This is as far as any nation has so far gone; it has apparently not yet occurred to any legislature that the State may owe a duty to the child to protect its mind from being poisoned, even though it has the misfortune to be born of poisoned parents. It is still permitted that parents should terrify their little ones with images of a personal devil and a hell of eternal brimstone and sulphur; it is permitted to found schools for the teaching of devil-doctrines; it is permitted to organize gigantic campaigns and systematically to infect whole cities full of men, women and children with hell-fire phobias. In the American city where I write one may see gatherings of people sunk upon their knees, even rolling on the ground in convulsions, moaning, sobbing, screaming to be delivered from such torments. I open my morning paper and read of the arrest of five men and seven women in Los Angeles, members of a sect known as the "Church of the Living God", upon a charge of having disturbed the peace of their neighbors. The police officers testified that the accused claimed to be possessed of the divine spirit, and that as signs of this possession they "crawled on the floor, grunted like pigs and barked like dogs." There were "other acts, even more startling", about which the newspapers did not go into details. And again, a week or two later, I read how a woman has been heard screaming, and found tied to a bed-post, being whipped by a man. She belonged to a religious sect which had found her guilty of witchcraft. Another woman was about to shoot her, but this woman's nerve failed, and the "high priest" was called in, who decreed a whipping. The victim explained to the police that she would have deserved to be whipped had she really been a witch, but a mistake had been made--it was another woman who was the witch. And again in the Los Angeles "Times" I read a perfectly serious news item, telling how a certain man awakened one morning, and found on his pillow where his head had lain a perfect reproduction of the head of Christ with its crown of thorns. He called in his neighbors to witness the miracle, and declared that while he was not superstitious, he knew that such a thing could not have happened by chance, and he knew what it was intended to signify--he would buy more Liberty Bonds and be more ardent in his support of the war! And this is the world in which our scientists and men of culture think that the battle of the intellect is won, and that it is no longer necessary to spend our energies in fighting "Religion!" * * * * * #BOOK TWO# #The Church of Good Society# Within the House of Mammon his priesthood stands alert By mysteries attended, by dusk and splendors girt, Knowing, for faiths departed, his own shall still endure, And they be found his chosen, untroubled, solemn, sure.