He couldn’t, Elmer complained, back in the refuge of his hotel, sink to a crossroads of nine hundred people, with a salary of perhaps eleven hundred dollars; not after the big tent and Sharon’s throngs, not after suites and morning coats and being Dr. Gantry to brokers’ wives in ballrooms.
But also he couldn’t go on. He would never get to the top in the New Thought business. He admitted that he hadn’t quite the creative mind. He could never rise to such originality as, say, Mrs. Riddle’s humorous oracle: “Don’t be scared of upsetting folks ’coz most of ’em are topsy-turvy anyway, and you’ll only be putting ’em back on their feet.”
Fortunately, except in a few fashionable churches, it wasn’t necessary to say anything original to succeed among the Baptists or Methodists.
He would be happy in a regular pastorate. He was a professional. As an actor enjoyed grease-paint and call-boards and stacks of scenery, so Elmer had the affection of familiarity for the details of his profession—hymn books, communion service, training the choir, watching the Ladies’ Aid grow, the drama of coming from the mysteries back-stage, so unknown and fascinating to the audience, to the limelight of the waiting congregation.
And his mother—— He had not seen her for two years, but he retained the longing to solace her, and he knew that she was only bewildered over his New Thought harlequinade.
But—nine hundred population!
He held out for a fortnight; demanded a bigger church from Bishop Toomis; brought in all his little clippings about eloquence in company with Sharon.
Then the Zenith lectures closed, and he had ahead only the most speculative opportunities.
Bishop Toomis grieved, “I am disappointed, Brother, that you should think more of the size of the flock than of the great, grrrrrrrreat opportunities for good ahead of you!”
Elmer looked his most flushing, gallant, boyish self. “Oh, no, Bishop, you don’t get me, honest! I just wanted to be able to use my training where it might be of the most value. But I’m eager to be guided by you!”
Two months later Elmer was on the train to Banjo Crossing, as pastor of the Methodist Church in that amiable village under the sycamores.
CHAPTER XIX
a thursdayin June 1913.
The train wandered through orchard-land and cornfields—two seedy day-coaches and a baggage car. Hurry and efficiency had not yet been discovered on this branch line, and it took five hours to travel the hundred and twenty miles from Zenith to Banjo Crossing.
The Reverend Elmer Gantry was in a state of grace. Having resolved henceforth to be pure and humble and humanitarian, he was benevolent to all his traveling companions. He was mothering the world, whether the world liked it or not.
But he did not insist on any outward distinction as a parson, a Professional Good Man. He wore a quietly modest gray sack suit, a modestly rich maroon tie. Not just as a minister, but as a citizen, he told himself, it was his duty to make life breezier and brighter for his fellow wayfarers.
The aged conductor knew most of his passengers by their first names, and they hailed him as “Uncle Ben,” but he resented strangers on their home train. When Elmer shouted, “Lovely day, Brother!” Uncle Ben looked at him as if to say “Well, ’tain’t my fault!” But Elmer continued his philadelphian violences till the old man sent in the brakeman to collect the tickets the rest of the way.
At a traveling salesman who tried to borrow a match, Elmer roared, “I don’t smoke, Brother, and I don’t believe George Washington did either!” His benignancies were received with so little gratitude that he almost wearied of good works, but when he carried an old woman’s suit-case off the train, she fluttered at him with the admiration he deserved, and he was moved to pat children upon the head—to their terror—and to explain crop-rotation to an ancient who had been farming for forty-seven years.
Anyway, he satisfied the day’s lust for humanitarianism, and he turned back the seat in front of his, stretched out his legs, looked sleepy so that no one would crowd in beside him, and rejoiced in having taken up a life of holiness and authority.
He glanced out at the patchy country with satisfaction. Rustic, yes, but simple, and the simple honest hearts of his congregation would yearn toward him as the bookkeepers could not be depended upon to do in Prosperity Classes. He pictured his hearty reception at Banjo Crossing. He knew that his district superintendent (a district superintendent is a lieutenant-bishop in the Methodist Church—formerly called a presiding elder) had written the hour of his coming to Mr. Nathaniel Benham of Banjo Crossing, and he knew that Mr. Benham, the leading trustee of the local church, was the chief general merchant in the Banjo Valley. Yes, he would shake hands with all of his flock, even the humblest, at the station; he would look into their clear and trusting eyes, and rejoice to be their shepherd, leading them on and upward, for at least a year.
Banjo Crossing seemed very small as the train staggered into it. There were back porches with wash-tubs and broken-down chairs; there were wooden sidewalks.
As Elmer pontifically descended at the red frame station, as he looked for the reception and the holy glee, there wasn’t any reception, and the only glee visible was on the puffy face of the station-agent as he observed a City Fellow trying to show off. “Hee, hee, thereain’tno ’bus!” giggled the agent. “Guess yuh’ll have to carry your own valises over to the hotel!”
