ially prone to express itself in an unquestioning
devoutness and a naive and complacent submission to an inscrutable
Providence. It therefore by preference seeks affiliation with some one
of those lay religious organizations which occupy themselves with
the spread of the exoteric forms of faith--as, e.g., the Young Men's
Christian Association or the Young People's Society for Christian
Endeavor. These lay bodies are organized to further "practical"
religion; and as if to enforce the argument and firmly establish the
close relationship between the sporting temperament and the archaic
devoutness, these lay religious bodies commonly devote some appreciable
portion of their energies to the furtherance of athletic contests and
similar games of chance and skill. It might even be said that sports
of this kind are apprehended to have some efficacy as a means of grace.
They are apparently useful as a means of proselyting, and as a means of
sustaining the devout attitude in converts once made. That is to
say, the games which give exercise to the animistic sense and to the
emulative propensity help to form and to conserve that habit of mind to
which the more exoteric cults are congenial. Hence, in the hands of
the lay organizations, these sporting activities come to do duty as a
novitiate or a means of induction into that fuller unfolding of the
life of spiritual status which is the privilege of the full communicant
along.

That the exercise of the emulative and lower animistic proclivities are
substantially useful for the devout purpose seems to be placed beyond
question by the fact that the priesthood of many denominations is
following the lead of the lay organizations in this respect. Those
ecclesiastical organizations especially which stand nearest the lay
organizations in their insistence on practical religion have gone some
way towards adopting these or analogous practices in connection with the
traditional devout observances. So there are "boys' brigades," and other
organizations, under clerical sanction, acting to develop the emulative
proclivity and the sense of status in the youthful members of the
congregation. These pseudo-military organizations tend to elaborate and
accentuate the proclivity to emulation and invidious comparison, and so
strengthen the native facility for discerning and approving the relation
of personal mastery and subservience. And a believer is eminently a
person who knows how to obey and accept cha