IV
Evening services at the Banjo Crossing Methodist Church had normally drawn less than forty people, but there were a hundred tonight, when, fumblingly, Elmer broke away from old-fashioned church practise and began what was later to become his famous Lively Sunday Evenings.
He chose the brighter hymns, “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” “Wonderful Words of Life,” “Brighten the Corner Where You Are,” and the triumphant paean of “When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder, I’ll Be There.” Instead of making them drone through many stanzas, he had them sing one from each hymn. Then he startled them by shouting, “Now I don’t want any of you old fellows to be shocked, or say it isn’t proper in church, because I’m going to get the spirit awakened and maybe get the old devil on the run! Remember that the Lord who made the sunshine and the rejoicing hills must have been behind the fellows that wrote the glad songs, so I want you to all pipe up good and lively with ‘Dixie’! Yes, sir! Then, for the old fellows, like me, we’ll have a stanza of that magnificent old reassurance of righteousness, ‘How Firm a Foundation.’ ”
They did look shocked, some of them; but the youngsters, the boys and the girls keeping an aseptic tryst in the back pews, were delighted. He made them sing the chorus of “Dixie” over and over, till all but one or two rheumatic saints looked cheerful.
His text was from Galatians: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace.”
“Don’t you ever listen for one second,” he commanded, “to these wishy-washy fellows that carry water on both shoulders, that love to straddle the fence, that are scared of the sternness of the good old-time Methodist doctrine and tell you that details don’t mean anything, that dogmas and the discipline don’t mean anything. They do! Justification means something! Baptism means something! It means something that the wicked and worldly stand for this horrible stinking tobacco and this insane alcohol, which makes a man like a murderer, but we Methodists keep ourselves pure and unspotted and undefiled.
“But tonight, on this first day of getting acquainted with you, Brothers and Sisters, I don’t want to go into these details. I want to get down to the fundamental thing which details merely carry out, and that fundamental thing—What is it? What is it? What is it but Jesus Christ, and his love for each and every one of us!
“Love! Love! Love! How beauteous the very word! Not carnal love but the divine presence. What is Love? Listen! It is the rainbow that stands out, in all its glorious many-colored hues, illuminating and making glad against the dark clouds of life. It is the morning and the evening star, that in glad refulgence, there on the awed horizon, call Nature’s hearts to an uplifted rejoicing in God’s marvelous firmament! Round about the cradle of the babe, sleeping so quietly while o’er him hangs in almost agonized adoration his loving mother, shines the miracle of Love, and at the last sad end, comforting the hearts that bear its immortal permanence, round even the quiet tomb, shines Love.
“What is great art—and I am not speaking of ordinary pictures but of those celebrated Old Masters with their great moral lessons—what is the mother of art, the inspiration of the poet, the patriot, the philosopher, and the great man of affairs, be he business man or statesman—yes, what inspires their every effort save Love?
“Oh, do you not sometimes hear, stealing o’er the plains at dawn, coming as it were from some far distant secret place, a sound of melody? When our dear sister here plays the offertory, do you not seem sometimes to catch the distant rustle of the wings of cherubim? And what is music, lovely, lovely music, what is fair melody? Ah, music, ’tis the voice of Love! Ah, ’tis the magician that makes right royal kings out of plain folks like us! ’Tis the perfume of the wondrous flower, ’tis the strength of the athlete, strong and mighty to endure ’mid the heat and dust of the valorous conquest. Ah, Love, Love, Love! Without it, we are less than beasts; with it, earth is heaven and we are as the gods!
“Yes, that is what Love—created by Christ Jesus and conveyed through all the generations by his church, particularly, it seems to me, by the great, broad, democratic, liberal brotherhood of the Methodist Church—that is what it means to us.
“I am reminded of an incident in my early youth, while I was in the university. There was a young man in my class—I will not give you his name except to say that we called him Jim—a young man pleasing to the eye, filled with every possibility for true deep Christian service, but alas! so beset with the boyish pride of mere intellect, of mere smart-aleck egotism, that he was unwilling to humble himself before the source of all intellect and accept Jesus as his savior.
“I was very fond of Jim—in fact I had been willing to go and room with him in the hope of bringing him to his senses and getting him to embrace salvation. But he was a man who had read books by folks like Ingersoll and Thomas Paine—fool, swell-headed folks that thought they knew more than Almighty God! He would quote their polluted and devil-inspired ravings instead of listening to the cool healing stream that gushes blessedly forth from the Holy Bible. Well, I argued and argued and argued—I guess that shows I was pretty young and foolish myself! But one day I was inspired to something bigger and better than any arguments.
“I just said to Jim, all of a sudden, ‘Jim,’ I said, ‘do you love your father?’ (A fine old Christian gentleman his father was, too, a country doctor, with that heroism, that self-sacrifice, that wide experience which the country doctor has.) ‘Do you love your old dad?’ I asked him.
“Naturally, Jim was awful fond of his father, and he was kind of hurt that I should have asked him.
“ ‘Sure, of course I do!’ he says. ‘Well, Jim,’ I says, ‘does your father love you?’ ‘Why, of course he does,’ said Jim. ‘Then look here, Jim,’ I said; ‘if your earthly father can love you, how much more must your Father in Heaven, who created all Love, how much more must he care and yearn for you!’
“Well, sir, that knocked him right over. He forgot all the smart-aleck things he’d been reading. He just looked at me, and I could see a tear quivering in the lad’s eyes as he said, ‘I see how you mean, now, and I want to say, friend, that I’m going to accept Jesus Christ as my lord and master!’
“Oh, yes, yes, yes, how beautiful it is, the golden glory of God’s Love! Do you not feel it? I mean that! I don’t mean just a snuffling, lazy, mechanical acceptance, but a passionate—”