“Where,” demanded Elmer, “is Mr. Benham, Mr. Nathaniel Benham?”
“Old Nat? Ain’t seen him today. Guess yuh’ll find him at the store, ’bout as usual, seeing if he can’t do some farmer out of two cents on a batch of eggs. Traveling man?”
“I am the new Methodist preacher!”
“Oh, well, say! That a fact! Pleased to meet yuh! Wouldn’t of thought you were a preacher. You look too well fed! You’re going to room at Mrs. Pete Clark’s—the Widow Clark’s. Leave your valises here, and I’ll have my boy fetch ’em over. Well, good luck, Brother. Hope you won’t have much trouble with your church. The last fellow did, but then he was kind of pernickety—wa’n’t just plain folks.”
“Oh, I’m just plain folks, and mighty happy, after the great cities, to be among them!” was Elmer’s amiable greeting, but what he observed as he walked away was “I am like hell!”
Altogether depressed now, he expected to find the establishment of Brother Benham a littered and squalid crossroads store, but he came to a two-story brick structure with plate-glass windows and, in the alley, the half-dozen trucks with which Mr. Benham supplied the farmers for twenty miles up and down the Banjo Valley. Respectful, Elmer walked through broad aisles, past counters trim as a small department-store, and found Mr. Benham dictating letters.
If in a small way Nathaniel Benham had commercial genius, it did not show in his aspect. He wore a beard like a bath sponge, and in his voice was a righteous twang.
“Yes?” he quacked.
“I’m Reverend Gantry, the new pastor.”
Benham rose, not too nimbly, and shook hands dryly. “Oh, yes. The presiding elder said you were coming today. Glad you’ve come, Brother, and I hope the blessings of the Lord will attend your labors. You’re to board at the Widow Clark’s—anybody’ll show you where it is.”
Apparently he had nothing else to say.
A little bitterly, Elmer demanded, “I’d like to look over the church. Have you a key?”
“Now let’s see. Brother Jones might have one—he’s got the paint and carpenter shop right up here on Front Street. No, guess he hasn’t, either. We got a young fella, just a boy you might say, who’s doing the janitor work now, and guess he’d have a key, but this bein’ vacation he’s off fishin’ more’n likely. Tell you: you might try Brother Fritscher, the shoemaker—he might have a key. You married?”
“No. I’ve, uh, I’ve been engaged in evangelistic work, so I’ve been denied the joys and solaces of domestic life.”
“Where you born?”
“Kansas.”
“Folks Christians?”
“They certainly were! My mother was—she is—a real consecrated soul.”
“Smoke or drink?”
“Certainly not!”
“Do any monkeying with this higher criticism?”
“No, indeed!”
“Ever go hunting?”
“I, uh—— Well, yes!”
“That’s fine! Well, glad you’re with us, Brother. Sorry I’m busy. Say, Mother and I expect you for supper tonight, six-thirty. Good luck!”
Benham’s smile, his handshake, were cordial enough, but he was definitely giving dismissal, and Elmer went out in a fury alternating with despair. . . . To this, to the condescension of a rustic store-keeper, after the mounting glory with Sharon!
As he walked toward the house of the Widow Clark, to which a loafer directed him, he hated the shabby village, hated the chicken-coops in the yards, the frowsy lawns, the old buggies staggering by, the women with plump aprons and wet red arms—women who made his delights of amorous adventures seem revolting—and all the plodding yokels with their dead eyes and sagging jaws and sudden guffawing.
Fallen to this. And at thirty-two. A failure!
As he waited on the stoop of the square, white, characterless house of the Widow Clark, he wanted to dash back to the station and take the first train—anywhere. In that moment he decided to return to farm implements and the bleak lonely freedom of the traveling man. Then the screen door was opened by a jolly ringleted girl of fourteen or fifteen, who caroled, “Oh, is it Reverend Gantry! My, and I kept you waiting! I’m terrible sorry! Ma’s just sick she can’t be here to welcome you, but she had to go over to Cousin Etta’s—Cousin Etta busted her leg. Oh, please do come in. My, I didn’t guess we’d have a young preacher this time!”
She was charming in her excited innocence.
After a faded provincial fashion, the square hall was stately, with its Civil War chromos.
Elmer followed the child—Jane Clark, she was—up to his room. As she frisked before him, she displayed six inches of ankle above her clumsy shoes, and Elmer was clutched by that familiar feeling, swifter than thought, more elaborate than the strategy of a whole war, which signified that here was a girl he was going to pursue. But as suddenly—almost wistfully, in his weary desire for peace and integrity—he begged himself, “No! Don’t! Not any more! Let the kid alone! Please be decent! Lord, give me decency and goodness!”
