From the archives.

Throughout 1999, Commonweal has been celebrating its 75th anniversary. Here from the August 5, 1925 issue is an excerpt from "Summing Up at Dayton," the conclusion of a series of reports on the Scopes trial, written by Commonweal's editor Michael Williams.

There remains still another question, which not only was not summed up at Dayton, but also could not be summed up by any judge, or any counsel, any more than it could be settled by the verdict of any jury. This is the issue which John Henry Newman had in mind, when, in his Apologia, he summed up the events and conclusions of his own religious struggle-the issue that comes when each man must face the ultimate realities of self and God.

Despite the crudities...of the late Mr. Bryan and the fundamentalists, they have shouted, raucously it may be, yet in a way that compels attention, a question which each and every soul must face, as Newman faced it-even if not to the same answering act of faith.

That question is--"What think you of God?"

A score of collateral questions surround or trail after the central one. Is man a mere accident in an accidental universe? Is he a mere chemical cell in a vast agglomeration of chemical cells? Is he an atom of force whirling amid an endless interweaving of blind, undirected forces? Has he no future even save nothingness and oblivion? Has he no real will, no true individuality, no true responsibility, no eternal future? Or is he the child of a Father whose life is love and who sent Christ to tell man so, and to prove it?

Each soul must answer these questions, or ignore them. Upon the way in which the question is answered by individuals depends not merely the fate of this nation, but the fate of the world.

Michael Williams