I
HE had 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.
II
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.
III
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.
IV
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 not _feel_ it? I mean that! I don’t mean just a snuffling, lazy,
mechanical acceptance, but a passionate—”
V
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.
VI
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?
VII
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.
VIII
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 husky _man_. 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.
IX
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:
The concurrent recommendation of two-thirds of all the members
of the several Annual Conferences present and voting, and of
two-thirds of all the members of the Lay Electoral Conferences
present and voting, shall suffice to authorize the next ensuing
General Conference by a two-thirds vote to alter or amend any of
the provisions of this Constitution excepting Article X, § I;
and also, whenever such alteration or amendment shall have been
first recommended by a General Conference by a two-thirds vote,
then so soon as two-thirds of all the members of the several
Annual Conferences present and voting, and two-thirds of all the
members of the Lay Electoral Conferences present and voting,
shall have concurred therein, such alteration or amendment shall
take effect; and the result of the vote shall be announced by
the General Superintendents.
He liked better, from the Articles of Religion in the Discipline:
The offering of Christ, once made, is that perfect redemption,
propitiation, and satisfaction for all the sins of the whole
world, both original and actual; and there is none other
satisfaction for sin but that alone. Wherefore the sacrifice of
masses, in the which it is commonly said that the priest doth
offer Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission of
pain or guilt, is a blasphemous fable and dangerous deceit.
He wasn’t altogether certain what it meant, but it had such a fine
uplifting roll. “Blasphemous fable and dangerous deceit.” Fine!
He informed his edified congregation the next Sunday that the
infallibility of the Pope was “a blasphemous fable and a dangerous
deceit,” and they almost jumped.
He had much edification from these “Rules for a Preacher’s Conduct” in
the Discipline:
Be Serious. Let your motto be, “Holiness to the Lord.” Avoid all
lightness, jesting, and foolish talking. Converse sparingly and
conduct yourself prudently with women. . . . Tell every one
under your care what you think wrong in his conduct and temper,
and that lovingly and plainly, as soon as may be; else it will
fester in your heart.
As a general method of employing our time we advise you, 1. As
often as possible to rise at four. 2. From four to five in the
morning and from five to six in the evening to meditate, pray,
and read the Scriptures with notes.
Extirpate out of our Church buying or selling goods which have
not paid the duty laid upon them by government. . . . Extirpate
bribery—receiving anything, directly or indirectly—for voting
at any election.
Elmer became a model in all these departments except, perhaps, avoiding
lightness and jesting; conducting himself in complete prudence with
women; telling every one under his care what he thought wrong with
them—that would have taken all his spare time; arising at four; and
extirpating sellers of smuggled goods.
For his grades, to be examined by the Annual Conference, he wrote to
Dean Trosper at Mizpah. He explained to the dean that he had seen a
great new light, that he had worked with Sister Falconer, but that it
had been the early influence of Dean Trosper which, working somewhat
slowly, had led him to his present perfection.
He received the grades, with a letter in which the dean observed:
“I hope you will not overwork your new zeal for righteousness. It might
be hard on folks. I seem to recall a tendency in you to overdo a lot of
things. As a Baptist, let me congratulate the Methodists on having you.
If you really do mean all you say about your present state of
grace—well, don’t let that keep you from going right on praying. There
may still be virtues for you to acquire.”
“Well, by God!” raged the misjudged saint, and, “Oh, rats, what’s the
odds! Got the credentials, anyway, and he says I can get my B. D. by
passing an examination. Trouble with old Trosper is he’s one of these
smart alecks. T’ hell with him!”
X
Along with his theological and ecclesiastical researches, Elmer applied
himself to more worldly literature. He borrowed books from Cleo and from
the tiny village library, housed in the public school; and on his
occasional trips to Sparta, the nearest sizable city, he even bought a
volume or two, when he could find good editions secondhand.
He began with Browning.
He had heard a lot about Browning. He had heard that he was a stylish
poet and an inspiring thinker. But personally he did not find that he
cared so much for Browning. There were so many lines that he had to read
three or four times before they made sense, and there was so much stuff
about Italy and all those Wop countries.
But Browning did give him a number of new words for the note-book of
polysyllables and phrases which he was to keep for years, and which was
to secrete material for some of his most rotund public utterances. There
has been preserved a page from it:
_incinerate—burn up_
_Merovingian—French tribe bout_ A. D. _500_
_rem Golgotha was scene crucifixn_
_Leigh Hunt—poet—1840—n. g._
_lupin—blue flower_
_defeasance—making nix_
_chanson (pro. Shan-song)—French kind of song_
_Rem: Man worth while is m. who can smile when ev thing goes dead wrong_
_Sermon on man that says other planets inhabited—nix. cause Bible says
o of Xt trying to save THEM._
Tennyson, Elmer found more elevating than Browning. He liked “Maud”—she
resembled Cleo, only not so friendly; and he delighted in the homicides
and morality of “Idylls of the King.” He tried Fitzgerald’s Omar, which
had been recommended by the literary set at Terwillinger, and he made a
discovery which he thought of communicating through the press.
