He had learned, in theory, the ways of raising money through church fairs; he had learned what he was to say on pastoral visits. He had learned that Roger Williams, Adoniram Judson, Luther, Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, and George Washington were the greatest men in history; that Lincoln was given to fervent prayer at all crises; and that Ingersoll had called his nonexistent son to his deathbed and bidden him become an orthodox Christian. He had learned that the Pope at Rome was plotting to come to America and get hold of the government, and was prevented only by the denunciations of the Baptist clergy with a little help from the Methodists and Presbyterians; that most crime was caused either by alcohol or by people leaving the Baptist fold for Unitarianism; and that clergymen ought not to wear red ties.
He had learned how to assemble Jewist texts, Greek philosophy, and Middle-Western evangelistic anecdotes into a sermon. And he had learned that poverty is blessed, but that bankers make the best deacons.
Otherwise, as he wretchedly examined his equipment, facing his career, Frank did not seem to have learned anything whatever.
From Elmer Gantry’s relations to Lulu Bains, from Harry Zenz’s almost frank hint that he was an atheist, Frank perceived that a preacher can be a scoundrel or a hypocrite and still be accepted by his congregation. From the manners of Dean Trosper, who served his God with vinegar, he perceived that a man may be free of all the skilled sins, may follow every rule of the church, and still bring only fear to his flock. Listening to the celebrated divines who visited the seminary and showed off to the infant prophets, he perceived that a man could make scholarly and violent sounds and yet not say anything which remained in the mind for six minutes.
He concluded, in fact, that if there was any value in churches and a ministry, of which he was not very certain, in any case there could be no value in himself as a minister.
Yet he had been ordained, he had taken a pulpit.
It was doubtful whether he could have endured the necessary lying had it not been for Dean Trosper’s bullying and his father’s confusing pleas. Frank’s father was easygoing enough, but he had been a Baptist clergyman for so many years that the church was sacred to him. To have had his son deny it would have broken him. He would have been shocked to be told that he was advising Frank to lie, but he explained that the answers to the ordination examination were after all poetic symbols, sanctified by generations of loving usage; that they need not be taken literally.
So Frank Shallard, pupil of Bruno Zechlin, said nervously to an examining cleric that, yes, he did believe that baptism by immersion was appointed by God himself, as the only valid way of beginning a righteous life; that, yes, unrepentant sinners would go to a literal Hell; that, yes, these unrepentant sinners included all persons who did not go to evangelical churches if they had the chance; and that, yes, the Maker of a universe with stars a hundred thousand light-years apart was interested, furious, and very personal about it if a small boy played baseball on Sunday afternoon.
Half an hour after the ordination and the somewhat comforting welcome by veterans of the ministry, he hated himself, and ached to flee, but again the traditional “not wanting to hurt his father” kept him from being honest. So he stayed in the church … and went on hurting his father for years instead of for a day.
II
It was a lonely and troubled young man, the Frank Shallard who for his first pastorate came to the Baptist Church at Catawba, a town of eighteen hundred, in the same state with Zenith and the Mizpah Seminary. The town liked him, and did not take him seriously. They said his sermons were “real poetic”; they admired him for being able to sit with old Mrs. Randall, who had been an invalid for thirty years, a bore for sixty, and never ill a day in her life. They admired him for trying to start a boys’ club, though they did not go so far in their support as to contribute anything. They all called him “Reverend,” and told him that he was amazingly sound in doctrine for one so unfortunately well educated; and he stayed on, in a vacuum.
Frank felt well about his fifth sermon in Catawba; felt that he was done with hesitations. He had decided to ignore controversial theology, ignore all dogma, and concentrate on the leadership of Jesus. That was his topic, there in the chapel with its walls of glaring robin’s-egg blue—the eager-eyed, curly-headed boy, his rather shrill voice the wail of a violin as he gave his picture of Jesus, the kindly friend, the unfailing refuge, the gallant leader.
He was certain that he had done well; he was thinking of it on Monday morning as he walked from his boardinghouse to the post office.
He saw one Lem Staples, a jovial horse-doctor who was known as the Village Atheist, sitting on a decayed carriage seat in front of the Fashion Livery Barn. Doc Staples was a subscriber to the Truth Seeker, a periodical said to be infidel, and he quoted Robert Ingersoll, Ed Howe, Colonel Watterson, Elbert Hubbard, and other writers who were rumored to believe that a Catholic was as good as a Methodist or Baptist. The Doc lived alone, “baching it” in a little yellow cottage, and Frank had heard that he sat up till all hours, eleven and even later, playing cribbage in Mart Blum’s saloon.
Frank disliked him, and did not know him. He was prepared to welcome honest inquiry, but a fellow who was an avowed athetist, why, Frank raged, he was a fool! Who made the flowers, the butterflies, the sunsets, the laughter of little children? Those things didn’t just happen! Besides: why couldn’t