The struggle was finished in the half-minute of ascending the stairs, and he could shake hands casually, say carelessly, “Well, I’m mighty glad you were here to welcome me, Sister, and I hope I may bring a blessing on the house.”
He felt at home now, warmed, restored. His chamber was agreeable—Turkey-red carpet, stove a perfect shrine of polished nickel, and in the bow-window, a deep arm-chair. On the four-poster bed was a crazy-quilt, and pillow-shams embroidered with lambs and rabbits and the motto, “God Bless Our Slumbers.”
“This is going to be all right. Kinda like home, after these doggone hotels,” he meditated.
He was again ready to conquer Banjo Crossing, to conquer Methodism; and when his bags and trunk had come, he set out, before unpacking, to view his kingdom.
Banjo Crossing was not extensive, but to find the key to the First Methodist Church was a Scotland Yard melodrama.
Brother Fritscher, the shoemaker, had lent it to Sister Anderson of the Ladies’ Aid, who had lent it to Mrs. Pryshetski, the scrubwoman, who had lent it to Pussy Byrnes, president of the Epworth League, who had lent it to Sister Fritscher, consort of Brother Fritscher, so that Elmer captured it next door to the shoemaker’s shop from which he had irritably set out.
Each of them, Brother Fritscher and Sister Fritscher, Sister Pryshetski and Sister Byrnes, Sister Anderson and most of the people from whom he inquired directions along the way, asked him the same questions:
“You the new Methodist preacher?” and “Not married, are you?” and “Just come to town?” and “Hear you come from the City—guess you’re pretty glad to get away, ain’t you?”
He hadn’t much hope for his church-building. He had not seen it yet—it was hidden behind the school-building—but he expected a hideous brown hulk with plank buttresses. He was delighted then, proud as a worthy citizen elected mayor, when he came to an agreeable little church covered with gray shingles, crowned with a modest spire, rimmed with cropped lawn and flower-beds. Excitedly he let himself in, greeted by the stale tomb-like odor of all empty churches.
The interior was pleasant. It would hold two hundred and ninety, perhaps. The pews were of a light yellow, too glaring, but the walls were of soft cream, and in the chancel, with a white arch graceful above it, was a seemly white pulpit and a modest curtained choir-loft. He explored. There was a goodish Sunday School room, a basement with tables and a small kitchen. It was all cheerful, alive; it suggested a chance of growth.
As he returned to the auditorium, he noted one good colored memorial window, and through the clear glass of the others the friendly maples looked in at him.
He walked round the building. Suddenly he was overwhelmed and exalted with the mystic pride of ownership. It was all his; his own; and as such it was all beautiful. What beautiful soft gray shingles! What an exquisite spire! What a glorious maple-tree! Yes, and what a fine cement walk, what a fine new ash-can, what a handsome announcement board, soon to be starred with his own name! His! To do with as he pleased! And, oh, he would do fine things, aspiring things, very important things! Never again, with this new reason for going on living, would he care for lower desires—for pride, for the adventure of women. . . .His!
He entered the church again; he sat proudly in each of the three chairs on the platform which, as a boy, he had believed to be reserved for the three persons of the Trinity. He stood up, leaned his arms on the pulpit, and to a worshiping throng (many standing) he boomed, “My brethren!”
He was in an ecstasy such as he had not known since his hours with Sharon. He would start again—hadstarted again, he vowed. Never lie or cheat or boast. This town, it might be dull, but he would enliven it, make it his own creation, lift it to his own present glory. He would! Life opened before him, clean, joyous, full of the superb chances of a Christian knighthood. Some day he would be a bishop, yes, but even that was nothing compared with the fact that he had won a victory over his lower nature.
He knelt, and with his arms wide in supplication he prayed, “Lord, thou who hast stooped to my great unworthiness and taken even me to thy Kingdom, who this moment hast shown me the abiding joy of righteousness, make me whole and keep me pure, and in all things, Our Father, thy will be done. Amen.”
He stood by the pulpit, tears in his eyes, his meaty hands clutching the cover of the great leather Bible till it cracked.
The door at the other end of the aisle was opening, and he saw a vision standing on the threshold in the June sun.
He remembered afterward, from some forgotten literary adventure in college, a couplet which signified to him the young woman who was looking at him from the door:
Pale beyond porch and portal,Crowned with calm leaves she stands.
Pale beyond porch and portal,Crowned with calm leaves she stands.
Pale beyond porch and portal,Crowned with calm leaves she stands.
Pale beyond porch and portal,
Crowned with calm leaves she stands.
