We do not wonder, considering the primitive state of religion, why men were spell-bound under its influence. It is all the more conspicuous in tropical natures, for there youth is exuberant. In all primitive states of religion we notice the same abandonment, the same illusions produced on the imagination, the contortions of the body, the child-like credulity, the superstition, the depression, and exaltations of the feelings, "the agony, the ecstasy, the plentitude of belief." They are the complement of barbaric faith, and not a peculiarity of the Negro. If in these primitive conditions we see the Negro tickled by a straw, or frightened by a ghost, or in moments of ecstasy spreading out his hands in an attempt to fly up to heaven without dying, these are the natural concomitants of such conditions. We pity, rather than censure him, more especially when we remember that for two hundred years in the house of bondage, his wild, primitive nature was left untrained. What is needed for the proper religious development of the Negro is education, not repression or subjugation of his feelings. We cannot emphasize this fact too much. There is the danger, in the zeal of preserving the holy ark, of defiling it by unholy contact. The Negro needs more thought in his religion, but religion is not all thought. To have a proper balance in religion as in every-day life, the faculties of thought, feeling, and volition must be present, distributed in fair proportions. When reason is overfed in the exercise of religion, the result is a dry and barren rationalism. When the emotions are overfed the result is a wild and sickly sentimentalism, a neurotic religion. Footnote: [1] The divine method of Inquiry. Biblical World. Dec. 1902, p. 450. Transcriber's Notes: Passages in italics are indicated by _underscore_. The misprint "soons" has been corrected to "soon" (page 4).