The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1920-11-10

5: WEDNHSDA ', NtJV EM B plorations of these strange cults, but the sfrangest of all I found when attended lecture on The Religion | of the Solar Plexus.' These people are | always knocking at the door of the old organism and what they find in side is intellectual rubbish. old bits of antique superstition brought forward in the name of new religion. It I would be humorous if it were not so l pathetic to see these religious wan derers, many of them once useful and empty systems in the hope Of finding something better than the water of life.
 How can we make religion real, vivid and triumphant? Even hard headed practical men can see no way out of the tangle the world is in today other than spiritual leadership. Her bert Hoover, who has a way, even when he talks about engineering, of injecting the feeling of religion into what he says, remarked the other day: We cannot solve the problem of pro- duction without, for want of a better name, spiritual revival How can we do that.
 ''It seems to me that the supreme function is to cultivate the spiritual quality in in. men. What is this spirit greatly admire has given this defin- Aion It is not piety in the ordin- ary sense, it is not necessarily re- ligiousness or religiosity, but though it may be consistent with any religion I do not understand that it can be consistent with none. It is con- sisten,s with money-getting and with indifference to money. It is con- sistent with ambition and with mod esty. It is consistent with great gifts and with lesser ones, but hard ly with stupidity. because it is a quality of intelligence. Let us call :4 oF i,, &s.,1fJ +Ie knowledge of which is revealed to some learned men, quality that comes moro by conduct than y study and more by breeding and the grace of God than either.
 Able men lacking or losing this quality cease to be able to inspire and fail of leadership. That is a noble passage It describes the kind is to make religion real in the halls of legislation and the marts of trade. There is something hard in the bright, keen business of New York you mis. It is the lack of spiritu- ality. One man plays a piece of music perfectly and accurately, but it lacks what musicians call touch. Another will play the same piece, striking the same no,es and it has warmth and glows with spirituality. Lincoln had that quality. He look ed at everything from the spiritual point of view. There was no more practical politician. He was posi- lively uncanny in his divination of human events and knowledge of hu- man nature. He knew how to play the tricks, but this fine spirituality made him dedicate his political skill 10 the doing of the will of God and that is what We want in our states men of today. If he had not been politically skillful, he would have been Parsifal in the hands of Stephen JIt 10 ron fv the game. he knew or what stakes he was playing. In a letter to Joshua Speed he wrote: Tt is our peculiar misunderstanding that we must on earth It was his peculiar dis tinction that he was a divine dream CT and had the practical acumen to make his dream come true. At a republic without a slave and with out a drunkard and the first of his dream came true within his lifetime, though it cost him his life. Today we realize that the second part of his dream will come true as the fruit of his life. We can forget that sentiment of his, that the question was not whether God was on his side.
 Next to the creation of private cha racter is the creation of public opinion. the spiritual education of
 
 two avenues open to us, private mo- bilitv and public wisdom The two do not always go together. Spirit @ ually minded n5! does not necessarily may be kept in different compart- ments in an individual mind
 If we look back over the last six years there is nothing more amazing than than the public impotence of relig ion. Christianity is wonderful in the richness of the inner lives of Chris Fians. There is a great gulf that is not bridsed between that inner rich tianfty in our public lives. That is the gulf we must bridge. The last five years have shown the private success and the public failure of Christianity.
 'Tf </cl1urch as in all it's history. is training noble men and women, but they have not yet learned the art and knack of carrying that religion into organized social and corporate life The Christianization of the corporate life of America is still before us. rem porari1y private morality and public morality are not the same thing. It is an intolerable thought for a Chris tion that that condition will remain permanent.
 'Hoy often it was said during the war that the religious forces of the world, if they could have been mobi- lized, could have prevented the war. erhaps so, and perhaps not. They were not mobilized and they did not prevent it. All of us know that there is enough good will In the world enough moral intelligence, enough re- ligious spirit to prevent wars, to pre- vent the atrocities and brutalities of our social order
 "In this world of ours great and hungry of heart, so wistful and pa thetic in that strange spiritual quest, feeding upon husks that do not sat- isfy, drinking from the diluted springs of easygoing naturalism, a world bit
 DIED.