At the same time popular rationalism has been greatly diffused in the United States by the lecturing of the late Colonel Ingersoll, one of the greatest orators of his time, as was his contemporary Charles Bradlaugh in England. Each of those men probably convinced more of his fellow countrymen of the untruth of the Christian creed than were ever rationally persuaded of its truth by the preachers or teachers of modern times. What preserves the form of faith in the States is probably less the socio-economic pressure seen so commonly in England and Scotland (since all life is franker and freer in the New World, especially in the West) than the simple lack of leisure for study in a community where competition for income drives all men at a pace that almost seems to belie prosperity. A shrewd and pliable clergy keeps itself rather better abreast of new scholarship and criticism than does the mass of the flock; and men and women who first learn from the pulpit something of the change of view passing over Biblical study are not apt to turn away from the teacher as Europeans do from an unteachable priest. But despite all accommodation the sense of an absolute change is diffused, and there is record of western preachers bidding farewell to the pulpit and being chorussed by laymen forsaking the pew. In strict keeping with the shrinkage of faith among the "higher" races is the expenditure of effort to spread it among the "lower." Faith naturally seeks the comfort of converts at lower intellectual levels; and it is in some quarters able to report a certain expansion of territory by such means. But the total statistics of Protestant missions tell only of handfuls of converts scattered among the yellow and brown and black races, a number grotesquely disproportionate to the immense outlay. This goes on in virtue of the still sufficient wealth of the churches, which are in consistency bound to respond to missionary appeals while they profess belief in the Christian doctrine of salvation. It is found, however, that the missionary system needs, to maintain it, either an ever more substantial stipend or some other opportunity of gain to the individual missionary; and the triviality of the results becomes increasingly discouraging to all save the most fervent faith. Disparagement of missionary labours on both moral and political grounds is probably more common among professed churchmen than among unbelievers, who sometimes, as in the case of Darwin, bear cordial testimony to the merits and the success of some missionaries as against the egoism of the normal trader in his relations with the undeveloped races.