Page:Honore Willsie--Judith of the godless valley.djvu/243

 Mr. Fowler was running his fingers through his beard, glancing hesitatingly from Douglas to Peter.

"Well, is it the sense of this meeting," asked the postmaster, "to let the preacher tell us how he feels about it?"

"Go to it, old wrangler," said Charleton. "I can spout the Persian Poet to 'em if you run short of Bible stuff."

"Baa—a—a!" bleated a small boy in the back of the room.

"I'm going to give the first young one that makes a disturbance a dose of aspen switch," said Grandma Brown.

There was a general chuckle that quieted as Mr. Fowler began to speak.

"Religion doesn't rest on proof. It rests on Faith. And faith is something every human being possesses. If you plant a seed, you have faith that it will produce a plant. No power of yours can bring the plant. But you have faith—in what?—that the plant will appear. Every night that you go to bed you believe that a new day will come. You cannot bring that day but you have absolute faith that to-morrow will be brought by—what? The stars come nightly to the sky, the moon and the earth whirl in their appointed places. You have absolute confidence that they will continue to float in the heavens. On what do you place that confidence?

"Friends, I cannot prove to you that there is a God. But if you will be patient with me, I will give you a faith that asks no proof." He opened his Bible and began to read.