gregational Church in San Francisco. He had been so invited some time previously by the Rev. James L. Gordon, a modernist type of minister who leans more to the sensational and to the attractions of immediate public interest than toward the old-fashioned, conservative line of church programs. Now, with the discussion of immortality, resurrection and infidelism at the boiling point throughout the country, but particularly in California because its centrally distributing element was located here, Burbank philosophically consented to address the fashionable San Francisco congregation on his beliefs in divinity and eternity.
The church, of course, was crowded to the vestibule. Hundreds stood outside hoping to get in long after the doors were closed, and then stood an hour or more longer to see the white-haired infidel come forth from the church, where he had explained simply why he could not accept many of the commonly accepted beliefs.
It was a trying situation, no doubt—both for Burbank and for Dr. Gordon—but a congregation that had assembled in the huge stone edifice, forewarned of what it would hear, did not march out in indignant protest at Burbank's sacrilege, but stayed to hear him out in respectful silence, then left, some of them perhaps with the feeling that they had enjoyed a most entertaining hour.
But even that did not close the incident, although Burbank expresses hope, not without fervor, that the matter might be allowed to drop and he be allowed to get back to his work.