She was younger than himself, yet she suggested a serene maturity, a gracious pride. She was slender, but her bosom was full, and some day she might be portly. Her face was lovely, her forehead wide, her brown eyes trusting, and smooth her chestnut hair. She had taken off her rose-trimmed straw hat and was swinging it in her large and graceful hands. . . . Virginal, stately, kind, most generous.
She came placidly down the aisle, a hand out, crying, “It’s Reverend Gantry, isn’t it? I’m so proud to be the first to welcome you here in the church! I’m Cleo Benham—I lead the choir. Perhaps you’ve seen Papa—he’s a trustee—he has the store.”
“You sure are the first to welcome me, Sister Benham, and it’s a mighty great pleasure to meet you! Yes, your father was so nice as to invite me for supper tonight.”
They shook hands with ceremony and sat beaming at each other in a front pew. He informed her that he was certain there was “going to be a great spiritual awakening here,” and she told him what lovely people there were in the congregation, in the village, in the entire surrounding country. And her panting breast told him that she, the daughter of the village magnate, had instantly fallen in love with him.
Cleo Benham had spent three years in the Sparta Women’s College, specializing in piano, organ, French, English literature, strictly expurgated, and study of the Bible. Returned to Banjo Crossing, she was a fervent church-worker. She played the organ and rehearsed the choir: she was the superintendent of the juvenile department in the Sunday School; she decorated the church for Easter, for funerals, for the Halloween Supper.
She was twenty-seven, five years younger than Elmer.
Though she was not very lively in summer-evening front porch chatter, though on the few occasions when she sinned against the Discipline and danced she seemed a little heavy on her feet, though she had a corseted purity which was dismaying to the earthy young men of Banjo Crossing, yet she was handsome, she was kind, and her father was reputed to be worth not a cent less than seventy-five thousand dollars. So almost every eligible male in the vicinity had hinted at proposing to her.
Gently and compassionately she had rejected them one by one. Marriage must, she felt, be a sacrament; she must be the helpmate of some one who was “doing a tremendous amount of good in the world.” This good she identified with medicine or preaching.
Her friends assured her, “My! With your Bible training and your music and all, you’d make a perfect pastor’s wife. Just dandy! You’d be such a help to him.”
But no detached preacher or doctor had happened along, and she had remained insulated, a little puzzled, hungry over the children of her friends, each year more passionately given to hymnody and agonized solitary prayer.
Now, with innocent boldness, she was exclaiming to Elmer: “We were so afraid the bishop would send us some pastor that was old and worn-out. The people here are lovely, but they’re kind of slow-going; they need somebody to wake them up. I’msoglad he sent somebody that was young and attractive—Oh, my, I shouldn’t have said that! I was just thinking of the church, you understand.”
Her eyes said that she had not been just thinking of the church.
She looked at her wrist-watch (the first in Banjo Crossing) and chanted, “Why, my gracious, it’s six o’clock! Would you like to walk home with me instead of going to Mrs. Clark’s—you could wash up at Papa’s.”
“You can’t lose me!” exulted Elmer, hastily amending, “—as the slangy youngsters say! Yes, indeed, I should be very pleased to have the pleasure of walking home with you.”
Under the elms, past the rose-bushes, through dust emblazoned by the declining sun, he walked with his stately abbess.
He knew that she was the sort of wife who would help him to capture a bishopric. He persuaded himself that, with all her virtue, she would eventually be interesting to kiss. He noted that they “made a fine couple.” He told himself that she was the first woman he had ever found who was worthy of him. . . . Then he remembered Sharon. . . . But the pang lasted only a moment, in the secure village peace, in the gentle flow of Cleo’s voice.
Once he was out of the sacred briskness of his store, Mr. Nathaniel Benham forgot discounts and became an affable host. He said, “Well, well, Brother,” ever so many times, and shook hands profusely. Mrs. Benham—she was a large woman, rather handsome; she wore figured foulard, with an apron over it, as she had been helping in the kitchen—Mrs. Benham was equally cordial. “I’ll just bet you’re hungry, Brother!” cried she.
He was, after a lunch of ham sandwich and coffee at a station lunch-room on the way down.
The Benham house was the proudest mansion in town. It was of yellow clapboards with white trim; it had a huge screened porch and a little turret; a staircase window with a border of colored glass; and there was a real fireplace, though it was never used. In front of the house, to Elmer’s admiration, was one of the three automobiles which were all that were to be found in 1913 in Banjo Crossing. It was a bright red Buick with brass trimmings.
The Benham supper was as replete with fried chicken and theological questions as Elmer’s first supper with Deacon Bains in Schoenheim. But here was wealth, for which Elmer had a touching reverence, and here was Cleo.
