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"THAT LITTLE STREAK OF

RELIGION"

CHORUS girl who had encountered hard luck went to a minister for sympathy and help. Now the men and women of the stage do not, as a rule, when in trouble resort immediately to a clergyman. But this particular one was known far and wide for his great tenderness of heart and his sympathy with the weak, distressed, and tempted. He received the actress graciously, as he always received his callers. He showed such quick understanding of her situation and he appealed with such tact to her better nature that suddenly the girl said, "Well, I do believe there is a little streak of religion in me after all, though it is buried way out of sight." It might have been years since she had given the subject any consideration, but now an exigency had arisen which made her aware that the deepest thing in her nature was the religious element. Not all her triumphs and not all her failures on the stage had extinguished within her this vital spark.

Yet hers was no abnormal experience. Religion is in the inheritance of most of us and in the training of many of us. Many a man in middle life will tell you that he was brought up to go to church or Sundayschool. Even if he has become utterly indifferent, he cannot altogether shake off the influence of the prayer he used to offer at his mother's knee or of the Bible that had a place of honor in his early home or of his personal interest in religion in former times. Said such a man to a chance acquaintance the other day, "I used to be a professor, but I don't believe in God any more or in a hereafter. But there is one thing that troubles me. I have a little daughter and I can't teach her any more such nonsense as 'Now I lay me down to sleep' - so what can I tell her?" "Tell her," replied the other man, himself a bluff but sincere believer, "tell her to go to the devil, for she is likely to go that way with you believing as you do." Drastic counsel was this, but it is sometimes necessary to give a jolt to the man who is so cock-sure of his infidelity that he forgets his own past and forgets that which is best and deepest in his own

For religion is in our very blood. Talk about religion perishing from off the face of the earth! When men cease to appreciate the masterpieces of art, when noble music finds in them no response, when a lovely landscape fails to elicit their admiration, when they are not susceptible to the appeal of friendship, then and not till then will they give up their religion. And not even then, for the religious instinct is a deeper and more inalienable part of the human endowment than is the capacity to appreciate music or art or poetry or nature. Religion is in the blood of the Caucasian and the African, of the Christian and the Mohammedan, of the Jew and the Parsee. Indeed there is sometimes more genuine religion in a follower of a so-called heathen religion than in some nominal Christians.

We are not talking now about forms and creeds, about denominations and isms. We are talking of that which underlies all expression, and our appeal is not in the interests of any one religion as of religion pure and simple. It is not for me to dictate what form your religion shall take, but simply to suggest that "the little streak of religion" in us needs to be brought under influences

that make for its strengthening and illumination, and to be put to work in the field of our daily activities and relationships.

Why should any of us wait until he has hard luck, until he is reduced to some desperate situation, before he discerns and confesses that he cannot rid himself, that he would not rid himself, of his religious instinct? Why not at once decide to give it more constant recognition and larger scope?

TO ONE SOURED ON LIFE

"WHAT

HAT can a man do who has become soured on life?" That question opens the door into a great subject, for despite the fact that Americans have the reputation of being the happiest and most buoyant people of the world, the number of those wholly or partly soured on life is larger than is at first supposed. They may not have gone so far as to contemplate throwing themselves into the nearest river, or taking a dose of strychnine. They are hardly ready to present themselves for treatment at any anti-suicide bureau; but the sweetness and charm of life have practically vanished for them and they radiate gloom instead of sunshine as they go about the world. They have adopted a slower form of suicide. What word may be spoken to these individuals here and there that shall incite them to make one more desperate try for happiness?

It ought to be a word of sympathy first of all. Quite likely you have been unjustly treated. Some supposed friend has gone