The play of these economic
aspirations among poor people results in all the simpler and most
general religious feelings. With the rise of the aspirations of the
individual, and the ideals of the group, toward higher satisfactions,
the religious experiences should become nobler, more refined. The
penniless college student who prays for an education should be a nobler
worshipper than the fisherman who asks his mud-divinity for a good
catch. The group of Oberammergau players who present the Passion Play, a
highly complex satisfaction of wants, should be nobler believers and
worshippers than herdsmen who out on the hills pray for the increase of
their flocks and for a better price for wool.

Communities differ from one another according to the living which they
supply, or the wants which they satisfy. Modern men will not live in a
community that does not satisfy a pretty long series of wants. For
instance, a graduate of the American common schools will desire bread,
clothing, shelter--all of comfortable quality--and education for his
children better than his own, musical enjoyment, aesthetic culture, the
possession of some books, access to many magazines and the reading of a
daily paper; and varied opportunities for the exercise of the play
spirit. The country community satisfies, in most of the United States,
only the first of these. It is a place for securing food, clothing and
shelter of a comfortable sort. Country people have in the past ten years
secured also a better supply of reading matter. Almost all the rest of
the series is lacking. The reason for the rural exodus is in the most of
cases the quest of education and of music, the craving for aesthetic
culture, and the desire for recreation. Country towns and small cities
therefore have come to be centers of education, of amusement and of
"culture." They are the first step upward on the series of economic
satisfaction. Men who have made some money on the farm "move into town,"
for the satisfaction of the later wants in the series.

None of these wants is itself sinful, for all of them make up life. They
are the steps on the way from bread to God. The business of the teacher
and preacher of religion is to know the wants of his people: study those
which are satisfied in his community, and so to build the community that
for most of its people and for the most desirable people, all the vital
necessities of life shall be satisfied, in the community in which the
desire