to them, and provide a spiritual motive for a life of goodness, kindness, and friendliness by offering tranquillity to this neurally distraught, aching eyed, weary-eared generation, which has been ridden at full gallop by the uplifters, with a curb bit, sharp rowels, and burrs under the saddle, until it fairly cries out for respite.

But the churches, accustomed to taking their cues from secular institutions of good intent, are fearful to speak of the Beatitudes. They suspect that they might be considered sleepy and spiritless. They hesitate to announce that they are possessed of a blessed palliative to counteract the psychopathic effects of overstimulation. It is too grave a risk, they think, in face of the fact that every other organization-commercial, political, industrial, educational, humanitarian

- is screaming at the top of its lungs, 'Own Your Own Home!' 'Clean-theGarage Week!' "Vote for "Bob" Jones!' 'Patronize Heep-Sympathetic Mortician!'

The churches are unwilling to be outdone in the business of promotion. Their Saturday advertisements in the daily papers screech shrilly of 'peppy' programmes on the ensuing Lord's Day, promising sensational pronouncements from the sacred desk bearing upon the political campaign, the current scandal, and the first-page crimes. Latterly, some of the more energetic have been electrifying the symbols and slogans of the faith, on the ground that the good news of salvation should be kept before the public by whatever process happens to be prevalent. While there may be nothing essentially wicked about the awkwardly close proximity of two blatant, blaring, blazing mottoes, 'JESUS SAVES!' and 'EATMORE SAUERKRAUT!' — it is symptomatic of the poor psychology of the churches, sincerely wanting to

make religion attractive, and succeeding only in making it ridiculous.

If the churches only knew it, great material prosperity - by no means despised among them-would instantly accrue to them were they able to guarantee a one solid hour on Sunday morning exclusively devoted to spiritual recovery. As the case stands, while they excoriate the pleasure-mad, sensation-seeking, frantically excited public that refuses to come in and be saved, the depressing fact is that they have little to offer — according to their own paid space in the newspapers the newspapers - but an attenuated solution of the same strychnia whose use they so stoutly deplore when administered elsewhere. They appear to believe that the public wants its water of life carbonated.

It is by no means a trivial matter to be required to confess that it has become next to impossible to meditate calmly in the typical Nonconformist church because of the racket. Here we have the chronic gabbler at his (and her) utmost. Now that the intolerable clatter of unfortunates, who have obviously stripped the gears engaging the brain and the larynx, makes hideous the theatre, the opera, the concert, the lecture, what vast credit would immediately attach to the churches were they able to announce that they were conducting houses of worship in which a spiritually minded pilgrim could be briefly enisled from the rasping banalities of the incessant talkers.

But witness the manner in which the average Nonconformist church conducts its so-called service of worship. The penitent is met in the lobby by the strong-arm squad of official greeters, and affectionately pawed. There is nothing distinctive about this process of welcome. The prospective worshiper was greeted thus on Tuesday noon at the Kiwanis, on Wednesday

at the Chamber of Commerce, on Thursday at the Better Business Commission, and on Friday night at the Masonic Temple. He is shown to his seat by a snappy usher who trusts that he will feel at home 'among these good folk.'

While appreciating the genial intent of these busy, buzzy brethren in their somewhat overdrawn efforts to be cordial to the stranger without being actually impudent, our man who has come here to worship finds the place so much like every other institution, whither the tribes go up, that he has reason to doubt whether the quest for heavenly light can be pursued here to any better advantage than in any other social club similarly astir with breezy amenities. The organist is vainly trying to drown the racket with his boisterous prelude.

The parson is probably romping about on the platform, fussing with his holy properties, chatting over the choir rail to the conductor, and beckoning his associate to come up and sit down, or go there, or do something else. An excited deacon scurries down the aisle to whisper a belated announcement into the ear of the prophet. Indeed, it is an interesting place - eventful, almost bewildering in its activity.

But the solemn hush, the sense of being in the presence of the divine, the feeling of reverence for a holy placeno; it is not there. Our visitor learns, from the pew behind him, that gasoline has dropped a cent; from the pew ahead, he is informed how much quince jelly we have put up; to the right, an animated conversation discloses that the parson's wife is sporting a new hat. Jesus had said, 'Come unto me and I will give you rest.' And, so far as Nonconformity is concerned, this is it! A house of worship? So is the Grand Central Station. A place for prayer

and spiritual refreshment? Nonsense!

