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long since turned their backs upon the accepted creeds now find themselves in the company of those who still claim allegiance to the church, but who feel themselves cramped by the creeds fashioned for them by their fathers.

The leader of the New Thought, reaching the top of the mountain, often finds himself face-to-face with a scientific savant who has reached the same place by climbing up the other side of the hill. And the scientist and the New Thought man need not be surprised to find a leader of advanced religious thought claiming a foothold on the top of the same hill. But the trio, after they have congratulated themselves upon reaching the summit and ending their journey look around them, and lo! their mountain is but a foothill, and far above them, towering higher and higher, rise range after range of the real mountains, the highest peaks being hidden among the clouds!

One has but to look around him to see how strenuous has grown the search for the answer to the riddle. New creeds, philosophies, cults and schools confront us at every turn. The past has been ransacked for its discarded philosophies, which have been renovated and trimmed anew for modern use. The dust has been brushed off many an old and almost forgotten creed, which is pushed to the front under a new name and with new trimmings. Plato is worked overtime to furnish the twentieth century creed promoters with material to be done over. The wildest dreams of the ancients are toned down a little, and boldly offered to the eager multitude as the long sought for solution of it all. Priests and teachers of all the religions of all lands are among us vying with the priests and priestesses of the new philosophies and creeds of our own land, and bidding for public favor. And these new home-made philosophies, how frightfully and wonderfully are they made! The old philosophies of Greece and Rome are skillfully dovetailed with the creeds of the Orient, and the result is a thing differing from anything ever seen before by gods or men.

Brahmins, Buddhists, Confucians, Mahommedans and Sun Worshippers claim thousands of followers in our land, and Isis and Osiris will before long again be given a place and duly installed in the new Pantheon. Thor and Odin will doubtless be revamped, and the rites of the Druids revived. We are looking every day for the arrival on our shores of the advance agent of the Joss propaganda from the Celestial kingdom.

And the home product is, if possible, more fantastic and bizarre than the imported article. The wildest claims and statements are made with an air of authority, and are accepted as "gospel" by the adherents of the several sects. One does not know whether to sigh or weep as he watches some of the modern prophets and prophetesses strutting their little stage and cutting fantastic capers before high heaven, thus adding to the gayety