born on the march there may come to be in the end a mystic home-sense in
the loneliness of tents, but in the beginning the army child may perhaps
have his own opinion of the rigors of camp life and prefer his morning
snooze to the summons of the bivouac. Analogously, the children of the
clerical class may come into existence with a leaning toward the world,
the flesh, and the devil, and may long conceal, beneath an outward
conformity and a due filial reticence, an infant resentment against the
preoccupation of their parents with the salvation of souls.
I think I speak for many ministerial children when I say that the
attitude of my infancy toward its environment was mainly one of protest,
broken by passionate upheavals of partisanship. Sometimes I sympathized
with little neighbors who limped shamelessly through the catechism or
went out of church before the sermon, but as often I longed to shake
them and thrust them, well-prodded, upon their duties.
The mere external discipline of the church militant came easily to me
because I was so early inured to it. It is back of my memory, but I
have ascertained that it was at the age of two and under that I learned
rigidity of muscle in the sanctuary, where I sat holding immobile on the
pew cushion legs too short to crook, while my fingers, in white cotton
gloves, were extended in stiff separation each from each. The hat upon
my head was in itself an early example of ministerial adjustment to
parochial issues. Two ladies who were rivals in missionary zeal had each
been moved to present me with a hat. That neither hat suited either my
face or my mother’s taste was, of course, mere incident. The claims both
of courtesy and of equity necessitated my wearing the hats in impartial
regularity, on alternate Sundays. Thus before the beginnings of memory,
and through the medium of a baby’s hat, did I become acquainted with the
potency, in our domestic concerns, of that great public called Parish.
It must have been at about this period that I experienced one of my
intermittent attacks of partisanship, desiring with my clear infant
voice to rebuke the lukewarm responses of the congregation, and
remodeling the unintelligible stretches of the Litany by the stentorian
variation, “Lord have mercy upon us, miserable scissors!” The words
of liturgy and hymn did not, however, long confound me. I had the
concentration of many a sanctuary hour to devote to their meaning, so
that by six years old even the Trinity had become a term of crystalline
comprehension. By this time, also, other ministerial babykins had come
toddling into the march in my rear, to share with me the soberness and
separation of our calling. It was, on the whole, well disciplined, our
little army corps, although we recognized the latent twinkle in the
eyes of the mother who generaled us with a clever balancing of motive
between our well-being and that of the Parish. Both she and we were
occasionally flabbergasted, sometimes by our public performance of
private virtues, sometimes by our private performance of public ones.
For example, at the home table we were always exhorted to conscientious
chewing; it did not, therefore, occur to us to accelerate the process
at a Sunday-School picnic. The sylvan board had long been deserted by
others, but we, the Rector’s children, a faithful little line, longing
to be on the merry-go-round, in the swings, on the boats, still sat and
dutifully chewed and chewed and chewed. I vividly recall the bewildering
onslaught of our mother leading a bevy of church ladies in search of the
missing. Ignominiously were we whirled off to join the sports of less
seeming-famished companions.
On the other hand, in public, in the Sunday School, were we early
made to understand that all the law and the prophets hung upon the
catechism; a pink-paper catechism, frank in its woodcuts and facile in
its explanation of the mysteries of the sacraments. Since this pink
catechism was a lamp unto our feet, we suggested, during a thrilling
burglar epidemic, that copies be left on the thresholds of rectory
bedchambers. The burglar would pause to read, and there would ensue his
immediate conversion and our resultant security. The parental laughter
at our expense shook the foundations of our faith.
