comparison with some artificial standard of life; it is the vulgarity which is self-conscious, which prides itself on its knowingness; it is the vulgarity which above all is deliberately generated and played with by the demonic and quite self-conscious forces of evil who manipulate human passions for the sake of gain. Every vulgar sign and vulgar poster tells of a mind which hopes to sell human innocence and virtue for money.

Times Square of an evening is the presentation of a problem which modern conditions of life more and more force upon the thoughtful observer. There is nothing new about the problem; it is as old, I suppose, as the dawn of civilization. That is what gives it its peculiar interest-no civilization has ever effectively dealt with it. We at présent do not seem even to be trying. We smile and pass by with some banal words about the necessity of amusement, and that people must have their own amusements, the amusements that amuse them; or we shrug our shoulders with the gesture of pessimistic despair. "You cannot change people," the pessimist says; "and, indeed, why should you want to? Why the egotism of the attempt to impose your habits upon others?" But it is not true that you cannot change people. The whole point about the Square is that it is changing people—and for the worse.

The question that is raised, then, is, can they be changed for the better? This would seem the problem of religion. This is why one bothers one's head about the Square at all. And religion has a perfectly definite answer. People can be changed for the better. The business of religion is to do it; and if it cannot do it, it has no business at all. Religion flourishes in proportion as it is the instrument of God for the regeneration of human life. The theory of religion in unmistakable.

But in practice it encounters vast difficulties, difficulties so vast that one is sometimes tempted to doubt whether the religious theory of human nature does correspond with the fact. In practice, religion has never succeeded in making its theories work on a broad scale. It has demonstrated its power to regenerate individuals; but it has never at any time regenerated enough individuals to control a society-those who live by faith

have always been a relatively small element in the social body. Conspicuous, in a remarkable degree, has been the failure of the Church to touch Times Square and all that it represents. We must face that, for the business of the Church is with the young as the business of the Square is with the young. I suppose we may say that the Church has tried to solve the problem. How has it tried?

Well, it has tried fear. I suppose fear is a legitimate motive of reform, albeit not a very exalted one. It is the motive the State is compelled to use, and its success does not encourage one. It seems to me quite legitimate to bring to bear on a human being the fear of loss; to press home to him, that is, the fact that certain lines of conduct will end in disaster. It is right to point out to an idle boy that the result of idleness is loss of ability to meet situations with which later in life he may be confronted; that he will be unable to take the place in life for which industry might fit him. It is right to point out to a boy or girl that the life of carelessness to which they are being tempted will result, in all probability, in ruin moral and physical. These are appeals to the fear of consequences and are perfectly legitimate. It is difficult to see why the appeal to the fear of spiritual consequences, to the fear of spiritual ruin, is not just as legitimate, though we do not find it so regarded today. The objection to the appeal to fear would seem to me not to lie in any hesitation as to its legitimacy, but in its futility. The appeal to fear fails when the person threatened can take refuge in a crowd. If the threatened person finds that multitudes are taking the same risk as he is tempted to take, he will go on conscious of the support of the crowd. The sinner who has to sin alone will perhaps be deterred by the unenviable conspicuousness; but he will be likely to go on if he feels that attention is not centered on him. The small boy swears without hesitation in the gang of profane companions, who would not swear before one whose opinion he respected. The widespread of divorce is not due to any breakdown of individual morality, but to the increase of divorce until the inhibitions which religion and social standards had raised against it had been over-balanced. Now that

the fact that one has passed through the divorce court seems rather an asset in "high society" than otherwise, fear has ceased to exert any pressure. Because Times Square is a crowd you cannot frighten anyone away from it.

