ple."

Dr. Luther H. Gulick, who was born of missionary parents, was trained in
religious schools, graduated as a physician, employed for years in the
Young Men's Christian Association, and then made Play-Ground Director in
the New York Public Schools, has become legitimately the heir of the
experiences of the modern social conscience. He has summed up the
philosophy of working men, students, and of the people whose lives are
systematized, in a sentence: "There is a higher morality in the
reactions of play than in the experiences of labor."

The tradition of the church has been opposed to amusement and
recreation. The church of our fathers recognized the moral possibilities
of play by calling all play immoral. The early Quakers filled their
records in the eighteenth century with denunciations of "frollicks."
Consciously they denounced amusement, acting no doubt in a wise
understanding of the rude, boisterous character of the pioneer's social
gatherings. Only unconsciously did the Quakers cultivate the spirit of
recreation in their social gatherings. It was permitted to have but few
and repressed opportunities. The decadence of the Quaker church is
probably due, in a considerable measure, to their stubborn unwillingness
to see both sides of this question. They saw that recreation was
immoral. They refused to see that its possible moral value was as great
as its moral danger.

Extensive correspondence with working pastors, by means of a system of
questions sent out from a New York office, has brought this result. In
answer to the question, "What amusements of moral value are there in the
community?" the answer, "Baseball, boating, tennis, golf, bicycling,
etc." A smaller number of recreations was named in answer to the inquiry
for immoral sports. The subsequent question, "What is your position
before the community?" brought from the minister very often this answer:
"I am known to be opposed to all sports." Few ministers realize the
inconsistency of this position. They stand before the community as the
professed advocates of public and private morality, and they stand also
before the community as the professed and violent opponents, often, of
the public sports which are known to the young men and workingmen
generally as promoters of ethical culture and moral training. Is it any
wonder that the churches, in these communities, are often deserted by
the common people?

In Lewistown, Pa., the old Presbyterian Church there,