t and religious unreality.

The semi-religious organizations have gone a full step beyond those of
the religious type. Societies like the Knights of King Arthur, Knights
of the Holy Grail, Modern Knights of St. Paul, and others of such ilk
have in symbolism sought to teach and find expression for the religious
impulse. The method has been more or less the religious type in
disguise--ancient titles, elaborate ritual, initiations, and degrees,
red fire, fuss and feathers, and something doing all the time to attract
the boy. The result has been and is a play-idea of organization and a
make-believe environment on the part of the boy. In his thought it never
classifies with his school or home or general church life. It is a
thing apart, some thing or place to retire to, to forget the everyday
thing for a moment of romance. The mature mind that is responsible for
all of this, however, seeks to bend and use this make-believe world for
the inculcation of religious truth; and the product is an astonishing
variety of results. Most of it is beyond the grasp of the ordinary man,
the only man who at present or at any time will do this work in the
church; and where set programs or ritual are followed the work itself
loses its fire and misses its effectiveness.

The welfare type of organizations has multiplied in the past few years,
_and their less religious activities have served to keep the religious
and semi-religious types alive_. The Boys' Brigade, the National First
Aid Association, the Woodcraft Indians, Sons of Daniel Boone, Boy
Scouts, and others of like type, are in season and out of season
appealing to American boyhood. Their aim is not specific, but general
and vague: "Something to do, something to think about, something to
enjoy, with a view always to character-building." Their appeal is
mostly to the physical and the out-of-doors; their philosophy that of
the recapitulation of the culture epochs. Their promoters do not claim
that they touch all of life. They seek to dominate the leisure time
only, and to produce goodness by affording no free time for positive
wrong-doing. The domination is also physical expression, and the mental
and spiritual in the boy and his home, school, and church life are not
vitally affected directly.

All three types, however, have done splendid work in the past, and are
rendering good service in the present as they will in the future. The
success of each depends entirely on its leadership. If