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 the local managers.

Revivals are for the revivalists, and some fine morning these revival towns will arise, rub their sleepy eyes, and Chapman will be but a bad taste in the mouth, and Sunday, Chaeffer, Torrey, Biederwolf and Company, a troubled dream.  To preach hagiology to civilized people is a lapse that Nemesis will not overlook.  America stands for the Twentieth Century, and if in a moment of weakness she slips back to the exuberant folly of the frenzied piety of the Sixteenth, she must pay the penalty.  Two things man will have to do—­get free from the bondage of other men; and second, liberate himself from the phantoms of his own mind.  On neither of these points does the revivalist help or aid in any way.  Effervescence is not character and every debauch must be paid for in vitality and self-respect.