There are few sadder thoughts than this--to think how the Church has thrown away the power that once it knew how to use, the mesmeric instinct of the crowd. 'In our State,' said an American, 'the devil is fighting hard against the Church!' 'Ah! in Montana it is different,' was the reply; 'there with us, the devil is running the Church.' It would look as if it were even so. Wherever there was a crowd waiting anywhere on the ministry of the Gospel, the devil set himself to break up that crowd. He did it in ways most skilful. Had his true personality appeared, he would instantly have been cast forth. It was therefore apparelled as an angel of light that he set about the work. He never failed to mouth high-sounding phrases. His favourite watchword was principle. It did not matter much what the principle was if only thereby the crowd could be broken up. In the beginning of the seventeenth century the evangel of Jesus, that was committed to the winds of Galilee and to a handful of peasants, was intellectualised into a massive system of propositions that was to be for all time the test of orthodoxy. One might smile if the fountain of tears lay not here. That religion, which is like the wind blowing where it listeth, was caught at last, and embodied in legal enactments and formulas--sheltered behind statistics! Whoever heard of wind blowing through legal documents? Build shelters and there is no more wind! Yet these legal documents became the test of that religion which is life and which is love. If any doubt was expressed about the use of shelters when men needed the fresh breeze from heaven--then the devil appeared and said that to abide by the shelter was a principle. Nobody must touch or change that structure. If that be done, then those who were loyal must separate. By a discreet use of the principle of loyalty to confessions the devil broke up crowd after crowd of worshipping Christians. There was nothing that he could not use for that purpose. The doubt arose whether the all-loving Father could really send babes to everlasting torments or decree that the vast majority of mankind be tortured, for ever and ever. That was used to break up the Church. A hymn, a paraphrase, the form of a prayer, the posture at worship, a vestment--anything, everything, was good enough for the devil's purpose. By these he achieved his ends. The crowd was no longer to be found in one sanctuary. Here, where I write, in the days of my boyhood the folk assembled in the open air for their great Christian festival on the second Sunday of August. It was a moving spectacle to see a couple of thousand people in the hearing of the sea, with the hills brooding over them, raise a psalm to heaven. But that crowd has been broken up into four fragments. There is no longer a crowd. The devil has secured its overthrow. On the wave of an emotion generated by a thousand hearts no soul shall again be wafted heavenward in that green place.