OURS is the most religious country on the face of the earth. There are more churches to the square mile of city and village area than any other part of the world, not excepting the grand old city of Rome. They may not be all of the same denomination, but their attendants worship the same God. They may quarrel a great deal about points of faith, but on essentials they are, if not exactly one, so closely related that there is room for any amount of hope. About baptism and regeneration and sanctification and adoption and perhaps damnation they may differ frightfully; but all of them base their belief upon the Apostles’ Creed, and look for their spiritual inspiration to the law of the Old and New Testament, preferably that of the four gospels.

Religion is a life, whatever else it may or may not be. No person who makes any pretence of being religious declines to admit that his creed is the basis of the life which he would like to lead, whether or not he may succeed in making his practice conform to his principles.{510}

That religion consists in proper life with a view to a life to come, or at least that it is so regarded, is proved by the custom which becomes more and more prevalent of judging men and women according to their religious professions.

There was a time when, if a man assented to a given form of faith, his life might be almost anything he pleased; and some of the most active “Defenders of the Faith,” as they styled themselves, whether they were Catholics, Protestants, Trinitarians or Unitarians, have been found among men who would nowadays not be considered fit to introduce into respectable society. The time when such things were has departed, and shows not the faintest sign of ever returning again. To-day a man’s religious profession is regarded as an assertion by himself of what he would have his life, and what he proposes that his life shall be judged by.

A cheering sign of the earnestness and sincerity of religion in modern times is that there is very little proselyting now. People who smile cheerfully at one another during six days of the week, do not glare and frown at one another on Sunday, as they used to do when meeting on their ways to their respective churches, and from the manners of members of different denominations meeting in business or polite society, no one could imagine or discern to what particular creed any one of those people subscribed. The Methodist,{511} the Baptist, the Catholic, the Episcopalian, meet each other cheerily in business and in society, their families intermarry, they have business relations with each other, and no one in indorsing or cashing a business man’s note ever thinks of asking to what particular church he may belong.

In a number of country towns this fraternal feeling has been largely stimulated and strengthened by what are called “union meetings,” in which all the members of all the congregations in the town unite at appointed dates in general services of prayer and worship. Occasionally the pastor of some church in the vicinity may object to taking part in such services, but pastors in congregations are frequently like Congressmen and the people—the followers are ahead of the leader. Only a little while ago a Catholic priest of high repute in his own denomination, and held in high esteem by the entire community in which he was known, ascended the platform at a western camp-meeting, in which denominations differing from his own had united, and made a most earnest undenominational and spiritual address to the entire audience before him.

Revival meetings, however they may be laughed at by the more refined and fastidious of church people, have had the effect in late years of attracting a great many thousands of people toward religious life. The most noted of these were{512} conducted, as every one knows, by Messrs. Moody and Sankey, two men who were never regularly ordained as clergymen by any authority whatever—they are simple laymen and undenominational workers. Yet these men never went to any city or town to begin their peculiar system of work until all, or nearly all, the pastors of churches had united in calling them and had promised to assist to the best of their ability. No effort was made by these men to make converts for any denomination whatever. Their sole purpose was to cause men and women to change their manner of life from that of the ordinary every-day selfishness of the unregenerate man and to compel him to recognize an over-ruling Providence who should also be the guide of his daily life in every respect. Mr. Moody, however “shaky” he may have been according to any theological test, was earnest and sincere enough to say to all the clerical fraternity of any town in which he worked, that he came only to sow seed and that it was the business of others to reap the harvest, and that he cared not into whose flock the lambs were led, so long as they were rescued from the wilderness. The Moody and Sankey movement is open to a great deal of criticism, and probably no one has regarded it with more jealous eye than newspaper editors, yet the editorial fraternity throughout the country has been compelled to admit that the agitation{513} begun by these men had a marked influence............