Page:Why I am an infidel.pdf/24

 Whereat the latter replied: "Although I went to college as a youth, I never considered it necessary to steep oneself in academic learning in order to learn how to think. I welcome a fair and square, open and above-board fight on any subject, including this, but I despise a man who sneaks around under a cloak or cover of any society or clique to strike his blows."

Said the Rev. E. E. Ingram, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church at Santa Rosa: "If words can be made to mean anything that one wants them to mean, we are bordering on linguistic anarchy. I regard Mr. Burbank's statement as most unfortunate and not worthy either of Mr. Burbank's head or heart. Mr. Burbank does not seem to know the meaning of the words and terms he used."

But Burbank merely smiled, pointing his finger suggestively toward the dictionary, and replied: "I said I am an infidel in the true sense of that word. Look it up, if you don't believe it."

In addition to these critics, others presented themselves from near and far. One suggested kindly that "the gardener should stick to his cabbages," another that "the cobbler should stick to his last."

Archbishop Edward J. Hanna of San Francisco, who was mentioned in press dispatches from Rome as a likely candidate to be elevated to the rank of cardinal, entered into a lengthy dissertation to prove that there is a God—a premise, or conclusion, as you will, that Burbank never denied. He merely said that for all of him the power called God might just as well