Such a severe consistency of behavior in regard to the lessons taught
in the rectory and those taught in the sanctuary is a state of mind
early outgrown by any intelligent ministerial child. Such crudity of
conduct was a stage in the march that we had all passed by the age
of ten. By that time we had an unerring sense of what was due to the
Parish and what was due to ourselves, with the result that our outward
conformity was about balanced by our inward misanthropy at having to
conform. We attended, muttering imprecations up to the very door, the
infant missionary society that filched our Saturday afternoons, we tore
up futile scraps of calico to jab them together again with accursed
“over-and-over” stitches, we gazed at pictures in which splendid
blanketed braves, or splendid unclothed Samoans, were seen to exchange
romance for religion in the shape of conversion and white cottas. Our
souls loathed patchwork and missions, but, on the other hand, how we
thrilled to the righteousness of reward when the visiting missionary,
male or female, became our own particular guest! The ecstasy as one
flirted one’s Sunday flounces before the eyes of less favored neighbors
because one was walking to church, holding the hand of a genuine
Arctic archdeacon! And then the Bishop’s visits, when we were whisked
into cubbyhole and closet out of our crowded nursery that it might be
converted into a prophet’s chamber! Which one of my schoolmates had ever
passed the right reverend plate at supper? And the honor of the Bishop’s
petting afterwards! The episcopal lap, the high general’s knee, is the
prerogative of the captain’s children only, the same that never miss
church and know all their collects.
Slowly we grew accustomed to the pressure of the knapsack upon our
shoulders, that weight of clerical example which did not burden our
irresponsible playmates. We knew that the Minister’s children were
different. We did not want it to be so, but we began to see why it
was so. True, we protested when our father would not pause to tell us
stories or our mother stay at home from calls to play with dolls, yet in
the silent thinking-places of our little hearts we began to divine the
beauty of the midnight sick-watches, of the valiancy of Sunday-School
labors, of the brave weariness of sewing societies, of the heaven-born
patience with Parish bores. As we watched the sleeker parents of our
schoolmates, there dawned in us realization of what our parents had
given up, and silent shame for our jealousy of their devotion. Few
children are hurt by being shoved aside a little because of an ideal.
The hours when our parents played with us are still passing precious,
but it is because of the other hours that there was born in us a
shamefaced sense of the meaning of the banner under which we trudged.
Isolation is the chief inconvenience of having an ideal in the family.
We were apart from other youngsters, partly because we knew it incumbent
upon us to set them an example, since, early enough and sadly enough,
we had acquired self-consciousness from the frank criticism of all our
conduct made by any parishioner so minded, and partly were we cut off by
the vow of poverty taken by our parents. Other families may look forward
to easier times; no ministerial household has any such illusions. The
tiniest child of the ministry knows that after forty the father will
not receive a call; the veriest baby of us knows what happens to old
ministers, because so many pitiful, decrepit old soldiers have from time
to time found shelter in our tent.
Yet the ministry is the best place in the world to learn that poverty
is a nut that yields good meat if you crack it boldly. Well I remember
an icy rectory which had but one register in the Arctic regions of the
second story. At bedtime we would gather about this register to warm
our toes. Each blanketed to the ears like a little Indian, we would
discourse as serenely and acutely as any schoolmen, of the nature of
angels, for was not the whole realm of heaven and earth ours for the
mere talking? Pinched and patched we might be, but bold to meet penury
with a consciousness of princely possessions. I did not so much think
well of myself for this superiority to worldly comforts as I thought
scorn of those who did not have it. Very early I had a contempt for a
child who could not evolve a game from a clothespin or set a pageant
moving forth from a box of buttons. I had a veritable snobbishness of
disdain for a youngster who had to be amused.
Necessarily one requires respect for inward resources when the only
things one has ever had enough of are bread and butter and books. Every
ministerial child breathes book-madness and burns for an education. When
at the age of five you have known your father to go without boots for a
book, and then to caper like a weanling lamb on the volume’s arrival,
you have acquired something more potent than a mere conscientious
respect for literature; rather you have learned to regard the book-world
as a place of bacchanal liberty and delight forever open to you. I do
not know whether it tended toward my humanizing or against it that the
dominant beings of my young imagination were Books, while those of my
girl friends were Boys.
