_THE FIGHTING PARSON_
"Did you mean what you said about the--preacher just now? Do your
thinking quick, and be prompt about speaking. If you meant it, I'm
going to punch your nose."
The speaker was "Angel Face," or as he was called, following the
militant speech recorded above, "Gyp the Blood." His parishioners in
S----, California, might not have recognized his language and his style
of delivery on the occasion which introduces him to my readers; but
they could not have made a mistake in the speaker himself; the figure
and presence of their pastor would identify him anywhere, even at a
prize-fight.
And the language used was fully warranted. For two days one of the few
"misfits" that the Y. M. C. A. must briefly contend with in France had
been making himself particularly obnoxious to the clergyman who finally
squelched him. The chap was new, and of the type that seeks to cover
ignorance with bluster and to be impressive by emitting loud noises. He
made the preacher the target of a good deal of his profanity, and for
nearly two days the preacher turned the other cheek.
But, having fulfilled the Scripture, the preacher took a turn around
the truck that had carried the party to its work,--a hut was being
erected,--and then clamped down upon the shoulder of the vilifier a
hand that was heavy and callous with two months of service on the
"line" and preached as already related. The mourners' bench was
instantly crowded!
"Can't you take a joke?" the frightened husky stuttered.
"No, not that kind," the California divine replied, and continued,
"We'll call it quits, since you _didn't mean it_; but don't try to be
funny again until you have studied a joke-book."
The applause that greeted the "clean knockout" was not audible; but it
was loud, and the name "Gyp the Blood" was the reward of the victor.
The preacher is "wanted" in France, but only the Fighting Parson need
apply. Surely it will be unnecessary to add that the "big fight" is
not of the kind just described, although the spirit that secured the
decision there is the spirit absolutely essential to success in the
other.
The present war has made many calls upon the church, and has laid new
and heavy obligations upon the ministry. I do not aspire to deal with
the general programme of organized religious forces, nor do I pretend
to discuss seriously the peculiar religious problems growing out of
these unparalleled times. I am ambitious only to present a pen-picture
glimpse of the preacher as I saw him in France, the American preacher
in action with the American overseas forces.
At the outset I disclaim any prejudice for or against. I saw him
under all conditions, from port of entry to the front lines,
from cosmopolitan Paris to the odoriferous country village, from
training-camp to hospital, at times when he was conscious of being
inspected and was on his mettle, and when he thought himself
unrecognized and with no fellow countryman about. I have no special
brief prepared for him; I judged him by the measure of a man. France
has only one uniform to-day, the uniform of the soldier; all other
distinctions as to dress have been removed.
I found a few preachers in France who made me thankful for the vivid
picture of my own ministerial father, which I carry always with me,
_they were so disappointing_! One was trying to smoke; it was painfully
apparent that it was his first attempt. He was doing his best to be a
good fellow, and succeeded only in being a fool. Another was rather
loudly arguing with a young Y. M. C. A. secretary and trying to
convince him that no man could really get on with the men of the army
unless he smoked cigarettes and drank the French wines. The younger
fellow won the debate, and did so without my seconding speech, which
for the other members of the recently arrived party I felt constrained
to make, since I was a veteran of several weeks' standing.
Both of these illustrations relate to the use of tobacco, and it will
be well to add that a preacher who would feel himself called upon to
conduct an anti-cigarette crusade on the western front would be equally
a misfit with the one laboring under the sad delusion that to grip the
hearts of the men in uniform he must lower his own personal standards.
First of all, a man to succeed with men anywhere must run true to form,
must be honest and be his best self; he may be very sure that the
American soldier will not misjudge him or be deceived by him. War has
an amazing aptness for ignoring reputations and discovering character.
If the preacher did not smoke on the western side of the Atlantic, he
does not need to smoke on the eastern side; it will take more than
smoke to make him a winner. Of course he may run true to his best form
and yet be a failure, but he is doomed from the beginning if he turns
his back upon his personal ideals and standards.
