How Little People Think
By Editor
It is not to be wondered at that people do not grasp religious truth when it seems impossible for them to grasp some of the simpler propositions of life. For instance, a daily paper propounds the simple problem, "If a brick weighs seven pounds and half a brick, how much does a brick and a half weigh?" and the answers given range from seven pounds to forty-two pounds. The following answers in pounds are common: 7, 10 1/2, 11 1/4, 14, 15 3/4, 18 1/2, 28, and there are still others. How little people think! What a commentary on the education of the day! Not one of these answers is correct. Here is a parallel problem: If a dollar equal fifty cents and half a dollar, to how many cents is a dollar and a half equal? Most people will answer this correctly, because they know apart from the problem. But it would be just as easy if the problem were thus put: If a dollar equaled sixty cents and half a dollar, to how much is a dollar and a half equal? The answers to the problem are profoundly significant of the mental status of this boasted age of enlightenment and intellectuality. And yet the school-teacher is abroad in the land.