purred Harry Zenz.
Frank Shallard was meditating unhappily. "Just why are we going to be preachers, anyway? Why are you, Harry, if you think we're all such liars?"
"Oh, not liars, Frank — just practical, as Elmer put it. Me, it's easy. I'm not ambitious. I don't want money enough to hustle for it. I like to sit and read. I like intellectual acrobatics and no work. And you can have all that in the ministry — unless you're one of these chumps that get up big institutional outfits and work themselves to death for publicity."
"You certainly have a fine high view of the ministry!" growled Elmer.
"Well, all right, what's your fine high purpose in becoming a Man of God, Brother Gantry?"
"Well, I — Rats, it's perfectly clear. Preacher can do a lot of good — give help and — And explain religion."
"I wish you'd explain it to me! Especially I want to know to what extent are Christian symbols descended from indecent barbaric symbols?"
"Oh, you make me tired!"
Horace Carp fluttered, "Of course none of you consecrated windjammers ever think of the one raison d'être of the church, which is to add beauty to the barren lives of the common people!"
"Yeh! It certainly must make the common people feel awfully common to hear Brother Gantry spiel about the errors of supralapsarianism!"
"I never preach about any such a doggone thing!" Elmer protested. "I just give 'em a good helpful sermon, with some jokes sprinkled in to make it interesting and some stuff about the theater or something that'll startle 'em a little and wake 'em up, and help 'em to lead better and fuller daily lives."
"Oh, do you, dearie!" said Zenz. "My error. I thought you probably gave 'em a lot of helpful hints about the innascibilitas attribute and the res sacramenti. Well, Frank, why did you become a theologue?"
"I can't tell you when you put it sneeringly. I believe there are mystic experiences which you can follow only if you are truly set apart."
"Well, I know why I came here," said Don Pickens. "My dad sent me!"
"So did mine!" complained Horace Carp. "But what I can't understand is: Why are any of us in an ole Baptist school? Horrible denomination — all these moldy barns of churches, and people coughing illiterate hymns, and long-winded preachers always springing a bright new idea like 'All the world needs to solve its problems is to get back to the gospel of Jesus Christ.' The only church is the Episcopal! Music! Vestments! Stately prayers! Lovely architecture! Dignity! Authority! Believe me, as soon as I can make the break, I'm going to switch over to the Episcopalians. And then I'll have a social position, and be able to marry a nice rich girl."
"No, you're wrong," said Zenz. "The Baptist Church is the only denomination worth while, except possibly the Methodist."
"I'm glad to hear you say that," marveled Eddie.
"Because the Baptists and the Methodists have all the numbskulls — except those that belong to the Catholic Church and the henhouse sects — and so even you, Horace, can get away with being a prophet. There are some intelligent people in the Episcopal and Congregational Churches, and a few of the Campbellite flocks, and they check up on you. Of course all Presbyterians are half-wits, too, but they have a standard doctrine, and they can trap you into a heresy trial. But in the Baptist and Methodist Churches, man! There's the berth for philosophers like me and hoot-owls like you, Eddie! All you have to do with Baptists and Methodists, as Father Carp suggests — "
"If you agree with me about anything, I withdraw it," said Horace.
"All you have to do," said Zenz, "is to get some sound and perfectly meaningless doctrine and keep repeating it. You won't bore the laymen — in fact the only thing they resent is something that is new, so they have to work their brains. Oh, no, Father Carp — the Episcopal pulpit for actors that aren't good enough to get on the stage, but the good old Baptist fold for realists!"
"You make me tired, Harry!" complained Eddie. "You just want to show off, that's all. You're a lot better Baptist and a lot better Christian than you let on to be, and I can prove it. Folks wouldn't go on listening to your sermons unless they carried conviction. No sir! You can fool folks once or twice with a lot of swell-sounding words but in the long run it's sincerity they look for. And one thing that makes me know you're on the right side is that you don't practise open communion. Golly, I feel that everything we Baptists stand for is threatened by those darn' so-called liberals that are beginning to practise open communion."
"Rats!" grumbled Harry. "Of all the fool Baptist egotisms, close communion is the worst! Nobody but people we consider saved to be allowed to take communion with us! Nobody can meet God unless we introduce 'em! Self-appointed guardians of the blood and body of Jesus Christ! Whew!"
"Absolutely," from Horace Carp. "And there is absolutely no Scriptural basis for close communion."
"There certainly is!" shrieked Eddie. "Frank, where's your Bible?"
"Gee, I left it in O.T.E. Where's yours, Don?"
"Well, I'll be switched! I had the darn' thing here just this evening," lamented Don Pickens, after a search.
"Oh, I remember. I was killing a cockroach with it. It's on top of your wardrobe," said Elmer.
"Gee, honest, you hadn't ought to kill cockroaches with a Bible!" mourned Eddie Fislinger. "Now here's the Bible, good and straight, for close communion, Harry. It says in First Corinthians, 11:27 and 29: 'Whoever shall eat this bread and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh damnation to himself.' And how can there be a worthy Christian unless he's been baptized by immersion?"
"I do wonder sometimes," mused Frank Shallard, "if we aren't rather impious, we Baptists, to set ourselves up as the keepers of the gates of God, deciding just who is righteous, who is worthy to commune."
"But there's nothing else we can do," explained Eddie. "The Baptist Church, being the only pure Scriptural church, is the one real church of God, and we're not setting ourselves up — we're just following God's ordinances."
Horace Carp had also been reveling in the popular Mizpah sport of looking up Biblical texts to prove a preconceived opinion. "I don't find anything here about Baptists," he said.
"Nor about your doggoned ole Episcopalians, either — darn' snobs! and the preachers wearing nightshirts!" from Eddie.
"You bet your life you find something — it talks about bishops, and that means Episcopal bishops — the papes and the Methodists are uncanonical bishops," rejoiced Horace. "I'll bet you two dollars and sixty-seven cents I wind up as an Episcopal bishop, and, believe me, I'll be high-church as hell — all the candles I can get on the altar."
Harry Zenz was speculating, "I suppose it's unscientific to believe that because I happen to be a Baptist practitioner myself and see what word-splitting, text-twisting, applause-hungry, job-hunting, medieval-minded second-raters even the biggest Baptist leaders are, therefore the Baptist Church is the worst of the lot. I don't suppose it's really any worse than the Presbyterian or the Congregational or Disciples or Lutheran or any other. But — Say, you, Fislinger, ever occur to you how dangerous it is, this Bible-worship? You and I might have to quit preaching and go to work. You tell the muttonheads that the Bible contains absolutely everything necessary for salvation, don't you?"
"Of course."
"Then what's the use of having any preachers? Any church? Let people stay home and read the Bible!"
"Well — well — it says — "
The door was dashed open, and Brother Karkis entered.
Brother Karkis was no youthful student. He was forty-three, heavy-handed and big-footed, and his voice was the voice of a Great Dane. Born to the farm, he had been ordained a Baptist preacher, for twenty years now, and up and down through the Dakotas, Nebraska, Arkansas, he had bellowed in up-creek tabernacles.
His only formal education had been