It is a pernicious fallacy that you must be like men to be liked
by them; sometimes men want you to be different. There are supreme
occasions in a man's life when, sick of himself and of his kind,
he longs for a comrade and a guide whose language, whose habits of
mind and of body, are the opposite of his own. Such times come more
frequently where the iron death moans by than elsewhere. A cad or a
Pharisee has no place in France to-day, but there are no depths in real
religion and simple piety too profound for the men who stand for their
country's sake in a soldier's narrow place between life and death.
[Illustration: THE FIRST AMERICAN TROOPS TO REACH EUROPE MARCHING
THROUGH LONDON AMID THE CHEERS OF THOUSANDS OF OUR BRITISH ALLIES
Copyright by Committee on Public Information.]
I heard a first lieutenant from Mississippi say to a young United
Presbyterian minister: "I came to talk to you to-day because you are
_different_. I feel myself slipping. At bayonet practice a man loses a
lot of the things he doesn't want to forget."
I would not refer to this if it were the only incident of its kind.
I have given my two stories of preachers who got away with a poor
start. I saw _hundreds_ of preachers in France, American preachers
with the Y. M. C. A. and others serving as chaplains. _They are a
great lot!_ Measured by every obligation of their ordination, and
by their ability and their willingness to adapt themselves to these
unprepared-for and utterly unanticipated conditions, _they are a great
lot_! The American preacher in France is a _minister_. He is doing a
tremendous work now, and he will do a far greater work when he returns.
I wish that every pastor in America could have at least six months in
actual service overseas. It would pay any congregation to finance its
minister's trip abroad for service with the Y. M. C. A.
As to the programme of the Kingdom itself, these men who have heard
the great spiritual voice of Civilization in her rebirth, who have
toiled and listened through long and terrifying days that crowded out
of their lives the petty and superficial things, who have thrilled with
the uncovered cries of men for the answer to their heart questionings,
for the realization of their soul quests, will not return to be
contented within the ancient walls of ecclesiasticism and sectarian
differences. They, with the hundreds of thousands they have ministered
to, will strike mightily against the props of outgrown systems. With
the re-enforcements already promised from missionary lands, they will
save us from ourselves, and together we shall set Christ free in
His own temple. These who have seen the folly of a too long divided
command on the western front, and who have witnessed the wisdom of
a generalissimo there, will call for a United Army under the Divine
Generalissimo, to press forward on the spiritual front of the world.
One day I saw six men building a road from a military highway in
to a Y. M. C. A. supply warehouse. They were working in the rain,
breaking rock and standing ankle-deep in mud. Four of the six men were
preachers, preachers to large and distinguished congregations at home.
The combined salaries of the six amount to $30,000; one man, a Wall
Street broker, draws $12,000; divide $18,000 among the other five men!
In a first-line Y. M. C. A. division fifty-two secretaries were working
night and day, doing the work of one hundred and twenty-five men.
Twenty-eight of the fifty-two were preachers. Ah, but you say, how well
were they doing it? This very question was in my mind, and I asked the
divisional secretary to tell me how many of the twenty-eight he would
keep if he could secure the secretarial assistance he would consider
ideal. He went over his list carefully, and said, "Twelve." Rather
disquieting! I then asked him how many of the laymen he would retain
by the same test, and after quite as careful consideration he said,
"Ten," and added: "O, they are all great fellows. You have asked me an
efficiency question, and I have applied my ordinary business standards;
but some of these very men may prove to be _very_ efficient."
The two interesting items are these: twenty-eight out of fifty-two
secretaries in a zone where thirty-five secretaries are under
shell-fire daily, where the most desperate chances are daily taken
and the most menial and body-wearying tasks are daily done, were
_preachers_; and the preachers and the laymen stood side by side, and
were of the same stature when a business man's efficiency measurements
were applied to them.
