(The CRIMSON invites all men in the University to submit signed communications of timely interest. It assumes no responsibility, however, for sentiments expressed under this head and reserves the right to exclude any whose publication would be palpably inappropriate.)

To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

Mediation is perhaps the most dangerous task that can be imposed upon a man, and I have some misgivings as to whether I am not boldly "rushing in where angels fear to tread" in the present instance. Yet the deep respect with which I regard the rights of Religion and Science, and my belief that there are others who also wish to mete out full justice, as far as possible, to the respective claims of these hoary old opponents prompt me to propose a truce, the Truce of God.

In the early Christian era, the telling of miraculous stories about the Founder and propagators of our highly estimable religion had an effect, almost equally miraculous, in the winning of converts--much as the modern missionary finds them useful to overcome the impassiveness of the unbeliever. To the untutored masses of the Empire, it was not a question of Mohammed going to the Mountain to be convinced, but rather of the Mountain coming to Mohammed in order to convince him by a material display of power. Never having been acquainted with even the possibility of such a higher life as the spiritual before, the slave and citizen of Rome, and elsewhere, demanded proof in a sphere with which he was familiar--the realm of the physical,--and got it.

But do the men and women of today need such proof of their faith? It seems rather unlikely, since miracles are rarely the basis of the Sunday sermons in their churches, nor do they often grace the front pages of their magazines and newspapers--except in advertisements. No, we have been admitted to the higher conception, and need no longer rest our belief upon such material matters. And as to the question of the Virgin Mary, which has lately aroused such animated discussion, it is hard to see just what difference an affirmative or negative decision can make in our faith. Is it not possible for one to be a good Christian without regard for whether one believes in the trimmings of Christianity that so attract the savage, or whether one consigns the miracles to the level of Greek mythology.

Hence, when Mr. Edsall some time ago demanded in these columns that Science keep off the property of Religion by preventing the attack of reason on faith, he should also have demanded, to be just, that Religion keep off the property of Science, by refraining from the distortion by faith of the latter's principles in its realm of facts. Let our faith and our reason be kept apart, as Kant recommended some two hundred years ago, for neither is to be trusted when it wanders from home. It matters not what belief tells us about how, or when, or where this, or that, or the other thing happened in Biblical times, but it does matter what we believe about our God; nor does it matter what our reason may have to say about its enemy. Enemy? No, brother! Let there be a truce. DEAN WOOD '26