Would it not be more edifying if our preachers or publicists, like Roosevelt and Bryan, instead of lavishing praises on an Asiatic book, out of tune with the intellectual and moral ideals of the modern world, recommended to their countrymen the nobler thoughts of the European masters? On a Sunday morning, what church could listen to a better sermon against superstition than is contained in these lines of Plutarch: * Paganism and Christianity, Farrer, page 96. _```Few of the ills we mortals bear ```Excel or equal those we fear; ```But worst his lot of all mankind ```Whom superstitious terrors bind. ```He dreads no storm who stays on shore, ```Nor battle who goes not to war; ```But he who thinks of God with dread ```Hath terror always overhead, ```And draws from land and sea and sky ```One long unending agony.= ```And so, methinks, they wrong God less ```Who doubt or disbelief confess ```Than they who worse of God believe ```Than of a man they could conceive, ```And every vice to Him assign ```To prove Him fickle, false, malign; ```As I would rather men should say ```"There is no Plutarch" than that they ```Should speak of Plutarch as so mean, ```So full of petty spite and spleen, ```That, if you vexed him in the least, ```Into your crops he'd turn his beast. *_= * Paganism and Christianity, Farrer, pages 98, 99. We often read in the newspapers of some foolish remark by a clergyman in his sermon, as, for instance, that the fearful and murderous wave of heat in the summer is a punishment from God for the sins of this or that city; or that earthquakes are sent to show the divine displeasure against this or that heresy in the church; or that God is opposed to aviation because the air belongs to the birds, as the sea does to the fishes; or that Christ is coming soon on a white horse: "The Son of God is coming on a white horse and the armies of heaven will follow him. Then he will be crowned king of all Israel. The kingdom promised to David will be resurrected," said the Rev. Dr. Ford C. Ottman, at the Winona Lake convention. The reverend speaker had in mind the following exquisite bible text when he was looking for the "white horse": _I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called faithful and true.... And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood.... And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses.... And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations.... and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. *_ Is it possible that the American mind has so deteriorated as to hope for the fulfillment of such a prophecy?