RELIGIOUS AGENCIES 



BY WASHINGTON GLADDEN 



Washington Gladden, Pastor, First Congregational Church, Columbus, Ohio; 

 Moderator, National Council of Congregational Churches, b. Pottsgrove, 

 Pennsylvania, 1836. A.B. Williams, 1859; D.D. Roanoke College; LL.D. 

 University of Wisconsin; LL.D. Notre Dame University of Indiana. Lyrnan 

 Beecher Lectureship, Yale, 1887-1902; Adin Ballou Lectureship, Meadville 

 Theological Seminary, 1892; E. A. Rand Lectureship, Iowa College, 1897; 

 William Belden Noble Lectureship, Harvard University, 1903 ; Preacher to 

 Harvard University, 1892, 1893, 1902. Member of American Social Science 

 Association, American Academy of Political and Social Science, American 

 Economic Society. Author of Plain Thoughts on the Art of Living; From the 

 Hub to the Hudson; The Young Men and the Churches; Parish Problems; 

 Art and Morality; Social Salvation; The Practice of Immortality; and many 



other works on religion.] 



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THE extent and the indefiniteness of the theme assigned to me 

 will be evident to any one who attempts to give any meaning to 

 these words. No limit of time is suggested; I do not know whether 

 I am expected to speak of existing religious agencies, or of all which 

 have been employed since the world began. No limitation of space 

 is proposed; I do not know whether I am to confine myself to my 

 own country, or to Christendom, or whether I am to deal with the 

 religious agencies of all nations. I dare say that the architects of the 

 programme which we are following in this Congress would have found 

 it easy to include the whole of time and space in a neat and compre- 

 hensive statement, by which the religious agencies of all centuries, 

 all kingdoms, all tribes, all faiths, should be succinctly and adequately 

 described; they could have distanced Puck and put a girdle round, 

 not the earth only, but also the heavens in forty minutes; but this 

 approximate omniscience is not mine, and I must begin by some sharp 

 delimitations. 



What is a religious agency? The word has a wide connotation. 

 It may denote the operation or the operator, the instrumentality or 

 the power using it. It may signify a method, a cult, a ritual, or the 

 employment of forms of activity by individuals or organizations. 

 I shall exclude the theoretic meaning, and confine myself to the 

 practical meaning of the term. By religious agencies I shall mean 

 individuals or classes or organizations acting for the maintenance or 

 propagation of religion. 



It would be interesting to trace the evolution of such agencies 

 from the primitive periods down to the present day. That there 

 has never been an hour when man was destitute of religion is the 

 increasing probability on which scientific investigation encourages 

 us to lay hold. The hasty assumption that some tribes were un- 

 religious has, in nearly every case, been overthrown by a more careful 



