Religion lost all its old contemplative and esoteric character, and
became a frankly worldly enterprise, a thing of balance-sheets and
ponderable profits, heavily capitalized and astutely manned. There was
no longer any room for the spiritual type of leader, with his white
choker and his interminable fourthlies. He was displaced by a brisk
gentleman in a "business suit" who looked, talked and thought like a
seller of Mexican mine stock. Scheme after scheme for the swift
evangelization of the nation was launched, some of them of truly
astonishing sweep and daring. They kept pace, step by step, with the
mushroom growth of enterprise in the commercial field. The Y. M. C. A.
swelled to the proportions of a Standard Oil Company, a United States
Steel Corporation. Its huge buildings began to rise in every city; it
developed a swarm of specialists in new and fantastic moral and social
sciences; it enlisted the same gargantuan talent which managed the
railroads, the big banks and the larger national industries. And beside
it rose the Young People's Society of Christian Endeavour, the
Sunday-school associations and a score of other such grandiose
organizations, each with its seductive baits for recruits and money.
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