taking the railroads
 
 250 THE EEVOLT 
 
 out of the hands of those who have a private 
 snap. I'm a landlord myself. I was raised as 
 a plutocrat, and was taught that my father 
 owned all outdoors. I clerked in a country 
 store (what is called nowadays a ' department 
 store ' — sold everything), and when I went into 
 the ministry I thought that the labor agitation 
 was simply the growl of unsuccessful men 
 against success. Here " — the train was draw- 
 ing up to a station — "is a typical railroad 
 town. The railroad company has made a real- 
 estate thing of it. This division is a hundred 
 and forty-four miles. Terrible! Some crews 
 work sixty hours at a stretch. I buried a man 
 who worked for fifty hours straight on a pile- 
 driver; he lost his hold and fell into the river. 
 Here there's one church that is trying to divide 
 railroad men into classes. Railroads are per- 
 fectly willing to have their men form brother- 
 hoods, for they pull apart. Firemen are just 
 waiting for a strike of engineers, for then they'll 
 go in and run the trains." 
 
 After some interesting, but for the purpose 
 of this article irrelevant, discussion of labor 
 questions, our conversation was guided, by some 
 questions I asked, into consideration of some of 
 this man's experiences. After giving an ac-
 
 AGAIT^ST COXVENTIOX 251 
 
 count of his pastorate in a church which had, 
 when he went to it, only two women as mem- 
 bers, and in a year and a half grew to have a 
 membership of seventeen, he told of his going 
 
 to the city of C . 
 
 "It was just after the panic," he explained, 
 "and the Congregational church asked me to 
 come. I w as the only ' cheap boy ' they could 
 find. It was really a railroad men's church. 
 The railroads at that time introduced a bill into 
 the Legislature providing for ' benefits ' — a 
 scheme to make employees pay damages for 
 accidents occurring to them. An amendment to 
 frustrate that scheme was introduced, and I 
 went down to lobby for it. The railroad men 
 hailed me with delight as the one minister who 
 would help. But when I was asked by some of 
 the railroad men to stand for their political party, 
 I told them I wouldn't have anything to do with a 
 rotten institution. That's why I left the church. 
 I made a mistake in that; for my successor, 
 though a good man, wasn't in touch with the rail- 
 road men. I think some day I may go back and 
 organize an independent church — not a w^ork- 
 ingman's church, but a church for all kinds to- 
 gether — for unless the Church has a message for 
 social conditions it had better get off the earth."
 
 252 THE REVOLT 
 
 " Shall we change conditions," my friend 
 inquired, " or change men? " 
 
 " The tunnel is working at both ends," was 
 the laconic answer, in railroad metaphor. " Take 
 a boy of seventeen or eighteen; he naturally has 
 ambitions, not for money or fame, but for some 
 noble ideals; but he gets out into the world and 
 goes for money; for he feels in his conditions 
 the spirit of greed, catches it, and — There's a 
 dead town," he said, interrupting himself, as we 
 whizzed by a village whose shaded, grass-bor- 
 dered streets made it look like a Massachusetts 
 village come West for a visit. 
 
 On our arrival at T we walked and drove 
 
 about the town. By the way in which he was 
 accosted, by his familiarity with men of all 
 kinds whom we chanced to meet, by many little 
 incidents, it was easy to see that our host had a 
 very intimate knowledge of the lives and char- 
 acters of the people in this community. Here, 
 he pointed out, was a house where thei'e lived a 
 man who got so much a week and had to pay 
 such and such rent; there was the home of a 
 poor family, in which a child died and no one 
 offered to help except the keeper of an illegal 
 dive across the street, perhaps for business rea- 
 sons; that house back from the street was
 
 AGAINST CONVENTION 253 
 
 occupied by an absentee landlord; this little 
 white house with the board walk in front was 
 the home of a humble, devout old couple with a 
 lot of money laid b}^ — the old man was in the 
 habit of secretly doing a great deal of good 
 with his money in very wise ways, some of 
 which our host specified; along that side of the 
 town was the poor quarter — a good many 
 foreigners, mostly Catholics, almost every house 
 suggesting some human story. So our tour 
 continued until we bade farewell to our host. 
 
 His burly frame, his cheerful, clean-shaven 
 face, and his paternal relations with the people 
 invited the priestly appellation, " Father." 
 That made it seem appropriate that he should 
 still be popularly known by his college nickname, 
 " Pa." When we had left, my friend, who is 
 himself a minister, and whose judgment is al- 
 ways sane and well considered, turned to me 
 and said: "Eemember, ' Pa ' is full of his ideas, 
 Init there are old people who are living their 
 faith with just as much sincerity as he has, and 
 they haven't his appreciation of social condi- 
 tions. The old man is always talking about 
 the condition of his soul, keeping near to Christ, 
 and conversion; but A and B [naming two 
 young men of our acquaintance] are talking
 
 254 THE REVOLT 
 
 about this life, and whether there is justice or 
 injustice, and how we can cure certain evils. 
 In prajer-meeting the old want to have ' testi- 
 monies,' the young want to discuss social prob- 
 lems. The minister to-day needs to be broad 
 enough to feel both sides of the truth — broader 
 than ever." 
 
 The last time I saw our vigorous host, the 
 rather quixotic free-lance against all conven- 
 tionalism, was at a meeting of an association 
 of churches. He was called upon to make a 
 report of his church, and he made it in char- 
 acteristic disregard of possible consequent re- 
 flections upon himself. He began by a refer- 
 ence to the conditions of life in the town ; then 
 described the young people's society, which was 
 fairly active when he became pastor. " But 
 now," he continued, " it is dead and only lacks 
 burial. There are two women's societies; one 
 is a Woman's Working Society that does no 
 work — except to raise money. The other is 
 the Woman's Missionary Society. It is divided 
 into twelve bands. Each band makes a clean 
 sweep of the town every month. Every new 
 family gets twelve invitations during the year — 
 one a month. The Society's work is entirely in- 
 dependent of the pastor, and goes on whether
 
 AGAINST CONVENTION 255 
 
 there is a pastor or not. It is stronger to-day 
 than ever. It is remarkable in organization 
 and in spirit. Yon see, I'm reporting, not 
 about the pastor, but about the church. As to 
 the Sunday-school — " "Time's up," inter- 
 rupted the moderator. " Oh, I can quit any 
 time," he replied. " We've got a church over 
 there. Come over and see it." 
 
 It would be a mistake to infer from the inde- 
 pendence of this particular religious free-lance 
 that the revolt against conventionalism is in 
 general essentially quixotic. He was rather a 
 striking example in one direction (the socio- 
 logical) of a tendency that I felt was evident, 
 though less marked, among many ministers in 
 many directions, sociological, theological, eccle- 
 siastical, and ethical. And this tendency has a 
 very real bearing upon practical religious work. 
 How true this is I learned specifically from a 
 young man who was carrying on a mission in 
 one of the cities of the Middle West. He had 
 been a wandering " street fakir " until some 
 happening suddenly brought him to the deter- 
 mination to turn his life into the direction of 
 decency and usefulness. To one minister after 
 another he went for moral backing, but each in 
 turn had only some conventional phrase to
 
 256 THE REVOLT 
 
 offer — sound enough, in the orthodox sense, 
 Scriptural, he acknowledged, but somehow not 
 very vital, not very real to him. At last one 
 minister started him on the way to getting the 
 strength and courage that he needed, and en- 
 abled him to turn his determination into action. 
 He broke with his old way of living, and at 
 once, without money, almost without friends, 
 undertook as his life-work to help others out 
 of degradation into self-respect and right liv- 
 ing. He had no special theology, but he did 
 have a faith in the power that had made a dif- 
 ferent man of him. He had also a practical 
 acquaintance with the sort of people he wanted 
 to help. He knew their dissatisfaction with 
 their life, for he had shared that with them; he 
 knew also their pretense about enjoying life, 
 for he had shared that too. But he was dis- 
 trustful of himself — he was not good enough, 
 so he imagined, to help them. So he under- 
 took to provide assistance to the needy, estab- 
 lish a place of meeting, and get an audience, 
 but instead of publicly speaking himself, he 
 turned to the ministers of the city to bring to 
 the people the message of power. Then again 
 he was disappointed. Kot that any refused to 
 respond to his request, but most of them had
 
 AGAINST CONVENTION^ 257 
 
 no message that meant anything to these peo- 
 ple. It was again the conventional phrase in- 
 stead of the real vital word. Still he persisted ; 
 he did not alter his plan of calling npon the 
 ministers because of disappointment at first. 
 And for his persistence he was rewarded. 
 Brought into acquaintance with men and wo- 
 men who were grievously and consciously in 
 need of moral help, ministers who had begun 
 by saying merely the conventional things 
 learned to be genuine and real before that audi- 
 ence. As a consequence,, that one man with 
 his rescue mission has, without knowing it, 
 done more to break down religious convention- 
 alism than any other force in the city. And 
 yet there are strongholds of conventionalism 
 which he found unpregnable. The most im- 
 pregnable were in two churches, one represen- 
 tative of the most wealthy and cultivated 
 classes in the city, the other made up distinc- 
 tively of the ignorant, though fairly well-to-do, 
 and shepherded by an uneducated minister of 
 the literalist type. The minister of the wealthy 
 church had responded with the greatest kind- 
 ness to the request of the superintendent of the 
 mission, but, after a number of experiences, said 
 to him at last, " There is nothing I should care
 
 258 THE REVOLT 
 
 SO much to do as to be able to speak to the 
 people of the mission, but I find I cannot — I 
 do not know how; I must acknowledge my 
 limitations. Financial help, however, our 
 church can and will give you." The unedu- 
 cated minister took quite the reverse attitude; 
 he not only responded to requests, but volun- 
 teered his services as a speaker; he shouted, 
 gesticulated, reiterated his shibboleths; but all 
 to no purpose. His failure was profound. And 
 yet he continued to embarrass the superinten- 
 dent with his proffers of service, until he devel- 
 oped into a permanent problem. On the other 
 hand, the superintendent spoke in terms of 
 gratitude with regard to the religious influence 
 upon the people of the mission exerted by cer- 
 tain of the ministers of the city. One of these 
 ministers I have already referred to, in connec- 
 tion with another incident, as by nature above 
 the understanding of the conformist. The 
 story of this superintendent, as I learned it 
 partly from himself and partly from others, 
 was one of the most cheering evidences of the 
 degree to which the revolt against convention 
 has already extended in the Middle West. 
 
 'No reaction against an evil is always wholly 
 good. The reaction against the spirit of con-
 
 AGAINST CONVENTION 259 
 
 formity has its perversions. In some cases it has 
 become attenuated into a rather frothy senti- 
 ment. One young preacher, very popuhir if 
 judged by the crowds that come to his meetings, 
 who is a leader in an " independent movement," 
 graciously gave me a few moments of his very 
 busy life ; but I got little from him except some 
 vague generalities about hurting nobody's con- 
 science, about the insufficiency of religious work 
 through accessions of converts to the churches, 
 and about the need of making " a direct assault 
 upon public opinion." On the other hand, this 
 revolt has in some cases hardened into purely 
 ethical experiments. At Hull House, Chicago, 
 for instance, where such courageous and tri- 
 umphant work for civic and social decency has 
 been done, an incidental mention which I made 
 of a possible religious basis for such work was 
 met with a chilling disclaimer of any trace of 
 religious motive in their efforts, the more chill- 
 ing because in strong contrast to the cordial 
 welcome I personally received. 
 
 And yet every independent church movement 
 is by no means therefore sentimental. A great 
 theater service I attended in Chicago was sus- 
 tained by a vast work of practical beneficence. 
 N'or does every social settlement feel the reli-
 
 260 KEVOLT AGAINST CONVENTION 
 
 gious motive alien to its life, as was abundantly 
 proved even in a very brief visit I made to Chi- 
 cago Commons ; for it so happened that on that 
 visit I found the evening service of a neighbor- 
 hood church being held in the modern and beau- 
 tiful building erected and maintained by the 
 Commons. Indeed, even those phases of the 
 reaction against conventionalism that seem most 
 unfortunate are signs of hopefulness, after all; 
 for they add to the multiform assaults that are 
 being made upon the deadening spirit of reli- 
 gious pretense, and hasten the day of its over- 
 throw.
 
 THE LEAVEN AND THE LUMP
 
 XI 
 THE LEAVEK A:N^D THE LUMP 
 
 ALMOST all Americans are of course essen- 
 Jr\^ tially Europeans transplanted. A good 
 deal of what we like to call distinctively Ameri- 
 can is composed of traits characteristic of 
 Europe in the seventeenth or eighteenth cen- 
 tury/ There is reason, therefore, in distin- 
 guishing between Asiatic and European immi- 
 grants, whether we consider them as social, 
 economic, political, or religious factors in the 
 life of the Nation. There is reason even in 
 raising the query whether the African people 
 who have been on this continent for generations 
 are not more truly aliens than the newcomers 
 from the countries of Europe. At any rate, it 
 is fair to say that most of the foreigners who 
 
 iMr. Barrett Wendell has drawn an interesting parallel between the 
 Yankee and the seventeenthnjentury Briton in his "Literary History of 
 America. " 
 
 2G3
 
 264 THE LEAVEN AND THE LUMP 
 
 are streaming in to make their homes here are 
 meeting not with an ntterly strange civilization, 
 but rather with a different phase of the same 
 civihzation to which they have been accustomed. 
 To this as well as to the American spirit of 
 religious toleration I attribute the fact that no- 
 where in the course of my trip did I meet with 
 evidence that newly ai-rived Europeans had 
 found occasion after their arrival for any violent 
 readjustment of their religious life. Whatever 
 adjustment came to my attention was invari- 
 ably the result of a comparatively slow process. 
 Such adjustment, moreover, was not by any 
 means all on one side. The process of making 
 the ISTation is not the simple one, as every one 
 knows, of turning Irishmen and Germans and 
 Swedes into Yankees; it is, so to speak, chemi- 
 cal, and the result is neither the one element 
 nor the other, but a new substance. The immi- 
 grants are not being modified without modify- 
 ing America in return. The making of Amer- 
 ica did not end with the adoption of the 
 Constitution. It is only necessary to cite the 
 history of music in America for the last genera- 
 tion to suggest how much the Europeans who 
 have come into the United States within that 
 time have contributed to the national character.
 
 THE LEAVEN AND THE LUMP 265 
 
 Similarly in religions life there was not a little 
 that I observed which could have come from no 
 other source than these people whom we are 
 accustomed to regard as being " assimilated " 
 like so much food. 
 
 As I came across foreigners in various parts 
 of the country three questions were in my 
 mind: First, in what ways is the immigrant 
 population affecting religious life in America? 
 Second, in what ways is America affecting 
 religious life in the immigrant population? 
 Third, what are churches, or other religious 
 bodies, or individual Christians doing to use 
 religion for the purpose of making out of these 
 immigrants loyal American citizens? 
 
 In order to find definite answers to these 
 questions, one ought to be able to use with 
 some fluency the languages of these foreigners, 
 and ought to know their lives far more inti- 
 mately than the casual observer can possibly 
 know them. It is hardly necessary to say that 
 I shall attempt no definite answers. I shall 
 simply record my experiences as they touched 
 upon foreign people in America, using the 
 three questions as interpreters. 
 
