shot hit and carried hit home, kind o' brash like-he war miserble- and they ketched him, and he's workin' out his fine, an' the neighbors on tother mounting air a-holpin' his wife. She's a-dyin' of pellagra. The ole man's allus been kind o' lackin'. He's powerful old, and him bein' lackin' he's kinda off'n his haid. He hollers out loud and prays. The gyards hit him over the haid yesterday when he hollered to some folks a-passin'. You see the sun is so hot, an' the ole man's lackin' anyhow.'

"There is a store beyond?' I ask faintly. 'We want to buy some alcohol. My husband has ivy poison.'

'Yes,' she answered. 'Hit's a right smart store. I don't know about alcohol. The storekeeper he owns a right smart chance of everything on this and tother mounting. Sence the boll weevil tuck us we all owe him due bills, and he owns all the land. They're about all renters but me. My son's a engineer in Birmingham. I own my place. He's a-movin' the mounting to get me out. Good-bye. I'd be proud if you-all'd write me a card. I kin read writin' too.'

We put John on the chain, and trudged on up the hot road between the iron cages. Mules and scrapers; negroes and whites; guards with pistols; and over all a pall of silence. Dirt and toil and sweat and torture! The 'city feller' with the 'specs' turned away his pallid face; the old man who was 'lackin" cried out a prayer to us; the guard shook him roughly by the shoulder. The silent horror of the road, broken only by the old man's cry, crept into our blood and caught at our hearts.

The store was packed with silent, lank mountaineers, sitting on boxes, spitting tobacco with great accuracy and perfect regularity from the open windows. Each man took his turn. There was a small amount of denatured alcohol in the lamp. We might have it, but there was no bottle to be found, no can, no receptacle whatever. We were in despair. Peter, tortured with ivy poison, grew more dejected.

A tall, lean mountaineer unfolded himself in sections from his box.

'Stranger,' he said, 'my advice is to step behind them flour sacks and putt hit on. Hit'll be yourn then.'

Presently a stifled groan came from behind the flour sacks. The mountaineer spat through the window out of his turn it was an unusual occasion and remarked dryly, ‘All of which he done so.'

We camped that night by a stream where I fished. John, barking at every fish I caught, forgot the kitten. Once more he was a gay dog. Peter, the pain of ivy poison allayed, was serene again. Nature healed us. But the old man who was lacking wept in his iron cage for his wife who was dying alone on 'tother mounting.' God send the pallid city youth slept the sleep of exhaustion. The little boy who played all day by the forge lay beside his tubercular mother in the cabin beside the shop. Perhaps the father who would n't join the sheriff in making red-devil whiskey thinks of them to-night. The caretaker's wife, whose husband has pellagra, rocks in the moonlight that shines on the grave of a child 'that thar war n't no doctor to holp.'

O America! Land of peace and plenty. Alabama! Here we rest.

THE Earl of Shaftesbury is said to have remarked on one occasion: 'Men of sense are really but of one religion.' When asked what religion that was, he replied: 'Men of sense never tell.'

This anecdote must have struck a responsive chord in the minds of many, if the frequency with which it has been quoted affords a fair test. It has rested in my own mind for many years, and a year ago I concluded to institute an inquiry among a few representative friends as to whether Shaftesbury's judgment was a witty half-truth or approximated the whole truth.

I

Substituting 'men of common sense' for 'men of sense' and qualifying 'never tell' with the phrase 'except upon certain agreeable occasions,' I selected my list, and on such occasions proceeded to dip into the minds of a number of newspaper writers, doctors, lawyers, professors, statesmen, and business men, to whose friendship several positions I occupied gave me convenient access. The study, of course, required patience and some tact. Too hurried or insistent an inquiry of this sort emanating from a banker might have given rise to rumors as to his sanity.

It is my purpose to report, as accurately as possible, the views of these men on religion. It is not my intention to discuss my own personal beliefs, or those of that oft-quoted but undiscoverable individual, the average man,'

or the views of a majority of men; nor to engage in a discussion of theological doctrines or historical origins. My intention is to act simply as a recorder, and to a limited extent as a commentator.

For convenience in recording, I used the Apostles' Creed as a common index to points of view.

I am quite well aware of the fact that, as Mr. Quick says, "The first necessity is not to restate creeds, but to explain them,' but I shall ask the reader to bear in mind that my purpose in this investigation was to find out what was in the other man's mind not to put something there.

Although impressed with the idea that Shaftesbury's dictum offered at least a half-truth, I confess I was somewhat surprised to find a substantial unanimity of opinion among these men as to what was fundamental in the Creed, and, what is more surprising perhaps, similar conclusions with relation to these fundamentals.

Their approach to the various subjects was sometimes different, but on the whole it was not difficult to find a common base. Some went a little further than others in the expansion of their views, but the least common denominator was rather clearly defined, and that is perhaps what Shaftesbury

meant.

It might clarify the discussion at the outset to state what this common base was in terms of the Apostles' Creed. As accurately as I can state it, it was as follows:

'I believe in God Almighty, Maker of the Universe, and in Jesus Christ, His spiritual Son, worthy to be our Lord; possibly conceived of the Holy Ghost and born of 'the Virgin Mary (but these seem unimportant); suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried.