There is nothing more effective than clerical penury to teach one
the cheapness of dreams. The door of fantasy stands always open for
the rectory household to enter, singly or together. I think every
ministerial family cherishes that one dear dream of all unwilling
gypsies. They always hope somehow, somewhere, sometime, to find a house
that shall be a home. Do what you may, a rectory is always house, not
home. It may always belong to some one else next month. If only it were
worth while to plant perennials in our flower-beds! If only it were
worth while to plant friendships to bear fruit in after years! Yet this
last we can never help doing as we pass from parish to parish, being
at heart most human of wanderers. It must be very beautiful to belong
somewhere, to have, for instance, cousinships in the neighborhood. There
are never any family parties in the ministry. There are never any gentle
grandsires to come forth from their kindly crypts and give guarantee of
our characters to the community. On each new camping-ground we stand,
a huddled family group, completely dependent on our own efforts for
introduction.
These new-parish sensations tempt to generalizations, for they are so
alike, in town after town. The zest of a new call wears away even in
one’s infancy. Perhaps the captain still expects to find his tents
pitched in Arcady, but not so his family; we meet the Parish’s reception
acutely on our good behavior, exquisitely affable to all, but our inner
motto is, “Watch out!” It is usually those parishioners who give us most
effusive welcome who will be readiest to desire our godspeed. It is
those who stand back and look us over who will be our firmest friends.
We cannot resent their attitude because it is exactly our own. We, too,
are looking them over.
When we go into a new parish the first person we meet is some one who
isn’t there, namely, our predecessor, that thorn in the flesh of the
most righteous saint and soldier. There is always a predecessor, and
however dead or distant, he is always there, in the hearts of the
Parish, and quite frequently he is in their homes as well. However
callous, however courteous one may endeavor to be, one cannot escape a
slight sensation of stiffening when parishioners want The Other One to
marry or bury them. Think of the well-bred wrangle that sometimes occurs
in settling the clerical rights to a corpse! In all my ministerial
experience I never knew a predecessor and a successor who loved each
other. Yet I speak without bitterness, for one of the proudest and
pleasantest sensations of our ministry has been that of being a
predecessor ourself.
To an unwilling nomad there is nothing so monotonous as change, yet the
very constancy of our march engenders an amazing ease of adjustment to
each new environment. In our relations to people, we clericals learn an
adaptability almost pathetically perfect. We succeed in being all things
to all men by never being all ourselves to any man. Our affability is
the armor that protects the inner sensitive personality. Perhaps we
are naturally expansive, but we early learn the perils of frankness,
so that it comes about that along our pilgrimage we are friendly, but
have few friends, those few, however, the tenderest, trustiest friends
in the world, those few, rare spirits of a keenness and a kindness to
penetrate the steel-strong armor of ministerial reserve. Very young, we
clerical sons and daughters learn to pass from millionaire to laundress
with no change of manner. The reason is not far to seek; we own senior
warden and washerwoman as our parishioners, equally, because warden and
washerwoman, equally, feel that they own us. With equal freedom the two
censure or serve, love or hate, us. Recognizing the proprietory rights
of each, we realize that each may be equally our bane or our blessing.
Yet our democracy goes deeper than all this. Half-hearted soldiers we
may often be, but we never doubt the sincerity of our flag. We had the
luck to be born into the household of the consecrated, whether we wanted
to be or not; we are genuinely democratic for the same reason that the
apostles were.
Perhaps there is another reason, and a wickeder one, why all men stand
in our sight naked of all accidental social trappings; and that is that
we know them all so well! I cannot determine how clearly the world may
see into rectory windows, but certainly one sees pretty clearly from
rectory windows. It is a heart-searching and heart-revealing relation,
that of a parish to its parson. The completely voluntary nature of
all church effort and church organization affords an exhibition of
idiosyncrasies not to be found in any other association. When I think
of the crimes and the crankiness sometimes committed in the name of
religion, I thank Heaven that the effect of these in a ministerial
household is more often amusement than cynicism. I was grown up before I
realized that the ostensible purpose of a choir is to praise the Lord:
in my youth I always thought of a choir solely as a means of perfecting
a rector in patience.