 It is perfectly evident to any one wdth eyes 
 in his head who travels in the United States
 
 2GG THE LEAVEN AND THE LUMP 
 
 that there are many communities of foreigners 
 which contribute little but their numbers to 
 the Nation, and receive in return little more 
 than a space in which to live. In religious 
 life they have only such significance as springs 
 from isolation. Such were the Bohemians 
 that I saw in Virginia. They had settled in 
 the Dakotas, I was told, but had been frozen 
 out by the long winters, and had sought a 
 milder climate not far from Petersburg. I 
 could well believe the old-time Southern gen- 
 tleman who said to me that they "refused 
 to affiliate with the inhabitants." Their mo- 
 bility was evidence of their unwillingness to 
 mingle with strangers. "They keep great 
 mastiffs," continued my informant, "which 
 scare people off ; they refuse to speak English ; 
 they won't work with other people, though you 
 can see them at work on the roads; they are 
 Catholics and won't have anything to do with 
 Lutherans, even of their own blood; they level 
 abandoned graveyards, using the gravestones 
 for landmarks. I have even seen in one kitchen 
 a stone, used to make bread on, with the in- 
 scription, 'Sacred to the memory of .' They 
 
 drive out the 'niggroes'; that," he added as 
 his opinion, " is the only good thing they do."
 
 THE LEAVEN AND THE LUMP 2G7 
 
 In the big cities there are colonies of foreign- 
 ers, as is well known, Avho are almost if not 
 quite as isolated as these Bohemians of Vir- 
 ginia. A resident in a social settlement situ- 
 ated among Italians in the city of New York 
 told me that he knew of Italian and Sicilian 
 villages which he had visited from which half 
 the population had gone bodily to the neigh- 
 borhood of his social settlement or to other 
 places in the American metropolis. Such 
 transplanted communities retained in the IS^ew 
 World their old local customs, their religious 
 peculiarities, their neighborhood acquaintances; 
 indeed, were almost as sufficient unto them- 
 selves as they were in their Italian or Sicilian 
 homes. 
 
 Such " side-tracked communities," as they 
 have been called, exist in all parts of the 
 country. Some of them count their age by 
 generations. Particularly is this true in the 
 State of Pennsylvania. Many of the so-called 
 Pennsylvania Dutch are nearly as far out of 
 the current of present-day American life as 
 they ever were. With some of these, whose 
 ancestors were American born, I have found it 
 almost as hard to communicate in English as if 
 they had just landed from Germany. Under
 
 268 THE LEAVEN AND THE LUMP 
 
 these conditions the persistence of seckided 
 churches and sects is but natural: the Wine- 
 brennerians and the Dunkards, for instance, 
 with their exotic rites, the Moravians with their 
 very beautiful customs and unworldly spirit, 
 the Little Russians, nominally under the con- 
 trol of Roman Catholic archbishops, but retain- 
 ing, as in Galicia and Hungary, their Slavonic 
 liturgy and their distinctive forms of saint- 
 worship. Such religious bodies, interesting, 
 picturesque, and, in the case of the Moravians, 
 valuable as they are, may be said to be only 
 incidental to the religious life of America. 
 
 As a rule, however, I found a process of 
 action and reaction going on between the for- 
 eign people and the communities in which they 
 had settled. The most evident result of such 
 a process is a change in the religious life of the 
 native American population. Sometimes this 
 change is one of decline and can be traced in 
 large measure to the exclusiveness of the for- 
 eigners. A town in southern Illinois which I 
 visited, for example, has been for decades sub- 
 ject to gradual inroads of Germans and Bohe- 
 mians. In the early days of the town it had 
 been, according to my informant, " historic 
 ground for Methodism." ^Now it is filled with
 
 THE LEAVEN AND THE LLMP 269 
 
 Catholics, Evangelicals, Lutherans, and Ger- 
 man Methodists. These foreigners were used 
 in the old countries to a life of drudgery, and 
 they retained their habits of unremittent toil in 
 their new surroundings. The Bohemians often 
 made their working days last from three o'clock 
 in the morning to nine o'clock at night. The 
 American farmers could not — or Avould not — 
 stand such a pace, and consequently yielded 
 the land to the newcomers. The result has 
 been a gradual but irresistible diminishing of 
 English-speaking congregations and a spirit of 
 lethargy among the English-speaking people 
 who remain. A contributive force in this pro- 
 cess has been the tendency, which exists in the 
 Middle West to only a less degree than in 
 'New England, of the more enterprising spirits 
 in the villages and smaller towns to seek the 
 supposed advantages offered by the rapid 
 growth of cities. The decay of religious insti- 
 tutions has been accompanied by a weakening 
 of the moral character of the community, 
 indicated not so much by the increase of vice 
 or crime as by the paralysis of the will and the 
 obliteration of the spirit of hopefulness and 
 self-reliance. 
 
 Another effect of the presence of Europeans
 
 270 THE LEAVEN AND THE LUMP 
 
 in an American community is to be seen in the 
 result of their example in altering the publicly 
 accepted standards of moral conduct. Whether 
 these standards are as a rule conventional or 
 vital depends upon one's point of view. One 
 minister whom I met in Kansas considered 
 them vital. He had formerly been the pastor 
 of a church in St. Louis. Many of his parish- 
 ioners were Germans who did not have his 
 views about the delusive qualities of beer, or 
 the proper ways of observing the Lord's day. 
 He told me that one of his trustees who was 
 fond of taking- his family out driving on Sun- 
 day mornings would not infrequently remark 
 if they happened to meet on Saturday: "Yell, 
 looks like to-morrow be stormy; I'll be at 
 church." The minister confessed that he was 
 glad to flee into Kansas from such a demoraliz- 
 ing foreign influence. In another and even 
 more distinctively German city I met a minister 
 who testified to a somewhat similar result of 
 foreign influence, though he had an altogether 
 different opinion of it. 
 
 " When I first came here," he told me, " I 
 was fresh from Kew England, and I had my 
 ]N'ew England ideas about right and wrong. I 
 soon discovered that the Puritan feeling is
 
 THE LEAVEN AND THE LUMP 271 
 
 dissipated here. A deacon — he was not a 
 German — drove me about to show me the city. 
 AVe came to a big brewery. 
 
 There are three grades of beer brewed 
 there,' he said. 
 
 "'Is there any real difference?' I inquired, 
 for I wanted to know all that I could about 
 the industries of the city in which I was to live. 
 
 " ' Yes, indeed ; there is a very decided dif- 
 ference,' he answered. 
 
 "'Which is considered the best?' I asked. 
 
 " ' Well,' he said in reply, ' for my part / like 
 "export " best'; then seeing the surprise in my 
 face, and anticipating my next and rather per- 
 sonal question, he added, ' Oh, yes, I </o.' " 
 
 This clergyman, though pastor of a church 
 strictly Puritan by right of descent, had come 
 to believe that the influence of the foreign ele- 
 ment upon the moral standard of the churches 
 was wholesome; he believed that it revealed 
 the conventionality of those standards, and that 
 the churches' conception of Christian character 
 could and ought to be freed from bondage to 
 mere conventionality; or, in other words, that it 
 introduced perspective into the Chinese flatness 
 by which the Puritan depicted all acts of which 
 he approved as of equal moral value.
 
 272 THE LEAVEN AND THE LUMP 
 
 So much for the influence of immigrants upon 
 the religious hfe of America. What, in turn, 
 has been the influence of the American democ- 
 racy upon the rehgious life of these immigrants? 
 In many respects this is a harder question to 
 answer than the former, because it is harder for 
 an American to trace changes in the life of an 
 alien people than in the life of people among 
 whom he lives. ^Nevertheless, some of these 
 changes are very obvious. The American sys- 
 tem of public education very rapidly breaks 
 down racial barriers between children of dif- 
 ferent nationalities, and therefore modifies 
 religious life in those respects in which it is 
 determined by racial custom. An Irish priest 
 pointed out to me the distinction that lies 
 between German Catholics and Irish Catholics. 
 In Germany, he said, the people are supremely 
 proud of their church; they are ambitious to 
 have the building well constructed and beauti- 
 ful, the altar properly adorned, and the estab- 
 lishment well taken care of; but their relations 
 to their priest are formal and somewhat im- 
 personal. The Irish, on the other hand, are 
 proverbially careless, not to say slovenly, in 
 their care of the church; they are willing to 
 have it and all its appurtenances shabby; but
 
 THE LEAYEN AND THE LUMP 273 
 
 Avith their priest they are on intimate terms; 
 they love to have him come as a familiar fi'iend 
 into their homes, be they poor or rich; they 
 turn to him in every need — when they are 
 harassed by debt they want his legal advice; 
 when they are sick they look upon his presence 
 as medicine; at their festivities he is the hon- 
 ored guest; and at the approach of death he is 
 more than the official of the church, he is the 
 companion for a little way on the road to the 
 region of the blest. When the Germans come 
 to this country they bring their loyalty to their 
 church, and they build fine buildings for conse- 
 cration. When the Irish become American 
 they retain their loyalty to their priest and 
 keep him as their friend. The German chil- 
 di'en and Irish children, however, play together, 
 go to school together, speak the same language, 
 and exchange ideas. Before long the Germans 
 begin to be infected with the Irish loyalty to 
 the priest, while they find their pride in their 
 church in no wise impaired. The Irish, too, 
 learn from the Germans ; they still are as fond 
 as ever of their Father Foley or their Father 
 O'Brien, but they begin to be ashamed of their 
 church buildings, that are so shabby beside the 
 German churches, and they make them more
 
 274 THE LEAVEN AND THE LUMP 
 
 tidy and try to improve them, and finally decide 
 to rebuild. This Irish priest told me that he 
 had gone West gradually, and he said that you 
 could see the difference in the Irish people on 
 each stage toward the setting sun, until when 
 you came to Iowa, say, they were new creatures 
 entirely. Before I bade him good-by he said 
 to me — and he knew I was a Protestant — 
 " We're like the islands of the sea ; separate 
 on top, but joined together down below the 
 water." 
 
 A German Methodist of the Middle West 
 talked to me very frankly about the people of 
 his nationality. Most of what he said I found 
 elsewhere confirmed. Some of his conver- 
 sation with me, so far as it bears on this 
 question of American influence upon the reli- 
 gious life of immigrants, is worth quoting. 
 
 "About thirty per cent., I should say, of 
 German immigrants," was his statement, " keep 
 up their connections with the estabhshed 
 churches — those are the Lutheran and the 
 Reformed. The majority of these you would 
 find difl[icult to distinguish from Catholics; 
 they only go to their churches occasionally, and 
 then not out of individual conviction — more 
 out of custom and conformity. Most German
 
 THE LEAVEN AND THE LUMP 275 
 
 immigrants keep away from the estal)lished 
 churches because they are among the things 
 for which they left Germany. It is very hard 
 to work among such Germans, because of their 
 rationalistic tendencies and conservatism." 
 
 " Both rationalistic and conservative? AYhat 
 do you mean? " 
 
 " I mean that Germans stick to their views, 
 whatever they are. They are not enthusiastic, 
 especially in religion. Germans can be enthu- 
 siastic in politics — but not in religion. So the 
 churches in this country that are made up of 
 such people not in the estal)lished churches are 
 liberal. In Germany such people would belong 
 to free (that is, irreligious) societies;, here 
 many of them, being free from the prejudice 
 that they would have in Germany, belong to 
 churches. These churches have had an influ- 
 ence on the Lutheran Church, and consequently 
 the German churches in America are more lib- 
 eral than they are in Germany. For the same 
 reason the Lutherans are more ' spii-itual ' here 
 than there. Many Lutheran churches have but 
 one service; but if a German Methodist church 
 is near by they need to keep up services to 
 save their own people to themselves. The 
 tendency in German churches in America is
 
 276 THE LEAVEN AND THE LUMP 
 
 toward a liberal theology (thoiig-h not the 
 ' Kew Theology,' which is rationalistic though 
 religious. The ^New Theology will appeal to 
 the better educated of the German rationahsts). 
 In the East the German churches are becoming 
 too much Americanized." 
 
 " Why do you think so? " I inquired. 
 
 " Because when Germans become American- 
 ized they ought to go to American, not German, 
 churches. The German churches ought to be 
 kept for those who want to go to church where 
 German is used. There are a good many Ger- 
 mans who use English in business and even in 
 their families who will not have use for Eng- 
 lish sermons. That is because they think of 
 their religion in the German-Bible-language." 
 
 This conservatism in the use of language I 
 noticed as a force frequently destructive of 
 foreign churches in America. The older gen- 
 eration holds on to the use of the native tongue ; 
 in the meantime the younger people, who find 
 English, to which they have become accustomed 
 in the school, on the street, in business, and 
 even in their homes, more acceptable, go to 
 other churches; then when the older genera- 
 tion dies, the church dies, too. This has been 
 the history of the Huguenot churches in
 
 THE LEAVEN AXD THE LUMP 2 
 
 JLk t 
 
 America — of which only one, and that now 
 wholly using English, is left; it will probably 
 be the history of many other churches. So the 
 foreign streams empty into the American sea. 
 
 In just two places I found some answer to 
 the question: Are churches or individual Chris- 
 tians using the religious motive as a force for 
 making out of these foreigners citizens in sym- 
 pathy with the principles of the Republic and 
 appreciative of its gifts? In other words, to 
 what extent among these foreigners is religion 
 made a cause of patriotism? In both cases 
 where I found an answer it happened that the 
 foreigners were not Europeans; in one case 
 they were American Indians, in the other 
 Armenians and Chinese. Without question 
 these two instances are representative of many; 
 but I cite them to show not so much what is 
 being done as what might be. 
 
 In Kansas there is a school for Indians car- 
 ried on by the United States Government. 
 The principal, a man whose stalwart character 
 was well expressed in a physique and bearing 
 that were emphatically vigorous, had the kind- 
 ness to give me a glimpse of the school and its 
 work. Strong, clean work it was — that I 
 could see in the shops and in the bearing of
 
 278 THE LEAVEN AND THE LUMP 
 
 the students. It was, however, the religious 
 element in the school that seemed to me most 
 significant. The principal's sympathetic appre- 
 ciation of the religious instincts of the Indian 
 was very keen, and to those instincts he appealed 
 with a most practical tact. "Our discipline 
 here is military," he said, " and therefore we 
 have always had a guard-house for offenders, 
 and it has been in frequent — sometimes daily 
 — use; but discipline here is not merely for the 
 sake of maintaining order — it is supremely for 
 the sake of inculcating the love of order. So I 
 decided upon a new method of discipline. 
 When our chapel was built we designed it so 
 as to include in the lower story a gymnasium. 
 I want our students to associate religion with 
 healthfulness and vigor of mind and body. 
 When the building was ready for use I called 
 the students together and I said to them: 
 ' Boys, to-day we open the gymnasium for the 
 first time. At the same time to-day I am going 
 to close the guard-house, I hope for the last 
 time.' The guard-house has not been used 
 once since then, and that was months ago." 
 That is one instance in which I saw religion 
 used as a force in preparing aliens for citizen- 
 ship.
 
