Joe Carbrook whistled.  “That’s a tough nut to crack, gentle people,” he said, “because you’ve simply got to think of those other five days.  The chances are that four times as many people in Delafield go to other public places as go to church and Sunday school.”

“What can the churches do?” asked J.W.  “You can’t make people go to church.”

“No,” assented Marcia, “and if you could, it would be foolish.  We want to make people like the churches, not hate them.  One thing I believe our churches can do is to put their public services more into methods and forms that don’t have to be taken for granted or just mentally dodged.  Half the time people don’t know what a religious service really stands for.”

“Meaning by that——?” Joe queried, as much to hear Marcia talk as for the sake of what she might say.

“Well, they have seen and heard it since they were children.  When they were little they didn’t understand it, and now it is so familiar that they forget they don’t understand it,” Marcia responded, not wholly oblivious of Joe’s strategy, but too much in earnest to care.  “I’ve heard of a successful preacher in the East who seems to be making them understand.  He says he tries to put into each service four things—­light, music, motion; that is, change—­and a touch of the dramatic.  Why not?  I think it could be done without destroying the solemnity of the worship.  They did it in the Temple at Jerusalem, and they do it in Saint Peter’s at Rome and in Westminster Abbey and Saint John’s Cathedral in New York.  Why shouldn’t we do it here in our little churches?”

“Make a note of it, J.W.,” ordered Joe.  “It’s worth suggesting to some of the preachers.”

J.W. made his note, rather absently, and offered a conclusion of his own: 

“The church must take note of the town’s sore spots too.  I’ve found out that crowding people in tenements and shacks means disease and immorality.  Isn’t that the church’s affair?  Angus MacPherson has taught me that when the jobs are gone little crimes come, followed by bigger ones; and sickness comes too, with the death rate going up.  Babies are born to unmarried mothers, and babies, with names or without, die off a lot faster in the river shacks and the east side tenements than they do up this way.  Maybe the church couldn’t help all this even if it knew; but I’m for asking it to know.”

“I’ll vote for that,” Joe asserted, “if you’ll vote for my proposition, which is this:  our churches must quit trying just to be prosperous; they must quit competing for business like rival barkers at a street fair; they must begin to find out that their only reason for existence is the service they can give to those who need it most; they’ve got to believe in each other and work with each other and with all the other town forces that are trying to make a better Delafield.”