XIV
IN WHICH SOCRATES DISCOVERS A NEW FOLLY
"Well, I went and saw the Reverend Robert Knowles sail between 'Sillyand Charybdis.' He bumped on both sides, but did it rather gracefully.He reviewed the career of Samuel, who lived and died some thousands ofyears ago. The miraculous touch of Carlyle or Macaulay might easilyhave failed in the task of reviving a man so thoroughly dead. But theReverend Robert entered this unequal contest with no evidence ofalarm. The dead man prevailed. The power of his long sleep fell uponus. My head grew heavy. I felt my weight bearing down upon thecushions. A stiffness came into my bones.
"On our way to church Betsey had placed the young minister in mythoughts. The trustees had reckoned that he would revive the interestof the young people in Sunday worship; and he did, but it was theworship of youth and beauty.
"Well, the other churches were emptier than ever, and so the spirituallife of the community was in no way improved. In fact, I guess it hadbeen a little embittered by the new conditions. As soon as it becameknown that Marie had won the prize of his favor the other girls hadreturned to their native altars, having discovered that the newminister was vain, worldly, and conceited.
"Lettie Davis, who had made a dead set at him, had been stronglyconvinced of that as soon as he began to show a preference for Marie,and the Davis family had left the church and gone over to theMethodists. The young man had been filled with alarm. He feared itwould wreck the church. That old ship of the faith was leaky andiron-sick, and down by the head and heel, as they say at sea. Sherolled if one got off or on her.
"Such was the condition of things when we entered the church of myfathers. We sat down in the Potter pew a few minutes before theservice began. There were, by actual count, forty-nine people gatheredaround the altar of the old church, and behind us a great emptinessand the ghosts of the dead. In my boyhood I had sat in its dim light,with six hundred people filling every seat to the doors and a man ofpower and learning in the pulpit.
"Faces long forgotten were there in those pews--old faces, youngfaces. How many thousands had left its altar to find distant homes orto go on their last journey to that nearer one in the churchyard! Myheart was full and ready for strong meat, but none came to me. Themoment of silence had been something rare--like an old Grecian vasewonderfully wrought. Then, suddenly, the singing fell upon us andbroke the silence into ruins. It was in the nature of a breach of thepeace. There are two kinds of people who ought to be gently but firmlyrestrained: the person that talks too much and the person that singstoo much.
"This young minister undoubtedly meant well. He's about the kind of achap that I've seen in law-offices working for fifteen dollars aweek--industrious, zealous, and able up to a point, and all rightunder supervision. He can be trusted to handle a small case withintelligence and judgment. But I wouldn't go to him for instruction inphilosophy; and if I wished to relay the foundation of my life Ishould, naturally, consult some other person. As one might expect, hehad searched the cellars of theology for canned goods, and withextraordinary success.
"The young man had so lately arrived in this world he couldn't beexpected to know much about its affairs, and especially about thoseof Samuel. It was graceful and decorous elocution. The Deaconexpressed his opinion of it in snores, and I longed to follow suit.
"The sermon ended with a dramatic recitation, and on our way out theminister met us at the door.
"'You must manage to keep these people awake,' I suggested to him.
"'How am I to do it?' he asked.
"'Well, you might have a corps of pin-stickers carefully distributedin the pews, or you could put the pins in your sermon. I recommend thelatter.'
"We went away with a sense of injury.
"'Let's keep trying,' said Betsey, 'until you find some one you wouldcare to hear. I would feel at home in any of our churches. These daysthere's no essential difference between Congregationalists, Baptists,Methodists, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians. I've talked with all ofthem, and their differences are dead and gone. They stand in theprinted creeds, but are no longer in the hearts of the people.'
"'Then why all these empty churches?' I asked. 'Why don't the peopleget together in one great church?'
"'Don't talk about the millennium,' said Betsey. 'We must try to makethe best of what we have.'
"Well, in the next four Sundays we went from church to church to getstrength for our souls, and found only weakness and disappointment.Immune from ridicule and satire, the sacred inefficiency of our pulpithad waxed and grown and taken possession of the churches. And onethought came to me as I listened. There should be a number of exits toevery Christian church, plainly marked: 'To be used in case of fire.'Ancient history, dead philosophy, sophomoric periods, bad music, emptypews, weary groups of the faithful longing for home, were, in brief,the things that we saw and heard. It was pathetic.
"I began to think about it. Here were five church organizations, allweak, infirm, begging, struggling for life. The automobile and thegolf and yacht clubs had nearly finished the work of destruction whichincompetence had so ably begun. There was not much left of them; yettheir combined property was worth about one hundred thousand dollars.They spent in the aggregate fifty-six hundred dollars for ministers'salaries, and their total average attendance was only four hundred andforty-nine. I could see no more extravagant waste of time, work, andcapital in any other branch of human effort. Some would call itwicked, but, though we speak with the tongues of men and of angels,and have not charity, we had better have kept still.
"The Reverend Mr. Knowles came to me within a day or two andapologized for his sermon. He complained that he couldn't behimself--that he didn't dare speak his thoughts.
"'Whose thoughts do you speak?' I asked.
"'Well, I trail along in the wake of the fathers.'
"'Then you are feeding your flock on corned and kippered thoughts--onthe dried and dug-up convictions of the dead. It isn't fair. It isn'teven honest. The church here is dying of anemia for want of freshfood. The new world must have new thought to fit new conditions. Itsoutlook has been utterly changed. If a man who had never seen alocomotive or a motor-car or a tandem or a telephone or an electriclight or the sons and daughters of a new millionaire or the home andcrest of the same or a bill of a modern merchant were to come down outof the backwoods and try to tell us how to run the world, we shouldthink him an ass, and wisely. Consider how these things have changedthe spirit of man and surrounded it with new perils.'
"'But think of the old fellows--the mossbacks--who hate your newphilosophy,' said the minister.
"'And think of the young fellows who are so easily tossed about. Themoss of senility is covering the bloom of youth and the honor ofyouth.'"