 THE LEAVEN AND THE LUMP 27f) 
 
 The other instance was in a Kew Enofland 
 city. Involving more didactic effort than the 
 case I have just described, this ilhistration was 
 somewhat more pronounced. An active mem- 
 ber of a large Congregational church in this 
 city had been for years interested in the for- 
 eigners that had drifted into the services. One 
 day, while he was teaching a men's class in the 
 Sunday-school, an Armenian presented himself 
 as a pupil. The Armenian was looking for 
 help in learning English and in finding support. 
 In the course of a few weeks other Armenians 
 joined him. Before long the teacher had to 
 abandon his former class and give all his time 
 to the Armenians. " I told them," he said, 
 " that if they would come regularly, I would 
 teach them English and help them to become 
 good Americans. So they came, and this is 
 what I kept saying to them : ' You Armenians 
 find freedom here and a chance to live and be 
 useful. You call this " God's country " and 
 you are right. It is God that has made this 
 country what it is. So since this is God's 
 country you all ought to be brothei-s ! ' One 
 day a Chinaman appeared at the Sundaj^-school, 
 and the officers of the school, not knowing what 
 else to do with him, sent him in to me. After
 
 280 THE LEAVEN AND THE LUMP 
 
 the session the Armenians came up to me and 
 protested against having a ' foreigner ' like him 
 admitted. 'Look here,' said I, 'when yon 
 Armenians came didn't I put up with you? 
 Then I guess you Armenians must stand the 
 Chinaman. Didn't I say that this is God's 
 country because he has made us all to be 
 brothers to one another? ' So the Chinaman 
 remained and other Chinese came. One day a 
 Chinaman whom I knew to be honest and 
 orderly was tormented by small boys, there 
 was some disorder, and the Chinaman was put 
 into jail. I immediately bailed him out. There- 
 upon an Armenian who had been constantly 
 asking for financial assistance came to me and 
 said, ' You help the Chinaman : why don't you 
 help me?' That's the failing of these Arme- 
 nians, to be begging for help. I said to him, 
 ' I didn't do anything for the Chinaman that I 
 wouldn't do for an American; and I won't do 
 anything for you that I wouldn't do for an 
 American. This is God's country because God 
 has put people here on their own reliance.' So 
 it has gone. The Armenians have organized 
 an Armenian Congregational church, and they 
 worship here in the lecture-room. As the older 
 people pass away the church will disintegrate,
 
 THE LEAVEN AND THE LUMP 2S1 
 
 for the younger Armenians prefer touse English 
 and unite with the American church; and it is 
 better so. These American flags and streamers 
 that are decorating their room were put up for 
 the Christmas celebration; thc}'^ chose the Stars 
 and Stripes instead of evergreens because they 
 are beginning to see now that Christianity is 
 helping them to become good Americans." 
 
 It is plain that the Repul)lic and its foreign 
 population are leaven and lump in turns. My 
 general impression may be briefly stated in this 
 wise: The effect of America upon the religious 
 life of immigrants is almost uniformly whole- 
 some ; the influence of immigrants upon Ameri- 
 can religious life, though sometimes temporarily 
 demoralizing, is, on the whole, decidedly in the 
 direction of breadth and genuineness.
 
 NEW SECTS AND OLD
 
 A' 
 
 XII 
 NEW SECTS A:N^D OLD 
 
 MONG the most interesting religions bodies 
 
 in the United States I shonld connt the 
 so-called fraternal insnrance organizations. 
 Strictly, these are not sects, of course, yet they 
 have many characteristics that give them a re- 
 semblance to denominational bodies. Indeed, 
 each of the most important marks of distinction 
 which exclude them from being popularly 
 classed among the sects — that they disclaim 
 all connection with the Church, that no de- 
 nomination " fellowships " them, that they have 
 no order of clergy, and that they do not usually 
 hold their stated meetings on Sunday — can 
 with equal truth be attributed to some Christian 
 denomination. On the other hand, almost all 
 of them have a more or less avowedly religious 
 basis. Some of them are nominally theocratic, 
 
 285
 
 286 NEW SECTS AND OLD 
 
 each having its own epithet, appropriate to its 
 general nomenclature, which it applies to God. 
 The order which does not place belief in deity 
 and in immortality among its principles is ex- 
 ceptional. Possibly this is because insurance 
 and relief, which it is the object of such asso- 
 ciations to promote, center about the fact of 
 death. Like the religious impulse, the ethical 
 idea of the Church and the fraternities is 
 largely identical in terms, even to the cant 
 title "brother." 
 
 More obvious resemblances to religious de- 
 nominations, however, have come from the 
 adoption or imitation by the orders of what 
 in the Church are called "the means of grace" — 
 the Bible, common worship, and personal piety. 
 The promoter of one of these orders, for in- 
 stance, told me that he began by selecting a 
 book as a basis. More's "Utopia" was his 
 choice. Then he prepared a ritual, formulated 
 according to the ideas and in the very phrase- 
 ology of the book. Wherever now that order 
 has spread — chiefly in the Middle West — there 
 are men whose feeling toward More's "Utopia" 
 might be described not inaptly as personal de- 
 votion. Other orders have their own scriptures, 
 their own rituals, and their own brands of piety.
 
 NEW SECTS AND OLD 287 
 
 "In fact," the disciple of More said, with a 
 smile, after describing an organization named 
 and patterned in accordance with one of Scott's 
 novels, "it is not uncommon for members to 
 be heard saying, ' I mean to read my Ivanhoe 
 more!' or, 'If we only lived up to our ritual I' — 
 just like a woman in a prayer-meeting!" 
 
 The real religious significance of these orders 
 seemed to me strangely overlooked by most of 
 the church people with whom I talked on the 
 subject in various parts of the country. As a 
 rule, it seemed, according to their view, to 
 consist in the degree in which these orders 
 competed or cooperated with the churches. In 
 one place I would be told that for many men 
 they took the place of the churches — as the 
 real guides of moral conduct, inculcating a sort 
 of remunerative altruism; the real teachers of 
 religion, inculcating in place of faith a vague 
 belief in the existence and benevolence of God; 
 and the real leaders of worship, supplanting the 
 clergyman even in the ministrations for the 
 dead. In another place, on the contrary, I 
 would be told that they made deeper the ethical 
 teaching of the Church, reinforced its religious 
 influence, and cooperated with it in public 
 worship. The more fundamental significance
 
 288 NEW SECTS AND OLD 
 
 of fraternal organizations, as I learned of them, 
 certainly quite irrespective of locality, may be 
 stated as threefold. First, they show that men, 
 when left quite free of any ecclesiastical direc- 
 tion, are still strongly governed by religious 
 conceptions, however vague and undeveloped. 
 Second, they illustrate how widespread and 
 spontaneous is the impulse to express religious 
 and ethical ideas by ritual, however crude and 
 artificial. Third, they express concretely, though 
 in a rather one-sided and selfish form, that 
 social consciousness which has too often been 
 left by the churches without any other religious 
 or ethical expression. In one respect, however, 
 these orders are fundamentally distinct from 
 what are commonly accepted as religious 
 bodies: in no case that I heard of did any of 
 these orders proffer a " salvation religion," or 
 furnish any sign even that its religion had any- 
 thing to do with the failure involved in wrong- 
 doing. This is perhaps the reason why these 
 orders are not, as it is a most unanswerable 
 argument why they should not be, accepted as 
 substitutes for the Church. Nevertheless, even 
 when they are not taken too seriously, they 
 constitute an interesting and, in the Middle
 
 NEW SECTS AND OLD 289 
 
 "West especially, a not inconsiderable phase of 
 religious life in America. 
 
 Distinctively ecclesiastical bodies have be- 
 come so numerous in the United States that the 
 mere brief mention of each of those I chanced 
 to meet with during my journey would require 
 an article by itself wholly encyclopedic in 
 character. The most depressing impression I 
 received, as the result of my trip, was caused 
 by hearing the claim of one sect after another 
 to be the most truly representative of the real 
 Christianity of Jesus and the Apostles. By 
 meeting in person and in somewhat rapid suc- 
 cession, as I did, actual representatives of many 
 different theologies, I heard, as it were, the 
 clamor of creeds, and saw the bewildering con- 
 fusion of sects that has been the result, under 
 the conditions of absolute religious freedom 
 peculiar to America, of the popular Protestant 
 conviction that salvation depends upon the 
 acceptance of correct dogmas. Of the sects 
 that came to my knowledge there are two 
 distinct and opposite types. One depends for 
 its existence upon the identification of Chris- 
 tianity with some invented or resuscitated doc-
 
 290 NEW SECTS AND OLD 
 
 trine or body of doctrines; the other depends for 
 its existence upon inheritance from historic 
 religious movements. Almost every religious 
 body that belongs in this second classification 
 originated either from a protest against some 
 prevailing error or from some need for the 
 assertion of an inadequately recognized truth. 
 In almost every case the conditions under which 
 the denomination originated have to a great 
 extent disappeared (usually because of the ser- 
 vice it has rendered) and the denomination 
 itself now continues chiefly as a witness to a 
 past achievement. Once people affiliated them- 
 selves with one or another of these denomina- 
 tions out of conviction ; now they belong largely 
 for reasons of personal convenience or family 
 tradition. Of these two types — one recent, 
 the other historic — the former is illustrated 
 by Christian Science, the Christian Catholic 
 Church in Zion, and the Reorganized Church 
 of Latter-Day Saints; the latter, in most em- 
 phatic contrast, is illustrated by the Friends 
 and the Moravians. 
 
 In view of the rapid spread of Christian 
 Science, it was somewhat surprising to me that 
 I made the acquaintance of only a single votary 
 of Mrs. Eddy's cult, and that was in Maine, on
 
 NEW SECTS AND OLD 291 
 
 the first day of my trip. I could easily have 
 met others, I suppose, if I had cared to search 
 for them by invading- any of the numerous 
 Christian Science Reading-Rooms which I saw 
 in most of the cities I visited; but I did not 
 think it worth while to pick up at haphazard 
 statements concerning the tenets of a sect that 
 has been so assiduous in giving to those tenets 
 currency. I found it more interesting to learn 
 what people not adherents thought about it. 
 Indeed, on several occasions I discovered that 
 the easiest way of approaching the general 
 topic of religious life was by introducing into 
 conversation the specific subject of Christian 
 Science. Everybody seemed to have some 
 experience with regard to it, or some opinion 
 concerning it. The little group of commercial 
 travelers I fell in with in a South Carolina 
 hotel were all mightily interested in the tales 
 of healing that they told one another out of 
 their own fund of experience, and were per- 
 fectly frank in admitting that they were read- 
 ier to concede the claims of a Church that 
 made its chief business to do away with disease 
 and suffering than the claims of churches that 
 made their chief business to preach at people. 
 A journalist of Missouri remarked to me in the
 
 292 NEW SECTS AND OLD 
 
 course of conversation : " The churches are 
 weaker than they used to be, except the Roman 
 Catholic Church (which I don't understand) 
 and Christian Science. The latter seems to 
 appeal to men especially. This is partly be- 
 cause of the concreteness of its appeal " — a leg 
 healed here, a specific disease cured there — 
 " but its real power lies in the fact that it makes 
 no distinction between hearing the word and 
 doing it " ; in other words, that it not only ac- 
 cepts on their face value the promises of Christ 
 that his disciples should be healers of disease 
 as well as he was, but assumes that this func- 
 tion of healing is the very essence of the 
 Gospel itself. Most significant of all were the 
 comments of a physician in Iowa. I asked him 
 if he thought there was anything more in 
 Christian Science than organized and deliberate 
 use of psychological suggestion. "Yes," he 
 replied, " there is a religious principle involved. 
 You will be surprised, perhaps, to know that I 
 have a considerable practice among Christian 
 Scientists. I think that is due mainly to my 
 attempt to avoid antagonism, and to approach 
 their ailments in every case possible from their 
 own point of view. If there is an amputation, 
 I remark, ' You cut your toe-nails, don't you ?
 
 NEW SECTS AND OLD 293 
 
 Then why not go a Httle further np and cut off 
 the foot ? ' Or if there is need for surgical 
 dressings, I inquire if they do not use soap; 
 and then ask, ' Why not use an antiseptic? ' It 
 is easy enough to argue from the other direc- 
 tion, and to inquire why, if they do not use 
 medicine, they should not dispense with food. 
 Their reply is always that the reason lies in the 
 imperfection of the individual mind, not in any 
 defect of the ' science.' They put it all up in 
 the air where you can't get at it; so I accept 
 their theory of the imperfection of the indi- 
 vidual mind. In many respects my Christian 
 Science patients are the best I have, aside from 
 the fact that they pay their bills (they've been 
 trained to do that by their 'healers'). In a 
 Christian Science household I do not encounter 
 the flustered state of mind that in other house- 
 holds I have to deal with as well as with the 
 disease. If it is a case of confinement, for in- 
 stance, when ordinarily there is a great deal 
 of nervousness, in the Christian Science house- 
 hold everything is accepted as natural, as in 
 harmony with the mind of God." In addition 
 to human credulity, which has so often served 
 as a cavalier explanation of any religious phe- 
 nomena, it was to one or all of these three char-
 
 294 NEW SECTS AND OLD 
 
 acteristics of Christian Science — its appeal 
 through the concrete, its identifying its faith 
 with practice, and its effectiveness in producing 
 serenity of mind by the easy method of denying 
 the existence of any cause for disturbance — 
 that non-adherents accounted for its growth. 
 
 Divine heahng is the special stock in trade 
 of a number of new sects, among them the so- 
 called " Christian Catholic Church in Zion " — 
 an enterprise promoted by a man named Dowie. 
 Chicago, eager if undiscriminating, is the Rome 
 for this pope — the wilderness for this Elijah, 
 this John Baptist, to use his own titles for him- 
 self. One Sunday afternoon I went to the 
 building used as headquarters of the new Zion. 
 I was directed to " follow the crowd." As I left 
 the building, a short, corpulent man, with a 
 long gray beard, hurried by me, giving me a 
 searching glance as he passed. I recognized 
 him from his pictures on the placards posted 
 about the city. He drove off in a carriage 
 drawn by a pair of spirited horses driven by a 
 liveried coachman. I made my way on foot to 
 the " tabernacle," and entered among a throng 
 of ordinary-looking people. At the farther 
 end of the " tabernacle," back of the platform,
 
 NEW SECTS AND OLD 295 
 
 were tiers of seats, like those for a chorus in a 
 concert hall, in the midst of which was a reed 
 organ. On the walls were hung trophies sup- 
 posed to have been obtained from converts, 
 and displayed as tokens of their release from 
 their ills and superstitions: in one place a de- 
 sign composed of crutches; in another the 
 word " drugs " spelled out in empty medicine- 
 bottles; in another a decoration consisting of 
 rosaries and Roman Catholic charms; in an- 
 other a sort of tapestry made of insurance 
 orders' certificates; and in yet another a cross 
 formed by hot-water bags ! The body of the 
 house was filled with people, and the semicircu- 
 lar galleries were well occupied. A woman in 
 white vestments was playing a prelude on the 
 organ. Soon the audience rose. Coming up 
 the aisle were children, walking slowly by twos, 
 wearing white vestments and holding open 
 books in their hands; they mounted the steps 
 to the platform, then, separating, filed up from 
 either side into the tiers of seats. The full 
 length of the aisle was filled twice over with 
 children before there appeared a division of 
 young women similarly vested, and with mortar- 
 board caps. As they approached the plat- 
 form they began to sing " Crown him with
 
 296 NEW SECTS AND OLD 
 
 many crowns." Then following came a choir 
 of young men in caps and white vestments; 
 after these white-robed ones came, in black 
 gowns and mortar-board caps, first a choir of 
 middle-aged women, then one of middle-aged 
 men. These followed the others up on the 
 platform, but, the tiers of seats being filled, 
 streamed into the front rows of the galleries. 
 At the end of the procession walked the stout, 
 gray-bearded man, now dressed in a black 
 gown with bishop's sleeves and a hood of 
 white, yellow, and purple. When he reached 
 the platform and turned, the music stopped and 
 all the men removed their caps. 'No theatrical 
 device could have more effectually concentrated 
 attention upon the central personage. He 
 raised his hand dramatically, and in resonant, 
 assertive tones pronounced a benediction. 
 Thereupon began the most wearisome, in some 
 respects the most interesting, and I think the 
 strangest service I ever attended, original not 
 so much in any new feature as in the ingenious 
 combination of features from many sources: 
 the canticles, hymns, and vestments of the 
 Church of England, the priestly dominance of 
 the Roman Catholic Church, the assumption of 
 divine healing of the Christian Scientist, the
 
 NEW SECTS AND OLD 297 
 
 reference to immersion of the Baptist sects, 
 the exhorting of the Methodist evangehst, and 
 the promise of the theocratic community of the 
 Mormon. The audience seemed to submit with 
 pleasure to the domineering autocracy of their 
 leader. When he gave out the notices, he 
 spent three-quarters of an hour in setting forth 
 the virtues of his various business ventures — 
 the publishing business of Zion, the great Zion 
 excursion, and the subscription for stock in the 
 new Zion city lots. 
 
