into the scullery to verify the holes"you see, sir, it is rather hard lines on us plumbers, the way we sometimes git put about by these builders. They 're glad enough to make use of our skill, sir, but-"

I nodded.

"And yet," continued Mr. Black, "where would they be, sir, if it was n't for our skill?"

Again I nodded-knowingly.

"Your mention of skill reminds me, Mr. Black," I said, "to ask you, what about these holes?"

"Well, sir," responded Mr. Black, "It 's gorn five o'clock, sir. My men go home at five."

Looking round, I saw that Mr. Black had spoken the truth.

"But," said Mr. Black, "I could send again on Wednesday. We are rather busy. But I could send again on Wednesday."

"It's Friday now," I mused.

"Yes sir," assented Mr. Black. "To-morrow, you see, Saturday, that don't 'ardly count as a day at all. But I'll try to send on Wednesday. See any 'oles there, Mr. Brown?"

"Yes," responded Mr. Brown, "there's a tidy few 'oles." Mr. Brown came out of the scullery as Mr. Black went in.

"It 's a pity about this, ain't it?"

said Mr. Brown in a sort of whisper. "Knockin' 'oles into the place! These plumbers are all alike. My man 's gorn 'ome now,-'e knocks off at five, but I'll try to send again on Wednesday."

"Could n't you make it Thursday?" I suggested. "I 'm expecting-ervisitors on Wednesday."

"Thursday 'd suit me better," replied Mr. Brown. "I'm rather busy. The fireplace won't come to no 'arm waitin' till Thursday, not if you don't light any fires in it. Are you comin' my way, Mr. Black?"

Mr. Black came out of the scullery. "Certainly I am, Mr. Brown," he

said.

Both gentleman bowed to me.

"Next Wednesday, then," said Mr. Black, "and thank you very much, sir."

"Thursday, sir, thank you, sir," said Mr. Brown.

I opened the door for them and watched them walk into the murky road, their shoulders very close together. I went back into my sittingroom and listened to the wind as it came hooting down the chimney, in and out of the holes. Then I got a sack and covered up the new, untarnished pump, which lay on a sodden grass plot, forgotten by everybody.

HE thing that the oncoming generation reacts more violently against than anything else is stuffiness. If you want to make a girl feel she is out of the race, call her mid-Victorian. If you want to cut a young man to the quick, call him a prig.

I am about to be graduated from an undenominational seminary, and I am planning to be a preacher. I hate stuffiness whether in blue-stockinged conduct or in stiff-necked doctrine, just as cordially as do the rest of us who are under thirty. And I crave, what we of this eager generation crave above all else, ventilation, a complete airing of soul. For our demand in these days is to meet all sorts of human beings, to have all kinds of experience.

The

The trouble is that most of us at present, no matter how cock-sure we may appear, are over-diffident; we are only groping, only stumbling toward the light that we must have. shock of the war, when we had to drop behind as useless baggage all but the simplest and most portable creeds and conventions; the shock of science, which, as historical criticism and as psychology of religion, has thrown a cold, searching light not only upon the Bible, but upon our very souls; the shock of seeing old institutions of government and society break up before our eyes-all these have bewildered us. And now we find ourselves curiously

bold in our irreverence regarding the old, our disrespect for the past.

On the other hand, we feel that it is no use appropriating the second hand in religion. Those doctrines which were inspiring enough to our fathers, such as the virgin birth of Buddha, the threat of brimstone and eternal torment or the lure of halos and golden streets to come, the tyranny of demons and dragons, the verbal inspiration of the Koran, the divine descent of the mikado-doctrines such as those we cannot accept. Nor, in a sense, can we take over glibly from the past any doctrine at all, because we have an idea that to be real, a spiritual truth must be achieved by one's own self out of a struggle. If it is not so battled for and won out of experience, it has no meaning. This, at any rate, we feel.

