n and shout--the little funny, mockingly
dressed, frowzily frumpily happy children, the stored-up sunshine of a
thousand years all shining faintly out through the dirt, out through the
generations in their little faces--"Will the Man come to me out of
these?"

The tombstones lean against the wall and the children run and shout. As
I watch them with my hopes and fears and the tombstones tilted against
the walls--as I peer through the railings at the children, I face my
three religions. What will the three religions do with the children?
What will the children do with the three religions?

And now I will tell the truth. I will not cheat nor run away as
sometimes I seem to have tried to do for years. I will no longer let
myself be tricked by the mere glamour and bigness of our modern life
nor swooned into good-will by the roll and liturgy of revolution, "of
the people," "for the people," "by the people," nor will I be longer
awed by those huge phrase-idols, constitutions, routines, that have
roared around me "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity"--those imperious,
thoughtless, stupid tra-la-las of the People. Do the People see truth?
Can the People see truth? Can all the crowd, and can all the machines,
and all the cathedrals piled up together produce the Man, the Crowd-man
or great man who sees truth?

And so with my three religions, I have three fears, one for each of
them. There is the Machine fear, lest the crowd should be overswept by
its machines and become like them; and the Crowd fear, lest the crowd
should overlook its mighty innumerable and personal need of great men;
and there is also the daily fear for the Church, lest the Church should
not understand crowds and machines and grapple with crowds and machines,
interpret them and glory in them and appropriate them for her own use
and for God's--lest the Church should turn away from the crowds and the
machines and graciously and idly bow down to Herself.

And now I am going to try to express these three fears that go with the
three religions as well as I can, so that I can turn on them and face
them and, God helping me, look them out of countenance.

CHAPTER II

THE CROWD SCARE

Time was when a man was born upon this planet in a somewhat lonely
fashion. A few human beings out of all infinity stood by to care for
him. He was brought up with hills and stars and a neighbour or so, until
he grew to man's estate. He climbed at last over the farthest hill, and