He had heard it said that Omar was non-religious, but when he read:
Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument
About it and about: but evermore
Came out by the same door wherein I went,
he perceived that in this quatrain Omar obviously meant that though
teachers might do a whole lot of arguing, Omar himself stuck to his
belief in Jesus.
In Dickens Elmer had a revelation.
He had not known that any literature published previous to the _Saturday
Evening Post_ could be thrilling. He did not care so much for the
humor—it seemed to him that Mr. Dickens was vulgar and almost immoral
when he got Pickwick drunk and caused Mantalini to contemplate
suicide—but he loved the sentiment. When Paul Dombey died, Elmer could
have wept; when Miss Nickleby protected her virtue against Sir Mulberry
Hawk, Elmer would have liked to have been there, both as a parson and as
an athlete, to save her from that accursed society man, so typical of
his class in debauching youth and innocence.
“Yes, sir, you bet, that’s great stuff!” exulted Elmer. “There’s a
writer that goes right down to the depths of human nature. Great stuff.
I’ll preach on him when I get these hicks educated up to literary
sermons.”
But his artistic pursuits could not be all play. He had to master
philosophy as well; and he plunged into Carlyle and Elbert Hubbard. He
terminated the first plunge, very icy, with haste; but in the
biographies by Mr. Hubbard, at that time dominating America, Elmer found
inspiration. He learned that Rockefeller had not come to be head of
Standard Oil by chance, but by labor, genius, and early Baptist
training. He learned that there are sermons in stones, edification in
farmers, beatitude in bankers, and style in adjectives.
Elmer, who had always lived as publicly as a sparrow, could not endure
keeping his literary treasures to himself. But for once Cleo Benham was
not an adequate mate. He felt that she had read more of such
belles-lettres as “The Message to Garcia” than even himself, so his
companion in artistic adventure was Clyde Tippey, the Reverend Clyde
Tippey, pastor of the United Brethren Church of Banjo Crossing.
Clyde was not, like Elmer, educated. He had left high school after his
second year, and since then he had had only one year in a United
Brethren seminary. Elmer didn’t think much, he decided, of all this
associating and fellowshiping with a lot of rival preachers—it was his
job, wasn’t it, to get their parishioners away from them? But it was an
ecstasy to have, for once, a cleric to whom he could talk down.
He called frequently on the Reverend Mr. Tippey in the modest cottage
which (at the age of twenty-six) Clyde occupied with his fat wife and
four children. Mr. Tippey had pale blue eyes and he wore a
fourteen-and-a-half collar encircling a thirteen neck.
“Clyde,” crowed Elmer, “if you’re going to reach the greatest number and
not merely satisfy their spiritual needs but give ’em a rich, full,
joyous life, you gotta explain great literature to ’em.”
“Yes. Maybe that’s so. Haven’t had time to read much, but I guess
there’s lot of fine lessons to be learned out of literature,” said the
Reverend Mr. Tippey.
“_Is_ there! Say, listen to this! From Longfellow. The poet.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal,
and this—just get the dandy swing to it:
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.
I read that way back in school-reader, but I never had anybody to show
me what it meant, like I’m going to do with my congregation. Just think!
‘The grave is NOT its goal!’ Why, say, Longfellow is just as much of a
preacher as you or I are! Eh?”
“Yes, that’s so. I’ll have to read some of his poetry. Could you lend me
the book?”
“You bet I will, Clyde! Be a fine thing for you. A young preacher like
you has got to remember, if you’ll allow an older hand to say so, that
our education isn’t finished when we start preaching. We got to go on
enlarging our mental horizons. See how I mean? Now I’m going to start
you off reading ‘David Copperfield.’ Say, that’s full of fine passages.
There’s this scene where—— This David, he had an aunt that everybody
thought she was simply an old crab, but the poor little fellow, his
father-in-law—— I hope it won’t shock you to hear a preacher say it,
but he was an old son of a gun, that’s what he was, and he treated David
terribly, simply terribly, and David ran away, and found his aunt’s
house, and then it proved she was fine and dandy to him! Say, ’ll just
make the tears come to your eyes, the place where he finds her house and
she don’t recognize him and he tells her who he is, and then she kneels
right down beside him—— And shows how none of us are justified in
thinking other folks are mean just because we don’t understand ’em. You
bet! Yes, sir. ‘David Copperfield.’ You sure can’t go wrong reading that
book!”
“‘David Copperfield.’ I’ve heard the name. It’s mighty nice of you to
come and tell me about it, brother.”