So the Church gives up fear and tries to meet the Square on its own ground. It tries to fight amusement with amusement. We are today interestedly watching parishes of the Church being transformed into amusement centers. I passed by a church the other day where there were three display boards set out; they all announced attractions of one kind or anothernone of them suggested that religion was an element in human life. Even the Sunday morning sermon was displaced by an address on a secular topic by a layman. "We must hold the young people," is the cry; and it seems to be felt that the end justifies the means. One reflects on the pages of stern disapproval that one has read of actions that seem not dissimilar— denunciations of certain practices of the Mediæval Church as the mere taking over of Paganism, pages of fiery denunciation of the conduct of Roman Catholic missionaries in India and elsewhere in the taking of heathen into the Church and leaving them with most of their ancestral customs. Well, here are we now, the flower of modern thought and civilization, taking Times Square into the bosom of the Church, moving the soap-box orator from the curb to the pulpit, and displacing our Evening Prayer by the movies-more or less "serious" movies, one hopes; though I hear that it is necessary to have at least one amusing feature "for the sake of the children."

It is not necessary to criticize the morality of all this, or to dwell upon the probable outcome of the increasing vulgarization of religion. What we are presently interested in is the utter futility of the whole thing. Amusement for amusement, the Square is by far the more amusing to those who are amused by that sort of thing. And some of us, who do not mind going to amusements of Sunday night, feel I fancy, a little more selfrespect if we go frankly to places whose business it is to provide amusement, and pay for our tickets. One's ancestral Puritanism may have gone to the extent of tolerating a Sunday concert

or play, but still balk at the spectacle of a Priest conducting a Sunday evening movie house. It may be true, no doubt is true, that there is a temporarily existing element of the population who still shrink a little from Sunday amusements, who still find difficulty in giving permission to their children to go to the theatre on Sunday. They will provide an audience for the Church movies-for a time. Ultimately their consciences will get accustomed to Sunday amusements, and they will find the distinction of place where rather silly, and will consequently drift to the place where they are most amused; and the energetic and up-to-date rector will find himself on Sunday evening faced with the same few old ladies and the same unsolved problem of the evening congregation. Personally, on a Sunday night, my sympathies are with the boys and girls in the Square rather than with their clerical tempters.

Is the case of religion versus vulgarity quite hopeless then? As a mass-problem I fancy it is, and will be for a long time to come. For, in the last resort, the Church has nothing to offer but what it has always offered and always found ineffective as a mass-influence. Up to date the Church has influenced individuals rather than societies. It has never converted a nation, a city, a community. Always there have been in all times and places large sections of the population impervious to its influence. By the pressure of fear it has sometimes held them nominally to the Church. Rarely has it felt it its function to amuse them. When it has been true to itself and the charge given it, it has tried to draw them with the attraction of high ideals. It has appealed to the best in man, to the dim longing that is hid in every man for a life beyond this life, for a life which begins here with the satisfaction of spiritual ideals and seeks so to identify itself with them that it shall exist while they exist.

This appeal to the spiritual man to realize himself as the child of God, to identify himself with the permanent in life, with its unseen eternal issues, is all the appeal Christianity has to make. No doubt it is not at present a very far reaching appeal; but it is absolutely certain that if it were the sole and emphatic

appeal of the Church, the Church would increase far more than it does today. There might be a difficult time during which the Church was repenting of its past failures and making known its true mission; but it would win in the end. There are multitudes of people who want religion, and who are disheartened and repelled by the fact that when they seek it they find the Church doing something other than teaching it. There are restless multitudes looking for the Bread of Life; but when they come to the Church to seek it they are given the secular lecture, the attractive concert, the movies. Times Square already has all these things with an opulence and a perfection with which no church can ever compete. Why not recognize the facts? The prosperity of the Church can never be based on its imitation of the world-it can at best give but a feeble and ludicrous imitation of it. It cannot convert Times Square by the creation of an inferior Times Square. If Times Square will consent to listen to the Church at all it will not be because the Church is something like it, but because the Church is something quite different. So long as the world sees the Church bidding for the support of the worldling on the ground that it is not very different from the world, the world will not be much disturbed. When it sees the Church calling its devotees to leave the world for something that is utterly unlike it, it will feel its empire endangered. There was a time when it looked as though the Church might conquer the world: it was the time when the Church left the world and went out into the desert. But the frightened world breathed freely when the Church came back from the desert and began to patronize the Circus.