Smith will not be won back to the church through appeals to theology, or stubborn reaffirmations of creeds and dogmas. I believe it may safely be said that the great body of ministers individually recognize this. A few cling to a superstition that there is inherent in religion itself a power which by some sort of magic, independently of man, will make the faith of Christ triumphant in the world. I do not believe so; Smith could not be made to think so. And Smith’s trouble is, if I understand him, not with faith after all, but with works. The church does not impress him as being an efficient machine that yields adequate returns upon the investment. If Smith can be brought to works through faith, well enough; but he is far more critical of works than of faith. Works are within the range of his experience; he admires achievement: show him a foundation of works and interest him in strengthening that foundation and in building upon it, and his faith will take care of itself. The word we encounter oftenest in the business world nowadays is “efficiency”; the thing of which Smith must first be convinced is that the church may be made efficient. And on that ground he must be met honestly, for Smith is a practical being, who surveys religion, as everything else, with an eye of calculation. At a time when the ethical spirit in America is more healthy and vigorous than ever before, Smith does not connect the movements of which he is aware in business and politics with religion. Religion seems to him to be a poor starved side issue, not a source and guiding spirit in the phenomena he observes and respects. The economic waste represented in church investment and administration does not impress Smith favorably, nor does it awaken admiration in Jones or in me. Smith knows that two groceries on opposite sides of the street are usually one too many. We used to be told that denominational rivalry aroused zeal, but this cannot longer be more than an absurd pretense. This idea that competition is essential to the successful extension of Christianity continues to bring into being many crippled and dying churches, as Smith well knows. And he has witnessed, too, a deterioration of the church’s power through its abandonment of philanthropic work to secular agencies, while churches of the familiar type, locked up tight all the week save for a prayer-meeting and choir-practice, have nothing to do. What strikes Smith is their utter wastefulness and futility.