confession of intimate sins is encouraged. "Conversions" result under the intense emotional strain that is engendered. The self-revelations run the gamut of pruriency, incontinence, nymphomania and onanism. Distraught young minds suffer acutely under the self-inflicted torture and from the excruciation of others which eggs them on. Against whatever "relief" some of the subjects may be said to have experienced, must be set the shattered nerves and warped minds of the others. In one fine old college in Virginia a student lingered for days on the verge of madness till a sensible alumnus, called in for the purpose by one of the faculty, succeeded in restoring the youth's mental balance. Dr. Buchman is not without prominent supporters. Dowager Queen Marie of Rumania has been interested in his work, and several years ago he spent three weeks at the royal palace in Bucharest at her invitation. In England, Harold Begbie told in his book, "Twice-Born Men," of his backing Dr. Buchman. Formerly a Lutheran minister and for a time a missionary in India, Dr. Buchman derives his income from the gifts of those to whom his "soulsurgery" appeals. One other to venture into this field deserves mention along with Dr. Buchman, though their methods and patients differ. It is the Rev. Samuel M. Shoemaker, Jr., the young rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in New York City, who operates a "soul-clinic" in connection with evangelism. He has written a book entitled "Children of the Second Birth" in which he trenchantly asserts that "Park Avenue needs conversion as much as the Bowery" and tells of his meeting in which people are "born again.” Matters which belong in the psycho-analyst's laboratory are now being dragged out in an epidemic of "public confession," in the name of religion to effect conversion. Opinions of the effect of this method upon the individual confessors may differ, but its social implications raise another question. As a form of evangelism it must be considered in its social aspect also. But whether the Spirit is invoked by John Roach Straton in Calvary Baptist Church or Uldine Utley in a tent to heal the body and inspire the soul, whether regeneration is contingent upon the confessional mode of Frank Buchman or Samuel Shoemaker, Jr., the proponents and the adherents will seek to justify themselves by the Book. J. Frank Norris, as a true Fundamentalist, probably would not hold the Seventh Commandment a whit more inviolable than the Sixth. The defense is grim. So sayeth the Book. The Book must be believed as it is. To be critical is to sin. To engage in unbiased—hence uninspired-research is heresy. Things have not changed. As it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be. But what was in the beginning? The Word. That suffices for the Fundamentalist revival. S CHAPTER XXIII RATIONALIZED RELIGION Blest be the tie that binds JOHN FAWCETT, 1739-1817. YNDICATED revivalism, capitalized at one hundred million dollars, starring William Ashley Sunday and Aimee Semple McPherson on a national circuit of palatial tabernacles equipped up-to-the-minute with essential paraphernalia, has been proposed by a man of business if not spiritual vision. One vaudeville concern is reliably reported to have offered Dr. Sunday ten thousand dollars a week to grace its boards. That acceptance has not yet been obtained is beside the point. Dr. Sunday and Mrs. McPherson would not have received such attention if they had not qualified in their own way. This is the ultimate. The glory of the old revival has departed. No heaven-called amateurs need try to break in. It is strictly professional now, a cold, calculated commercial proposition with immeasurable cash returns for the principals and spiritual dividends of less than one per cent. for the evangelical Churches of America. Dr. Sunday's campaign in New York City in 1917 cost more than three hundred and fifty thousand dollars, raised by one hundred and twenty thousand dollars in free-will offerings and by gifts of wealthy underwriters. Of the sixty-five thousand to seventy thousand "trail-hitters” only two hundred could be traced to church memberships. His Pittsburgh run footed up to about ninety thousand dollars and three thousand one hundred and seven "converts," very few of them permanent, at the rate of twentyeight dollars and ninety-six cents apiece. Dr. Sunday is generally believed to be a millionaire and men like the Rev. Charles L. Goodell, head of the Commission on Evangelism and Life Service of the Federal Council of Churches, have expressed the belief that he is worth many times a million. At the flood tide of high-power revivalism, 1914-1917, the churches with the aid of a charitable public were spending twenty million dollars a year for the purported saving of souls by one thousand evangelists, great and small. The campaigns cost the communities an average of five thousand dollars, but Dr. Sunday and other star performers came higher, all the way up to one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Since then the large Eastern centres of population have contrasted costs and results and have become wiser-the promoters of the revival game say "wickeder"—and the remnant of two hundred and fifty salvation sellers concentrated at Winona Lake have turned to charting their courses in the religiously febrile and fertile South, Southwest, West, Middle West and Northwest. The East can go to hell without benefit of the chance to crash the gates of heaven with a handshake and a free-will offering. And Sister Aimee has a lien on the Pacific Coast. Winona is not waning yet. It has just closed up ranks and shifted tactics. This country is going to be worked to the last collection at the end of the sawdust trail. The little army keeps on drilling. Homer Rodeheaver has his Gospel Singing School and Dr. Sunday is second in command to Charles R. Scoville in the preaching phalanx. Tex Rickard could take lessons from them all. But the days of cyclonic pressure are numbered. The legerdemain of the big man of holy medicine and his manipulative entourage repels the intelligent and won't go with the herd the moment its bellwethers scent staleness and lead a stampede to fresher diversion. Already, responsible leaders of that Church which was born of the pure fire of the Wesleyan revival are speaking their mind. "We have permitted professional evangelism to organize their campaigns too largely upon a commercial basis,” says Bishop Adna W. Leonard of the Methodist Episcopal Church. "Their desire to secure money has been as pronounced as their eagerness to see men and women saved from sin. How often it is said that there is need for a revival in order that people may be solicited for funds 'while their hearts are warm and tender.' The Rev. Joseph L. Berry, Senior Bishop of the Methodists, classing mass interdenominational revivalism as "high-pressure evangelism," declares that it is now "a thing of the past." He adds that six hundred evangelists are idle in America and that there is little demand for their services. The Rev. William E. Biederwolf, an evangelist who has done worthy work ever since he began in Jerry McAuley's New York mission, aptly observes that "if the evangelist is getting too much money it is because somebody else is guilty of giving it to him" and voices a plea for the itinerant who goes underpaid or not paid at all. The adjustment is now in the making. Aside from the mercantile, not to say predatory, aspect of the situation that has come about since Sam Jones admitted getting thirty thousand dollars a year back in |