“No, you’re wrong,” said Zenz. “The Baptist Church is the only denomination worth while, except possibly the Methodist.”
“I’m glad to hear you say that,” marveled Eddie.
“Because the Baptists and the Methodists have all the numbskulls—except those that belong to the Catholic Church and the henhouse sects—and so even you, Horace, can get away with being a prophet. There are some intelligent people in the Episcopal and Congregational Churches, and a few of the Campbellite flocks, and they check up on you. Of course all Presbyterians are half-wits, too, but they have a standard doctrine, and they can trap you into a heresy trial. But in the Baptist and Methodist Churches, man! There’s the berth for philosophers like me and hoot-owls like you, Eddie! All you have to do with Baptists and Methodists, as Father Carp suggests—”
“If you agree with me about anything, I withdraw it,” said Horace.
“All you have to do,” said Zenz, “is to get some sound and perfectly meaningless doctrine and keep repeating it. You won’t bore the laymen—in fact the only thing they resent is something that is new, so they have to work their brains. Oh, no, Father Carp—the Episcopal pulpit for actors that aren’t good enough to get on the stage, but the good old Baptist fold for realists!”
“You make me tired, Harry!” complained Eddie. “You just want to show off, that’s all. You’re a lot better Baptist and a lot better Christian than you let on to be, and I can prove it. Folks wouldn’t go on listening to your sermons unless they carried conviction. No sir! You can fool folks once or twice with a lot of swell-sounding words but in the long run it’s sincerity they look for. And one thing that makes me know you’re on the right side is that you don’t practise open communion. Golly, I feel that everything we Baptists stand for is threatened by those darn’ so-called liberals that are beginning to practise open communion.”
“Rats!” grumbled Harry. “Of all the fool Baptist egotisms, close communion is the worst! Nobody but people we consider saved to be allowed to take communion with us! Nobody can meet God unless we introduce ’em! Self-appointed guardians of the blood and body of Jesus Christ! Whew!”
“Absolutely,” from Horace Carp. “And there is absolutely no Scriptural basis for close communion.”
“There certainly is!” shrieked Eddie. “Frank, where’s your Bible?”
“Gee, I left it in O.T.E. Where’s yours, Don?”
“Well, I’ll be switched! I had the darn’ thing here just this evening,” lamented Don Pickens, after a search.
“Oh, I remember. I was killing a cockroach with it. It’s on top of your wardrobe,” said Elmer.
“Gee, honest, you hadn’t ought to kill cockroaches with a Bible!” mourned Eddie Fislinger. “Now here’s the Bible, good and straight, for close communion, Harry. It says in First Corinthians, 11:27 and 29: ‘Whoever shall eat this bread and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh damnation to himself.’ And how can there be a worthy Christian unless he’s been baptized by immersion?”
“I do wonder sometimes,” mused Frank Shallard, “if we aren’t rather impious, we Baptists, to set ourselves up as the keepers of the gates of God, deciding just who is righteous, who is worthy to commune.”
“But there’s nothing else we can do,” explained Eddie. “The Baptist Church, being the only pure Scriptural church, is the one real church of God, and we’re not setting ourselves up—we’re just following God’s ordinances.”
Horace Carp had also been reveling in the popular Mizpah sport of looking up Biblical texts to prove a preconceived opinion. “I don’t find anything here about Baptists,” he said.
“Nor about your doggoned ole Episcopalians, either—darn’ snobs! and the preachers wearing nightshirts!” from Eddie.
“You bet your life you find something—it talks about bishops, and that means Episcopal bishops—the papes and the Methodists are uncanonical bishops,” rejoiced Horace. “I’ll bet you two dollars and sixty-seven cents I wind up as an Episcopal bishop, and, believe me, I’ll be high-church as hell—all the candles I can get on the altar.”
Harry Zenz was speculating, “I suppose it’s unscientific to believe that because I happen to be a Baptist practitioner myself and see what word-splitting, text-twisting, applause-hungry, job-hunting, medieval-minded second-raters even the biggest Baptist leaders are, therefore the Baptist Church is the worst of the lot. I don’t suppose it’s really any worse than the Presbyterian or the Congregational or Disciples or Lutheran or any other. But—Say, you, Fislinger, ever occur to you how dangerous it is, this Bible-worship? You and I might have to quit preaching and go to work. You tell the muttonheads that the Bible contains absolutely everything necessary for salvation, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
“Then what’s the use of having any preachers? Any church? Let people stay home and read the Bible!”
“Well—well—it says—”
The door was dashed open, and Brother Karkis entered.
Brother Karkis was no youthful student. He was forty-three, heavy-handed and big-footed, and his voice was the voice of a Great Dane. Born to the farm, he had been ordained a Baptist preacher, for twenty years now, and up and down through the Dakotas, Nebraska, Arkansas, he had bellowed in up-creek tabernacles.
His only formal education had been in country schools; and of all books save the Bible, revivalistic hymnals, a concordance handy for finding sermon-texts, and a manual of poultry-keeping, he was soundly ignorant. He had never met a woman of the world,