I found my own pastor directing the affairs of a busy port-of-entry
canteen with all the earnestness and success that mark his ministry at
home. I saw the pastor of a large New Jersey "First Baptist Church"
levelling the floor in a Y. M. C. A. officers' tent. At a brigade
headquarters another minister was in charge of a hut on the first line,
set out in the woods for the fellows' completer isolation from even the
advantages of a ruined village, and at the point where all lights are
turned out at night by supply and ammunition trucks creeping up to the
line. Another, a graduate of Northwestern University, a strong-bodied,
great-hearted, husky saint, was alone in the dugout, the most advanced
permanent Y. M. C. A. station in any army. Just 1,600 yards it is from
our most advanced trenches, and directly in front of our last batteries
of "75's." I saw a young minister, who is the "informal chaplain" in
a great seacoast city, marching at the head of a little funeral party
that bore three black stevedores to their last resting-place.
But why multiply instances? The American preacher is just short of
omnipresent in France, and he is doing the work of the war from Alpha
to Omega with two-handed masculine energy and unselfish Christian zeal.
His spiritual message may be shoved across a hut counter along with a
can of beans or a bar of chocolate, or it may be quietly spoken about a
red-hot stove just before closing-time at night, when he gathers those
who care to stay, for "family prayers"; it may be whispered in broken
sentences to the lad who has been gassed or to the man dying from his
wounds. In a thousand ways it may be given, but it is being delivered.
The minister who left America to preach to the boys at the front, who
departed with the words of his people, admiringly spoken, ringing in
his ears, and a purse of real American money ballasting his trousers,
has had some heavy seas in passage; but he has arrived. Rude shocks
have awaited him, and his whole plan of campaign has been ruthlessly
changed; but he has not turned back. To-day he is carrying on, and he
will stay through. I saw no more inspiring figures in the beautiful
land where so much of America's future is now shaping, and where so
many of her hopes and fears are centred, than the preacher of the
gospel of the Son of God.
I have not said anything about the formal religious services. They
are not neglected. The number of these increases with the raising
of each hut and the arrival of each new chaplain and secretary. The
pulpit messages our fighters are listening to in France are the most
eloquent and soul-feeding that are heard by Americans anywhere in the
world to-day. Their messengers are from the first line of our American
congregations, and these men of God are preaching as they never
preached before.
I have had one ambition for this very faulty picture of the American
preacher overseas--to leave with my readers the impression of the
manhood of the ministry in a time when those who are less than men are
either pitied or despised.
I reached a Paris hotel one evening utterly tired, dead for rest. I
defied the teachings of Horace Fletcher, however, and ate my supper.
Before I had finished my meal--I was late--the doors between the
dining-room and the parlor were opened, and the programme of the weekly
session of the Paris secretaries' club of the Y. M. C. A. began. I
gulped my food to get out of the way.
Then a man began to read in a voice that rested me and warmed my heart,
a voice of richness and vibrant with personality. He read from "Beside
the Bonnie Brier Bush." I stretched my legs far under the table, leaned
hard into the chair, and with my back to the speaker drank in the music
of his speaking.
The reader was "Dr. Freeman," Freeman of Pasadena, one of the
best-loved men in France to-day. He is a "corker," a "prince," the
"real stuff," a "humdinger," and a hundred other things, by the ringing
testimony of those who know him over there. I followed his trail from
the sea to the mountains. I saw the division that he "set up" on the
line, travelled the roads over which he distributed his equipment, and
heard the men he led there tell how by day and by night he filled
his own hands with the meanest tasks and spared not his own body. In
Brest I found his manly prayer of purity and strength on the wall
of a captain's room. In Toul his successor told me of his unfailing
resourcefulness and cheer. Had he his own way, he would be on the line
still, out in the greater noise and danger. But he is a good soldier.
Now the spiritual directorship of the Y. M. C. A. for France is in his
firm hands.
We sat through a raid one night after I had "borrowed" a pair of his
socks and mussed up his room, and we talked of the great days that are
to be when the boys come home.
Ah, one of the compensations for the war is the friendships it has made
among Christians and the vocabulary it has given them, in which words
of faith and fellowship have crowded out the smaller words of doubt and
selfishness.
One of the best-loved men I found in France was Freeman of Pasadena, a
_preacher_.
[NOTE.--I wish to say that the preacher referred to in the opening
of this chapter is Rev. William L. Stidger, pastor of the first
Methodist Episcopal Church of San José, California.--D. A. P.]