A MAN WITH A HEALTHY HOBBY

313

have rejected that one Methodist doctrine that a large part of the human race must inevitably suffer endless torment, was to my father as great a slide backwards on my part as for me to have become the most thorough-going agnostic. It relieved me greatly to discover this; and indeed, he seemed to take the whole matter to heart much less than I had feared he might. I am satisfied that one of the chief reasons why he became reconciled so easily, was the fact that he has always thought so much of my wife. He knew that she had been brought up from childhood in the beliefs that I acquired after leaving home; and as he couldn't help liking her for her own sake, he could hardly condemn me harshly for believing what she believed.

"But my surprise did not reach its climax until the time when I deemed it my duty to change front in politicswhen I at last realized that political heresy, like religious heresy, is not seldom synonymous with truth. You may imagine how astonished I was to find that my action in voting a different ticket from that of my father in the election of a man to fill an earthly political office, seemed to disturb him far more than my renunciation of the entire system of Christian doctrine. That I was a political turncoat stirred him more deeply than that I was a religious heretic. It was a great eye-opener to me. And following up the clew, I was even more astounded to discover that in this matter, as in so many others, it was a case of 'like father, like son'; it had cost me a harder struggle to break away from my political party than to break away from my religion."

"I must not forget to tell you," said Mr. Henson the next morning at breakfast, "how I met up' with an old friend of ours, last month down on the Mexican border. I was on a trip through Arizona, New Mexico, and western Texas for the purpose of reporting to a New York syndicate upon the extent of the irrigable arid lands in that region, the water supply, and the possibilities of storing and distributing it; for you know that already the star of scientific irrigation is taking its way eastward and southward from California and Colorado, into this new, meagerly developed region, where the primitive methods of the Pueblos and Mexicans and the results that they have produced are merely a token and guarantee of what can and most certainly will be done not far in the future."

"There! I've been afraid of it all along," interrupted Craig, in a low tone, glancing at Thalia and Paul, and tapping his forehead. "It's his hobby. He can't help it. He's always wound up, and once you pull the string, there's no telling when he'll run down; and as for stopping

him

Go ahead, Henson," broke in Granger. "I'm interested. Craig never could stand anybody else's crankiness—except my own."

Henson took Craig's sally and Paul's reply with a smile, and went on:

"Yes, I am full of it, I admit, and I like to talk of it. Perhaps I sometimes get over-enthusiastic; so few people in the East, even the intelligent-outside of Chicago❞—with a profound bow in the direction of Craig-"seem to have any adequate idea of the meaning and results of scientific irrigation. I have had occasion to make a study of it, its promises and realities, both here and in the Old World. And I see in it not only great and attractive openings for money-making, but also the means for satisfying great human necessities. You know that the great fundamental material problem of human life is the problem of food supply; and that again is the problem of the best and fullest use of our natural resources, chiefly agricultural lands, for the production of food. There are three principal factors in the solution of this problem-heat, water, and tillage. Tillage is the one factor of the three wholly within man's control. The sun, so irregular and uncertain in his work in the humid climates, becomes, in the drier regions a much more regu-* lar, constant, reliable quantity, and the more reliable in proportion to the aridity-a fact not only curious and interesting but of inestimable importance; because this very regularity and constancy of sunshine, so disastrous to life without artificial means of water supply, becomes, with such artificial supply, the most potent factor in bringing about enormous productivity of the soil, both as to quantity and as to variety.

"So, then, in the dry, hot region we can control the tillage and depend on the good behavior of the sun. It only remains to procure and distribute a water supply-a problem which in past ages as well as in the present has given ample scope to the genius alike of the engineer and of the statesman. And once the water supply is obtained, the

OSSIE WAVER ONCE MORE

315

arid region has an incalculable advantage over the rainy clime; for water in the skies is still beyond our control, whether we would bring it to us or drive it away-too little or too much the constant danger. To depend upon rainfall alone is, moreover, to abandon vast portions of the earth to barren waste; while other vast portions, semi-arid, can furnish but a meager and uncertain food supply, wholly insufficient to support a large population in comfort or permit the progress of mankind to any high degree of civilization. But once water is had and brought under control through an adequate system of irrigation, lo! the desert tracts become the choice spots of the earth. Mark my words: the 'Great American Desert' will yet be, in large part, the Great American Garden."

"But these irrigation systems must be very expensive," objected Paul, as if unconvinced, "compared with the dropping of the gentle rain from heaven.'"

"Yes, at the outset; but they pay immensely, I assure you," replied Henson, ready to defend his position.

