Religion: God's Income

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"If these facts seem improbable in this enlightened age, I can only explain my submission to Father Divine's influence by indicating that I am a colored woman of middle age, with unlimited faith in Divine Providence and a quickness and readiness, through a highly impressionable and emotional mentality, to believe in human perfection and the brotherhood of man. My husband, also colored and of my own age, regards himself as well read in the Bible, and has always sought relief from an inferiority complex resulting from the color of his skin, in the consoling thought of a blessed hereafter. These mental attitudes no doubt caused us to become easy subjects for Father Divine's preachments."

Mrs. Brown declared that she gave Father Divine $70 of her $80-per-month wages from 1930 to 1935, that her husband surrendered all his earnings as a handyman as well as their jewelry, furniture and savings. Mrs. Brown's explanation: "I paid all this money in the belief that unless I did so I was doomed to everlasting misery and that by giving money to Father Divine I was depositing it in his Heavenly Treasury and was in that way assured of eternal life and peace." But the Browns began getting leery of Father Divine when, as is his invariable custom, he commanded them to cease sleeping together.

To the contentions set forth in Lawyer Lesselbaum's moving papers, Father Divine reserved reply until this week.