 " Keep the books of Zion for people to look at, 
 but don't lend! The great mass of mankind 
 are great book-keepers. . . . You have great 
 readiness to borrow books, especially when 
 you can buy them yourselves, you wretches! 
 . . . The Zion's Banner will be the news, 
 eliminating the lies that are common in the 
 papers. . . . This will give me a chance to 
 deal with things that I haven't felt justified 
 in dealing with in the Leaves of [Healing, and 
 I shall deal with them, too; I've never been 
 afraid of men. . . . We guarantee no land of 
 the first series after May 31st, and the second 
 series will be higher in price. . . . We have a 
 right to charge the laggards for indolence. . . . 
 Pray for me about this. I don't like to talk
 
 298 NEW SECTS AND OLD 
 
 this business, but it is my only chance, and 
 this is God's business, isn't it?" 
 
 "Yes," came the answer from some thousand 
 throats. 
 
 " Prairie schooners are on their way to Zion 
 city. Some are staying on the land. People 
 coming from England, Germany, Australia. 
 In Canada from a little country place twenty 
 are coming. You Chicago people will wake 
 up to find yourselves outside. I'll be rather 
 glad to see you in the outer darkness, weeping 
 and wailing and gnashing your teeth to see the 
 Canadians on the inside. I'm not much of a 
 business man — I'm an innocent — that's what 
 they say. A lady got 'Dr.' Dowie to pray 
 about selling land — and she sold it, not at a loss 
 either, but at a gain ! . . . Give your wife half — 
 that is, if she's in Zion; if not, don't give her 
 anything. . . . Overseer Jane Dowie, pray for 
 her. Can I send her a cablegram sending her 
 love?" 
 
 "Yes," came the reply from the audience, 
 like a distant roll of thunder, as they held up 
 their hands. 
 
 " A young Frenchman in Paris has given up 
 tobacco, wine, swine's-flesh, and gambling. I 
 want you to pray for him.' 
 
 75
 
 XEW SECTS AND OLD 299 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Some of these impudent papers say I have 
 a mighty soft place. Huh! When my wife 
 comes, she'll back me up. N^ow, then! Have 
 you forgotten all I've said already? . . . Xext 
 Lord's Day there will be baptism by triune 
 immersion." 
 
 This may give an idea of his methods of 
 financing his enterprise. It did not sound 
 much hke the ordinary appeal for church or 
 missionary funds. 
 
 In his sermon, which he delivered in front of 
 his pulpit with much shouting, stamping, and 
 pounding, he displayed what his followers 
 doubtless interpreted as moral passion, but 
 what sounded much like savagely exuberant 
 delight in the rhetoric descriptive of the evils 
 he denounced. 
 
 "... Don't talk as if death were good. It 
 is hateful, hellish, king of terrors; it never 
 blesses, but always curses. . . . The false 
 teachings of the apostate churches have led 
 people to think that death is of God. It is 
 from the devil. ... I plead for love that will 
 overcome lust, life that will overcome death, 
 health that will overcome disease. May God 
 give us that love!"
 
 300 NEW SECTS AND OLD 
 
 "Amen," fervently responded the audience. 
 
 "Did he love us as himself? Answer me!'''' 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "Did he love us better than himself?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Then we should love him, and love others 
 better than ourselves. Do you want that 
 love?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Then rise and ask for it." 
 
 He offered a petition, stopping at the end of 
 each phrase for the people to repeat it after 
 him. During this prayer, as during every 
 other prayer in the service, the demeanor of 
 the congregation was extraordinarily devout. 
 
 "Did you mean it?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " During the recessional hold your hearts in 
 adoration." 
 
 The hymn, a long one, was sung five times 
 over before all the chorus (there must have 
 been some two hundred and fifty) disappeared. 
 
 When I left, at the end of three hours, a 
 large part of the people were departing; but 
 even then a negro was preparing on the plat- 
 form the utensils for the Communion service 
 that was to follow. I was glad to get into the
 
 NEW SECTS AND OLD 301 
 
 clearer air outside, and, by a brisk walk along 
 the edge of the lake, to shake off the feeling 
 of helplessness that seemed to be contagious in 
 that fold of submissive sheep. 
 
 It was also in Chicago that I had a glimpse 
 of the seamy side of irresponsible religious 
 Csesarism. The sign on a building announced 
 that here was a mission of the Reorganized 
 Church of Latter-Day Saints. A little girl in 
 a torn and dirty dress answered my summons. 
 She conducted me through a bare, dirty hall- 
 way to a room upstairs and called for her 
 mother. A woman, whose hair hung down in 
 strings on either side of her rather sallow face, 
 and whose dress was almost as torn and dirty 
 as the girl's, appeared and asked me what I 
 wanted. When she learned that I was inter- 
 ested in her religion, the expression of her face 
 changed from that of vacant weariness to an 
 earnestness that was almost luminous. For an 
 hour, it may have been longer, she talked to me 
 of her faith. She explained how wicked had 
 been the lapse of the Mormons from the teach- 
 ings of Joseph Smith; how the remnant of 
 true believers had been basely defrauded of 
 their name as the real Church of Latter-Day
 
 302 NEW SECTS AND OLD 
 
 Saints; how impossible it was for more than 
 one genuine Church of Christ to exist; and 
 how it happened that, because of the introduc- 
 tion of false revelations in favor of polygamy, 
 the one true Church had been reduced to the 
 body of believers who, forced to call themselves 
 Reorganized, and commonly known as " non- 
 polygamous Mormons," now have their head- 
 quarters in Iowa. She expounded the Scrip- 
 tures to show that triple immersion and laying 
 on of hands, both ordinances only as properly 
 administered, were essential to salvation. She 
 showed me the room in which the services were 
 held, and when I took my departure put into 
 my hands some tracts and leaflets setting forth 
 the doctrines upon which the hope of the world 
 depends. A masterful mind with some ingenu- 
 ity in constructing dogmas by a new juxtaposi- 
 tion of Scripture texts — that seems to be one 
 element common to all these "new" sects. 
 The other element is furnished by that host of 
 people who like to be mastered because it saves 
 them trouble. 
 
 "We believe that the canon of Scripture is 
 not full, but that God, by his Spirit, will con-
 
 NEW SECTS AND OLD 303 
 
 tiiiiie to reveal his word to man until the end 
 of time." This statement, which is from one 
 of these pamphlets of the " non-polygamous 
 Mormons," represents the crude form of a pro- 
 foundly religious belief which has never been 
 wholly without voice in the Christian Church. 
 That the Holy Spirit is always directly inspir- 
 ing the words and the acts of believers was the 
 conviction of the Christians in the Apostolic 
 age, and the distinguishing doctrine of the 
 Montanists. In modern times it has found 
 most adequate expression with the Friends. 
 So wide has been their influence, and so happily 
 has this influence, unpolemically exerted, been 
 reinforced by modern conceptions of the imma- 
 nence of God, that to-day the idea of the 
 " Inner Light," in fact if not in name, has been 
 accepted among all bodies of Christians. It has 
 even been formulated into harsh creeds of recent 
 manufacture, to do service for some new cult 
 and to justify some Arcana Coelestia, or Book 
 of Mormon, or Key to the Scriptures. In the 
 meantime, as this belief has become less dis- 
 tinctive of the Friends, it has apparently lost 
 its hold upon them. I tried to discover the 
 reason for this from a Friend minister. He
 
 304 NEW SECTS AND OLD 
 
 had remarked that the Friends as a body had 
 not accepted the conclusions of the Higher Criti- 
 cism of the Bible/ 
 
 " Then they believe in the infallibility of the 
 Bible, and accept it as the ultimate authority? " 
 
 " Yes," he said emphatically, " we hold close 
 to the Bible." 
 
 " You believe that there is inspiration of men 
 to-day?" 
 
 "Yes. Shakespeare and Longfellow were 
 inspired in a sense, but not as the holy men 
 of old." 
 
 "How about the holy men of to-day?" 
 
 " Yes, they are inspired, we believe, but are 
 capable of error." 
 
 " Then the Holy Spirit does not inspire infal- 
 libly, as in ancient times? " 
 
 He made a reference to the changes in revis- 
 ing the King James Version, the pertinence of 
 which I did not understand, and concluded by 
 saying that the errors were so slight that they 
 occasioned no difficulty. Then, after a discus- 
 
 1 Neither this statement concerning " Higher Criticism " nor the preceding 
 one concerning the " Inner Light " is to be considered as universally true of 
 the whole body of Friends. This Friend minister would find other Friends 
 strongly disagreeing with him. Nevertheless his statements are true of 
 certain Friends and represent some existing tendencies which are in thor- 
 ough accord with the proneness of human nature to substitute the mechani- 
 cal for the vital.
 
 NEW SECTS AND OLD 305 
 
 sion as to the source of authority for the accept- 
 ance of the canon, he finally dismissed the 
 subject by saying, " In the providence of God, 
 the Bible is here as we find it." The only con- 
 clusion to which this conversation could lead 
 was that the desire for an outward and visible 
 repository of authority was too strong for a 
 faith in an Inner Light that was originally less 
 a dogma than an experience. 
 
 Like the Friends, the Moravians seem to find 
 reason for separate existence as a religious 
 body, not in doctrinal distinctions, but in his- 
 toric continuity. So long as there are differ- 
 ences of denomination which make impossible 
 organic unity of the Christian Church, there is 
 no better reason for the separate existence of 
 any religious body than a great history; and 
 certainly that reason the Moravians abundantly 
 have. The sign that even this reason is no 
 longer as effectual as it was is evident in the 
 waning of some of their customs. Many of 
 their observances, however — for instance, the 
 Easter service at dawn in the old burying- 
 ground, or the announcement of deaths by 
 chorales played by four trombonists from the 
 church belfry, the second chorale being always
 
 306 NEW SECTS AND OLD 
 
 that designated by custom as appropriate to the 
 age of the one whose death is announced — are 
 still vigorously maintained, and are certainly 
 very beautiful. The historic preeminence and 
 present activity of the Moravian Church in mis- 
 sionary enterprise is too well known to need 
 more than mere mention. Compared with the 
 competing and disputatious sects of the Middle 
 West, the Unitas Fratrum — as the Moravian 
 body is strictly called — as I saw it in eastern 
 Pennsylvania, seemed to have a peculiarly 
 untroubled and untroubling faith. 
 
 Bethlehem, as I approached it in the train 
 that ran along the picturesque Lehigh River, 
 reminded me somewhat of Durham, in England 
 — only there was not the squalor that disfigures 
 so many cities of the older country, and there 
 was no Cathedral on the heights. Of all the 
 places I have seen in the United States, only 
 Charleston, South Carolina, and Kew Orleans 
 approach it in quaintness. The old Moravian 
 hostelry, the old burying-ground with grave- 
 stones lying flat on the ground and placed in 
 strict order according to the dates of death 
 without regard to family groups, the low stone 
 buildings — everything in the old portion of the 
 town seemed part of a fit setting for the reli-
 
 NEW SECTS AND OLD 307 
 
 gious customs, the musical atmosphere, the his- 
 toric hturgy, and the traits of sturdiness, 
 simpHcity, and self-forgetfuhiess in the charac- 
 ter of its people. I remember one lane in par- 
 ticular, flanked by high brown walls, over which 
 hung the limbs of fruit-trees in full blossom. 
 Not half the old-world charm of the town has 
 ever been described. On the other hand, the 
 people have been so frequently caricatured by 
 over-enthusiastic reporters that they have come 
 to be thought of as peculiarly different in man- 
 ners and dress from other folk. An editor on 
 whom I called showed very plainly that he was 
 tired of being " written up." Ministers were at 
 first unresponsive to my inquiries. A vivacious 
 and charming member of the Moravian Church, 
 the wife of a mechanical engineer of the iron- 
 works, told me a story illustrative of the wide- 
 spread popular fallacy as to the queerness of 
 the Moravian people. She was one of a num- 
 ber of young people, all Moravians, who were 
 among the guests at a dance in Philadelphia. 
 During the evening she was introduced to a 
 lady of evident intelligence, who, after some 
 conversation, exclaimed : 
 
 " Oh, have you seen them? " 
 
 "Seen whom?"
 
 308 NEW SECTS AND OLD 
 
 " Why, the Moravians. They say a party of 
 them are to be here to-night. I'm just dying 
 to see them. Why, you know, it will be just 
 the strangest thing ! They wear a peculiar cos- 
 tume and all that. I wish they would come. I 
 don't see what makes them so late." 
 
 She was talking to a Moravian and did not 
 know it. 
 
 In one respect the Moravians are a peculiar 
 people. Their church music is a heritage they 
 jealously and enthusiastically prize, l^owhere 
 else in America has the St. Matthew " Passion " 
 of Bach been sung, as it was intended to be, 
 not for a concert performance but for a church 
 service, with the chorales taken up by a congre- 
 gation of people who had been familiar with 
 them from childhood. It was in Bethlehem 
 that both the Christmas Oratorio and the 
 so-called B minor Mass of Bach had their first 
 complete American rendition. During my visit 
 rehearsals for a three-day Bach music festival 
 to be given by a chorus from the community 
 were in progress. I have heard technically better 
 singing of Bach, but none so convincingly gen- 
 uine. The sight of the children who were in the 
 chorus, and the sound of their voices, were alone 
 almost enough to make one a convert to the faith.
 
 KEW SECTS AND OLD 309 
 
 The account of the ceremonies of the church 
 and of the preachmg of the ministers was inter- 
 esting. So were the statements which two min- 
 isters made independently concerning the social 
 conditions among the workingmen in the iron- 
 works, the rebuffs which the Church had met 
 Avith from the representatives of the owners, the 
 effect of the breaking up of family life by 
 modern conditions of labor, the consequences 
 following the influx of foreigners, and the rela- 
 tion of the university to the community. But 
 the one unpression which I carried away from 
 Bethlehem was of a community whose charac- 
 ter had been created and was still molded by a 
 religious faith which was retaining much of its 
 pristine power through the use of traditional, 
 but vitalizing, forms of great beauty.
 
 COLORADO
 
 XIII 
 COLORADO 
 
 THE three parts into which places innu- 
 merable have been divided since Julius 
 Caesar wrote his Commentaries have their 
 counterparts in Colorado : the City, the Resort, 
 and the Camp. It is true there is a fourth 
 part, the Ranch, which in certain respects is 
 more important than all the others, for the 
 agricultural products of the State form a larger 
 part of its wealth than its minerals. In com- 
 parison to the Ranch, therefore, the City is a 
 dependent, the Resort is a parasite, and the 
 Camp is a poor relation. For our purposes, 
 however, we will assume that all Colorado is 
 divided into three parts. 
 
