found in the final prayer where he asks the Lord to make his country as good and moral as he! Beware of a humorist! There is a sting behind his smiles. American critics have been unanimous in finding “Elmer Gantry” overdone. Tartuffe’s rascality was qualified and it remained accidental. He broke into M. Orgon’s house, as a thief who steals a watch and then retires. Elmer Gantry is a hypocrite in broad daylight and triumphant to the end. Such an obduration in crime and success in mischief read like impossibilities. By unduly stressing the rascality of Gantry, it may well be that Lewis intended to kill two birds with one stone. “Elmer Gantry” is no less an indictment of a hypocrite than a courageous study of the decline of religious ideals in America. Religion, as everything else, has become automatic. Mysticism has been replaced by respectability. The American churches failed to raise the people to their high level, and, in order to make themselves popular, they brought their ideals down to earth. To make up for the absence of the really faithful they relied more and more on the larger number. They were seized with the spirit of greed and material comfort, and betrayed the teachings of Him who said that His kingdom was not of this world. They courted money and, to keep the congregations, they resorted to the advertising methods of the “realtors.” A display of riches and material splendor outside, and within the walls everything except Christianity. Hygiene, sport, eugenics, prophylaxy, domestic and political economy, entertainments and very little Bible. Churches vied with one another to see which could present the most gorgeous façade. Cathedrals were erected, cathedrals of stone and not of faith. The church became fashionable, a club, a school, a hotel, a parlor. Elmer Gantry had no difficulty in investing his lust and greed in such a temple. It repaid him well. Around Gantry, the novelist has marshalled in complete array the forces of the Protestant clergy in America. We are told that he managed to peep through the doors of the temple before he satirized it. No wonder the clergy rose in arms against him, and there is no doubt that he did not render full justice to them. A great many noble souls were not included in the parade. However, in the long run, one sees no reasons why “Elmer Gantry” should prove more harmful to the clerical profession than “Arrowsmith” to the medical one. To expose the faker _manu militari_ now and then may prove after all a profitable operation for the true servants of the temple.