Presently the clatter subsides, and the 'service' is in progress. It is obvious that this performance is intended to buck you up, to stimulate you, to be to you a veritable 'shot in the arm.' The hymns are sprightly, and the congregation is strongly counseled to make a joyful noise. Every time there is a moment when 'silence, like a poultice, comes to heal the blows of sound,' the pastor chinks the gap with fatuous prattle. He reads the Scriptures as improved by one of the more informal revisions, and by his inflection the bronzed Tarsan is made to speak to the Romans with that crisp, heman, hands-in-pockets effectiveness employed so adroitly by the Secretary for the Older Boys at the Y. M. C. A. We will now pray. We do so extemporaneously, chattily. 'We're all for you, God!' is the general impression deduced from the supplication. Frequently, through the 'service,' a bit of pleasantry is spontaneously introduced to promote a feeling of genial fellowship 'among these good folk.' If the smile it was intended to engender gets out of bounds, the minister may offer a vicarious apology for all whose untimely cackle has too generously rewarded his wit by remarking in a tone suddenly invested with an almost lugubrious piety, 'God is just as much pleased with a smile as a tear, folks!'

which may, indeed, be true, for all that the good brother or anybody else knows. There is one authentic forecast that God in His Heaven shall laugh! I am sure I have seen things done in churches that would justify it. Now we will have the announcements. The congregation has been waiting, in some impatience, for this event; for the announcements are usually a treat. Almost every Sunday something delightfully funny is said at this point. There are still seven cases of chocolate

bars for sale by the Ladies. The Young Men's Guild will have a soap-bubble party at the Parish House, Thursday night. The semiannual rummage sale will occur on Friday and Saturday of this week. Ransack the attic and bring your junk to the good Ladies. It will be sold. The proceeds will be applied to our missionary fund. Missionaries will go forth into all the world to spread the light the same kind we have and the Kingdom will be increased. Your morning offering will now be received. (This, too, is frequently inadequate.)

I do not wish to convey the impression that all Nonconformist churches are constantly making all of the mistakes to which I have referred. Even a programme of blunders cannot be standardized to one-hundred-per-cent efficiency. Some of the churches are making all of these mistakes, and almost all are making some of them. Nor do I care to be identified as one of those dissatisfied Protestants who think that the Catholics and possibly the Episcopalians have a monopoly of the art of inspirational appeal in public worship. One of the dullest services I ever attended was in St. Peter's under circumstances which made it a noteworthy event for the celebrants to excise from the occasion all the inspirational element resident in it. But the Nonconformist is obliged to admit that when he enters a Catholic or an Episcopal church he realizes that he is on holy ground. He becomes aware, in that environment, of the supremacy of spiritual interests. People become strangely transfigured as they cross the threshold. They are there to worship. The imperatives of soul culture have driven secular concerns into complete eclipse. The priest is there to direct the heart Godward not to prattle amiably of good-fellow clubbishness, or to exploit the latest

quirk in relativity, or to campaign for a better prosecuting attorney.

Were Nonconformity a bit more canny and resourceful, it would realize the crying need of its own potential following for an opportunity to worship, to meditate calmly upon divine things in holy places, to recover its spiritual poise, to experience the peace which passeth all understanding. Our churches consider this matter unimportant. Dim lights, toned to restfulness by symbolic windows, are depressing.

If we had a little more discernment, we should offer services of worship eclectically compiled from the greatest works of religious inspiration. But we will not do it. At this exact point our most serious weakness lies; but we do not realize it. We think the people want folksy, chatty churches- mere social clubs surmounted by steeples. We have a notion that the public wants to be noisy and excited. We will continue to provide noise and excitement. We are mistaken. The people sincerely desire an opportunity to worship. It is the business of the churches to meet that demand. They have proved themselves inadequate to supply the need.

II

They are too meddlesome. Surely there is no necessity, at this late date, to lower one's voice and speak enigmatically of the fact that Nonconformity owes its origin to the stout conviction, on the part of some very determined people, that Church and State are far better off as friends than as relatives. Whether the Catholics, today, entertain the belief that in all matters of disagreement between the Church and the State the wishes of the former should, must, and do take precedence, is a subject I do not wish to trifle with, not because of any reticence,

but for lack of sufficient information. One sees so many obviously sincere and well-authenticated statements on both sides of this question that it is difficult to arrive at a satisfying opinion.

The fact remains, however, that the plaint of the original Protestants was against the increasingly dictatorial attitude on the part of the Church. They asserted that she had her finger in every pie, that she meddled too much in secular affairs, that she kept herself in doubtful company through her political alliances, that she had become so astute in business as to commercialize sin and sell it for whatever it would fetch on the counter of the confessional booth, that she had become the general manager of too many diversified endeavors.