"But what's the use of it all?" continued Paul. "Why go to all that trouble and cost merely for the sake of getting water, in a desert or anywhere else? Why not pray for it? "Trapped!" exclaimed Craig, with a laugh.

Thalia cast a reproachful look at Paul.

"I couldn't help it, my dear; really I couldn't," meekly pleaded the victim of the look.

Henson smiled good-humoredly, if a little confusedly, and answered:

"Well, Granger, I am afraid I must confess that when it comes to wetting the ground, I have more faith in a dam and a ditch than in a prayer-especially in the arid regions. But I started out to tell you about meeting an old friend of ours in El Paso, Texas-none other than Ossie Waver." Paul burst out laughing, while Thalia also showed a degree of amusement that evidently surprised the visitors. We saw the Waver family here in L- some time ago," explained Thalia, "and a funny episode it was.'

"Yes," said Paul, "we'll relate it after we hear your tale." "It was late in November," said Henson. "I stopped off at El Paso to look over the valley and mesa lands and study a great project for damming the Rio Grande. When I got off the cars I found the air so balmy and bracing that I thought I would walk to the hotel. My way led through

the plaza; and there, stretched out on a bench, lay Ossie, basking in the warm November sun and munching away at a bunch of mission grapes. In spite of his haggard face I knew him, and sat down to talk with him for half an hour. He was the same old Ossie, barring his physical infirmities; and he descanted on the merits of his wife and babies-particularly the twins-with all his old-time eloquence and disregard for the r's. Poor fellow! He is in the advanced stages of consumption. Even the life-giving properties of that magnificent air-you never breathe such air outside of the arid regions-cannot now save him. He waited too long before going there. But now let us hear, Mrs. Gran

ger, about your own meeting."

Thalia and Paul related the circumstance, amid much merriment.

"That accounts for it," said Henson at the conclusion. I was not a little curious to hear about' Mawia' from less interested lips than Ossie's. He announced to me no less than four times during our half-hour's talk that she was the 'gweatest woman on eahth,' and declared that he could never congwatulate' himself enough on having won 'such an attwactive and supewioh woman.'

CHAPTER 46

MORE ABOUT CHRISTIAN CREED-MAKERS AND HERESY

HUNTERS

AFTER breakfast Thalia excused herself to attend the weekly meeting of a mothers' kindergarten class, of which she was the leading spirit; and so Paul, Stuart, and Henson were left to themselves.

"I propose that we let Henson guide the discussion for the present," said Stuart. "I may have something to say later."

"The fact is," said Henson, "I have just spent a week browsing around among the libraries in New York, looking up some points that I couldn't find covered in the books accessible to me in Denver. Several questions have come to me that are not yet answered to my satisfaction. I realize that I am too strongly prejudiced to take a strictly

THE FOUR GREAT COUNCILS AGAIN

317

impartial view. Now, one of the points is this: From what Craig has told me and what I have read, it seems to me that you attach too much importance to the action of those councils of Christian bishops in the first five centuries after Christ."

66

"On the contrary," answered Paul, we protest most strenuously against the immense importance which all Christendom has attached to those councils, from that day to this. What struck me most forcibly when I began to look into the history of Christian doctrine was the overwhelming weight which the Christian church attaches. to the decrees of those councils, as well as to the crude, gross speculations of the leaders of the Christian church in that era, and to their testimony as to the date and authorship of the four Gospels. And yet it is impossible to overestimate that weight. Hear what Richard Hooker, 'the greatest of English philosophical theologians,' says in his Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity,' a work which, in the words of Buckle, is still considered one of the greatest bulwarks' of the English church:

"There are but four things which concur to make complete the whole state of our Lord Jesus Christ: his deity, his manhood, the conjunction of both, and the distinction of the one from the other being joined in one. Four principal heresies there are which have in those things withstood the truth: Arians by bending themselves against the deity of Christ; Apollinarians by maiming and misinterpreting that which belongeth to his human nature; Nestorians by rending Christ asunder and dividing him into two persons; the followers of Eutyches by confounding in his person those natures which they could distinguish. Against these there have been four most ancient general councils: the council of Nice to define against Arians; against Apollinarians, the council of Constantinople; the council of Ephesus against Nestorians; against Eutycheans the Chalcedon council.'

"Archdeacon Farrar, in the article on 'Jesus Christ' in the Encyclopedia Britannica, quotes Hooker with approval, and adds:

"The result of these centuries of controversy was enshrined in the so called Nicene creed-"the holy symbol declared at Nice, established at Constantinople, strengthened at Ephesus, sealed at Chalcedon.'

"Then Farrar makes this decisive statement:

When the church had thus rigidly defined the limits of Catholic orthodoxy, the decisions of the four ecumenical councils were