The religious zeal which pervades much of the college sporting element is especially prone to express itself in an unquestioning devoutness and a naive and complacent submission to an inscrutable Providence.

It therefore by preference seeks affiliation with some one of those lay religious organizations which occupy themselves with the spread of the exoteric forms of faith--as, e.g., the Young Men's Christian Association or the Young People's Society for Christian Endeavor.

These lay bodies are organized to further "practical" religion; and as if to enforce the argument and firmly establish the close relationship between the sporting temperament and the archaic devoutness, these lay religious bodies commonly devote some appreciable portion of their energies to the furtherance of athletic contests and similar games of chance and skill.

It might even be said that sports of this kind are apprehended to have some efficacy as a means of grace.
They are apparently useful as a means of proselyting, and as a means of sustaining the devout attitude in converts once made.

That is to say, the games which give exercise to the animistic sense and to the emulative propensity help to form and to conserve that habit of mind to which the more exoteric cults are congenial.