"_Resolved_, That the earth is flat and stationary, and that the sun moves around it once in twenty-four hours." At early candle-lighting on two successive Friday evenings this question was debated. On each night the procedure was the same. Each of the speakers spoke forty-five minutes, and each of the leaders spent a half-hour in rebuttal, a total of four hours each evening of solid oratory. I should like to relate, but it would unduly extend this narrative, the learned arguments of the two college students who stood for the rotundity of the earth, and how those arguments were met. I well remember the closing argument of my chief opponent, not the local preacher but an abler man whom he brought in, the cousin of a Confederate General of the same name (though himself a stanch Union man) who stood beside and above me with long descending gestures that threatened to crush my skull as he shouted: "He's a college student-ah! And he's come out here to larn us and instruct us about the shape of the yarth-ah! And he knows more'n Joshua-ah! And he'd take Joshua into this here school and tell him he didn't know what he'd ort to pray for-ah! He'd tell Joshua that he hadn't orter said, 'Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon-ah, and thou moon in the valley of Ajalon-ah!' He'd tell Joshua that he'd ort to have prayed, 'Yarth, stand thou still upon thine axle-tree-ah!' But I reckon God knowed what Joshua had ort to have prayed for, for it is written in the Word of God that the sun stood still-ah! I tell ye, brethering, hit's the doctrine of infidelity-ah! And any man that teaches it ort to be drove out of the country-ah!" There is much more of the story, but this must suffice to illustrate an important point. Until he went to live in Springfield, Abraham Lincoln probably never had heard a Baptist preacher, unless it was John Mason Peck on some errand to Vandalia, who did not believe the earth flat, and who would not have classified Abraham Lincoln as an infidel for denying the declaration. Now, I knew that I was not an infidel, even though I parted company with my friends in the Baptist ministry in my belief that the earth was round, and even though I had a similar debate with a well-informed Methodist preacher on the length of time that was required to make the earth. But Abraham Lincoln did not know. Thomas Paine and the preachers were agreed in their misinformation. I count it a privilege to have lived with earnest and intelligent people who believed the earth flat, and to whom that belief was an important article of Christian faith. But I saw intelligent young men who had come to another opinion concerning some of these matters who accepted without protest the names that overzealous mountain preachers applied to them, and who, believing themselves to be infidels, in time became so.