Love, Life Work | Page 7

desperate is the situation
that they are willing to get them at the price of self-respect. Hence
come Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Chapman, and play Svengali to
our Trilby. These gentlemen use the methods and the tricks of the
auctioneer--the blandishments of the bookmaker--the sleek, smooth
ways of the professional spieler.
With this troupe of Christian clowns is one Chaeffer, who is a specialist
with children. He has meetings for boys and girls only, where he plays
tricks, grimaces, tells stories and gets his little hearers laughing, and
thus having found an entrance into their hearts, he suddenly reverses
the lever, and has them crying. He talks to these little innocents about
sin, the wrath of God, the death of Christ, and offers them a choice
between everlasting life and eternal death. To the person who knows
and loves children--who has studied the gentle ways of Froebel--this
excitement is vicious, concrete cruelty. Weakened vitality follows close
upon overwrought nerves, and every excess has its penalty--the
pendulum swings as far this way as it does that.
These reverend gentlemen bray it into the ears of innocent little
children that they were born in iniquity, and in sin did their mothers
conceive them; that the souls of all children over nine years (why nine?)
are lost, and the only way they can hope for heaven is through a belief

in a barbaric blood bamboozle, that men of intelligence have long since
discarded. And all this in the name of the gentle Christ, who took little
children in his arms and said, "Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven."
This pagan proposition of being born in sin is pollution to the mind of a
child, and causes misery, unrest and heartache incomputable. A few
years ago we were congratulating ourselves that the devil at last was
dead, and that the tears of pity had put out the fires of hell, but the
serpent of superstition was only slightly scotched, not killed.
The intent of the religious revival is dual: first, the claim is that
conversion makes men lead better lives; second, it saves their souls
from endless death or everlasting hell.
To make men lead beautiful lives is excellent, but the Reverend Doctor
Chapman, nor any of his colleagues, nor the denominations that they
represent, will for an instant admit that the fact of a man living a
beautiful life will save his soul alive In fact, Doctor Chapman, Doctor
Torrey and Doctor Sunday, backed by the Reverend Doctor McIntyre,
repeatedly warn their hearers of the danger of a morality that is not
accompanied by a belief in the "blood of Jesus."
So the beautiful life they talk of is the bait that covers the hook for
gudgeons. You have to accept the superstition, or your beautiful life to
them is a byword and a hissing.
Hence, to them, superstition, and not conduct, is the vital thing.
If such a belief is not fanaticism then have I read Webster's Unabridged
Dictionary in vain. Belief in superstition makes no man kinder, gentler,
more useful to himself or society. He can have all the virtues without
the fetich, and he may have the fetich and all the vices beside. Morality
is really not controlled at all by religion--if statistics of reform schools
and prisons are to be believed.
Fay Mills, according to Reverend Doctor McIntyre has all the
virtues--he is forgiving, kind, gentle, modest, helpful. But Fay has
abandoned the fetich--hence McIntyre and Chapman call upon the
public to pray for Fay Mills. Mills had the virtues when he believed in
the fetich--and now that he has disavowed the fetich, he still has the
virtues, and in a degree he never before had. Even those who oppose
him admit this, but still they declare that he is forever "lost."
Reverend Doctor Chaeffer says there are two kinds of habits--good and
bad.

There are also two kinds of religion, good and bad. The religion of
kindness, good cheer, helpfulness and useful effort is good. And on this
point there is no dispute--it is admitted everywhere by every grade of
intellect. But any form of religion that incorporates a belief in miracles
and other barbaric superstitions, as a necessity to salvation, is not only
bad, but very bad. And all men, if left alone long enough to think, know
that salvation depends upon redemption from a belief in miracles. But
the intent of Doctor Chapman and his theological rough riders is to
stampede the herd and set it a milling. To rope the mavericks and place
upon them the McIntyre brand is then quite easy.
As for the reaction and the cleaning up after the carnival, our revivalists
are not concerned. The confetti, collapsed balloons and peanut shucks
are the net assets of the revival--and these are left for