 Those who go from the East to Colorado — 
 whether it is to the City, or to the Resort, or 
 to the Camp — are put to a thorough and very 
 
 313
 
 314 COLORADO 
 
 wholesome test as regards both character and 
 rehgious faith. This test consists in being 
 granted a very great freedom from the con- 
 ventional standards of morality and religion. 
 A case somewhat parallel is that of the native 
 of southern Italy who emigrates to America. 
 In the country of his birth he is expected by 
 everybody to conform to the observances of 
 the Church. In his adopted country he finds 
 many who conform to the observances of other 
 churches, and some who conform to none at all. 
 For the first time he has the choice between 
 religion and no religion. If he is a genuinely 
 devout Koman Catholic, he will continue to 
 attend mass and perform his religious obliga- 
 tions. If he is a mere formalist, and happens 
 not to take up his residence in a community 
 practically transplanted bodily from his native 
 soil, or to come under the influence of an espe- 
 cially active priest, he will fall away from the 
 practices which at home were a matter of 
 course, and be content with having recourse to 
 the Church only as a matter of expediency — 
 and habit — in greatest extremities. The result 
 is that among Italians in America it is perhaps 
 more common to find, on the one hand, open 
 hostility to the Church than in Italy, and, on
 
 COLOEADO 315 
 
 the other hand, more vital and active Kfe within 
 the Church itself. A closer parallel is that of 
 the boy who goes from his village home to the 
 city. The fact that in the village he is known 
 to almost everybody binds him to do what his 
 family and his acquaintances do. The fact, on 
 the other hand, that in the city no one he knows 
 will notice his absence from church or his 
 presence in the dive leaves him free to choose, 
 and he will choose the one or the other accord- 
 ing to the inward force of will rather than the 
 outward force of opinion. The result is that 
 among young men in the city are found both 
 wilder dissipation and sturdier self-control than 
 among the young men of a village community. 
 In much the same way, the man from the East 
 who goes to the City, the Resort, or the Camp 
 of Colorado finds himself confronted with the 
 necessity of making his own choice in matters 
 of conduct and faith. This is not so much 
 because he is presented with new alternatives, as 
 is true in the case of the immigrant; nor so 
 much because he is no longer subject to the 
 regard of interested neighbors, as is true in the 
 case of the village boy in the city — though both 
 these facts are contributing causes — as because 
 he has entered into a life essentially uncon-
 
 316 COLOEADO 
 
 ventional. In the East a man gets material 
 advantage by leading an outwardly respectable 
 life, and even by being identified, either in per- 
 son or through his family, to some extent at 
 least, with the Church. In Colorado an out- 
 wardly respectable life, it is safe to say, is not 
 any disadvantage to a man, but it is hardly 
 safe to say that in the Camp, in the Resort, or 
 even in the City it brings any immediate visible 
 reward ; and as for church membership, perhaps 
 the safest thing to say is that there is less 
 excuse for moral anomalies among church 
 members than in most places in America. The 
 result is that, according not only to what I 
 heard of, but also to what I saw, in Colorado as 
 in no other region I visited, open, unshamed 
 violation of common morality exists side by 
 side with genuine, courageous, and single- 
 minded religious faith and life. 
 
 It was only a brief glimpse that I had of the 
 City. That was enough, however, to include the 
 extremes characteristic of the State. Denver 
 is a city of many fine streets and some forlorn 
 quarters; of dives and of churches; of nouveaux 
 riches and of cultivated men. At the tune I 
 was there, it happened that, on the one hand, I 
 heard a considerable discussion — made possi-
 
 COLORADO 317 
 
 ble by woman suffrage — concei'ning the effect 
 upon municipal conditions of the votes cast by 
 inmates of disorderly houses; and, on the other 
 hand, I attended a reception at which there 
 were present the presidents of four unportant 
 colleges. Xo city, however, can wholly with- 
 stand the encroachments of conventionalism. 
 So Denver is growing more conventional — in 
 matters of institutional rehgion at any rate. 
 Most of its chm'ches, like most of the churches 
 in the cities of the East and the Middle West, 
 have been moving uptown, following along in 
 the procession of the respectable. Some of 
 these churches are very prosperous. One in 
 particular that I saw, owing in part to the 
 natural gro^^i:h of this Western city, owing in 
 part to the efficiency of its pastor, seemed like 
 one of those Western corn-fields in which the 
 corn grows so fast that you can hear it crackle 
 as it grows. But this church was composed 
 mainly of what an Englishman would call mid- 
 dle-class people, and what most Americans 
 think of when they visualize the great Sovereign 
 Citizen. 
 
 In spite of this tendency to conventionality, 
 one man I met has remained during these years 
 an apostle of the unconventional. This was
 
 318 COLORADO 
 
 " Parson Tom," as he is universally known, the 
 minister of a Congregational church. He was 
 a member of the City Council. In order to find 
 him I had to go to the City Hall. As we came 
 down the steps together, a man and a woman, 
 both poorly dressed, stopped him and held a 
 hurried, brief consultation with him. The par- 
 son-councilman explained that this man and 
 wife had come to him for a chance to get a job 
 under the city government. Here was one 
 minister who believed there was no reason why 
 a minister should not use for unselfish ends a 
 means of "reaching" people which the ward 
 boss uses too often for corrupt and selfish ends. 
 We walked along the street to his new church 
 building, then in process of construction. A 
 drunken man hailed him in response to a touch 
 on the shoulder. Two little children greeted 
 him as an old friend. A man, evidently a day- 
 laborer, asked for a chance to see him. So the 
 appearance of the parson's stalwart figure 
 evoked from one after another expressions of 
 friendliness and confidence. And all this was 
 on the edge of the " scarlet district." He told 
 me stories of the turmoil in the city occasioned 
 by the influx of men who left Chicago during 
 the panic of '93 ; how troops came by train to
 
 COLOEADO 319 
 
 the fort, how the banks were used as arsenals, 
 how with others he had succeeded in preventing 
 starvation by supplying the men with bologna 
 sausages, how he had had to address the crowds, 
 how with others he succeeded in sending the 
 men out with State money to the Missouri 
 River, how afterwards in Memphis he came 
 across a man who said to hmi, "I'm one of 
 those you sent out; there are five hundred of 
 us here working on the levee, and we'll give 
 you an ovation " ; and how he had met others 
 of those men in all sorts of places between 
 Chicago and San Francisco. The minister who 
 has had influence with laboring men, individu- 
 ally and in large bodies, under both ordinary and 
 extraordinary circumstances, is rare. The views 
 of such a man on the religious life of working- 
 men are, I think, worth summarizing. In the 
 first place, he was convinced that it was one 
 thing to win the approval of the labor agitator 
 and quite another to win the approval of the 
 great body of wage-earners. In the second 
 place, he recognized certain obstacles in the 
 very unconventionality of Western life: the 
 unreligious atmosphere which, though uncon- 
 genial to cant and pretense, is also uncongenial 
 to devoutness; the open Sunday, with its
 
 320 COLOKADO 
 
 " splendid opportunities for staying away from 
 church"; the many organizations which are 
 more attractive to men under ordinary condi- 
 tions than the churches are, though wanting in 
 the message which the Church has for great 
 exigencies; and the tendency of the Church to 
 revert to traditional methods even under such 
 new conditions as those of a Colorado city. 
 
 We soon came to the new church building. 
 It was only a block or two from the old build- 
 ing. He explained his action in remaining on 
 the edge of the " scarlet district " by saying, 
 " If you set a trap on the hill to catch a fish in 
 the river, you'll be a long time catching him. 
 I've got about two-thirds of the city to look 
 after." Yet his work was very far from being 
 merely what is termed "rescue work." His 
 chief interest was in the poor of the district, 
 who were forced by circumstances to live in an 
 environment full of vice and shame. He felt 
 keenly the unfairness to these poor of permit- 
 ting disorderly houses to exist among them. 
 He has shown the courage of his convictions by 
 refusing to leave this district. His mother, he 
 told me, sharing his convictions, shares also in 
 his work, for, though she is seventy-five years 
 old, she drives about with a little Shetland
 
 COLOKADO 321 
 
 pony, distributmg to the needy. And now that 
 he had to build a new church, he chose a site 
 where it would primarily serve the neighbor- 
 hood, and only secondarily be accessible to 
 those of his congregation whose lines are fallen 
 in pleasanter places. 
 
 In the Resort, many of the people are, of 
 course, enforced idlers. Since they are there 
 either because of their own ill health or because 
 of the ill health of some member of the family, 
 such people, with more time than they know 
 how to occupy wisely, and more money than 
 they know how to spend judiciously, are 
 strongly tempted to welcome their release from 
 conventionality by releasing themselves also 
 from common moral obligation. Those people, 
 therefore, whose conduct in the East is bound 
 chiefly by a sense of propriety, make the dis- 
 covery, soon after their arrival in Colorado, 
 that their conduct there is under scarcely any 
 bonds whatever. Those, on the other hand, 
 who carry their moral principles with them find 
 those principles as unaffected by the lessening 
 of the pressure of conventionalism as by the 
 lessening of the pressure of the atmosphere. 
 Take away the sanction of convention, and the 
 goats of their own free will separate them-
 
 322 COLOEADO 
 
 selves from the sheep. A sojourn in Colorado 
 Springs has afforded many men and women, 
 who have abundant time and money, a very 
 close approximation to the modern theologian's 
 conception of the Day of Judgment. Only, 
 conventionalism does not wholly disappear; so 
 the approximation is but earthly, after all. It 
 naturally follows from all this that such people 
 as make a pretense of religion in the East 
 continue in that pretense when they reach 
 the Colorado Resort — so far as they continue 
 in it at all — less as a studied means for self- 
 advancement than as a habit of which they 
 are more or less unconscious. 
 
 Such a condition cannot fail to strike one 
 who cares at all for reality in religion as being 
 constitutionally wholesome. In the first place, 
 it prevents the sanctimonious hypocrite from 
 deceiving almost every well-informed person, 
 except possibly himself. No circumstance can 
 ever wholly cure self-deception. In the second 
 place, it makes possible a genuineness in reli- 
 gious life which is at best limited under any 
 other condition. 
 
 That such a condition of genuineness in 
 conduct, in spite of its concomitant open immo- 
 rality, can do away with much of the misun-
 
 COLORADO 323 
 
 derstanding between organized wage-earners 
 and organized Christian people was illustrated 
 by what a carpenter, himself a man not only of 
 deep religious convictions but also of fine fiber 
 and native refinement, told me. He prefaced 
 his tale, which others corroborated and partly 
 amplified, by saying that industrial conditions 
 in Colorado Springs had been for years excep- 
 tionally easy. There had been such a continu- 
 ous demand for labor in the building trades 
 that the wages of carpenters, for instance, had 
 risen in nine years from $2.75 a day to $3.50, 
 and the hours of labor per day had decreased 
 from ten to eight. This process, moreover, had 
 gone on without a strike and with only one in- 
 stance of temporary suspension of work, and 
 that had occurred by a misunderstanding of 
 the state of affairs on the part of outsiders. 
 Under these conditions the relations between 
 employers and employed had come to be pleas- 
 ant. The men did as much work in eight 
 hours as they had been accustomed to do in 
 ten, for, as it was explained, "they feel that 
 the conditions are happy, and want to make an 
 equivalent." In reply to my inquiries as to 
 how these pleasant relations between labor and 
 capital were brought about, I heard from more
 
 324 COLORADO 
 
 than one source the following story, in about 
 the form which I give it: 
 
 Several years ago, when the wage-earner who 
 was mainly responsible for the undertakings I 
 am about to describe first entered " the organi- 
 zation," he was convinced that the mutual feel- 
 ing between labor and capital could be made 
 more cordial. At that time certain strikes in 
 the West had made this feeling especially bitter. 
 At Colorado Springs some union men, of rather 
 fiery temper and of disposition violently opposed 
 to religion, attempted, in spite of the easy 
 industrial conditions there, to intensify these 
 bitter feelings. The member of whom I have 
 spoken, being chairman, could not take the 
 floor to counsel a better spirit, so he suggested 
 that the union institute a series of talks on labor 
 problems, make the meetings open, and send 
 special invitations to ministers and to employers 
 of labor. The first speaker was selected with 
 great care; the meetings were held; a number 
 of ministers became interested, and their verdict 
 was, "Why, this is Christian; it is neither 
 Anarchy nor Socialism." Then followed labor 
 conferences. The attendance of the general 
 public grew so that it was necessary to hire the 
 high- school building for the meetings. The
 
 COLORADO 325 
 
 subjects, instead of being general, were selected 
 with regard to municipal matters of current 
 interest. The question of municipal ownership 
 of street railways grew out of the refusal of the 
 local street railway company to hold to its prom- 
 ise of granting free transfers, because it was 
 too expensive. As this materially affected the 
 wage-earners, they took up at the conference 
 the cost of running street-cars. Investigation 
 showed that the company was using money to 
 boom suburban lots. As Colorado Springs 
 owned the water plant, a good contrast was 
 afforded between private and public ownership 
 of municipal monopoly. In a similar way the 
 ownership of the electric light plant was dis- 
 cussed. The country was scoured for informa- 
 tion. The result was that the rich men of the 
 place and the wage-earners met on the common 
 level of economic facts. The personal meeting 
 brought about a mutual respect for intellectual 
 qualities. The members of the unions and the 
 employers caught the spirit of the undertaking. 
 They learned to speak easily on their feet. 
 Men who had formerly been bitterly opposed to 
 organized labor became friends, because of the 
 reasonableness of the unions. Of course there 
 was no lack of opposition and indifference ; of
 
 326 COLORADO 
 
 course there were some sad experiences. Cer- 
 tain of the churches and the ministers failed to 
 fall into line. On the other side two of the 
 labor organizations proved unruly. One of 
 these started a movement for higher wages, but 
 failed because it did not get the support of the 
 other unions and the sympathy of the public. 
 The movement resulted, not only in a failure to 
 gain its end, but also in a distinct loss. This 
 was one direct result of the conferences; it 
 gave a new value and sanction to public opinion. 
 Another result was that the support of the con- 
 ferences by certain churches and ministers 
 heartened that minority in the unions who were 
 genuinely religious, and, as was shown by sub- 
 sequent events, gave to those who had not been 
 in sympathy with the Church a new conception 
 of institutional religion. 
 
