than to seek similar adventure and satisfaction in
conflict with established property rights and the recognized agencies of
peace and order.

Nevertheless there persists in the church, however unconsciously, a sort
of piety that disregards the body, and the conventional Christian ideal
has certainly been anemic and negative in the matter of recreation. The
Young Men's Christian Associations with their reproduction of the Greek
ideal of physical well-being have served to temper the other-worldly
type of Christianity with the idea of a well-rounded and physically
competent life as being consonant with the will of God.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century Francke of Halle, an
educational organizer and philanthropist of no mean proportion, said,
"Play must be forbidden in any and all of its forms. The children shall
be instructed in this matter in such a way as to show them, through the
presentation of religious principles, the wastefulness and folly of all
play. They shall be led to see that play will distract their hearts and
minds from God, the Eternal Good, and will work nothing but harm to
their spiritual lives."

Only gradually does "the-world-as-a-vale-of tears" and
"the-remnant-that-shall-be-saved" idea give place to a faith that claims
for God the entire world with its present life as well as individual
immortality in future felicity. Miracle and cataclysm and postmortem
glory--the ever-ready recourse of baffled hope and persecuted
Christianity--are giving place more and more to a Christian conquest
that is orderly and inclusive of the whole sweep of human life. The
church is but dimly conscious, as yet, that through the aid of science
she has attained this magnificent optimism; much less does she realize
its full implication for social service and the saving of the
individual, both body and soul.

The minister as the herald and exemplar of such an imperial salvation
cannot ignore the exceptional opportunities which the play interests of
boyhood offer. He whose task has been to reconcile men to God, to bring
them into harmony with the universe in its ultimate content, cannot
neglect those activities which more than anything else in the life of
the boy secure the happy co-ordination of his powers, the placing of
himself in right relation with others and in obedience to law. These are
the moral and religious accomplishments aimed at in the teaching of
reconciliation which bulks so large in Christian doctri