The Herr Director said that he had no objection to our inventing or importing as many religions as we pleased; but he did object to our exporting any, for we were making the task of regulating and controlling them very difficult. Moreover he did not see how we could develop any kind of common, national ideals with such a confusion of religions. “You have, or pretend to have, a democratic government, and your strongest church is monarchic to the core.”

I had to admit that religiously we are a very chaotic people, and that we are daily adding to that chaos; yet these facts might prove what I had been trying to make clear to him: That this is fundamentally a religious country, and that as a whole we are the most religious people in the world. I supported this statement by quoting a good German authority, the late Prof. Karl Lamprecht, who thinks we have a great future. . . Read More