Page:Points of View (1924).pdf/26

 book agent comes to the door with a book which he intends to sell to the busy housewife for ten dollars. The busy housewife opens the door three inches and peers suspiciously through the crevice. Does the book agent say: "Good morning! Would you like to buy a book this morning?" Not at all. He knows perfectly well that the busy housewife doesn't believe in books. He keeps his book behind his back, and lifts his hat, and says: "Good Morning! Are there any children in the house?" He knows that the busy housewife believes in children. The door opens another three inches. Through the widening aperture, he asks her whether she is interested in her children, and whether she would deny them anything essential to their welfare. In two minutes he is sitting in the parlor, explaining that for ten dollars she can provide her child with the sum and substance of a university education.

The book agent may be a humbug; but his method is psychologically sound. Mr. Bryan may not be a humbug; but his method is psychologically unsound. The first step towards the awakening and development of a religious sense that will bind up and give unity of purpose to a generation which seems all at loose ends is like the first step of the book agent: it is an appeal to what this generation believes in. The effective first step for the religious leader is not to revive and vamp up the discredited basis of an old religion. Neither, on the other hand, is it to invent and attempt to promulgate a new religion. The important, the effective, thing to do,