 Such was the situation when the Young Men's 
 Christian Association proposed the building of 
 new quarters. Until then the Association had 
 done very little to bring wage-earners into its 
 membership. After these conferences proved 
 successful, the member of the union who had 
 suggested and directed them was chosen, in 
 spite of his modest protest that he was incompe- 
 tent, as a member of the Board of Directors of
 
 COLORADO 327 
 
 the Association. I give his story about the 
 building as nearly as possible in his own words : 
 " They were talking about getting money for 
 the building. But, as I became acquainted 
 with the new secretary, who had been a wage- 
 earner and was a member of a labor union, 
 ' Here,' said I to him, ' I've got something for 
 you. I want you to go to the organizations.' 
 And I had this advantage, for I could say, 
 ' Boys, here's a man who carries his card.' 
 The responses were generous. I was strength- 
 ened, you see, by having a man who was a 
 wage-earner with me. I said, 'When this 
 building is finished we want a label on top.' I 
 spoke to the teamsters, and we got a contribu- 
 tion from them of forty days' work, valued at 
 four dollars a day. They gave it especially on 
 account of their boys. One man — a Bob 
 Ingersoll man -*- objected, but finally he gave 
 one day's work with three teams — that means 
 twelve dollars. Then the pick and shovel men 
 each promised to give from one to three days' 
 work. In the carpenters' organization the 
 decision was to give one day's work each — in 
 cash, fifteen hundred dollars ! So it went. This 
 Young Men's Christian Association building 
 is to be built as the cathedrals of France were
 
 328 COLOEADO 
 
 built, by the voluntary and cooperative contri- 
 bution of the labor of the people. When the 
 day came, the organizations left their work to 
 see the breaking of ground. The men wore 
 ribbons, yellow, pinned on labels, and they were 
 proud of them. They got out the band. They 
 had a parade three-quarters of a mile long. 
 There were the police, the band, the high-school 
 cadets, and the labor organizations with their 
 banners, and each man carried a flag. This 
 will show the interest: An old German, who is 
 a Grand Army man, and who says that there is 
 only one holiday. Decoration Day, because he 
 was ' in it,' had never lost a half -day's work 
 otherwise; but, don't you know, he gave half 
 a day for this parade ! Another man gave a 
 dollar and said : ' This is all I can afford, but 
 I want you to take this dollar and buy some 
 bricks, and mark them, and put them in the 
 front where I can see them.' The teamster 
 who was to haul out the first load was chosen 
 by his organization ; others were grouped about. 
 That's the way the ground was broken for the 
 building. While this good feeling exists we 
 want all to have a part in the better things this 
 building stands for." "Yes," he added, in 
 answer to a remark of mine, "it seems that
 
 COLOEADO 329 
 
 I've had a part in this, for which I am very 
 grateful." 
 
 This is what a recreation and health resort 
 has contributed towai'd the solution of one of 
 the most vexing problems in the religious life 
 of America.^ It is unquestionable, however, 
 that the method would have been ineffectual if 
 it had not been for certain individual men — 
 chiefly three: the member of the union who 
 suggested the project, the President of Colorado 
 College, and the Secretar}^ of the Association. 
 As in every other successful effort for practical 
 religious life that I have seen, the chief agency 
 in this was forceful personality. 
 
 The way to the Camp lay over the snow- 
 streaked mountains. The train crawled up 
 the grade. Soon Colorado Springs lay like 
 a map on the table-land below. Up went 
 the train, along gorges, around almost spiral 
 curves. Suddenly it stopped with a jerk. The 
 road was new, and the melting snow had 
 brought down a mass of loosened earth and 
 )"ock upon the tracks. Stock-brokers, miners, 
 bankers, tourists, left the train and walked 
 
 1 The Young Men's Christian Associations of Cleveland and Dayton, 
 Ohio, have succeeded in enlisting the cooperation of wage-earners, though 
 in quite diflferent fashion from that I have just described. I was not fortu- 
 nate enough to include in my observations either of these Ohio cities.
 
 330 COLOEADO 
 
 ahead. There men with crowbars, picks, and 
 shovels were clearing away the debris. Soon 
 darkness fell. In the dim light of lanterns the 
 huge rocks glistened like snow. The gorges 
 grew black and seemingly bottomless. The 
 screech of a whistle echoed and reechoed. A 
 gleam of light shone on the rocks and was 
 reflected in sinuous golden curves on the edge 
 of the rails. The passengers who had gone 
 beyond the landslide scattered to points of 
 safety as the train from Cripple Creek flashed 
 and rumbled past. Immediately an exchange 
 of passengers was made. The two huge loco- 
 motives glared and snorted at each other. 
 Over the pile of stones and earth between 
 them, human creatures, like midgets beneath 
 the masses of rock, darted in and out of the 
 shadows. A man carrying a rifle guarded 
 the express matter. The steam from the en- 
 gines formed a vast sheet on which the moving 
 shadows of gigantic men passed. Prismatic 
 blues and yellows edged this sheet of vapor 
 with color. Yet this scene of light was but 
 a spot in the enveloping blackness. Deep 
 down I knew, I felt, but could not see, was the 
 precipitous slope of the mountain-side. Then
 
 COLOEADO 331 
 
 slowly the train started. Within the car the 
 conversation was of mines and stocks. An- 
 other sudden stop. Another landslide ahead. 
 After a long delay the obstruction was removed 
 with dynamite. Then hours of cautious creep- 
 ing in the darkness. Suddenly in the velvety 
 blackness below gleamed a mass of constella- 
 tions, as if these heights were indeed the very 
 border of the earth, and we were gazing down 
 at the sky beneath us. These nether stars 
 were the lights of Cripple Creek. 
 
 It was after two o'clock Sunday morning 
 when we reached the station. From a street 
 near by, brilliantly lighted, where men and 
 women could be seen entering and leaving the 
 dives and resorts of vice, came the sound of 
 dance music and revelry. At the big hotel 
 gambling-wheels and slot-machines were in 
 evidence. Yet it was in this city, which is 
 called the Camp, that I found, when at last 
 daylight returned, a church with as vigorous 
 and genuine a religious spirit as it has ever 
 been my good fortune to see. Here, in the 
 midst of a district which comprised a popula- 
 tion of fifty thousand, where ten years before 
 there had been nothing but grazing-ground
 
 332 COLOEADO 
 
 for cattle, there was evident a stalwart faith 
 that is rarely developed in communities out- 
 wardly more civilized. 
 
 The small Congregational church was filled 
 with a congregation made up largely of men. 
 There was a quality of spontaneity in the ser- 
 vice that is not too common in public worship. 
 The sermon was rugged in diction, thoughtful, 
 and genuine — every word of it. The Bible 
 class after the morning service was marked by 
 an interchange of ideas, real ideas. It seemed 
 incredible even at the time, but it was invigor- 
 ating. I had occasion afterwards to feel the 
 grip of some of those miners' hands. That 
 was invigorating, too. 
 
 The minister explained, as he pointed out the 
 foundations of a new building in front of his 
 church, that there were the beginnings of a 
 parish house, some day to contain a gymnasium, 
 swimming-tank, reading-room, and other means 
 of wholesome recreation. It was designed to 
 afford young men some other place besides 
 "Hell's Acre" to which they might go for 
 amusement. Where was the money to come 
 from for the cost of construction? The min- 
 ister did not know. I^obody in Cripple Creek 
 seems to know just where money is coming
 
 COLORADO 333 
 
 from. One thing was clear: this parish house 
 was not a " drawing card." As the minister 
 stated it, in order to get hold of men in Cripple 
 Creek, it does no good to shake the tree; you 
 must pick them by hand. 
 
 This method of building the house is char- 
 acteristic of the Camp. It is the abode of 
 idealists. "There are three stages in the history 
 of a mining camp," said the minister. " The 
 first is the stage of the wilderness, without 
 habitation. The second follows the discovery 
 of gold, when the miners, too busy in the early 
 work of prospecting to think of comfort, live in 
 shacks. This invariably ends with a destruc- 
 tive fire. Then comes the stage of permanent 
 building. It is when the miner is living in his 
 shack that he is most luxurious, for then he is 
 really — in his imagination — not living in his 
 shack at all, but in marble and in down." A 
 church in a mining camp cannot wholly escape 
 this idealism. This is one result of the un- 
 conventionality of Cripple Creek. 
 
 But the men of the Camp do not stop with 
 ideals. They are men who do things. And 
 the church is of the same sort. A church of 
 one hundred members that raises eight hundred 
 dollars in one year for missions is certainly
 
 334 COLOEADO 
 
 UO 
 
 not engaged merely in dreaming/ The active 
 energy of the churches in Cripple Creek is, 
 however, to be seen chiefly in the unorganized 
 activity of their individual members. In this 
 respect the Church in the Camp is too much 
 like the Church in the rest of the world. 
 
 It is true that even the Camp, unconven- 
 tional as it is, has not been exempt from doc- 
 trinal controversy. I had the privilege of 
 hearing the end of a debate which centered 
 about the meaning in the New Testament of 
 the Greek verb translated " baptize." The 
 minister who began it undertook to prove that 
 it really signified "immerse," and sneeringly 
 challenged a reply. It is hardly necessary to 
 say that the frequenters of "Hell's Acre" 
 registered no protest against either interpreta- 
 tion. In fairness, however, it should be said 
 that this exhibition of denominational pertness 
 was probably unusual, and, at any rate, while 
 it lasted was marked by a vigor and candor 
 wholly appropriate to the character of the 
 region. 
 
 Above all, religion in the Camp is saved 
 
 » A few months after the date of my visit the public gambling-houses were 
 closed and the professional gamblers driven from town. This was due to the 
 energy and courage of a few men in the churches backed up by public 
 opinion and the integrity of a judge.
 
 COLOEADO 335 
 
 from the depredations of its most treacherous 
 enemy — sanctimony. The sanctimonious man 
 is to be found there, I know, for I saw him, but 
 he is " sized up." If he is a vicious hypocrite, 
 he has no chance, for, as one man expressed 
 it, " vice is so open here that a hypocrite 
 can't Uve a loose Ufe on the quiet"; conse- 
 quently he takes, or appears to take, " a tre- 
 mendous tumble." If he is merely a Pharisee, 
 he fares no better, for a Pharisee is only a reli- 
 gious or moral snob, and in a mining camp 
 there are too many grim and exciting realities 
 for men to stand in awe of any kind of snob- 
 bery. The practical absence of all moral and 
 religious pretense enhances the power of a life 
 governed by genuine moral principle and reli- 
 gious impulse. Good coin is more efficient as 
 a circulating medium when practicable coun- 
 terfeits are made impossible. 
 
 Certain practical results from this absence 
 of pretense were evident to me in Cripple 
 Creek. In the first place, since most opposi- 
 tion to religion is really a form of resentment 
 against imposture, open confession of religion 
 in Cripple Creek, just because it was almost 
 certain to be genuine, appeared to meet with no 
 ridicule or antagonism. When, for instance.
 
 336 COLORADO 
 
 on Sunday night the minister and I entered a 
 disreputable dance-hall, our presence was un- 
 noticed although my companion wore a clerical 
 costume. A few doors away a " Gospel Mis- 
 sion," with dives on each side, was being con- 
 ducted without the least sign of molestation; 
 and near by in the same street, where the side- 
 walks were used with almost the same freedom 
 that the houses were, the Salvation Army was 
 carrying on a meeting, and was not only unmo- 
 lested, so I was assured, but also thoroughly 
 respected. Such, I understood, had been the 
 experience of the Salvation Army continually 
 at Cripple Creek. Indeed, the men of the 
 Camp, because they live in an atmosphere of 
 hatred of cant, are emphatically open-minded, 
 and will give a hearing to a preacher as scarcely 
 any other body of men will do. My clerical 
 Congregational guide said that he often had 
 preached to crowds on the streets, and had al- 
 ways been respectfully heard; that, in fact, 
 some of the most active members of his church 
 he first saw in a street crowd at a preaching. 
 This, then, I noticed, was one result of the 
 absence of cant — that the religious life was 
 accorded respect. 
 
 In the second place, certain methods of reli-
 
 COLOEADO 337 
 
 gious work that elsewhere would have the taint 
 of conventionalism and would seem pietistic 
 seemed in the mining camp to be spontaneous 
 and genuine. ISTeither in the accounts I heard 
 of " conversions " nor in personal experiences 
 in the church did I discover anything either 
 unctuous or perfunctory. A spirit of genuine- 
 ness invests even conventional forms with new 
 value. 
 
 In the third place, the freedom from pretense 
 increased the value of the test, " By their fruits 
 ye shall know them." The mine superinten- 
 dent who succeeded in bringing about the regu- 
 lar closing of his mine every Sunday testified 
 by his action to the strength of his religious 
 convictions all the more because he curried no 
 man's favor by his action. To what a different 
 tree the same fruit may sometimes bear witness 
 was illustrated by another mine superintendent 
 who closed his mine on Sundays while his wife 
 visited him from the East. That bit of pre- 
 tense was not indigenous to the soil of the 
 Camp. When left to itself. Cripple Creek may 
 be immoral, but it certainly is temperamentally 
 sincere. For that reason I could more readily 
 believe the testimony of the superintendent of a 
 mine that he wanted religious men to work in
 
 338 COLORADO 
 
 his mine, because they were free from vicious 
 habits, they were more efficient workmen, and 
 took more interest in the company's welfare and 
 success than others did. Cripple Creek, just 
 because it is free from pretense, places upon the 
 religious life a very real and entirely distinctive 
 ethical value. 
 
 The City, the Resort, and the Camp, each in 
 its own way, set before men with unconcealed 
 contrast the good and the evil from which to 
 choose. There is little mingling of the black 
 with the white. Somehow it is very wholesome 
 — this facing of the fact of evil, and making 
 deliberate choice for or against it. Whether 
 you think or not, as I do, that it is exhilarat- 
 ing, it is certainly true that in Colorado, as 
 in few other regions, the Church has a freedom 
 to make clear that there is no compromise be- 
 tween the evil that men should hate and shun 
 and the good that men should choose, the Christ 
 they should follow, the God they should love 
 and serve.
 
 SATIS SUPERQUE
 
 XIY 
 SATIS SUPEKQUE 
 
 THIS book really ends with the preceding 
 chapter. Whatever is hereinafter written 
 is almost entirely outside of the original plan, 
 which was merely to record observations, not 
 to make wide generalizations. It was inevita- 
 ble, however, that, as a result of my journey, I 
 should reach some general conclusions as to 
 religious life in America, as readers of the pre- 
 ceding chapters have undoubtedly already dis- 
 covered. Inasmuch as several readers of the 
 articles in periodical form have expressed a 
 desire to know what these conclusions are, it is 
 not unlikely that others may have a similar 
 desire. For that reason I incorporate into this 
 chapter certain questions in much the same 
 form in which they were put to me, and to each 
 one attach an answer. 
 
 341
 
 342 SATIS SUPEEQUE 
 
 To what is the manifest reaction against reli- 
 gious life and observance in New England 
 due? — to a laxity in theology, or to an intel- 
 lectual revolt against the doctrines of Puritan- 
 ism? This question assumes as true the 
 decadence of religion in rural 'New England, 
 of which much has recently been said and 
 written. That decadence has been sometimes 
 over-emphasized. The picture of it has too often 
 been copied from the representations of the 
 Yankee who has fallen into the habit of con- 
 trasting with " the good old times " all the evils 
 of the present, who is experiencing " the sad- 
 ness of survival," and makes the most of it. 
 Nevertheless, after all is said, some decadence 
 is very real. It has unquestionably been ac- 
 companied by a looseness of thinking, a flab- 
 biness of mind, that is evident not only in the- 
 ology, but in all intellectual processes. I am 
 inclined to think that this mental softness is a 
 result rather than a cause; that it is in part a 
 consequence of the loss of distinctness in ideas 
 that is suffered whenever men replace narrow 
 conceptions with broader ones; and, in part, a 
 consequence of economic change. Much of the 
 disregard of religious observance is due less to 
 a deliberate intellectual revolt than to a natural
 
 SATIS SUPEEQUE 343 
 
 reaction against the harsh doctrines and more 
 particularly the practical severities of previous 
 generations. I know that many men and 
 women, whose childhood was made miserable 
 by the heartless and unlovely form assumed by 
 the piety of their parents, have, in their attempt 
 to avoid making their children miserable, neg- 
 lected to give them even elementary religious 
 and moral instruction. The uneducated Yankee 
 infidel is the project of an unintelligent reaction 
 from an unreligious pietism. Apathy, however, 
 is more serious than open revolt, and the dis- 
 regard of religion in JN'ew England is in its 
 nature not so much antagonistic as apathetic. 
 The cause for this, I believe, is not reaction 
 against Puritanism, nor laxity in theology, but 
 a social condition. ISTew England has been 
 gradually but steadily bled. Its most vital ele- 
 ment, the enterprising young people, has for 
 years been drawn into other parts of the ISTation. 
 Religious indifference, as well as intellectual 
 inertness, in ^ew England is only one part of 
 the general languor that is a symptom of 
 anaemia. 
 
