but I think it would be almost too stimulating to watch you become a spiritual leader.
J. B. L.
All of Elmer's raging did not make the room seem less lonely.
CHAPTER IV
1
President Quarles urged him.
Elmer would, perhaps, affect the whole world if he became a minister. What glory for Old Terwillinger and all the shrines of Gritzmacher Springs!
Eddie Fislinger urged him.
"Jiminy! You'd go way beyond me! I can see you president of the Baptist convention!" Elmer still did not like Eddie, but he was making much now of ignoring Jim Lefferts (they met on the street and bowed ferociously), and he had to have some one to play valet to his virtues.
The ex-minister dean of the college urged him.
Where could Elmer find a profession with a better social position than the ministry — thousands listening to him — invited to banquets and everything. So much easier than — Well, not exactly easier; all ministers worked arduously — great sacrifices — constant demands on their sympathy — heroic struggle against vice — but same time, elegant and superior work, surrounded by books, high thoughts, and the finest ladies in the city or country as the case might be. And cheaper professional training than law. With scholarships and outside preaching, Elmer could get through the three years of Mizpah Theological Seminary on almost nothing a year. What other plans had he for a career? Nothing definite? Why, looked like divine intervention; certainly did; let's call it settled. Perhaps he could get Elmer a scholarship the very first year —
His mother urged him.
She wrote, daily, that she was longing, praying, sobbing —
Elmer urged himself.
He had no prospects except the chance of reading law in the dingy office of a cousin in Toluca, Kansas. The only things he had against the ministry, now that he was delivered from Jim, were the low salaries and the fact that if ministers were caught drinking or flirting, it was often very hard on them. The salaries weren't so bad — he'd go to the top, of course, and maybe make eight or ten thousand. But the diversions — He thought about it so much that he made a hasty trip to Cato, and came back temporarily cured forever of any desire for wickedness.
The greatest urge was his memory of holding his audience, playing on them. To move people — Golly! He wanted to be addressing somebody on something right now, and being applauded!
By this time he was so rehearsed in his rôle of candidate for righteousness that it didn't bother him (so long as no snickering Jim was present) to use the most embarrassing theological and moral terms in the presence of Eddie or the president; and without one grin he rolled out dramatic speeches about "the duty of every man to lead every other man to Christ," and "the historic position of the Baptists as the one true Scriptural Church, practising immersion, as taught by Christ himself."
He was persuaded. He saw himself as a white-browed and star-eyed young evangel, wearing a new frock coat, standing up in a pulpit and causing hundreds of beautiful women to weep with conviction and rush down to clasp his hand.
But there was one barrier, extremely serious. They all informed him that select though he was as sacred material, before he decided he must have a mystic experience known as a Call. God himself must appear and call him to service, and conscious though Elmer was now of his own powers and the excellence of the church, he saw no more of God about the place than in his worst days of unregeneracy.
He asked the president and the dean if they had had a Call. Oh, yes, certainly; but they were vague about practical tips as to how to invite a Call and recognize it when it came. He was reluctant to ask Eddie — Eddie would be only too profuse with tips, and want to kneel down and pray with him, and generally be rather damp and excitable and messy.
The Call did not come, not for weeks, with Easter past and no decision as to what he was going to do next year.
2
Spring on the prairie, high spring. Lilacs masked the speckled brick and stucco of the college buildings, spiraea made a flashing wall, and from the Kansas fields came soft airs and the whistle of meadow larks.
Students loafed at their windows, calling down to friends; they played catch on the campus; they went bareheaded and wrote a great deal of poetry; and the Terwillinger baseball team defeated Fogelquist College.
Still Elmer did not receive his divine Call.
By day, playing catch, kicking up his heels, belaboring his acquaintances, singing "The happiest days that ever were, we knew at old Terwillinger" on a fence fondly believed to resemble the Yale fence, or tramping by himself through the minute forest of cottonwood and willow by Tunker Creek, he expanded with the expanding year and knew happiness.
The nights were unadulterated hell.
He felt guilty that he had no Call, and he went to the president about it in mid-May.
Dr. Quarles was thoughtful, and announced;
"Brother Elmer, the last thing I'd ever want to do, in fairness to the spirit of the ministry, would be to create an illusion of a Call when there was none present. That would be like the pagan hallucinations worked on the poor suffering followers of Roman Catholicism. Whatever else he may be, a Baptist preacher must be free from illusions; he must found his work on good hard scientific facts — the proven facts of the Bible, and substitutionary atonement, which even pragmatically we know to be true, because it works. No, no! But at the same time I feel sure the voice of God is calling you, if you can but hear it, and I want to help you lift the veil of worldliness which still, no doubt, deafens your inner ear. Will you come to my house tomorrow evening? We'll take the matter to the Lord in prayer."
It was all rather dreadful.
That kindly spring evening, with a breeze fresh in the branches of the sycamores, President Quarles had shut the windows and drawn the blinds in his living-room, an apartment filled with crayon portraits of Baptist worthies, red-plush chairs, and leaded-glass unit bookcases containing the lay writings of the more poetic clergy. The president had gathered as assistants in prayer the more aged and fundamentalist ex-pastors on the faculty and the more milky and elocutionary of the Y.M.C.A. leaders, headed by Eddie Fislinger.
When Elmer entered, they were on their knees, their arms on the seats of reversed chairs, their heads bowed, all praying aloud and together. They looked up at him like old women surveying the bride. He wanted to bolt. Then the president nabbed him, and had him down on his knees, suffering and embarrassed and wondering what the devil to pray about.
They took turns at telling God what he ought to do in the case of "our so ardently and earnestly seeking brother."
"Now will you lift your voice in prayer, Brother Elmer? Just let yourself go. Remember we're all with you, all loving and helping you," grated the president.
They crowded near him. The president put his stiff old arm about Elmer's shoulder. It felt like a dry bone, and the president smelled of kerosene. Eddie crowded up on the other side and nuzzled against him. The others crept in, patting him. It was horribly hot in that room, and they were so close — he felt as if he were tied down in a hospital ward. He looked up and saw the long shaven face, the thin tight lips, of a minister...whom he was now to emulate.
He prickled with horror, but he tried to pray. He wailed, "O blessed Lord, help me to — help me to — "
He had an enormous idea. He sprang up. He cried, "Say, I think the spirit is beginning to work and maybe if I just went out and took a short walk and kinda prayed by myself, while you stayed here and prayed for me, it might help."
"I don't think that would be the way," began the president, but the most aged faculty-member