Page:Why I am an infidel.pdf/13

 as the days passed, from an ever-widening circle that finally took in Canada, England, Germany and a score of other countries. From scientists and laymen who with Tennyson believe that "there is more faith in honest doubt than in half the creeds," came messages of commendation. From the orthodox clergy, and from cranks of all conditions of mental servitude, there came an avalanche of expostulation, reproof, and sibilant recrimination for the man who had had the temerity to tell what he thought in the face of established doctrine.

Ministers in Luther Burbank's own town, whose churches he had attended at times and for whose congregations he had more than once spoken on scientific subjects, winced, looked first askance, then scandalized. With wry faces religious leaders pecked at his words, outraged orators enveloped him in the gases of withering, trenchant criticism, and fanatics lashed him with biblical platitudes. Like kernels of popcorn, livid defenders of the faith, scorched by the heat of what a great man sees as Truth, jumped high into the air, and with quavering voices went into convulsions. Sententious champions of the gospel squared off to engage Burbank in Quixotic jousting, and fanatics ran amuck with anonymous threats of every dire punishment known either to God or the evil eye. One writer, addressing his protest to the newspaper that had first interviewed Burbank on the subject, consigned the plant wizard to no less a tropical climate than hell itself, where it was promised he would meet Conan Doyle and Sir Oliver Lodge.