And they had cake and homemade ice cream.
It was very dull and, to Elmer, very grateful. He felt accepted, secure, and ready to begin his work.
VIII
He had plans for the Wednesday evening prayer-meeting. He knew what a prayer-meeting in Banjo Crossing would be like. They would drone a couple of hymns and the faithful, half a dozen of them, always using the same words, would pop up and mumble, “Oh, I thank the Lord that he has revealed himself to me and has shown me the error of my ways and oh that those who have not seen his light and whose hearts are heavy with sin may turn to him this evening while they still have life and breath”—which they never did. And the sullenly unhappy woman in the faded jacket, at the back, would demand, “I want the prayers of the congregation to save my husband from the sins of smoking and drinking.”
“I may not,” Elmer meditated, “be as swell a scholar as old Toomis, but I can invent a lot of stunts and everything to wake the church up and attract the crowds, and that’s worth a whole lot more than all this yowling about the prophets and theology!”
He began his “stunts” with that first prayer-meeting.
He suggested, “I know a lot of us want to give testimony, but sometimes it’s hard to think of new ways of saying things, and let me suggest something new. Let’s give our testimony by picking out hymns that express just how we feel about the dear Savior and his help. Then we can all join together in the gladsome testimony.”
It went over.
“That’s a fine fellow, that new Methodist preacher,” said the villagers that week.
They were shy enough, and awkward and apparently indifferent, but in a friendly way they were spying on him, equally ready to praise him as a neighbor or snicker at him as a fool.
“Yes,” they said; “a fine fellow, and smart’s a whip, and mighty eloquent, and a real husky man. Looks you right straight in the eye. Only thing that bothers me—He’s too good to stay here with us. And if he is so good, why’d they ever send him here in the first place? What’s wrong with him? Boozer, d’ye think?”
Elmer, who knew his Paris, Kansas, his Gritzmacher Springs, had guessed that precisely these would be the opinions, and he took care, as he handshook his way from store to store, house to house, to explain that for years he had been out in the evangelistic field, and that by advice of his old and true friend, Bishop Toomis, he was taking this year in a smaller garden-patch to rest up for his labors to come.
He was assiduous, but careful, in his pastoral calls on the women. He praised their gingerbread, Morris chairs, and souvenirs of Niagara, and their children’s school-exercise books. He became friendly, as friendly as he could be to any male, with the village doctor, the village homeopath, the lawyer, the station-agent, and all the staff at Benham’s store.
But he saw that if he was to take the position suitable to him in the realm of religion, he must study, he must gather several more ideas and ever so many new words, to be put together for the enlightenment of the generation.
IX
His duties at Banjo Crossing were not violent, and hour after hour, in his quiet chamber at the residence of the Widow Clark, he gave himself trustingly to scholarship.
He continued his theological studies; he read all the sermons by Beecher, Brooks, and Chapman; he read three chapters of the Bible daily; and he got clear through the letter G in the Bible dictionary. Especially he studied the Methodist Discipline, in preparation for his appearance before the Annual Conference Board of Examiners as a candidate for full conference membership—full ministerhood.
The Discipline, which is a combination of Methodist prayerbook and bylaws, was not always exciting. Elmer felt a lack of sermon-material and spiritual quickening in the paragraph:
The concurrent recommendation of two-thirds of all the members of the several Annual Conferences present and voting, and of two-thirds of all the members of the Lay Electoral Conferences present and voting, shall suffice to authorize the next ensuing General Conference by a two-thirds vote to alter or amend any of the provisions of this Constitution excepting Article X, §1; and also, whenever such alteration or amendment shall have been first recommended by a General Conference by a two-thirds vote, then so soon as two-thirds of all the members of the several Annual Conferences present and voting, and two-thirds of all the members of the Lay Electoral Conference present and voting, shall have concurred therein, such alteration or amendment shall take effect; and the result of the vote shall be announced by the General Superintendents.
He liked better, from the Articles of Religion in the Discipline:
The offering of Christ, once made, is that perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction for all the sins of the whole world, both original and actual; and there is none other satisfaction for sin but that alone. Wherefore the sacrifice of masses, in the which it is commonly said that the priest doth offer Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission of pain or guilt, is a blasphemous fable and dangerous deceit.
He wasn’t altogether certain what it meant, but it had such a fine uplifting roll. “Blasphemous fable and dangerous deceit.” Fine!
He informed his edified congregation the next Sunday that the infallibility of the Pope was “a blasphemous fable and a dangerous deceit,” and they almost jumped.
He had much edification from these “Rules for a Preacher’s Conduct” in the Discipline:
Be Serious. Let your motto be, “Holiness to the Lord.” Avoid all lightness, jesting, and foolish talking. Converse sparingly and conduct yourself prudently with women. … Tell everyone under your care what you think wrong in his conduct and
