The theological seminary of the past has been a literary institution. During the period of its development the typical Christian was the bright and aspiring young man in a community of boundless resources. To such a man books are the interpreters of life. But in the modern period with the congested population and close social organization, human fellowship is an experience of greater value to most men than books. Since the time of the invention of printing successive quantities of literature have been given to the world, and under the law of diminishing returns literature has come to have for many very small returns. At the time of the Protestant Reformation the value of books in the hands of the common people was infinite. For several generations along with the extension of universal education this infinite value of books continued for the people on the margin of the educated world. But nowadays everybody in American progressive communities can read and write: and in a universally educated population we arrive at the final utility of books in human use. Great masses of poor people and also many people of means use books within narrow limits only. They do not buy them, they do not read them, they do not think in literary terms. Yet they have access to books and they turn from them with a clear sense of intelligent preference for other human values. Books are to them but an alphabet and social life is the story. My own impression is that the life of the marginal man is social rather than literary. His religion will be a social religion rather than a biblical religion. The weakness of Protestantism is that it stubbornly insists upon literary interpretation of God and upon a biblical ministry, while the population around these Protestant churches exemplifies the diminished value of literature for spiritual uses.