Lulu Bains had been a tempting mouthful; Cleo Benham was of the race of queens. To possess her, Elmer gloated, would in itself be an empire, worth any battling. . . . And yet he did not itch to get her in a corner and buss her, as he had Lulu; the slope of her proud shoulders did not make his fingers taut.
After supper, on the screened porch pleasant by dusk, Mr. Benham demanded, “What charges have you been holding, Brother Gantry?”
Elmer modestly let him know how important he had been in the work of Sister Falconer; he admitted his scholarly research at Mizpah Seminary; he made quite enough of his success at Schoenheim; he let it be known that he had been practically assistant sales-manager of the Pequot Farm Implement Company.
Mr. Benham grunted with surprised admiration. Mrs. Benham gurgled, “My, we’re lucky to have a real high-class preacher for once!” And Cleo—she leaned toward Elmer, in a deep willow chair, and her nearness was a charm.
He walked back happily in the June darkness; he felt neighborly when an unknown muttered, “Evening, Reverend!” and all the way he saw Cleo, proud as Athena yet pliant as golden-skinned Aphrodite.
He had found his work, his mate, his future.
Virtue, he pointed out, certainly did pay.
CHAPTER XX
hehad two days to prepare his first sermon and unpack his trunk, his bags, and the books which he had purchased in Zenith.
His possessions were not very consistent. He had a beautiful new morning coat, three excellent lounge suits, patent leather shoes, a noble derby, a flourishing top hat, but he had only two suits of underclothes, both ragged. His socks were of black silk, out at the toes. For breast-pocket display, he had silk handkerchiefs; but for use, only cotton rags torn at the hem. He owned perfume, hair-oil, talcum powder; his cuff links were of solid gold; but for dressing-gown he used his overcoat; his slippers were a frowsy pulp; and the watch which he carried on a gold and platinum chain was a one-dollar alarm clock.
He had laid in a fruitful theological library. He had bought the fifty volumes of the Expositors’ Bible—source of ready-made sermons—secondhand for $13.75. He had the sermons of Spurgeon, Jefferson, Brooks, and J. Wilbur Chapman. He was willing to be guided by these masters, and not insist on forcing his own ideas on the world. He had a very useful book by Bishop Aberman, “The Very Appearance of Evil,” advising young preachers to avoid sin. Elmer felt that this would be unusually useful in his new life.
He had a dictionary—he liked to look at the colored plates depicting jewels, flags, plants, and aquatic birds; he had a Bible dictionary, a concordance, a history of the Methodist Church, a history of Protestant missions, commentaries on the individual books of the Bible, an outline of theology, and Dr. Argyle’s “The Pastor and His Flock,” which told how to increase church collections, train choirs, take exercise, placate deacons, and make pasteboard models of Solomon’s Temple to lead the little ones to holiness in the Sunday School.
In fact he had had a sufficient library—“God’s artillery in black and white,” as Bishop Toomis wittily dubbed it—to inform himself of any detail in the practice of the Professional Good Man. He would be able to produce sermons which would be highly informative about the geography of Palestine, yet useful to such of his fold as might have a sneaking desire to read magazines on the Sabbath. Thus guided, he could increase the church membership; he could give advice to errant youth; he could raise missionary funds so that the heathen in Calcutta and Peking might have the opportunity to become like the Reverend Elmer Gantry.
Though Cleo took him for a drive through the country, most of the time before Sunday he dedicated to refurbishing a sermon which he had often and successfully used with Sharon. The text was from Romans 1:16: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.”
When he came up to the church on Sunday morning, tall and ample, grave and magnificent, his face fixed in a smile of friendliness, his morning coat bright in the sun, a Bible under his arm, Elmer was exhilarated by the crowd filtering into the church. The street was filled with country buggies and a Ford or two. As he went round to the back of the church, passing a knot at the door, they shouted cordially, “Good morning, Brother!” and “Fine day, Reverend!”
Cleo was waiting for him with the choir—Miss Kloof, the school-teacher, Mrs. Diebel, wife of the implement-dealer, Ed Perkins, deliveryman for Mr. Benham, and Ray Faucett, butter-maker at the creamery.
Cleo held his hand and rejoiced, “What a wonderful crowd there is this morning! I’m so glad!”
Together they peeped through the parlor door into the auditorium, and he almost put his arm about her firm waist. . . . It would have seemed natural, very pleasant and right and sweet.
When he marched out to the chancel, the church was full, a dozen standing. They all breathed with admiration. (He learned later that the last pastor had had trouble with his false teeth and a fondness for whining.)
He led the singing.
“Come on now!” he laughed. “You’ve got to welcome your new preacher! The best way is to put a lot of lung-power into it and sing like the dickens! You can all make some kind of noise. Make a lot!”
Himself he gave example, his deep voice rolling out in hymns of which he had always been fond: “I Love to Tell the Story” and “My Faith Looks up to Thee.”
