Missouri caught the reflex tide of population, and her fertile soil, mineral wealth and commercial advantages not only retained this reflex population, but supplied an effective appeal to thousands more from all parts of the country—North, East and South—until for a few years her population increased at the rate of nearly one hundred thousand per annum. And yet, in her extended area of territory, this immense influx was scarcely perceptible. Along her rivers and railroad lines her population thickened, and her great commercial centres felt the life and power of multiplied agencies and resources. Either the rapid growth of cities, the stir and excitement of trade, the strife for fortune and fame, the magical charm of Western life, or something else peculiar to the climate, the country or the people, all of these distinct and opposing types of social life, began soon to lose their “type force” and blend into a conglomerate social mass, with fewer Northern, Eastern and Southern peculiarities than Western—a rather unique social formation, which the modern sociologists have not yet classified. Few Southern men and Southern families long retained their purely Southern style of life, and few Eastern or Northern men and families long retained the social and domestic habits that were peculiar to the latitude from which they hailed. It is easy to see how the social life that derives its characteristics from such different and distant systems would be peculiar in itself and to itself. People lose their social characteristics much sooner and more easily than they do their religious peculiarities. The former are based on education, taste, association and habit, the latter on principles vital and divine. As every national and social characteristic known to American society has become mixed and blended in Missouri, so every shade of religious thought and feeling, every form of religious doctrine and dogma, together with every type of ecclesiasticism known to modern American civilization, exists in the hearts and homes of Missouri—at least to some extent. Nearly every shade of religious belief has a representative in Missouri, and stands out more or less distinct upon the moral phases of society. These do not blend. No moral alchemist can fuse the distinct religious peculiarities of a people. Men may relinquish their social and domestic characteristics because they are matters of taste or convenience; but to give up their distinctive religious characteristics is considered a sacrifice of principle and conscience.