In the main, however, historic religion has always dis-
played one or another of the three types of physical appeal
we are chiefly considering. Some kind of formal element
religion has always had. I am not objecting to these forms;
the thing I am objecting to is that we have given them up.
At least the bulk of present-day Protestantism no longer
makes any very large or interesting use of them. And this
is one of the things the matter with us. We do not have
statues and paintings, nor a noble liturgy; we no longer
devote ourselves to the great Reformation creedal formu-
laries; even the Methodists have largely left off the very
emotionalism that gave them such great power; we are too
spiritual; we have a religion that won't work except in a
realm of disembodied spirits.

Without detailed analysis, and not to anticipate, there
would seem to be more hope of future improvement along
the lines of the first type rather than the others. The third
form, that of Crude Excitement, is too low and primitive
and never has appealed permanently to the better spirits of
any people. Moreover, its intellectual content is always too
meager and shifting and personal to be long utilized on a
general scale. Which is not to say that at its highest it is
not to have a powerful place in religion. We still hope that
there may be many in the succession of Chrysostom, Savona-
rola, Whitfield, and Moody.

With the second type, the modern man and his contempt
of creeds has perhaps too little sympathy. We need creeds,
but we are properly too humble to complete and compress
our faith in finished creeds: we want sun parlors and open
porches in our house of faith, always inviting the visitation
of newer and later revelations of the Spirit. For after all,
the humility of agnosticism, so far from being inimical to
worship, is perhaps its natural beginning. Which is not to say
that we can get on without slogans and mottoes and working
statements of common faith. But these can scarcely supply
the emotional fire necessary to popular religion. The first
type, however, can be utilized with vastly greater power and
variety than ordinary Protestantism has ever considered.

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