All this is immensely encouraging to men who regard religion as the greatest moral influence of life, as well as a promise of things less seen yet more important in which the majority of people believe more or less blindly. The change has come about through the different pulpit method that has come in vogue within a very few years. Men have learned to look upon religion of any kind as infinitely preferable to no religion at all. No man who keeps his eyes open has failed to see changes, such as can be accounted for by no other theory, as to the possibilities of human nature, suddenly and quietly achieved through the practice of religious life as indicated by some particular creed. So far as changes in the lives of individuals are concerned, creed seems to make very little difference. Within the lines of all denominations men can be found who, according to every rule and precedent of human nature, should be dishonest, indolent, vile, and brutal, yet who have suddenly become respectable and in all things visible entirely decent. Any attempts to break down religion, as such, are stoutly combated by the entire intelligent portion of the community, barring the few dilettanti who are not certain about anything, and least of all about whatever will make themselves amenable to the moral law. Colonel Bob Ingersoll can draw a large crowd in a large city, but never in his life has he had as large an audience as can be found any Sunday in any one of twenty churches in the city of New York, and were he to enter some of our smaller towns he would find himself with the same proportion of hearers. Most religious people who think--and most of them do think--have periods of doubt on a great many topics which in the earlier portion of their new life seemed to them essentials. Nevertheless they have learned by experience not to change their faith, much less to abandon it, because of some things which they do not understand. Since religion has become a life instead of a mere belief, all men who sincerely practice it have learned that there is a great unknown of human experience beyond which their own lives cannot reach except at certain times and under certain influences, and to abandon what they doubt would mean to them to also forego the fruits of what they already know and believe.