Perhaps the greatest of these is the extent to which it has suc-
ceeded in impressing the average Christian with his responsibility
for supporting the institutions of religion. We see the weakness of
the American Church; its irregular and in many respects unlovely
development; the curious types of religion to which it has given rise;
the multiplicity of rival sects; the lack of the sense of beauty and of
dignity; the loss of the consciousness of the historic past of which
it is heir. We do not always realize as we should that these are
only the counterpart in religion of the democratic experiment in the
nation--the price of an experience which, with much that is uncouth
and regrettable, has yielded also much that is of inestimable value
to mankind.

The history of the American Church, could it but be studied with
the sympathy and understanding which it deserves, would give us
a key to the understanding of the American people. In both we
see the same irregular and unplanned development. In both we
find the spirit of the pioneer reaching out into the uncharted wil-
derness, careless of the conventions of the home-land from which
he came, yet a child of that home-land none the less, carrying with
him into his new environment ideals and aspirations that he did not
create. We see him played upon by a thousand influences both old
and new. Each ship that brings him his supplies of food and
tools brings him also ideas embodied in men and women. Puritan
and Cavalier build side by side and worship as they build, each in
his own way. Yet the Episcopacy of Virginia differs from the Ang-
licanism that gave it birth as truly as the Congregationalism of New
England differs from the older Puritanism from which it sprang.
Immigrant follows immigrant: Scotch, Irish, Welsh, Dutch, French,
German, and each group brings its own type of religion. To under-
stand the story you must consult the United States Census of
Religious Bodies, as well as the records of the commissioner on
Ellis Island. Each separate religious type, being free to develop as
it will, tries its own experiment and comes to terms as it may with
the new influences that surround it. Under these many forms reli-
gion shares in the struggle against nature in forest and prairie; in
the rapid immigration from state to state; in the new problems of
government, civil and religious; in the world-old problem of recon-
ciling liberty and order. Each type responds in its own way to the
influences that are welding the nation into a unity. The growth of

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