'I believe in His descent into Hell and ascent into Heaven, symbolically. I believe there is some evidence that bodily He arose from the dead, and I believe in the immortality of His spirit; also allegorically that He sitteth on the right hand of God Almighty, and that I am judged or shall be judged by the spiritual views He taught on earth. I believe that no one could find a wiser, juster, more understanding, or more merciful judge of my actions.

'I don't quite understand the Holy Ghost, though I believe in the Holy Spirit of God; I believe in the advisability of some church organization (though I do not like any of them very much). I do not appreciate the significance of the Communion of Saints. I believe in the forgiveness of sins, in the possibility of the resurrection of the body (though this seems remote), and in the probability of spiritual life everlasting (concerning the desirability of which many are in doubt).'

II

Let us consider the Apostles' Creed phrase by phrase and I will attempt to present the reasons that led to the several conclusions.

I believe in God the Father Almighty. Practically all of these men, I found, believed in a God. Some asserted that they possessed an 'intuitive' feeling of the existence of God, and believed that others did. As Ratzel says, 'Ethnology knows no race without a religion, but only difference in the degree to which religious ideas prevail.'

VOL. 142 NO. 1

C

The intuitionalists among my friends argue that intuition is a quick subconscious summary of accumulated knowledge and experience, and that a feeling of this sort, widely prevalent among sensible people, should be relied upon. They point out that correct thinking existed before logical premises were discovered, just as words existed before the alphabet, and language before grammar. They look upon intuition as a northwest passage of thought that often leads the mind as accurately to the truth as the longer route of logical premises. They are quite persuasive, but I found this argument did not appeal to most of the men with whom I talked.

a

The latter preferred what they called 'common-sense argument.' They knew from personal experience that intellect brings order out of chaos, and, seeing order in the universe, they had concluded that a Supreme Intellect had brought about order.

Herbert Spencer, one pointed out, has shown rather conclusively that no one will ever be able to prove through scientific methods either the existence or nonexistence of a God. These men expressed the same idea in the oftused term, 'the finite cannot grasp the infinite.'

But, in the vast silence of science on the subject, my friends automatically pursued the same course they followed in the affairs of daily life; they dealt with probabilities. They are accustomed consciously, and often subconsciously, to weigh conclusions as well as reasons; they felt they would be foolish to demand proof where proof is impossible and equally foolish not to use the scale of probability in weighing the merits of 'is' and 'is not.'

In substance they said: 'It may be difficult to conceive of a Supreme Intellect creating and directing order in the universe, but it is more difficult

to conceive of order in the absence of a creating and directing force.' Or, to put it in even simpler terms: 'An orderly universe is more likely to be run by an orderly intellect than by nothing at all.'

In brief, they are theists, and in this conclusion I think they have reached a common ground with men who have thought much more deeply on the subject. There was n't an atheist among them.

Some of them leaned a bit toward agnosticism, but all were inclined to think that the agnostic sets too high a premium on his own intellect. As one of them said: "That great group of scientists of the nineteenth century, responsible for so many agnostics of their day and the succeeding generation, naturally placed a high value on the methods and rules of scientific investigation; but the difficulty, as we now begin to see it, is that they greatly overextended the area to which their methods and rules might be applicable.' The generation of the man who discovered the multiplication table must have experienced similarly excited sensations and demanded mathematical proof of many matters to which the multiplication table was in no way applicable.

III

They believe, then, in a God. What kind of God? Here one finds just what he might expect. The argumentative theists, we know, split some two hundred ways in describing the qualities of their God. Why so few, it is difficult to understand. Men's vision of a God, His interest in them, their love and reverence for or reliance upon Him, proceed from their emotions as well as their thought. Heredity, environment, education, experience, are of course unlike. They would be as

likely to select the same God as the same wife. Their general conclusions might be grouped and classified, but would as likely be identical in detail as their respective thumb prints.

Therefore my friends do not attempt to describe their God. When pressed as to the term 'Father' in the Creed, I found, curiously enough, that all interpreted the word 'Father' as indicative of the relationship of God to man; no one of them had appreciated the contrast of the words 'God the Father' and 'His only Son our Lord.'

Only a few warmed to the idea that God resembles even the best of human fathers. I do not think any of them were much concerned about the question. If God is all-powerful, they said, He can do or be what He pleases. It is quite possible that He has established a fatherly relationship; on the other hand, He may not have done so.

If anything, they rather agreed with the view Huxley expressed in that wonderful letter to Charles Kingsley, in which, after saying that he cannot see a shadow or tittle of evidence that the great unknown underlying the phenomena of the universe stands to us in the relation of a Father, he explains what he does believe. He says:

The whole teaching of experience seems to me to show that while the governance (if I may use the term) of the universe is rigorously just and substantially kind and beneficent, there is no more relation of affection between governor and governed than between me and the twelve judges. I know the administrators of the law desire to do their best for everybody and that they would rather not hurt me than otherwise, but I also know that under certain circumstances they will most assuredly hang me; and that in any case it would be absurd to suppose them guided by any particular affection for me.

They grant that one cannot be too sure that a wise father would not adopt