(1) It may seem strange to say that a country which does not even name the Supreme Being in its national constitution, which has no established form of worship or belief, and whose public schools and universities are expressly disconnected from any kind of church control, is at the same time strongly religious, in its temperament. Yet strange as this seems, it is true of America. The entire independence of Church and State was the result of a deliberate conviction, in which the interest of religion was probably the chief consideration. In the life of the people the Church has been not less, but more, potent than in most other countries. Professor Wendell was perfectly right in the lectures which he delivered in Paris four years ago, when he laid so much emphasis upon the influence of religion in determining the course of thought and the character of literature in America. Professor Münsterberg is thoroughly correct when he says in his excellent book _The Americans_, "The entire American people are in fact profoundly religious, and have been, from the day when the Pilgrim Fathers landed, down to the present moment." The proof of this is not to be seen merely in outward observance, though I suppose there is hardly any other country, except Scotland, in which there is so much church-going, Sabbath-keeping, and Bible-reading. It is estimated that less than fifteen of the eighty millions of total population are entirely out of touch with any church. But all this might be rather superficial, formal, conventional. It might be only a hypocritical cover for practical infidelity. And sometimes when one reads the "yellow journals" with their flaming exposures of social immorality, industrial dishonesty, and political corruption, one is tempted to think that it may be so. Yet a broader, deeper, saner view,--a steady look into the real life of the typical American home, the normal American community,--reveals the fact that the black spots are on the surface and not in the heart of the country. The heart of the people at large is still old-fashioned in its adherence to the idea that every man is responsible to a higher moral and spiritual power,--that duty is more than pleasure,--that life cannot be translated in terms of the five senses, and that the attempt to do so lowers and degrades the man who makes it,--that religion alone can give an adequate interpretation of life, and that morality alone can make it worthy of respect and admiration. This is the characteristic American way of looking at the complicated and interesting business of living which we men and women have upon our hands.