Those were big days, rejoicing days, sunny days. He had everything: his girl, his work, his fame, his power over people. When they held meetings in Topeka, his mother came from Paris to hear them, and as she watched her son addressing two thousand people, all the heavy graveyard doubts which had rotted her after his exit from Mizpah Seminary vanished.
He felt now that he belonged. The gospel crew had accepted him as their assistant foreman, as bolder and stronger and trickier than any save Sharon, and they followed him like family dogs. He imagined a day when he would marry Sharon, supersede her as leader—letting her preach now and then as a feature—and become one of the great evangelists of the land. He belonged. When he encountered fellow evangelists, no matter how celebrated, he was pleased, but not awed.
Didn’t Sharon and he meet no less an evangelist than Dr. Howard Bancock Binch, the great Baptist defender of the literal interpretation of the Bible, president of the True Gospel Training School for Religious Workers, editor of The Keeper of the Vineyard, and author of Fools Errors of So-Called Science? Didn’t Dr. Binch treat Elmer like a son?
Dr. Binch happened to be in Joliet, on his way to receive his sixth D.D. degree (from Abner College) during Sharon’s meetings there. He lunched with Sharon and Elmer.
“Which hymns do you find the most effective when you make your appeal for converts, Dr. Binch?” asked Elmer.
“Well, I’ll tell you, Brother Gantry,” said the authority. “I think ‘Just as I Am’ and ‘Jesus, I Am Coming Home’ hit real folksy hearts like nothing else.”
“Oh, I’m afraid I don’t agree with you,” protested Sharon. “It seems to me—of course you have far more experience and talent than I, Dr. Binch—”
“Not at all, my dear sister,” said Dr. Binch, with a leer which sickened Elmer with jealousy. “You are young, but all of us recognize your genius.”
“Thank you very much. But I mean: They’re not lively enough. I feel we ought to use hymns with a swing to ’em, hymns that make you dance right up to the mourners’ bench.”
Dr. Binch stopped gulping his fried pork chops and held up a flabby, white, holy hand. “Oh, Sister Falconer, I hate to have you use the word ‘dance’ regarding an evangelistic meeting! What is the dance? It is the gateway to hell! How many innocent girls have found in the dance-hall the allurement which leads to every nameless vice!”
Two minutes of information about dancing—given in the same words that Sharon herself often used—and Dr. Binch wound up with a hearty: “So I beg of you not to speak of ‘dancing to the mourners’ bench!’ ”
“I know, Dr. Binch, I know, but I mean in its sacred sense, as of David dancing before the Lord.”
“But I feel there was a different meaning to that. If you only knew the original Hebrew—the word should not be translated ‘danced’ but ‘was moved by the spirit.’ ”
“Really? I didn’t know that. I’ll use that.”
They all looked learned.
“What methods, Dr. Binch,” asked Elmer, “do you find the most successful in forcing people to come to the altar when they resist the Holy Ghost?”
“I always begin by asking those interested in being prayed for to hold up their hands.”
“Oh, I believe in having them stand up if they want prayer. Once you get a fellow to his feet, it’s so much easier to coax him out into the aisle and down to the front. If he just holds up his hand, he may pull it down before you can spot him. We’ve trained our ushers to jump right in the minute anybody gets up, and say ‘Now Brother, won’t you come down front and shake hands with Sister Falconer and make your stand for Jesus?’ ”
“No,” said Dr. Binch, “my experience is that there are many timid people who have to be led gradually. To ask them to stand up is too big a step. But actually, we’re probably both right. My motto as a soul-saver, if I may venture to apply such a lofty title to myself, is that one should use every method that, in the vernacular, will sell the goods.”
“I guess that’s right,” said Elmer. “Say, tell me, Dr. Binch, what do you do with converts after they come to the altar?”
“I always try to have a separate room for ’em. That gives you a real chance to deepen and richen their new experience. They can’t escape, if you close the door. And there’s no crowd to stare and embarrass them.”
“I can’t see that,” said Sharon. “I believe that if the people who come forward are making a stand for Christ, they ought to be willing to face the crowd. And it makes such an impression on the whole bunch of the unsaved to see a lot of seekers at the mourners’ bench. You must admit, Brother Binch—Dr. Binch, I should say—that lots of people who just come to a revival for a good time are moved to conviction epidemically, by seeing others shaken.”
“No, I can’t agree that that’s so important as making a deeper impression on each convert, so that each goes out as an agent for you, as it were. But everyone to his own methods. I mean so long as the Lord is with us and behind us.”
“Say, Dr. Binch,” said Elmer, “how do you count your converts? Some of the preachers in this last town accused us of lying about the number. On what basis do you count them?”
“Why, I count everyone (and we use a recording machine) that comes down to the front and shakes hands with me. What if some of them are merely old church members warmed over? Isn’t it worth just as much to give new spiritual