 Is there likely to be, under present theologi- 
 cal conditions, a revival of genuine religious 
 belief and conduct in I^ew England? If there
 
 344 SATIS SUPERQUE 
 
 is to be such renewal of life, two conditions 
 must be fulfilled. First, the process of drain- 
 ing off the best elements of the population 
 must be diminished; second, there must be an 
 intelligent and deliberate effort, impelled by 
 enthusiasm, to adjust the work of the churches 
 to the changed social environment and intellec- 
 tual temper. In diminishing emigration theo- 
 logical ideas can of course have no effect. 
 One rural district in Maine, for instance, which 
 thirty years ago maintained a school of forty 
 pupils, now sends to its little tumble-down 
 school-house only four children. The lifeless- 
 ness of that school-room can scarcely be imag- 
 ined. One day, when I chanced to visit it, the 
 mosquitoes were swarming in by the loosely flap- 
 ping netting at the windows because the teacher 
 and her pupils lacked brains or energy enough 
 to tack the netting down in place. Two of the 
 children were almost as untrained as the crea- 
 tures of the woods. In another country school 
 which I entered during recess the boys were 
 stupidly gathered about the window. They 
 had not life enough even for play. They re- 
 sponded willingly enough when I proposed to 
 teach them the game of " duck on the rock," 
 but inertly ceased all play as soon as I left
 
 SATIS SUPERQUE 345 
 
 them. Such communities as those, where even 
 the boys lack zest for outdoor play, do not 
 need doctrine, harsh or mellow, but an infusion 
 of new life. I think I am not alone in the 
 opinion that already present economic condi- 
 tions are permitting 'New England to recover 
 its \dtality. Moreover, there are signs that the 
 churches are trying to adapt themselves to 
 the changed environment and intellectual tem- 
 per. IN^ot a few of the younger ministers, who 
 recognize that religion cannot without disaster 
 be severed from the multiform activities of 
 humanity, are using their wits as well as losing 
 their own lives in introducing new elements of 
 vitality into communities that have contributed 
 their native elements of vitality to the large 
 cities and the great West. In one respect, of 
 course, religious belief — as distinguished from 
 ecclesiastical dogma — is at the source of this 
 effort for adjustment; for when ministers be- 
 lieve, as they do far more strongly than they 
 did a generation or two ago, that God is in all 
 his world, that his kingdom is not a mere 
 demesne around the pulpit and the "family 
 altar," but an all-inclusive empire, they will 
 not be satisfied with letting economic and social 
 reinvigoration come as the selfishness of men
 
 346 SATIS SUPEEQUE 
 
 may dictate without the contributing force of 
 religious impulse. What sacrifice such belief 
 may involve is indicated by the experience of a 
 certain young minister who went directly from 
 the theological seminary into a lumber town of 
 ^N^ew Hampshire. There, under the auspices 
 of the missionary society of his denomination, 
 he organized a church. Highly educated, he 
 devoted his mental acquirements to the im- 
 provement of the town schools. Athletic, he 
 used his physique in compelling the disorderly 
 element in the population to respect if not 
 wholly to obey the laws. Bred in the lumber 
 regions, he helped to cut the wood for the 
 church building he succeeded in erecting. 
 Broad in his sympathies and interests, he in- 
 cluded in his church building a reading-room 
 and gymnasium. Distrustful of traditionalism, 
 he did not hesitate to make his preaching and 
 teaching accord with modern knowledge. 
 Strongly evangelical in temperament, he drew 
 people into the church by the earnestness with 
 which he declared his faith in the power of his 
 crucified and risen Master, Christ. At the end 
 of a few years — perhaps some half-dozen — he 
 had transformed that community. But he had 
 given his life. From sheer exhaustion he died,
 
 SATIS SUPERQUE 347 
 
 broken down in health and mind, a vicarious 
 sacrifice for the people he had served. Though 
 I knovi^ of no other such man as this, yet I do 
 know that, in different ways, in accordance 
 with different temperaments and different 
 communities, other men are denying them- 
 selves much which, being human, they prize — 
 comfort, advancement, congenial friends, ap- 
 preciation, even opportunities for their own 
 mental and moral growth — in order that they 
 may put what vitality they have into lethargic 
 communities. In brief, then, I look for a 
 steady renewal of religious life in JN^ew Eng- 
 land, first, because I think the economic pro- 
 cess which has resulted in its present lethargy 
 has spent its force and in some places is being 
 reversed ; second, because many of the younger 
 generation of ministers, governed by the belief 
 that nothing human is outside of the sphere of 
 religion, are gi\dng, with no small cost to 
 themselves, which is the more praiseworthy as 
 well as the more effectual because largely un- 
 premeditated, the benefit of their intelligent 
 energy to supply the very diverse needs of 
 their communities. 
 
 As the South develops, is it likely to go 
 through the same transition as that which is
 
 348 SATIS SUPERQUE 
 
 observable in Kew England? "Without at- 
 tempting to dogmatize, I think I can say pretty 
 confidently that it is not. For at least these 
 three reasons: In the first place, the economic 
 and social changes that have been taking place 
 in the South during the past generation have 
 been very different — in some respects quite 
 opposite — to those which have been taking 
 place in New England. I do not need to point 
 out the contrast in detail; it is entirely too 
 well known. The effect of economic change 
 upon a Southern rural community I have 
 already had occasion to point out in the chap- 
 ter on "A Virginia Country Rector." It is 
 sufficient here to say that whereas the typical 
 ]S^ew Englander of to-day is reminiscently de- 
 spondent, his typical Southern contemporary is 
 hopeful; the former has felt the loss of social 
 vitality, the latter is just beginning to feel its 
 influx. With this difference between the eco- 
 nomic conditions of I^ew England and those 
 of the South, their religious conditions cannot 
 be the same. In the second place, the ortho- 
 doxy of the South, though it is quite as tradi- 
 tional and in form is quite as stern as that of 
 New England ever was, is by no means marked 
 by the actual practical austerities that made the
 
 SATIS SUPERQUE 349 
 
 Calvinism of Puritan 'New England at last 
 unendurable. Though there are in the South 
 many of the same mind with the Presbyterian 
 minister who in conversation with me protested 
 against the belief in the universal Fatherhood 
 of God and the brotherhood of all men as a 
 virtual denial of the Christian faith, they belie 
 their harsh theories by the habitual suavity of 
 theirmanner andkindliness of their heart. There 
 can hardly be the same reaction against Southern 
 orthodoxy as there has been against the Puri- 
 tanical rigor of the North. In the third place, 
 as is indicated in the chapter on " Kew Reli- 
 gious Tendencies in the Old South," theological 
 ideas at variance with traditional rehgious the- 
 ories are being diffused very gradually and 
 quietly through the South, almost without 
 observation. They made their way in very 
 different fashion in IsTew England — creating 
 turbulence, dissension, enmities, and schisms. 
 The difference is that between a conquering 
 army of invaders and a vast number of quietly 
 straggling immigrants. The modern concep- 
 tions that descended upon I*^ew England as 
 young and immature soldiers with the roar of 
 cannon have in the course of years become good 
 citizens, and are now going South as responsible
 
 350 SATIS SUPEKQUE 
 
 middle-aged homesteaders. There they are 
 meeting with suspicion, but not with armed re- 
 sistance. The South is undoubtedly undergoing 
 a transition from old to new religious ideas, 
 but the process is likely to be not revolutionary 
 but gradual, peaceful, and possibly therefore 
 the more thorough. 
 
 Is the religious condition of the negro improv- 
 ing or deteriorating? Concerning the negro 
 race as a whole I have already expressed the 
 judgment that no safe generalization can be 
 made. This, however, can be said with cer- 
 tainty, that the race is showing both the good 
 and the ill effects of libeity. Large numbers 
 are wholly unfit for conditions of freedom, and 
 are rapidly succumbing to their environment. 
 Such show their deterioration physically, mor- 
 ally, and religiously, by their susceptibility to 
 disease, their non-resistance to evil, and their 
 lapse from even the hysterical forms of religious 
 emotionalism. On the other hand, large num- 
 bers — larger than is generally known even in 
 the South — have found in the conditions of 
 freedom their chance for physical, moral, and 
 religious development. Among such the de- 
 velopment possibly has been too rapid, too much 
 of the nature of sudden reaction, to be alto-
 
 SATIS SUPERQUE 351 
 
 gether wholesome. One negro minister said — 
 and I had good reason to \ akie his judgment in 
 this respect — that his congregation, through 
 fear of emotional excesses, to which, as a people, 
 they felt themselves to be peculiarly liable, had 
 acquired the fault of unresponsiveness and 
 frigidity. If a race is to be judged by its 
 leaders, the religious condition of the negro in 
 the South has much in it of promise. 
 
 Signs are not lacking of the political suprem- 
 acy of the West; what is its religious influ- 
 ence? There are two distinct regions in what 
 is commonly called the West ; between the Mid- 
 dle West and the pioneer country there is the 
 strongest kind of contrast. I^either of them, it 
 seems to me, is influential in forming theologi- 
 cal conceptions; both of them are influential in 
 suggesting experiments in church methods. In 
 these respects they are alike, but, as far as I 
 could see, in no other. Before going to the 
 Middle West I was led into expecting to find it 
 governed by traditionalism. In that I was mis- 
 taken. The Middle West is no more enterpris- 
 ing in business affairs than it is in religious 
 schemes. Indeed, nowhere else has Christianity 
 been so diversely garbed or so variously vul- 
 garized. At the same time, religion in the
 
 352 SATIS SUPEEQUE 
 
 Middle "West is essentially conventional. Its 
 standards are, generally speaking, external 
 rather than intrinsic. This, however, is only a 
 part — an unfortunately necessary part — of the 
 process by which a composite population is mak- 
 ing itself homogeneous. The social conscious- 
 ness which is a result of that process has fitted 
 the Middle West for performing what is and 
 will increasingly continue to be its chief service 
 to the religious life of the IS^ation — namely, its 
 constant insistence, partly by word, more effec- 
 tively by example, upon the social bearing of 
 religion. The pioneer West, in distinction from 
 the middle region, may be godless, wicked, sor- 
 did — though I do not say that it is — but above 
 all things it is genuine. It is probably too new 
 and too isolated to have much influence upon 
 the country at large, but what influence it 
 exerts in religion must be in creating and inten- 
 sifying the hatred of sham and the love of 
 reality and candor. 
 
 How much of an ethical force are the 
 churches of this country? Not by any means 
 so great as they ought rightfully to be. This 
 is partly because they spend so much time in 
 trying to satisfy the insatiable human craving 
 for superficial speculative philosophy by retail-
 
 SATIS SUPEKQUE 353 
 
 mg old dogmas supposed to be true because 
 they are old, or by manufacturing new creeds 
 supposed to be true because they are new. It 
 is partly also because they too frequently lack 
 the courage to deal plainly with specific evils, 
 for fear of unpleasant consequences. Such 
 courage is not always shown as it was by those 
 ministers in a Southern city I passed through, 
 who, during the season when the races were 
 exclusively engrossing the attention of even 
 members of their churches, preached very 
 directly and pointedly against the then preva- 
 lent madness of gambling. In spite, however, 
 of their defects, the churches are a tremen- 
 dously strong ethical force in the life of the 
 people ; though I know superlatives are danger- 
 ous, I do not hesitate to say, the strongest. 
 Indeed, the churches cannot help exerting a 
 very distinct ethical influence, if only for the 
 fact that they are constantly engaged in mak- 
 ing known the greatest body of ethical teach- 
 ins: in the world — the Bible. Even men who 
 are non-church-goers are frankly shocked when 
 a church falls away from high ethical standards. 
 Nothing can more definitely indicate the extent 
 of the Church's ethical influence. The fact is 
 that the Church is universally subjected to a
 
 354 SATIS SUPERQUE 
 
 critical estimate according to ideals by which 
 no other institution is measured. In compari- 
 son with such ideals the Church is obviously 
 defective as an ethical force; in comparison 
 with other institutions the Church is immeasur- 
 ably superior. This I found to be manifestly 
 true in all regions. 
 
 Are the churches intellectually adjusted to 
 the life of to-day? There is no weakness of 
 the Church which I found more obvious than 
 its failure to adjust itself to intellectual stan- 
 dards that obtain in all life outside the Church. 
 This weakness is so wide in its extent that the 
 church Avhich is intellectually modern is usually 
 self-complacent — not to say intellectually 
 snobbish — because of its strength in this one 
 respect. In general, ministers, as I met them, 
 are very much better acquainted with contem- 
 porary scientific and philosophic thought, and 
 very much more in agreement with it, than lay- 
 men. This, of course, is not to be deplored; 
 but it did seem to me deplorable that so many 
 ministers among those with whom I talked felt 
 themselves subject to a humiliating supervision, 
 and not infrequently constraint, exercised by 
 laymen whose mental attitude had been unaf- 
 fected by modern knowledge, except to be 
 made more obstinatelv traditional.
 
 SATIS SUPERQUE 355 
 
 Is the Church developing or losing spnpathy 
 with the working classes? The cases I saw of 
 conscious attempts to fashion the Church into 
 shape to suit the demands of Avage-earners 
 were sporadic. Their number, I think, is in- 
 creasing. Such attempts are indicative of a 
 growing desire on the part of the Church to 
 obliterate in religious life the class distinctions 
 that have grown up in consequence of present 
 industrial conditions. I think that along with 
 this desire is a growing sympathy with labor 
 organizations as forces which, in spite of their 
 frequent exhibitions of unintelligence, selfish- 
 ness, and rancor, are means by which the 
 Church may approach and benefit large num- 
 bers of men. The real feeling of the Church 
 has often been obscured, as I have once before 
 indicated, by the attitude of superiority affected 
 by men and women prominent in the Church, 
 and on that account naturally but mistakenly 
 supposed to be representative of it. 
 
 If the working classes are perceptibly losing 
 their confidence in the Church, what is to be the 
 outcome? Can it be determined by anything 
 that the Church, and sincere believers and 
 workers in the Church, can do to bring the 
 Church back to the people? The outcome of 
 the present relation between the Church and
 
 356 SATIS SXJPEEQUE 
 
 such working people as are not of the Church 
 can be determined only by the Chui'ch. The 
 burden of bringing about a change rests upon 
 the Church, not upon the alienated classes. 
 That the burden does not justly belong alto- 
 gether where it actually rests will make no 
 difference in the degree of its weight. Indeed, 
 it is one function of the Church to bear unjust 
 conditions, as its Master did, and by bearing 
 cure them. Without question the willingness 
 to accept the entire responsibility of securing 
 the confidence of those workingmen who are 
 now indifferent or antagonistic exists in the 
 Church; but it lacks adequate expression. 
 The Church needs to direct its power of intol- 
 erance — of which it has suflacient — against 
 those of its own constituency who are misrep- 
 resenting it and denpng the spirit of its faith 
 by intensifying class antagonism. One thing 
 that the sincere believers and workers in the 
 Church can do to bring back the Church to the 
 people is to follow in this respect the guidance 
 of its ministers rather than its "pillars." In 
 the meantime the sympathy that is too little 
 expressed is more effective than is ordinarily 
 known. Here it may be opportune to observe 
 that, in spite of a frequently expressed opinion
 
 SATIS SrPEEQUE 357 
 
 to the contrary, the Church holds popular con- 
 fidence to a remarkable degree. This can be 
 especially seen when any great philanthropic 
 service is to be rendered; the appeal is first of 
 all to the Church. This is true whether the 
 project is the building of a village school-house 
 or the relief of destitution following some gi-eat 
 calamity of national importance. 
 
