same attitude toward reason that an Apache Indian holds toward a
camera--the Indian thinks that to have his picture taken means that he
will shrivel up and blow away in a month. And Stanley relates that a
watch with its constant ticking sent the bravest of Congo chiefs into a
cold sweat of agonizing fear; on discovering which, the explorer had but
to draw his Waterbury and threaten to turn the whole bunch into
crocodiles, and at once they got busy and did his bidding. Stanley
exhibited the true Northfield-revival quality in banking on the
superstition of his wavering and frightened followers.

The revival meetin' is an orgie of the soul, a spiritual debauch--a
dropping from sane and sensible control into eroticism. No person of
normal intelligence can afford to throw the reins of reason on the neck
of emotion and ride a Tam O'Shanter race to Bedlam. This hysteria of the
uncurbed feelings is the only blasphemy, and if there were a personal
God, He surely would be grieved to see that we have so absurd an idea of
Him, as to imagine He would be pleased with our deporting the divine
gift of reason into the hell-box.

Revivalism works up the voltage, then makes no use of the current--the
wire is grounded. Let any one of these revivalists write out his sermons
and print them in a book, and no sane man could read them without danger
of paresis. The book would lack synthesis, defy analysis, puzzle the
brain and paralyze the will. There would not be enough attic salt in it
to save it. It would be the supernaculum of the commonplace, and prove
the author to be the lobscouse of literature, the loblolly of letters.
The churches want to enroll members, and so desperate is the situation
that they are willing to get them at the price of self-respect. Hence
come Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Chapman, and play Svengali to our
Trilby. These gentlemen use the methods and the tricks of the