with the capitalization of Puritan
effort there came a radical overhauling of method. The secular arm, as
it were, conquered as it helped. That is to say, the special business of
forcing sinners to be good was taken away from the preachers and put
into the hands of laymen trained in its technique and mystery, and there
it remains. The new Puritanism has created an army of gladiators who are
not only distinct from the hierarchy, but who, in many instances,
actually command and intimidate the hierarchy. This is conspicuously
evident in the case of the Anti-Saloon League, an enormously effective
fighting organization, with a large staff of highly accomplished experts
in its service. These experts do not wait for ecclesiastical support,
nor even ask for it; they force it. The clergyman who presumes to
protest against their war upon the saloon, even upon the quite virtuous
ground that it is not effective enough, runs a risk of condign and
merciless punishment. So plainly is this understood, indeed, that in
more than one State the clergy of the Puritan denominations openly take
orders from these specialists in excoriation, and court their favour
without shame. Here a single moral enterprise, heavily capitalized and
carefully officered, has engulfed the entire Puritan movement, and a
part has become more than the whole.[43]

In a dozen other directions this tendency to transform a religious
business into a purely secular business, with lay backers and lay
officers, is plainly visible. The increasing wealth of Puritanism has
not only augmented its scope and its daring, but it has also had the
effect of attracting clever men, of no particular spiritual enthusiasm,
to its service. Moral endeavour, in brief, has become a recognized
trade, or rather a profession, and there have appeared men who pretend
to a special and enormous knowledge of it, and who show enough truth in
their pretension to gain the unlimited support of Puritan capitalists.
The vice crusade, to mention one example, has produced a large crop of
such self-constituted experts, and some of them are in such demand that
they are overwhelmed with engagements. The majority of these men have
wholly lost the flavour of sacerdotalism. They are not pastors, but
detectives, statisticians and mob orators, and not infrequently their
secularity becomes distressingly evident. Their aim, as they say, is to
do things. Assuming that "moral sentiment" is behind them, they override
a