New Britain herald., 1926-09-27
STAND FATHERS IN
 RELIGION EXPOSED
Prof. Vaughan Shows Up Fal. lacy of Keeping Mind Closed

tell untruths, according to an ad- dress delivered 10 Everyman's Bible class yesterday morning by Professor
 David D. Vaughan of Boston Uni yersity.
 Dr. Vaughan frankly told his
 hearers that they cannot believe everything they are told about their own religion. regardless of what that religion is. He called attention 10 the fact that the world did not al- ways have Christianity and that primitive man had his religion even before the birth of the ancient He brew religion. He mentioned found- CT. of various denominations and said they were wrong in many things He said in part;
 we did not always have Chris tianity, and before that time we did not always have the Hebrew religion. Go back to the days of primitive
 man. Primitive man was religious. Why was primitive man religious?
 Primitive man was religious for the same reason that babies will push spoon off a chair. Psychologists tell us that babies push spoons off high chairs beacuse of the psychol- logical delight of being a cause.
 And so the primitive man went looking for God, and up through the centuries men have been struggling up the slope that leads toward the .brope Va, raod iT, vo,r h ierb ecboo1 histories how the Aborigines of South America killed their own little babies and their blood ran down over the stones of the altar. You read how q beautiful Indian maiden would go down over Niagara Falls in her canoe. In Mexico beautiful maidens would be thrown into the fire-all in mems pathetic effort to find God"
 Citing as an illustration of the fact that "Our grandfathers did not know it all" he conducted an imaginary conversation with George Washing ton. in which the latter answered T don't know" to such questions as What Is a railroad, an automobile, radio, a steamboat. telephone, sub marine, airshipH" He said any 10 year old boy or girl would get 100 per cent to Washingtons zero on this test.
 "If that's true of Washington, how much nor. true would it be of us one hundred years from now? How long since we have had automobiles The first one went down the streets of Chicago in 1894. It went whist ling down the street and the police man stopped the driver because he was endangering lives. How long since have we had telephones and phonographs? We all remember the first time we heard them. The first time I heard a phonograph I had to drop a dime in slot in the vil- lage drug store and put tubes in my ears to hear that silly cylinder on that primitive photograph.
 "A hundred years from now tho children and the simple minded peo, pie of that day will look back at this Everyman's Bible class, speaker and all, and say the whole bunch of them | must have escaped from the Con- f necticut home for the feeble minded. | We do not know it all, and our fathers did not know 1t all. We'll, | then, htey must have been wrong on some things, and We must be wrong on some things. Where are we wrong? If we knew we would change and then we would not be | Wn d A l. ,,.lno are wrong. Isn't 1t serious to be | wrong and not to know it? Of l course 1t is. When you remember ! that for hundreds of years the brain- | jest men in the colleges and churches | all believed in witchcraft, and put to | death hundreds and thousands of in 1 nocent people, isn't it a serious thing to be wrong?
 If we are wrong and 1t Is a ser ious thing to be wrong, what are we | going to do about it? I hope we will | do in this Bible class now and be- fore the year is over what the aver age man is not willing to do-be teachable and tolerant and patient. Jesus Christ said, Blessed are the | poor in spirit, which means blessed are the teachable. Blessed are the teachable for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven--for theirs is the kingdom of anything. You cannot learn any thing unless you are teachable.
 When they ran the first railroad train over the country, the locomo- tive was called the rocket One II man to show his contempt for 1t got on horseback in front of the train to race it down the track. It at- tained the awful speed of Is miles an hour. As the thing went whistl ing through the country the farmers got out along the track with pitch forks to protect themselves.
 You know what happened when a. man carried the first umbrella down the street. The whole town with pockets full of eggs and fruit got out on the street and lined up and threw things at him, and the whole bunch got soaked with the rain.
 What happened when they intro duced bath tubs in the United States? They brought one to Pittsburgh and one to Boston. A medical expert Of that day said If a man took bath all over all at once, he would get sick and die. They were fined s3O | year apiece for owning bath tubs.
 q think we need to remind our selves again and again that religion s not static, but dynamic; religion is not stationary thing, but a grow ng thing. and ii keeps getting bet l .er and better and our viewpoint gets q richer and richer. It is easy to illus g rate this from history. You take c he religious beliefs and theories of s certain great leaders of the past. ! Take some of the opinions of Martin q luther. Anyone who says, I am T ,oing to believe all that Martin Luth- IF ever belieyed' has his hands full.