He prayed briefly—he was weary of prayers in which the priest ramblingly explained to God that God really was God. This was, he said, his first day with the new flock. Let the Lord give him ways of showing them his love and his desire to serve them.
Before his sermon he looked from brother to brother. He loved them all, that moment; they were his regiment, and he the colonel; his ship’s crew, and he the skipper; his patients, and he the loyal physician. He began slowly, his great voice swelling to triumphant certainty as he talked.
Voice, sureness, presence, training, power, he had them all. Never had he so well liked his rôle; never had he acted so well; never had he known such sincerity of histrionic instinct.
He had solid doctrine for the older stalwarts. With comforting positiveness he preached that the atonement was the one supreme fact in the world. It rendered the most sickly and threadbare the equals of kings and millionaires; it demanded of the successful that they make every act a recognition of the atonement. For the young people he had plenty of anecdotes, and he was not afraid to make them laugh.
While he did tell the gloomy incident of the boy who was drowned while fishing on Sunday, he also gave them the humorous story of the lad who declared he wouldn’t go to school, “because it said in the Twenty-third Psalm that the Lord made him lie down in green pastures, and he sure did prefer that to school!”
For all of them, but particularly for Cleo, sitting at the organ, her hands clasped in her lap, her eyes loyal, he winged into poetry.
To preach the good news of the gospel, ah! That was not, as the wicked pretended, a weak, sniveling, sanctimonious thing! It was a job for strong men and resolute women. For this, the Methodist missionaries had faced the ferocious lion and the treacherous fevers of the jungle, the poisonous cold of the Arctic, the parching desert and the fields of battle. Were we to be less heroic than they? Here, now, in Banjo Crossing, there was no triumph of business so stirring, no despairing need of a sick friend so urgent, as the call to tell blinded and perishing sinners the necessity of repentance.
“Repentance—repentance—repentance—in the name of the Lord God!”
His superb voice trumpeted it, and in Cleo’s eyes were inspired tears.
Beyond controversy, it was the best sermon ever heard in Banjo Crossing. And they told him so as he cheerily shook hands with them at the door. “Enjoyed your discourse a lot, Reverend!”
And Cleo came to him, her two hands out, and he almost kissed her.
Sunday School was held after morning service. Elmer determined that he was not going to attend Sunday School every week—“not on your life; sneak in a nap before dinner”—but this morning he was affably and expansively there, encouraging the little ones by a bright short talk in which he advised them to speak the truth, obey their fathers and mothers, and give heed to the revelations of their teachers, such as Miss Mittie Lamb, the milliner, and Oscar Scholtz, manager of the potato warehouse.
Banjo Crossing had not yet touched the modern Sunday School methods which, in the larger churches, in another ten years, were to divide the pupils as elaborately as public school and to provide training-classes for the teachers. But at least they had separated the children up to ten years from the older students, and of this juvenile department Cleo Benham was superintendent.
Elmer watched her going from class to class; he saw how naturally and affectionately the children talked to her.
“She’d make a great wife and mother—a great wife for a preacher—a great wife for a bishop,” he noted.
Evening services at the Banjo Crossing Methodist Church had normally drawn less than forty people, but there were a hundred tonight, when, fumblingly, Elmer broke away from old-fashioned church practise and began what was later to become his famous Lively Sunday Evenings.
He chose the brighter hymns, “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” “Wonderful Words of Life,” “Brighten the Corner Where You Are,” and the triumphant pæan of “When the Roll is Called up Yonder, I’ll be There.” Instead of making them drone through many stanzas, he had them sing one from each hymn. Then he startled them by shouting, “Now I don’t want any of you old fellows to be shocked, or say it isn’t proper in church, because I’m going to get the spirit awakened and maybe get the old devil on the run! Remember that the Lord who made the sunshine and the rejoicing hills must have been behind the fellows that wrote the glad songs, so I want you to all pipe up good and lively with ‘Dixie’! Yes,sir! Then, for the old fellows, like me, we’ll have a stanza of that magnificent old reassurance of righteousness, ‘How Firm a Foundation.’ ”
They did look shocked, some of them; but the youngsters, the boys and the girls keeping an aseptic tryst in the back pews, were delighted. He made them sing the chorus of “Dixie” over and over, till all but one or two rheumatic saints looked cheerful.
His text was from Galatians: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace.”
“Don’t you ever listen for one second,” he commanded, “to these wishy-washy fellows that carry water on both shoulders, that love to straddle the fence, that are scared of the sternness of the good old-time Methodist doctrine and tell you that details don’t mean anything, that dogmas and the discipline don’t mean anything. They do! Justification means something! Baptism means something! It means something that the wicked and worldly stand for this horrible stinking tobacco and this insane alcohol, which makes a man like a murderer, but we Methodists keep ourselves pure and unspotted and undefiled.