But our motive-and let me emphasize this-is not to destroy what has been sanctified by the past. On the contrary, the force that drives us on to-day has been sanctified for nineteen hundred years by One Who came that men might have life and have it more abundantly. What we seek is more air, more life, more personality. It is toward the production of personality that the whole creation moves. We are becoming more assured of that. Up-to-date scientists like J. A. Thomson, though not dogmatizing about it, point to trends in nature that seem to be a drive in the direction of person

ality. Writers like Wells and Hocking, who take in large horizons of history, trace a spirit that has been stirring in man since the beginning of civilization, and that has been expanding through the centuries his feeling and realization of kinship with all other men. Though not unanimous, the testimony of the greatest souls that have yet appeared is to the effect that character is the most worth while thing in the world, and that character can be achieved not in solitude, but only in the great currents of the world, where men meet men as brothers.

There is a devil in the world all right. The devil is the spirit of divisiveness. There is a sin against the Holy Ghost, too. That sin is boredom, the ennui, the deadening sense of meaningless monotony, that eats out the spirit of men when they are making no contribution of bread or joy, of machinery or truth, of healing or beauty, to their fellows. This sin we observe as a dry rot here and there in society, low and high, and here and there in the church. Whether this curse of stupid snobbishness takes the form of stodgy, non-productive denominationalism or of complacent small-town aristocracy, whether it is a matter of sects or sets, welcoming only the properly immersed or the properly introduced, it leaves the atmosphere equally sick and musty. It is the attitude of shutting oneself off from others, so that only dullness of soul can result, that we despise and that we will fight with our very life.

Accordingly, many of us young people, not only on this hemisphere, but in Asia and Africa and Europe as well, are betting our lives to-day on a simplified faith. How many we are one cannot compute. What advances

beyond these minimum essentials we shall make, each along his own particular line, one cannot even guess. But in this belief, or rather in this attitude and prevailing enthusiasm, we stand united.

A man on a desert island is next to nothing. He cannot do anything worth while by himself. He cannot mean anything by himself. It is people that make life interesting. What we strive after is to be on our toes, exuberant, aware; to take such deep drafts of life to-day that to-morrow we shall breathe even more deeply and be even more alive. We want so increasingly to widen ourselves that we shall more and more incorporate within ourselves the vibrating life of others. We want to be caught up in thrilling projects. The world is so made that we cannot go on and on, free from the chance of colliding with others, unless we coöperate with them and share with them the best we have. Apart from the reasonableness of it, pulling together with other people is hugely satisfying, and it is more than mere gregariousness.

§ 2

I believe that this is where the spirit of youth unites. This is the common ground on which could come together the new generation of church members, whether in Zenith or on Morningside Heights, who squirm at the narrowness of their denominations, who will leave the church unless ecclesiastical windows are opened wide enough to clear the air of Bryanism and premillennialism. Neither do I doubt that it would appeal to hosts of idealistic young pagans not only in America, but in Europe as well, who would be startled were they to hear themselves

called Christians, but who nevertheless walk in the light, since they love their brother and work for a fairer community. And my contact during the last six years with the young men and women of Asia leads me to the assurance that a surprisingly large number would stand with us here. Take those students of Peking or Shanghai or Nanking who are becoming too sensible to wear American hats, but in whose bones there burns an apostolic zeal for science and a China to be saved by science. Consider Miss Szee, who is now studying at Teachers' College, New York. "I am going to have the fun," she declares buoyantly, "of spreading village education in my home town in China," a home town beside which Gopher Prairie would show up as a metropolis.