But always there exists the other side in the parochial relation, the
side not of badness, but of beauty. Personally I perceive no stronger
argument against the charge of present-day irreligion than the tribute
of trust paid to any sincere minister. From my childhood on I have seen
it everywhere, the respect for consecration. Everywhere I have heard it,
the belief in the man who believes, ring confident as the cry of the
roadside beggar upon the Nazarene.
Few people think it worth while to put on pretense with a clergyman;
they rarely try to make him think them better than they are; yet he
generally does think so. It is frequently the alertness to protect the
captain against his own unworldliness that teaches his family their
sanity and sureness of insight. This very insight may, however, make
them poorer-spirited than their superior officer, craven and fain
to capitulate. In a parish skirmish they are likely to be divided
between hot loyalty to his cause and a vain hope that he won’t think it
necessary to fight. I can picture the probable domestic anxiety in the
house of Calchas when in pursuit of his calling he found it necessary to
stand up to the king of men, Agamemnon!
Long campaigning is likely to make ministerial offspring lovers of
peace, yet I believe I am not really unwilling to fight the Devil. The
trouble is that we of the ministry so often fight him when he isn’t
there. I wish our young theologues could be taught the sound and shape
of Satan. Frankly I arraign the theological seminary as a very poor
military school. It sends forth a soldier who does not know so much as
how to set up a tent, whose idea of the Enemy is a mediæval bugaboo in
a book. I would establish two new chairs in our seminaries, a chair
of agriculture, rudimentary, perhaps, but sufficient to teach the
difference between tares and wheat, which Nature, uninstructed in any
isms, still ordains shall grow together unto the harvest; and a second
chair, in common sense, to dispense instruction in human nature. The
average theologue is deep-read in Hebrew Scripture, but ignorant of the
A B C of the tongue in which is written the Bible of man’s soul. Doctors
may dispute the divine inspiration of the former, but who of us is
infidel enough to dispute the divine inspiration of the latter? Perhaps
the more reprehensible fault of the seminary is not so much deficiency
in the matter of its teaching as deficiency in its maturity. No thinking
person wishes to receive his spiritual guidance from an unthinking boy.
I am constantly puzzled by the ill-logic of our ministerial preparation
when I reflect that the foundation of its teaching is the fact that God
Himself thought it necessary to be thirty years a man with men before He
was ready to teach or to preach.
Considering his inadequate equipment, so inferior in the relation of
means to end to that of the social worker, the average minister of
to-day does better than his preparation deserves. If he has devotion,
devotion will, in the long run, counteract his blunders. People will put
up with almost anything from a man so long as he’s a man. There never
was a time when respect for a clerical coat, as a coat, was less; there
never was a time when reverence for the man within the coat, as a man,
was greater. Because of this fact, we of the ministry who best know the
seamy side of an ideal know also best its beauty.
I was born beneath a banner I did not choose, but like many another
ministerial child, I have grown from a mere external allegiance to a
real one. I think the angels of birth were a little distraught when
they dropped me in the tents of the righteous, but on the whole I am
reconciled. I have traveled to and fro and far, but only the rectory
tent is home, there alone exists the nomad’s intense family friendship
which is a home’s sole enduring furniture. I have wandered so far
among other men and other manners and morals that sometimes our little
band has seemed but a faint dot on the spaces of a universe undreamed
of within the limitations of rectory walls. Wandering thus, I have
questioned many things unquestioned in my childhood. Only ministerial
children themselves can estimate how open they are to doubt’s attacks.
The very intensity of partisanship and narrowness of creed and practice
in which they have been brought up are sources of danger, while, having
always been nourished on the glory of the mind, they will always in
their traveling gravitate to the places of intellect, only to find their
little faith regarded there as one more soap-bubble to be tossed about.
Accustomed at home to the old-fashioned unquestioning distinctions, the
minister’s son or daughter will discover that there no longer exists
the old sharp fight between orthodoxy and heterodoxy, because each side
recognizes far too well a kinship in weakness and wistfulness. There was
a time when to take a man’s faith from him was a fair game, for it was
his own affair to guard a castle aggressively inviting attack. Now even
infidels are too pitiful to steal another man’s God.
It is not so simple an adjustment as perhaps it externally appears, the
return to the tiny clerical camp whence once we issued forth to our
education. Perhaps I have thrilled to the trumpets of larger armies,
perhaps our little troop of skirmishers seems to me a sorry one now,
and perhaps, darker treachery still, the hosts of Midian do not loom so
big and black to me as of old, perhaps I have even made some charming
friends among the Hittites and the Jebusites, but it is astonishing how,
when I am back in the old conditions, the enemy’s ranks resume their old
color and proportion.
When I am abroad I am no stickler for church attendance, yielding
myself sometimes to the call of a “heaven-kissing hill” or to the spell
of woods sacredly serene; but at home I am accustomed by contagion to
look darkly askance at Sunday picknickers or lazy stay-at-homes. They
should come and hear my father preach! Yet I myself feel God nearer on
a hilltop than at the altar, and I own, as closest comrades and most
inspiring, men and women whose souls never bow in worship anywhere.
They belong to another army, that army of social betterment which is so
curiously blind to its own pillar of fire. My creed is to their minds a
child’s lisping, they ask neither a God nor an immortality, they ask
only that they may lift the burdened man upright. If we cannot worship,
let us work, people say to-day, and do not dream that never before
in history was there enough religion in the world to make theirs a
plausible deduction.
These my friends belong to the army of non-church-goers arraigned in
the little village church where I kneel to say my prayers. It is very
strange, they say to me,--these soldiers of an army grown far larger
now than our thinning ranks,--very strange to me that you should need
a religion; and I answer it is very strange to me that you cannot hear
above the blackness of your hosting, your own prophet voices choiring a
midnight mass to Heaven.
There are divers ways of worship and I acknowledge that my own way,
minister’s daughter though I am, exemplary in externals, is not always
that which would appear best in accord with my bowed head and practiced
knees. There is much in your full-sized Anglican that is bigger than
his Prayer Book, although I loyally hold that an inspired document of
Christian common sense. Many a windy, rolling thought comes to me when
I am kneeling in secret rebellion at the abasement of the Litany,
irreverent, meseemeth, to the souls cast in God’s image, but who am I
that I should think scorn of any words by which people climb to Heaven?
Suppose I should compose prayers for my father’s congregation, think
how bewildered the good people in our pews would become if they should
find, writ out for their repeating, the calls of birds and the voices of
winds, which I know would sing themselves into any prayer of my making.
No, in its prayers and in its practice, I find myself ever turning
quietly back to the faith of my fathers, that banner of my clan.
Perhaps I may think its gold tarnished with mediævalism, its silk worn
very thin, but are not all banners merely the work of men’s hands? And
what matter of the ensign so long as it holds skyward? I, within the
ministry, may sometimes question our methods of warfare, thinking them
valiant against obsolete bugaboos and oblivious of a more subtle Satan,
but, doubtful how better to direct the age-old campaign, uncertain what
newer weapons to endue, I would rather still be on the side of a blind
and passionate ideal, for energies may sometimes be wasted, but ideals
are never wasted.
Perhaps I have sometimes thought to join that other army, of man’s
social progress, a noble army the thunder of whose modern warfare rolls
ever louder and louder through the land. But I a deserter from the
thin, faint brigade that belongs to an older fashion? A deserter now,
when, in our little rectory corps, I see the hands that grasp the sword
growing weaker, and the hands that uphold the sword-bearer’s growing
frailer, and when, in eyes keen to pierce the Enemy’s darkness, I read
the growing peace prophetic of the battle over? Back to my place in
the ranks, back beneath our tattered pennon! What better service have
I craved? What braver banner? For on the ensigns of many creeds I have
searched, after all, only for that one sure device which shines upon my
fathers’ faith. That device is a Face, even the face of the leader of
all the host, and as on and on I follow the march of our ministry,--
“That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows,
Or decomposes, but to recompose,
Become my universe that feels and knows!”
XXII
_Some Difficulties in Doing without Eternity_