No less satisfying to her was the way in which Elmer impressed all their neighbors. Charley Watley, the house-painter, commander of the Ezra P. Nickerson Post of the G.A.R. of Paris, who had always pulled his white mustache and grunted when she had tried to explain Elmer’s hidden powers of holiness, took her aside to admit: “You were right, Sister; he makes a find upstanding young man of God.”
They encountered that town problem, Hank McVittle, the druggist. Elmer and he had been mates; together they had stolen sugar-corn, drunk hard cider, and indulged in haymow venery. Hank was a small red man, with a lascivious and knowing eye. It was certain that he had come today only to laugh at Elmer.
They met face on, and Hank observed, “Morning, Mrs. Gantry. Well, Elmy, going to be a preacher, eh?”
“I am, Hank.”
“Like it?” Hank was grinning and scratching his cheek with a freckled hand; other unsanctified Parisians were listening.
Elmer boomed, “I do, Hank. I love it! I love the ways of the Lord, and I don’t ever propose to put my foot into any others! Because I’ve tasted the fruit of evil, Hank—you know that. And there’s nothing to it. What fun we had, Hank, was nothing to the peace and joy I feel now. I’m kind of sorry for you, my boy.” He loomed over Hank, dropped his paw heavily on his shoulder. “Why don’t you try to get right with God? Or maybe you’re smarter than he is!”
“Never claimed to be anything of the sort!” snapped Hank, and in that testiness Elmer triumphed, his mother exulted.
She was sorry to see how few were congratulating Eddie Fislinger, who was also milling, but motherless, inconspicuous, meek to the presiding clergy.
Old Jewkins, humble, gentle old farmer, inched up to murmur, “Like to shake your hand, Brother Elmer. Mighty fine to see you chosen thus and put aside for the work of the Lord. Jiggity! T’think I remember you as knee-high to a grasshopper! I suppose you study a lot of awful learned books now.”
“They make us work good and hard, Brother Jewkins. They give us pretty deep stuff: hermeneutics, chrestomathy, pericopes, exegesis, homiletics, liturgies, isagogics, Greek and Hebrew and Aramaic, hymnology, apologetics—oh, a good deal.”
“Well! I should say so!” worshiped old Jewkins, while Mrs. Gantry marveled to find Elmer even more profound than she had thought, and Elmer reflected proudly that he really did know what all but a couple of the words meant.
“My!” sighed his mother. “You’re getting so educated, I declare t’ goodness pretty soon I won’t hardly dare to talk to you!”
“Oh, no. There’ll never come a time when you and I won’t be the best of pals, or when I won’t need the inspiration of your prayers!” said Elmer Gantry melodiously, with refined but manly laughter.
III
They were assembling on benches, wagon-seats and boxes for the ceremony of ordination.
The pulpit was a wooden table with a huge Bible and a pitcher of lemonade. Behind it were seven rocking chairs for the clergy, and just in front, two hard wooden chairs for the candidates.
The present local pastor, Brother Dinger, was a meager man, slow of speech and given to long prayers. He rapped on the table. “We will, uh, we will now begin.”
… Elmer, looking handsome on a kitchen chair in front of the rows of flushed hot faces. He stopped fretting that his shiny new black shoes were dust-gray. His heart pounded. He was in for it! No escape! He was going to be a pastor! Last chance for Jim Lefferts, and Lord knew where Jim was. He couldn’t—His shoulder muscles were rigid. Then they relaxed wearily, as though he had struggled to satiety, while Brother Dinger went on:
“Well, we’ll start with the usual, uh, examination of our young brothers, and the brethren have, uh, they’ve been good enough, uh, to let me, uh, in whose charge one, uh, one of these fine young brothers has always lived and made his home—to let me, uh, let me ask the questions. Now, Brother Gantry, do you believe fully and wholeheartedly in baptism by immersion?”
Elmer was thinking, “What a rotten pulpit voice the poor duck has,” but aloud he was rumbling:
“I believe, Brother, and I’ve been taught, that possibly a man might be saved if he’d just been baptized by sprinkling or pouring, but only if he were ignorant of the truth. Of course immersion is the only Scriptural way—if we’re really going to be like Christ, we must be buried with him in baptism.”
“That’s fine, Brother Gantry. Praise God! Now, Brother Fislinger, do you believe in the final perseverance of the saints?”
Eddie’s eager but cracked voice explaining—on—on—somniferous as the locusts in the blazing fields across the Kayooska River. As there is no hierarchy in the Baptist Church, but only a free association of like-minded local churches, so are there no canonical forms of procedure, but only customs. The ceremony of ordination is not a definite rite; it may vary as the local associations will, and ordination is conferred not by any bishop but by the general approval of the churches