We of the West who look out freshly on the twentieth century can count on aid from China and Japan, perhaps from Burma. No doctrinal pessimism of Buddha will paralyze their eagerness for fuller life; we can be sure of that. As for the young Indians, the better one becomes acquainted with them, the more one realizes that they have something immensely liberating to offer to youth the world over. "My religion," said a brilliant young Indian Mohammedan to me, “is youth; that is, spontaneity, idealism, grace; and beauty, the beauty of God that I find in clouds and sunshine, in the friendship of men and women; and service, the service of being a good neighbor, a good citizen." This twenty-two-year-old Oriental was a student in Oxford, and therefore not a typical spokesman for either India or Islam; but he does represent a regenerating spirit in the East that is animating many young idealists who

would break free of the old stifling prejudices, to walk joyously in the open sunshine of world friendship. I met any number of students in India who impressed me as having an unshakable faith in the sheer supremacy of spirit over matter, and a radiant brotherliness within them that would bring them naturally to our fellowship. It has been said that no common religious factor can be discovered which will unite the youth of to-day. But have we not got it here—a common factor in the strivings of all idealistic young people? I believe that not only can we join here, but that we can go together on an even wider basis, holding in common a reverence for the divine fire in human life. No doubt it interests only those who care for friends intensely, but most of us who care with all our heart and all our strength, agree that personality must somehow continue. Speaking of the findings of a cosmopolitan group of students in an English university seeking for a common religious platform, an undergraduate told me that they all agreed on these two principles, reverence for personality and immortality of the soul.

§ 3

One of these enemies is war-war that is bred of overweening nationalism, of the stupid swank of battle-gray dreadnoughts or goose-stepping regiments, that overrides the rights of conquered and conquerors alike, that respects nobody. Yet it appears to be true that hardly any of our older friends seem able to understand our reaction from the jingoistic bitterness of the war years, our demand that war be destroyed before it destroy us, not because we are afraid to die, but be

cause this evil breeds hatred of men and an indifference toward them that strikes us as utterly silly.

But how can we stop war and that sort of talk? By building up a new patriotism, for one thing. Those of us who have the dawn of a brighter day in our eyes are beginning to realize that we must develop within us a deeper love for our country-the love of motherland that considers it treason to disrespect other countries. And that means we must toil terrifically in behalf of an organized world court and an international police force to back the decisions of that court. It means that we cannot cease from advertising everywhere what a young-minded prophet has recently declared, "There can be no peace now but a common peace, no prosperity but a general prosperity." Nor shall our sword sleep in our hand till secret diplomacy gives place to open agreements openly arrived at.

Another enemy of youth is the spirit within the nation of class domination and class selfishness in industry. The attitude of the clenched fist that respects only the claims of its own class, without caring a straw for the obligations that go along with those claims, is utterly of the devil, no matter on whose side it is found.

What right under the blue sky has any employer or any corporation to accept in exchange for a pittance twelve hours of machine-like drudgery from human beings seven days in the week?

"But we must obey the law of supply and demand," it is objected.

Well, in the same sense a pagan must bow down to wood and stone: these are his gods. He must worship them. God help us if we cannot see

that labor is not a commodity! Some of my friends do see that men come before excessive dividends, and they are not just contemplating that vision in the sky, either. They are building brotherhood and justice into automobile-tire factories. One is making the attempt in the oil-fields of the Near East, where one drop of oil is said to be esteemed at higher value than a hundred drops of blood.

Divisiveness in industry is of the devil. Equally of the devil is race arrogance. Wells is right: race prejudice "justifies and holds together more baseness, cruelty, and abomination than any other sort of error in the world." If the Turks had not nursed it, there would have been no atrocities. If the British had wiped it out of their minds six years ago, there would not be the "Indian situation" to-day. If we Americans took our democracy seriously, the people of India would not be reading with such horror what a friend in Bengal described as a bestseller, "The Martyred Race," an account of the lynchings and other mistreatment of negroes in the United States. The race snobbishness that shouts, "We Nordics are the people!" is riding for a fall, and the sooner we get off that high horse, the better for

us.

84

The last enemy of all, and the enemy which we shall have to fight most desperately, is sex irresponsibility. The mind of this questioning generation is being colored far more than older people realize by an influential group of writers who are challenging the ideal of chastity as it has never before been challenged. H. G. Wells, with his far-flung influence on youth,