“Oh, that’s nothing, nothing at all! Mighty glad to help you in any way
I can, Clyde.”
Elmer’s success as a literary and moral evangel to Mr. Clyde Tippey sent
him back to his excavations with new fervor. He would lead the world not
only to virtue but to beauty.
Considering everything, Longfellow seemed the best news to carry to this
surprised and waiting world, and Elmer managed to get through many, many
pages, solemnly marking the passages which he was willing to sanction,
and which did not mention wine.
Ah, nothing is too late
Till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate.
Cato learned Greek at eighty; Sophocles
Wrote his grand Œdipus, and Simonides
Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers,
When each had numbered more than fourscore years.
Elmer did not, perhaps, know very much about Simonides, but with these
instructive lines he was able to decorate a sermon in each of the
pulpits he was henceforth to hold.
He worked his way with equal triumph through James Russell Lowell,
Whittier, and Ella Wheeler Wilcox. He gave up Kipling because he found
that he really enjoyed reading Kipling, and concluded that he could not
be a good poet. But he was magnificent in discovering Robert Burns.
Then he collided with Josiah Royce.
XI
Bishop Wesley R. Toomis had suggested to Elmer that he ought to read
philosophy, and he had recommended Royce. He himself, he said, hadn’t
been able to give so much time to Royce as he would have liked, but he
knew that here was a splendid field for any intellectual adventurer. So
Elmer came back from Sparta with the two volumes of Royce’s “The World
and the Individual,” and two new detective stories.
He would skip pleasantly but beneficially through Royce, then pick up
whatever ideas he might find in all these other philosophers he had
heard mentioned: James and Kant and Bergson and who was that fellow with
the funny name—Spinoza?
He opened the first volume of Royce confidently, and drew back in
horror.
He had a nice, long, free afternoon in which to become wise. He labored
on. He read each sentence six times. His mouth drooped pathetically. It
did not seem fair that a Christian knight who was willing to give his
time to listening to people’s ideas should be treated like this. He
sighed, and read the first paragraph again. He sighed, and the book
dropped into his lap.
He looked about. On the stand beside him was one of the detective
stories. He reached for it. It began as all proper detective stories
should begin—with the tap-room of the Cat and Fiddle Inn, on a stormy
night when gusts of rain beat against the small ancient casement, but
within all was bright and warm; the Turkey-red curtains shone in the
firelight, and the burnished handles of the beer-pump—
An hour later Elmer had reached the place where the Scotland Yard
Inspector was attacked from the furze-bush by the maniac. He excitedly
crossed his legs, and Royce fell to the floor and lay there.
But he kept at it. In less than three months he had reached page
fifty-one of the first volume of Royce. Then he bogged down in a
footnote:
The scholastic text-books, namely, as for instance the
_Disputations of Suarez_, employ our terms much as follows.
_Being (ens)_, taken quite in the abstract, such writers said,
is a word that shall equally apply _both_ to the _what_ and to
the _that_. Thus if I speak of the being of a man, I may,
according to this usage, mean either the ideal nature of a man,
apart from man’s existence, or the existence of a man. The term
“Being” is so far indifferent to both of the sharply sundered
senses. In this sense Being may be viewed as of two sorts. As
the _what_ it means the Essence of things, or the _Esse
Essentiæ_. In this sense, by the Being of a man, you mean simply
the definition of what a man as an idea means. As the _that_,
Being means the Existent Being, or _Esse Existentiæ_. The _Esse
Existentiæ_ of a man, or its existent being, would be what it
would possess only if it existed. And so the scholastic writers
in question always have to point out whether by the term Ens, or
Being, they in any particular passage are referring to the
_what_ or to the _that_, to the Esse Essentiæ or to the
Existentiæ.
The Reverend Elmer Gantry drew his breath, quietly closed the book, and
shouted, “_Oh, shut up!_”
He never again read any philosophy more abstruse than that of Wallace D.
Wattles or Edward Bok.
XII
He did not neglect his not very arduous duties. He went fishing—which
gained him credit among the males. He procured a dog, also a sound,
manly thing to do, and though he occasionally kicked the dog in the
country, he was clamorously affectionate with it in town. He went up to
Sparta now and then to buy books, attend the movies, and sneak into
theaters; and though he was tempted by other diversions even less
approved by the Methodist Discipline, he really did make an effort to
keep from falling.
By enthusiasm and brass, he raised most of the church debt, and made
agitation for a new carpet. He risked condemnation by having a cornet
solo right in church one Sunday evening. He kept himself from paying any
attention, except for rollickingly kissing her once or twice, to the
fourteen-year-old daughter of his landlady. He was, in fact, full of
good works and clerical exemplariness.
But the focus of his life now was Cleo Benham.