The Elk Mountain pilot., 1922-10-12
Continued from page One

family responsibilities. He sold books
and maps to keep the wolf from the
door. At the Spanish Court, as be-
fore in Portugal, he urged his
schemes of sea-adventure but for
many weary months there was no en-
coura ging response. For the most part,
he was accounted a moon-struck
visionary. He lacked that which bred
confidence. But at last the spirit of
the time favoring his plans, Ferdin-
and and Isabella, on August 3, 1892,
\ set him afloat on the high seas.
He was not an efficient master of
his ship. The man, Pinzon, was ap-
pa emily more Indispensable than he.
He wanted those qualities which in
duce respect in subordinates. His
crew mutinied at last, and Pinzon
alone was able to restore order. And
it was by Pinzon's advice that he
changed his course from west to south
of west, and so on October IL, 1892,
landed at San Salvador.
But Fate was unrelenting to the
end. Hear him in his old age: "Such
is my fate, that twenty years of SER
vice through which have passed
with so much toll and danger have
profited me nothing, and at this very
day do not possess roof in Spain
that can call my own. If wish to
eat or sleep, have nowhere to go
but to the inn or tavern, and most
times lack wherewith to pay the
bill----Now l have not hair upon
me that is not gray: my body is in
firm, and all that was left to me, as
we'll as to my brothers, has been
taken away and sold, even to the
frock that l wore, to my great dis
honor"
Yet Fate so harsh to this man, liv-
ing, immortalized him, dead. His
name is symbol of loyalty to faith,
of dauntless perseverance, and its
lustre shall grow dim probably only
with the dimming of the stars in the
worlds collapse.
The Alleged Decadence Of the Church
A certain Mr.. ]. D. Bush, writing
in ''The Nation" for Oct. A, offers a
remedy for what he considers the
Churchs utter decadence. The remedy
is not new, and Mr. Bush's manner. in
prescribing is hardly calculated to
win the patients confidence, yet, if
the situation be as desperate as he
reports it, one can't afford to quibble
about such details as triteness and
BIT squeness. Indeed, some very, very
old remedies are still accounted ef-
fective, and some impatient, Grabbed
phys ciai have proved highly sue
cessful pract tioners.
symptoms OF the utter decadence
of the Church, Mr.. Bush finds ~ in
the note of hopelessness in the tone
of the clergy as they denounce ir-
religion; (2) in the cheap expedients
resorted to by so many congrega-
tions,-the organization of boys and
girls clubs, the supervision Of dance
halls, and the installation of billiard
tables; and (3) the general indiffer-
ence Of the people. THE mass of
citizens pay no more heed to their
(the Churches) pronouncements than
to the buzzing of flies"
what, one may fsk in sober
honesty, is there to take anyone to
church? Why sloold we assemble
o-ce week, not to seek God, but to
congratulate ours,lv,s on having
found Him, and on thoroughly under
standing the plan which He prom ul-
gated some centuries ago? Peo
pie do feel the need of religion
witness the popularity of any new
sect that seems to promise something
for the hungry. Neither dead ritual
ism nor the blood of the Lamb means
anything p the modern world. No
deep need of the human soul is salts
fed by repeating creed of which
one believes not word, or by sing
ing hymns about blessed and GER
which the most devout might well
shudder."
"And yet the church might be,
what it strangely thinks it is, a
leader, and its religion might be
religion, instead of being one of the
less interesting brsncles of archae-
ology"
The remedy pres ribed is, in gen.
eral, "the abandon ment of the idea
of revelation and the whole super
natural framework erected by prim-
tive zealots" At two points this
readjustment is pec'ally imperative.
First, Christ must be humanized at
is certain that Christ was no Chris
tian. If Christ was God, he doesn't