200 With Feet to the Earth 



For color, form, and light, rocks, woods, 

 and waves, they preach, if only one will 

 listen. It is those who refuse to listen that 

 are so rough, so unmoved by the daily 

 pageant of the world. It is compensation 

 again, however, that makes them the easiest 

 victims of emotional morality, and some of 

 the strictest church people are those of the 

 ''mountains and the backwoods. They still 

 live in a past time and should be happy, 

 if they knew how. Doubt has not reached 

 them yet They do not know of the 

 changes that have gone through common 

 thought in these late years. In the cities 

 thought has become free and hard. Re^ 

 publican ideas rule. Science is dominant. 

 Yet the respect for goodness is shown in 

 the demand for it. Business hardly sup^ 

 ports itself in crooked ways, stealing is no 

 longer respectable, nor even a part of 

 politics. In the exact practice of our 

 thinking religion has become poetry, and 

 poetry is effete. There are more Chris^ 

 tian philosophers than Christians, more He- 

 brews than Jews, more Deists than Unita^ 

 rians, more good people than church-goers. 



