American democratic thought, pointed up the relation between the Protestant movement in this country and the development of a social religion, which he called the American Democratic Faith. Those familiar with his work will remember that he placed the incipience of the democratic faith at around 1850. And he describes it as a balanced polarity between the notions of the free individual and what he called the fundamental law.

I want to say more about Gabriel's so-called fundamental law. But first I want to quote him on the relationship that he found between religion and politics in this country and what happened to it. He points out that from the time of Jackson on through World War 1,, evangelical Protestantism was a dominant influence in the social and political life of America. He terms this early enthusiasm ``Romantic Christianity'' and concludes that its similarity to democratic beliefs of that day is so great that ``the doctrine of liberty seems but a secular version of its counterpart in evangelical Protestantism.'' Let me quote him even more fully, for his analysis is important to my theme.

He says: ``Beside the Protestant philosophy of Progress, as expressed in radical or conservative millenarianism, should be placed the doctrine of the democratic faith which affirmed it to be the duty of the destiny of the United States to assist in the creation of a better world by keeping lighted the beacon of democracy.'' He specifies, ``In the middle period of the Nineteenth Century it was colored by Christian supernaturalism, in the Twentieth Century it was affected by naturalism. But in every period it has been humanism.'' And let me add, utopianism, also.