V
A meeting of the church body had been called to decide on Frank’s worthiness, and the members had been informed by Styles that Frank was attacking all religion. Instantly a number of the adherents who had been quite unalarmed by what they themselves had heard in the pulpit perceived that Frank was a dangerous fellow and more than likely to injure omnipotent God.
Before the meeting, one woman, who remained fond of him, fretted to Frank, “Oh, can’t you understand what a dreadful thing you’re doing to question the divinity of Christ and all? I’m afraid you’re going to hurt religion permanently. If you could open your eyes and see—if you could only understand what my religion has meant to me in times of despair! I don’t know what I would have done during my typhoid without that consolation! You’re a bright, smart man when you let yourself be. If you’d only go and have a good talk with Dr. G. Prosper Edwards. He’s an older man than you, and he’s a doctor of divinity, and he has such huge crowds at Pilgrim Church, and I’m sure he could show you where you’re wrong and make everything perfectly clear to you.”
Frank’s sister, married now to an Akron lawyer, came to stay with them. They had been happy, Frank and she, in the tepid but amiable house of their minister-father; they had played at church, with dolls and saltcellars for congregation; books were always about them, natural to them; and at their father’s table they had heard doctors, preachers, lawyers, politicians, talk of high matters.
The sister bubbled to Bess, “You know, Frank doesn’t believe half he says! He just likes to show off. He’s a real good Christian at heart, if he only knew it. Why, he was such a good Christian boy—he led the B.Y.P.U.—he couldn’t have drifted away from Christ into all this nonsense that nobody takes seriously except a lot of long-haired dirty cranks! And he’ll break his father’s heart! I’m going to have a good talk with that young man, and bring him to his senses!”
On the street Frank met the great Dr. McTiger, pastor of the Royal Ridge Presbyterian Church.
Dr. McTiger had been born in Scotland, graduated at Edinburgh, and he secretly—not too secretly—despised all American universities and seminaries and their alumni. He was a large, impatient, brusque man, renowned for the length of his sermons.
“I hear, young man,” he shouted at Frank, “that you have read one whole book on the pre-Christian mysteries and decided that our doctrines are secondhand and that you are now going to destroy the church. You should have more pity! With the loss of a profound intellect like yours, my young friend, I should doubt if the church can stagger on! It’s a pity that after discovering scholarship you didn’t go on and get enough of that same scholarship to perceive that by the wondrous beneficence of God’s mercy the early church was led to combine many alien factors in the one perfection of the Christian brotherhood! I don’t know whether it’s ignorance of church history or lack of humor that chiefly distinguishes you, my young friend! Go and sin no more!”
From Andrew Pengilly came a scrawled, shaky letter begging Frank to stand true and not deliver his appointed flock to the devil. That hurt.