What Can a Man Believe?

In every human being, whether emperor or cowboy, prince or

pauper, philosopher or slave, there is a mysterious something

which he neither understands nor controls. It may lie dormant

for so long as to be almost forgotten; it may be so repressed

that the man supposes it is dead. 

But one night he is alone in the desert under the starry sky;

one day he stands with bowed

head and damp eyes beside an open grave; or there comes an

hour when he clings with desperate instinct to the wet rail of a

storm - tossed boat, and suddenly out of the forgotten depths of

his being this mysterious something leaps forth. It over - reaches

habit; it pushes aside reason, and with a voice that will not be

denied it cries out its questionings and its prayer.

What Can a Man Believe?, Barton