 Is there a tendency toward Christian unity, 
 not of organization, but of feehng? In other 
 words, are Christian people pulling together or 
 pulling apart? The accounts I heard concerning 
 the sharp practices employed by ministers tc 
 gain advantages over what they counted rival 
 denominations made belief in a real and earnest 
 tendency toward Christian unity very difficult. 
 For instance, one Episcopal rector, of it mat- 
 ters not where, told me how he had been ob- 
 structed in his plan to enlarge a mission which 
 his church maintained. He had gone to a 
 woman, a relative of his, but an adherent of 
 another denomination, to purchase from her a 
 lot of land in the vicinity of his mission, for 
 a new building. Her pastor being informed of 
 this fact, and knowing that the Episcopal mis- 
 sion was in a critical period because it was 
 forced to move, privately induced his parish-
 
 358 SATIS SUPERQUE 
 
 ioner to give this land to her owii church for a 
 new mission, as a rival to that which had al- 
 ready been long established as the only one in 
 the immediate region. AVhen asked by the 
 rector for an explanation, he showed pride in 
 his strategic move, making as his only defense 
 the gratuitous assumption, " You would have 
 done the same thing if you had been in my 
 place." Another minister, Congregational, 
 told me that to his town, in which his was the 
 only church, came a visiting minister of another 
 denomination, with the purpose of establishing 
 a "second church. The Congregational minis- 
 ter, believing that this church should be estab- 
 lished if it were needed, gave the visitor not 
 only a welcome but an opportunity to state his 
 case from the pulpit of the Congregational 
 church. After accepting the hospitality and 
 making his appeal, the visitor undertook, before 
 he left the church building, to induce one of 
 the more active of his host's congregation to 
 enter the rival entei-prise he was trying to 
 establish. No amount of merely sentimental 
 talk about common aims for the salvation of 
 souls can make much real headway against such 
 violations of strict honesty and ordinary cour- 
 tesy as these. My experiences, however, lead
 
 SATIS SUPERQUE 359 
 
 me to believe that such practices are excep- 
 tional, and, when they occur, are reprehended 
 by the public opinion of the churches. Against 
 them the real counteracting force is to be found 
 in movements for the united action of churches 
 and Christian people. 
 
 Is there any possibility, however remote, of a 
 working union of the various Protestant sects? 
 I think that such possibility is indicated by the 
 various instances which came under my obser- 
 vation of organic effort : ministers' associations, 
 church federations, and other interdenomi- 
 national movements, especially those among 
 young people, those for moral reform, and 
 those for missionary enterprise, l^othing that 
 I observed gave any sign of the form which a 
 future woi'king union of Protestant denomina- 
 tions might take. Of onl}^ one thing concern- 
 ing it can I speak with any confidence. Unless 
 present tendencies are reversed, such union will 
 come about through the desire, not for agree- 
 ment in doctrine, nor for outward parade of 
 power, but for effectiveness in practical reli- 
 gious activity. 
 
 Of what value are those institutions of Chris- 
 tianity which are external to the Church? 
 Their value to the Church, as I have already
 
 360 SATIS SUPERQUE 
 
 indicated in the answers to the two preceding 
 questions, consists in the fact that they are rudi- 
 mentary forms of a working union of the differ- 
 ent branches of the Church. More than that, 
 they are .doing things which the churches as 
 such have been unable or have simply neglected 
 to do. I found the Young Men's Christian 
 Association notable in both these respects. 
 These modern extra-church institutions, as they 
 may be termed, seem to be doing for the Protes- 
 tant Church of America what the monastic and 
 mendicant orders did for the Catholic Church 
 of the Middle Ages. The parallel is, of course, 
 far from being exact, but it is close enough to 
 suggest that the Church of to-day will be wise 
 if it will accept and make use of these institu- 
 tions as the Church of the Middle Ages accepted 
 and made use of the orders. 
 
 In regard to commonplace virtues, such as 
 temperance, industry, and the sense of obliga- 
 tion on the part of those who have wealth or 
 education or other advantages, is the present 
 tendency upward or downward? In spite of 
 some experiences which left me in the mood to 
 distrust every appearance of virtue and decency, 
 I found myself at the end of my journey firmly 
 believing that the present ethical tendency is
 
 SATIS SUPERQUE 301 
 
 upward. So far as I could compare my obser- 
 vation with testimony as to past conditions, I 
 should say that moral standards among Ameri- 
 cans to-day are much less formal and provincial 
 than they were a generation or so ago, much 
 saner, much more fundamental ; based less upon 
 precept, more upon principle. For instance, 
 there is prol)ably more drinking but less drunk- 
 enness ; certainly much more respect and regard 
 for those whose convictions lead them to estab- 
 lish their own temperance by practicing total 
 abstinence, while there is less vituperation for 
 those who do not see any necessity for practic- 
 ing total abstinence in order to establish their 
 own temperance. Idleness has never, I think, 
 been a characteristically American fault; I 
 could not learn that it had increased, though I 
 did see very plainly that in time spent for rec- 
 reation there had been a very decided increase 
 over the time so spent a generation ago. There 
 seemed to me to be on the part of many individ- 
 uals a greater sense than ever of responsibility 
 to society. This is one phase, of course, of the 
 social consciousness the increase of which was 
 evident everywhere I traveled. 
 
 Is the devotional spirit in religious life in- 
 creasing or decreasing? Although in general
 
 362 SATIS SUPERQUE 
 
 the tendency in religious life in America seems 
 to be toward a keener ethical sensitiveness 
 rather than toward a devouter sentiment, the 
 effect of my experiences was to increase my 
 sense of the value and the real permanence of 
 personal religious feeling. This seems at first 
 sight to be in face of the fact that there were 
 signs almost everywhere that the traditional 
 forms by which such devoutness has been 
 expressed by Protestants — such as the " prayer- 
 meeting" and the "experience-meeting" — 
 are decadent. On the other hand, it is thor- 
 oughly in accord with the fact that there were 
 signs almost everywhere that the use of liturgy 
 in public worship is becoming more and more 
 prevalent. What often has been and still is 
 deplored as a loss of spiritual life is to no 
 small extent really an improvement in taste. 
 In other words, it is l^ecoming more and more 
 recognized that spiritual beauty cannot be cul- 
 tivated without formal beauty; and, as there is 
 no trace of formal beauty in the ordinary 
 prayer-meeting, that some other means of cul- 
 tivating spiritual beauty must be used. The 
 substitution of liturgy for the prayer-meeting 
 is, however, more than a sign of improved taste ; 
 it is a result of changed feelings regarding the
 
 SATIS SrPERQUE 3C3 
 
 devotional life. Xot long ago devout Chris- 
 tians saw no impropriety in talking openly and 
 publicly about their most intimate religious 
 experiences for the edification of other Chris- 
 tians and the conversion of the unregenerate. 
 Xow a growing number of Christian people 
 feel that to make a routine matter of public 
 talking about intimate religious experiences not 
 only vulgarizes those experiences, but also 
 fosters self-complacency and invites cant and 
 false pretense. They are consequently reserv- 
 ing their intimate religious experiences for their 
 own private devotions, and for public devotion 
 find satisfaction in those forms which so express 
 conunon human needs and common human 
 aspirations that a few or many who are gath- 
 ered together may unite not merely in hearing 
 a clergyman worship for them, but in the very 
 act of worship itself. I have not the space here 
 to show how the historic liturgies also allow 
 for the observance of private devotions at the 
 same time with public worship, so that each may 
 be helped by the other, nor how the abandon- 
 ment of the prayer-meeting does not mean the 
 abandonment of the best means for cultivating 
 religious experience. I have said enough, how- 
 ever, to show why I believe the decadence of
 
 364 SATIS SUPEEQUE 
 
 the devotional spirit because of the desuetude 
 of the prayer-meeting is more apparent than 
 real. The chief present impediment to the 
 growth of the devotional spirit is not the com- 
 mercial spirit of the day, much less the increased 
 practical activities of the Church, but the fruit- 
 less attempts on the part of both ministers and 
 laymen to preserve a religious form which, 
 though of comparatively modern origin as a 
 regular institution of the Church, is totally 
 unsuited to the legitimate, not to say whole- 
 some, tendencies of the people. I say whole- 
 some, because I believe that much of the public 
 expression of personal experience, which the 
 present tendency is to abandon, is likely to 
 make the individual self-centered and con- 
 spicuous. 
 
 Is there more, or is there less, of reverence, 
 more or less of moral stalwartness, in the 
 life of American homes? Unquestionably 
 much in present social conditions is full of 
 danger to the continuance of wholesome family 
 life. This danger is quite as apparent in peace- 
 ful rural districts as in the big cities. Cer- 
 tainly the religious life of the ordinary Ameri- 
 can family is not as conspicuous as it once 
 was. I am inclined to think, on the other
 
 SATIS SUPERQUE 365 
 
 hand, that there has been a markedly mcreased 
 recognition of the need of early moral and 
 spiritual training of children. The fact is that 
 family life is rather too intimate for the ordi- 
 nary observer to see much of or to talk much 
 about. 
 
 What is the general tendency of views 
 regarding the Bible? People in America may 
 be divided into two categories, determined by 
 their attitude toward the Bible. These may 
 be called, for convenience, the literalists and 
 the idealists. The literalists are those who 
 believe that religious faith should be molded by 
 the Bible; that the Bible is the only true 
 source of Christian belief. This category is 
 not made up wholly of those who are adhe- 
 rents of the Church; indeed, most of the people 
 who are unconnected with any church take this 
 point of view by assuming that no one is a 
 Christian unless he derives his beliefs from the 
 Bible. It is from the literalists — both adhe- 
 rents and non-adherents of the Church — that 
 the new sects derive their supporters. By 
 simply persuading people that the Bible incul- 
 cates the belief in a visible return of Christ, or 
 the practice of feet-washing, or the sacrament 
 of triple immersion, or the obligation to treat
 
 366 SATIS SUPERQUE 
 
 disease without medicine, these sects multiply 
 their converts. The reason why so many 
 literalists are not enrolled in the churches is 
 not because they do not sufficiently accept the 
 authority of the Bible, but because, through the 
 multiplicity of disagreeing interpreters, they 
 are confused in their minds as to what the 
 Bible really does definitely teach. Some man 
 — or woman — with vigorous, domineering per- 
 sonality, who can make his interpretations of 
 Scriptui'e more definite to the popular mind than 
 rival sectarian leaders, is the chief explanation 
 of every one of several remarkable cults that 
 have spread] in America. In contrast to the 
 literalists are the idealists, as those may be 
 termed who assume that religion is not the 
 product of a book, but that the Book is a 
 product of religion. They believe that religion 
 is not obedience to a recorded law, but a life 
 whose motive power is the Infinite Spirit. 
 They accept the Bible not as the source of that 
 life but as a means for its development. To 
 them interpretations of the Bible are of great but 
 not of supreme unportance. Over these idealists, 
 using the term in this very limited and inac- 
 curate sense, no sect based merely on an ex- 
 planation of Scripture text can have much if
 
 SATIS SUPEEQUE 367 
 
 any influence. The literalists in America to- 
 day are quite as dependent upon the letter as 
 hterahsts always have been. The idealists, 
 however, are much more in accord with modern 
 intellectual tendencies, and, though probably 
 very much in the minority, are, in my opinion, 
 decidedly growing in numbers and influence. 
 This is particularly true of clergymen. 
 
 Is there any likelihood that the experience of 
 this country will be like that of France, where, 
 as is commonly supposed, there is a definite 
 line of demarcation between the few devoted 
 adherents of the Church, composed chiefly of 
 clerics and women, and the great body of the 
 population, which is indifferent to the Church, 
 except as an institution for the performance of 
 certain formalities? Decidedly and emphati- 
 cally, no. For three reasons. To paraphrase 
 the saying of Demosthenes, the first is liberty, 
 the second is liberty, and the third is liberty. 
 
 In the first place, the religious impulse in 
 America, quite otherwise than in France, has 
 been left free from political interference. In 
 France, as indeed in a large part of Europe, a 
 man's attitude toward the Church is determined, 
 not only by religious faith, but also by political 
 considerations. In the United States, a man in
 
 368 SATIS SUPERQUE 
 
 determining his attitude toward the Church is 
 free to be governed solely by religious motive. 
 That there is a difference in effect from this 
 difference of condition is obvious. 
 
 In the second place, religion in America has 
 been allowed to meet knowledge freely, on an 
 open field. In France religion is confined, on 
 the one hand, to the ignorant and superstitious 
 who are not bothered with intellectual difficul- 
 ties, and, on the other hand, the highly educated 
 few who have the trained vision to see that re- 
 ligion is not identical with its traditional forms. 
 The great bulk of the people who have know- 
 ledge enough to see that traditional forms of re- 
 ligion are incompatible with reality, and yet who 
 have not knowledge enough to see that these 
 traditional forms are not identical with religion, 
 are, for the most part, those who are alienated. 
 In America the very weakness of Christianity 
 — namely, its multiple forms — is its strength ; 
 for it is constant evidence that these forms can- 
 not be religion. Religion in America is prob- 
 ably vaguer, but it is not impossible to the 
 ordinary intelligence, as it is in France. The 
 recent religious movements among students in 
 American colleges offer a concrete illustration
 
 SATIS SUPERQUE 369 
 
 of the effect that intellectual liberty has had in 
 preserving religious vitality in America. 
 
 In the third place, the people of America are 
 intellectually and morally free to follow the 
 guidance of intellectual and moral leaders. It 
 has been shown that in America it takes about 
 a generation for a new idea, well established by 
 experts, to become popularly disseminated and 
 accepted. It has been true in politics, in educa- 
 tion, in religion, more than once. A professor 
 of Church history once was asked by a student 
 whether a statement regarding the early Church 
 made by a professor of philosophy was sound. 
 " No," was the answer ; " that was the hypothe- 
 sis thirty years ago, but a different conclusion 
 has since been definitely established. Church 
 history is not his department, so he is about 
 thirty years behind the Church historians. I 
 suppose I am about thirty years behind the 
 metaphysicians." Each of those professors 
 represented in turn the people, while the other 
 represented the leader. If, therefore, the pres- 
 ent position of leaders in religious thought can 
 be accepted as a guide, future religious life in 
 America will be marked by tendencies toward 
 a religion less dependent upon intellectual
 
 370 SATIS SUPEKQUE 
 
 hypotheses, and therefore less timid of intel- 
 lectual change; toward a faith less dependent 
 upon the external bulwark of literalism; toward 
 a less materialistic interpretation of life; toward 
 a religion more ethical in character; toward a 
 desire for beauty of religious expression, at any 
 rate in public worship ; toward a more confident 
 belief in the reality of religious experience ; and 
 toward a more frequent recourse to the Chris- 
 tian Church in its various forms and through 
 its various instrumentalities, not so much for 
 doctrine as for the expression of devotional 
 feeling, for ethical impulse, and for opportunities 
 of doing good after the teaching and practice of 
 Jesus of Kazareth.
 
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