“But tonight, on this first day of getting acquainted with you, Brothers and Sisters, I don’t want to go into these details. I want to get down to the fundamental thing which details merely carry out, and that fundamental thing—— What is it? What is it? What is it but Jesus Christ, and his love for each and every one of us!
“Love! Love! Love! How beauteous the very word! Not carnal love but the divine presence. What is Love? Listen! It is the rainbow that stands out, in all its glorious many-colored hues, illuminating and making glad again the dark clouds of life. It is the morning and the evening star, that in glad refulgence, there on the awed horizon, call Nature’s hearts to an uplifted rejoicing in God’s marvelous firmament! Round about the cradle of the babe, sleeping so quietly while o’er him hangs in almost agonized adoration his loving mother, shines the miracle of Love, and at the last sad end, comforting the hearts that bear its immortal permanence, round even the quiet tomb, shines Love.
“What is great art—and I am not speaking of ordinary pictures but of those celebrated Old Masters with their great moral lessons—what is the mother of art, the inspiration of the poet, the patriot, the philosopher, and the great man of affairs, be he business man or statesman—yes, what inspires their every effort save Love?
“Oh, do you not sometimes hear, stealing o’er the plains at dawn, coming as it were from some far distant secret place, a sound of melody? When our dear sister here plays the offertory, do you not seem sometimes to catch the distant rustle of the wings of cherubim? And what is music, lovely, lovely music, what is fair melody? Ah, music, ’tis the voice of Love! Ah, ’tis the magician that makes right royal kings out of plain folks like us! ’Tis the perfume of the wondrous flower, ’tis the strength of the athlete, strong and mighty to endure ’mid the heat and dust of the valorous conquest. Ah, Love, Love, Love! Without it, we are less than beasts; with it, earth is heaven and we are as the gods!
“Yes, that is what Love—created by Christ Jesus and conveyed through all the generations by his church, particularly, it seems to me, by the great, broad, democratic, liberal brotherhood of the Methodist Church—that is what it means to us.
“I am reminded of an incident in my early youth, while I was in the university. There was a young man in my class—I will not give you his name except to say that we called him Jim—a young man pleasing to the eye, filled with every possibility for true deep Christian service, but alas! so beset with the boyish pride of mere intellect, of mere smart-aleck egotism, that he was unwilling to humble himself before the source of all intellect and accept Jesus as his savior.
“I was very fond of Jim—in fact I had been willing to go and room with him in the hope of bringing him to his senses and getting him to embrace salvation. But he was a man who had read books by folks like Ingersoll and Thomas Paine—fool, swell-headed folks that thought they knew more than Almighty God! He would quote their polluted and devil-inspired ravings instead of listening to the cool healing stream that gushes blessedly forth from the Holy Bible. Well, I argued and argued and argued—I guess that shows I was pretty young and foolish myself! But one day I was inspired to something bigger and better than any arguments.
“I just said to Jim, all of a sudden, ‘Jim,’ I said, ‘do you love your father?’ (A fine old Christian gentleman his father was, too, a country doctor, with that heroism, that self-sacrifice, that wide experience which the country doctor has.) ‘Do you love your old dad?’ I asked him.
“Naturally, Jim was awful’ fond of his father, and he was kind of hurt that I should have asked him.
“ ‘Sure, of course I do!’ he says. ‘Well, Jim,’ I says, ‘does your father love you?’ ‘Why, of course he does,’ said Jim. ‘Then look here, Jim,’ I said; ‘if your earthly father can love you, how much more must your Father in Heaven, who created all Love, how much more must he care and yearn for you!’
“Well, sir, that knocked him right over. He forgot all the smart-aleck things he’d been reading. He just looked at me, and I could see a tear quivering in the lad’s eyes as he said, ‘I see how you mean, now, and I want to say, friend, that I’m going to accept Jesus Christ as my lord and master!’
“Oh, yes, yes, yes, how beautiful it is, the golden glory of God’s Love! Do you notfeelit? I mean that! I don’t mean just a snuffling, lazy, mechanical acceptance, but a passionate—”
He had them!
It had been fun to watch the old fanatics, who had objected to the singing of Dixie, come under the spell and admit his power. He had preached straight at one of them after another; he had conquered them all.
At the end they shook hands even more warmly than in the morning.
Cleo stood back, hypnotized. When he came to her she intoned, her eyes unseeing, “Oh, Reverend Gantry, this is the greatest day our old church has ever known!”
“Did you like what I said of Love?”
“Oh . . .Love. . . yes!”