Perhaps the Church was not nearly so predatory, high-handed, and magisterial as the seceders imagined, but they did so imagine - which came to the same thing as if it were true- and they fled, unforgivably ruining priceless works of art and showing up very badly in the manner and extent of their profanations, vandalisms, and iconoclastic excesses, to hatch a spawn of turbulent, competitive sects which had little enough in common but their determination to escape an ecclesiastical surveillance no longer tolerable.

I think we are in error when we believe that any considerable number of these early Protestants really had acute grievances against the Church. In the main, she had looked out for their welfare probably better than they could have done it themselves, as their impending vicissitudes were promptly to prove. It was the spirit of the old ecclesiastical oversight, rather than overt deeds of tyranny, that actually evoked the Reformation. The public had grown tired of the mother-knowsbest attitude which the Church had developed to such fine efficiency; tired

of the long nose of official holiness flattened against the pane, the inquisitive eye of legalized piety peeking through the curtains, and the attentive ear of infallible righteousness applied to the keyhole of every institution from the laborer's cottage on up to the baronial castle. The worst they could say of her was that she had become an indefatigable meddler, which was unquestionably true enough to justify their exodus.

With such history behind us, then, plus the fact that the bulk of contemporary Nonconformity is obsessed by the psychosis that Catholicism still strives for and strides toward a strangle hold upon our political institutions, probably untrue, but commonly believed by the majority of American Protestants, it seems very strange that so large a number of our churches should be practising, feebly, but with ardent zeal, the very technique of coercion, bossism, political intrigue, and general meddling which they consider so reprehensible when sanctioned in Latin.

I am sure nobody wants to tie the hands of the churches so that they may not help to wield the fork when the Augean stables require a bit of tidying, or demand their silence when great moral issues are at stake; but the quite justifiable liberty to do that, on occasion, does not carry with it the right to indulge in as much meddling as they are now engaged in, at the behest of a bevy of interdenominational and undenominational agencies of alleged reform.

This business dates from the war. The government's Bureau of Publicity contracted the habit of bulletinizing the churches, once a week, informing the preachers what it would be well to say on the coming Sunday. When the war was over, a good precedent having been established for using the churches

as centres of propaganda, every agency of reform, plus a score more which rose suddenly to assist in the world's salvation, began to solicit the coöperation of the churches in the promotion of every manner of cause, from worldwide peace and universal prohibition to foundations for the care of infirm canary birds. Every minister's mail box is crammed daily with appeals to enlist his congregation for the support of enough remedial and prophylactic projects to ensure our entrance upon the millennium by a week from Tuesday, at the farthest.

Take the brood of peace societies, for example. Without doubt, we 're all for peace. But the typical peace advocate wants it at the price of unseasonable rackets with persons in authority who probably know very much more than he about the practical terms on which the great boon may be had. He wants peace, this afternoon! No more waiting. He inflames the churches to send telegrams and write letters and print literature. They are encouraged to denounce the R.O.T.C., thus increasing the embarrassment of university officials already sufficiently bewildered over the problems incident thereunto. War being a bad thing, so are army chaplaincies; therefore the churches must make the situation unpleasant for the chaplains whose opportunity to exert a helpful influence in their environment is meagre enough without additional restrictions and annoyances. Not infrequently Nonconformist bodies have voiced, on the floor of their religious conclaves, their determination never to sanction or obey another call to arms, regardless of the issue. If Catholicism in this country were to pass a resolution of that nature, or even seriously debate it, a yelp would go up that could be heard from the Tropic of Capricorn to the nebula of Andromeda.

The churches are meddling too much with legislation - urban, state, and national. It is no secret that the manner in which many of these interchurch organizations now conduct their lobbies, influence elections, and operate the inquisitorial machinery of bossism compares very favorably in effectiveness with any of the ingenious devices built for similar purposes by merged industries at their utmost of conscious strength.

I refuse to take into consideration the fact that many, if not most, of these causes are meritorious. I likewise refuse to listen to the explanation that the people who promote them are of excellent character, desirous only of contributing to public welfare, with nothing to gain, personally, when they win their point. My criticism is based wholly on the fact that this was not the Galilean way of saving society from its blunders. its blunders. Ends do not justify means. This was one of the first sentences Protestantism learned to parse. It is as true in 1927 as it was in 1517.

The field of this meddling has been growing more extensive of late: active participation in the election of representatives in Congress and the state legislatures; petitions to Senators urging the passage or defeat of certain bills, and broadly hinting of the wrath to come in the event of failure to comply; mass action to regulate the curricula in state schools; resolutions demanding the parole or pardon of convicts; advice of all sorts to special commissions engaged in investigations under government auspices; drastic enforcement of obsolete ordinances regulating Sunday commerce; embarrassing interference with local school boards relative to the employment of Catholic teachers, the teaching of the Bible, the textbooks on natural sciences.