The Bozeman courier. (Bozeman, Mont.) 1919-1954, 1923-06-06
sTHE OLD TINE RELIGION

Mr.. Bryan, antievoiutionary and old fashioned church mem
Der lost his fight against evolutionary teaching at the Presby-
terrain conference. Which is another corroberations of the fact
that things change and people change withnthenTT@ae <tuF7
It is some change from them good old davsn when an
"infidel" classed with a states prison bird in the minds of the
sturdy old religionists of that former. day. Even the crop cared
convicts, of whom a few yet remained as examples of what the
law used to do to convicts in some of the states ranked equal with
an "infidel." perhaps some of us have forgotten or never knew
that cropping convcts ears was a distinguishing mark in some
sections of this country within the memory of living men, Well.
anyway an infidel was next thing to the devil himself. Darwin's
intellectual and scientific ability wouldn't have helped him any
with the communicates of the Old Brick church in those DAYS
An infidel was an infidel. Broadly defined he was one who dis
believed what we believed or thought we believed and refused
to accept our belief.
There were grades of nfidels shading down from unitarians
ana unversahsts to atheists. The lowest type was that who SUBJ
scribed to the "Truthseeker," the infidel journal and who had a
full set OF Tom Pa1nels works and Bob IngersolPs lectures. There
were a few of that lowest grade of outcasts. They talked infidelity
openly at the crossroad stores poked fun at the preachers. pro-
pounded all manner of embarrassing questions, wanted to "argue
religion" and were generally blasphemous, sacriegious and usually
profane. In those days to express a doubt of hell or attempt to
shift the real birthstone to a figurative sense put it's prepayment
in bad; to argue universal salvation was bad enough; to be a
unitarian was worse, but to deny God was to go beyond the pale
into outer darkness where are doge. And those of us brought
up under pious mothers who held firmly to all the church teach
ngs of that day still classify in our minds as fools those who saw
there is no God. Why, a little Sunday school boy of those days
shrank away from an atheist as from a murdered. Church
people avoided him. They failed to neighbor with him. They
aided him when sickness overlook him and came away from his
bedside with visions of his obdurate soul screaming in everlasting
torture throughout the interminable sweep of eternity. Folks
believed in hell and were afraid of it in those days. No little.
innocuous hell of moderate temperatures but the real, old fash
Toned old testament hell of flaming birthstone where the fire was
unquenched and the worm dieth not. Business was business then.
The preacher told it to 'em fifty-two times a year of Sundays
and night after night of quarterly meetings. Many a little boy
and girl went home and drew the covers up over his head to con-
template in the cold sweat of horror what would happen to him if
he died that night-for deathbed repentances were then in the
class that used cars are now. Chances were they break down at
the critical moment.
To have Bob Ingersolrs works in the house was significant
of the mark of the beast. Tom Paine was anathema. To those
who had heard or knew anything about him so was Herbert
Spencer. Darwin and his theories were adjuncts of the Enemy
of Man. There was the bible, there was the curse on those who
attempted to add to or take away from it. That was enough.
They were perhaps crude and narrow in their creeds, ignorant
in a way and lacking that culture that we deem a necessary part
of education, religion and otherwise, nowadays; but they had the
old Puritan sense of living under Gods eye, of the immediate
presence and watchfulness of Hin who should reward as well as
punish. Like the Puritan their houses were mansions in the sky,
their faith the path to a place beside the throne, their rewards
as well as their penalties infinite and eternal. Those old fathers
and mothers in Israel spoke to lin as through a veil that Swallowed
a glory that human eye might not endure. If they lived under
the ban of punishment they lived also under the promise of bes-
sing and they died in an anchored hope that even death and its
gathering darkness could not loose.
Things and times change and the minds of men change with
them. Even faiths absorb the colors of generations and periods
We know more than our fathers, perhaps, we live better materially
than they, but the faith and the obedience to its commands OF
our fathers was as granite, firm and stable if it may have beer
rude. And when the last theory has been offered, when the fina
conclusion has been reached, the granite of their simple faith
and unwavering trust will endure.