She spoke as one asleep; she seemed not to know that he was holding her hand, softly; she walked out of the church beside him, unspeaking, and of her tranced holiness he felt a little awe.
In his attention to business, Elmer had not given especial heed to the collections. It had not been carelessness, for he knew his technique as a Professional Good Man. But the first day, he felt, he ought to establish himself as a spiritual leader, and when they all understood that, he would see to it that they paid suitably for the spiritual leadership. Was not the Laborer worthy of his Hire?
The reception to welcome Elmer was held the next Tuesday evening in the basement of the church. From seven-thirty, when they met, till a quarter of eight, he was busy with a prodigious amount of hand-shaking.
They told him he was very eloquent, very spiritual. He could see Cleo’s pride at their welcome. She had the chance to whisper, “Do you realize how much it means? Mostly they aren’t anything like so welcoming to a new preacher. Oh, I am so glad!”
Brother Benham called them to order, in the basement, and Sister Kilween sang “The Holy City” as a solo. It was pretty bad. Brother Benham in a short hesitating talk said they had been delighted by Brother Gantry’s sermons. Brother Gantry in a long and gushing talk said that he was delighted by Brother Benham, the other Benhams, the rest of the congregation, Banjo Crossing, Banjo County, the United States of America, Bishop Toomis, and the Methodist Episcopal Church (North) in all its departments.
Cleo concluded the celebration with a piano solo, and there was a great deal more of hand-shaking. It seemed to be the rule that whoever came or was pushed within reach of the pastor, no matter how many times during the evening, should attack his hand each time.
And they had cake and homemade ice cream.
It was very dull and, to Elmer, very grateful. He felt accepted, secure, and ready to begin his work.
He had plans for the Wednesday evening prayer-meeting, He knew what a prayer-meeting in Banjo Crossing would be like. They would drone a couple of hymns and the faithful, half a dozen of them, always using the same words, would pop up and mumble, “Oh, I thank the Lord that he has revealed himself to me and has shown me the error of my ways and oh that those who have not seen his light and whose hearts are heavy with sin may turn to him this evening while they still have life and breath”—which they never did. And the sullenly unhappy woman in the faded jacket, at the back, would demand, “I want the prayers of the congregation to save my husband from the sins of smoking and drinking.”
“I may not,” Elmer meditated, “be as swell a scholar as old Toomis, but I can invent a lot of stunts and everything to wake the church up and attract the crowds, and that’s worth a whole lot more than all this yowling about the prophets and theology!”
He began his “stunts” with that first prayer-meeting.
He suggested, “I know a lot of us want to give testimony, but sometimes it’s hard to think of new ways of saying things, and let me suggest something new. Let’s give our testimony by picking out hymns that express just how we feel about the dear Savior and his help. Then we can all join together in the gladsome testimony.”
It went over.
“That’s a fine fellow, that new Methodist preacher,” said the villagers that week.
They were shy enough, and awkward and apparently indifferent, but in a friendly way they were spying on him, equally ready to praise him as a neighbor or snicker at him as a fool.
“Yes,” they said; “a fine fellow, and smart’s a whip, and mighty eloquent, and a real huskyman. Looks you right straight in the eye. Only thing that bothers me— He’s too good to stay here with us. And if he is so good, why’d they ever send him here in the first place? What’s wrong with him? Boozer, d’ye think?”
Elmer, who knew his Paris, Kansas, his Gritzmacher Springs, had guessed that precisely these would be the opinions, and he took care, as he handshook his way from store to store, house to house, to explain that for years he had been out in the evangelistic field, and that by advice of his old and true friend, Bishop Toomis, he was taking this year in a smaller garden-patch to rest up for his labors to come.
He was assiduous, but careful, in his pastoral calls on the women. He praised their gingerbread, Morris chairs, and souvenirs of Niagara, and their children’s school-exercise books. He became friendly, as friendly as he could be to any male, with the village doctor, the village homeopath, the lawyer, the station-agent, and all the staff at Benham’s store.
But he saw that if he was to take the position suitable to him in the realm of religion, he must study, he must gather several more ideas and ever so many new words, to be put together for the enlightenment of the generation.
His duties at Banjo Crossing were not violent, and hour after hour, in his quiet chamber at the residence of the Widow Clark, he gave himself trustingly to scholarship.
He continued his theological studies; he read all the sermons by Beecher, Brooks, and Chapman; he read three chapters of the Bible daily; and he got clear through the letter G in the Bible dictionary. Especially he studied the Methodist Discipline, in preparation for his appearance before the Annual Conference Board of Examiners as a candidate for full conference membership—full ministerhood.
The Discipline, which is a combination of Methodist prayerbook and by-laws, was not always exciting. Elmer felt a lack of sermon-material and spiritual quickening in the paragraph: