“You can’t kick me out! It takes the whole church to do that!”
“The whole church’ll damn well do it, you watch ’em!” said Deacon William Dollinger Styles.
IV
“What are we going to do, dear?” Bess said wearily. “I’ll stand by you, of course, but let’s be practical. Don’t you think it would make less trouble if you did resign?”
“I’ve done nothing for which to resign! I’ve led a thoroughly decent life. I haven’t lied or been indecent or stolen. I’ve preached imagination, happiness, justice, seeking for the truth. I’m no sage, Heaven knows, but I’ve given my people a knowledge that there are such things as ethnology and biology, that there are books like Ethan Frome and Père Goriot and Tono-Bungay and Renan’s Jesus, that there is nothing wicked in looking straight at life—”
“Dear, I said practical!”
“Oh, thunder, I don’t know. I think I can get a job in the Charity Organization Society here—the general secretary happens to be pretty liberal.”
“I hate to have us leave the church entirely. I’m sort of at home there. Why not see if they’d like to have you in the Unitarian Church?”
“Too respectable. Scared. Same old sanctified phrases I’m trying to get rid of—and won’t ever quite get rid of, I’m afraid.”
V
A meeting of the church body had been called to decide on Frank’s worthiness, and the members had been informed by Styles that Frank was attacking all religion. Instantly a number of the adherents who had been quite unalarmed by what they themselves had heard in the pulpit perceived that Frank was a dangerous fellow and more than likely to injure omnipotent God.
Before the meeting, one woman, who remained fond of him, fretted to Frank, “Oh, can’t you understand what a dreadful thing you’re doing to question the divinity of Christ and all? I’m afraid you’re going to hurt religion permanently. If you could open your eyes and see—if you could only understand what my religion has meant to me in times of despair! I don’t know what I would have done during my typhoid without that consolation! You’re a bright, smart man when you let yourself be. If you’d only go and have a good talk with Dr. G. Prosper Edwards. He’s an older man than you, and he’s a doctor of divinity, and he has such huge crowds at Pilgrim Church, and I’m sure he could show you where you’re wrong and make everything perfectly clear to you.”
Frank’s sister, married now to an Akron lawyer, came to stay with them. They had been happy, Frank and she, in the tepid but amiable house of their minister-father; they had played at church, with dolls and saltcellars for congregation; books were always about them, natural to them; and at their father’s table they had heard doctors, preachers, lawyers, politicians, talk of high matters.
The sister bubbled to Bess, “You know, Frank doesn’t believe half he says! He just likes to show off. He’s a real good Christian at heart, if he only knew it. Why, he was such a good Christian boy—he led the B.Y.P.U.—he couldn’t have drifted away from Christ into all this nonsense that nobody takes seriously except a lot of long-haired dirty cranks! And he’ll break his father’s heart! I’m going to have a good talk with that young man, and bring him to his senses!”
On the street Frank met the great Dr. McTiger, pastor of the Royal Ridge Presbyterian Church.
Dr. McTiger had been born in Scotland, graduated at Edinburgh, and he secretly—not too secretly—despised all American universities and seminaries and their alumni. He was a large, impatient, brusque man, renowned for the length of his sermons.
“I hear, young man,” he shouted at Frank, “that you have read one whole book on the pre-Christian mysteries and decided that our doctrines are secondhand and that you are now going to destroy the church. You should have more pity! With the loss of a profound intellect like yours, my young friend, I should doubt if the church can stagger on! It’s a pity that after discovering scholarship you didn’t go on and get enough of that same scholarship to perceive that by the wondrous beneficence of God’s mercy the early church was led to combine many alien factors in the one perfection of the Christian brotherhood! I don’t know whether it’s ignorance of church history or lack of humor that chiefly distinguishes you, my young friend! Go and sin no more!”
From Andrew Pengilly came a scrawled, shaky letter begging Frank to stand true and not deliver his appointed flock to the devil. That hurt.
VI
The first church business meeting did not settle the question of Frank’s remaining. He was questioned about his doctrines, and he shocked them by being candid, but the men whom he had helped, the women whom he had consoled in sickness, the fathers who had gone to him when their daughters “had gotten into trouble,” stood by him for all the threats of Styles.
A second meeting would have to be called before they took a vote.
When Elmer read of this, he galloped to T. J. Rigg. “Here’s our chance!” he gloated. “If the first meeting had kicked Frank out, Styles might have stayed with their church, though I do think he likes my brand of theology and my Republican politics. But why don’t you go to him now, T. J., and hint around about how his church has insulted him?”
“All right, Elmer. Another soul saved. Brother Styles has still got the first dollar he ever earned, but maybe we can get ten cents of it away from him for the new church. Only—Him being so much richer than I, I hope you won’t go to him for spiritual advice and inspiration, instead of me.”
“You bet I won’t, T. J.! Nobody has ever accused Elmer Gantry of being disloyal to his friends! My only hope is that your guidance of
