From the Bottom Up: The Life Story of Alexander Irvine

by Alexander Irvine

"It may be that more sermons with equal plain speaking would do good. It may be that the conservatism, not to say the Phariseeism, of the modern church requires a John the Baptist to pierce it to the core, and expose its inner rottenness. The church that does not welcome the poor man and his family with just as much heartiness, sincerity and kindly sympathy as it does the rich man and his family is certainly not worthy of the great Teacher who spoke of the great difficulty the rich man has in entering the kingdom of God."

I have delivered about two written sermons in twenty-five years. That farewell message was one of them. I wanted to be careful, fair, just. I could not escape the belief that at least seven of my predecessors who had been pushed out by unfair means had left with a lie on their lips. Pastor and people, in dissolving relationship, had always assumed and often explicitly stated on the records that the departing minister "had been called of God" elsewhere. If God was the author of their methods of dismissal, He ought to be ashamed of Himself.

There was no interregnum. The Sunday following that farewell sermon I preached my first sermon as pastor of the newly organized People's Church of New Haven. About thirty people left the old church and joined the new. Among them was a saintly woman, who had been a member for half a century of Pilgrim Church. We had one man of means—Philo Sherman Bennett, the friend of Mr. Bryan. The opening meeting was in the Hyperion Theatre. The creed was simple, and brevity itself: "This church is a self-governing community for the worship of God and the service of man." A Jewish Rabbi read the Scriptures, a Universalist minister made an address, and a judge of the city led in prayer. Part of my address was a series of serious questions: "Will this movement raise the tone of society? Will it increase mutual confidence? Will it diminish intemperance? Will it find the people uneducated and leave them educated? Will the voice of its leader be lifted in the cause of justice and humanity? Will it tend after all to elevate or lower the moral sentiments of mankind? Will it increase the love of truth or the power of superstition or self-deception? Will it divide or unite the world? Will it leave the minds of men clearer and more enlightened, or will it add another element of confusion to the chaos? These are the tests we put to this new church and to our personal lives."

We had an old hall in the outskirts of the city, on a railroad bank. There we opened our Sunday School and began our church activities. I got a band of Yale men to go to work at the hall. The son of Senator Crane, of Massachusetts, became head of the movement, but that plan was spoiled by a man of the English Lutheran persuasion, who was an instructor in Yale. It appeared that the church of which this man was a member had been trying to rent this old hall and, not succeeding in that, they claimed the community. This instructor complained to the Yale authorities, and without a word to me the Yale band was withdrawn. A few weeks after the Lutherans claimed another community, and went to work in it.

In the middle of our first year our little church received a staggering blow in the death of Mr. Philo S. Bennett. We had become very intimate. I dined with him once a week. He was about to retire from business, and after a rest he was to give his time to the church idea. He inquired about buildings, and he had fixed his mind on a $25,000 structure. He spoke to others of these plans, but in Idaho, that summer, he was killed in an accident. Mrs. Bennett sent for me and I took charge of the funeral arrangements. Mr. Bryan came on at once and helped. After the funeral he read and discussed the will. I was present at several of these discussions. The sealed letter written by the dead man was the bone of contention. Then the lawyers came in and the case went into the courts. The world knew but a fragment of the truth. It looked to me at first as if a selfish motive actuated Mr. Bryan, but as I got at the details one after another, details the world can never know, I developed a profound respect for him. He was the only person involved that cared anything for the mind, will or intention of the dead man, and his entire legal battle was not that he should get what Mr. Bennett had willed him, but that the designs of his friend should not be frustrated: not merely with regard to the fifty thousand—he offered to distribute that—but with regard to the money for poor students.

We missed Mr. Bennett, not only for his moral and financial help, but because of his great business ability. During the coal strike of 1902, for instance, when coal was beyond the reach of the poor, we organized among the working people a coal company. The coal dealers blocked our plans everywhere. We were shut out. Then the idea came to us to charter a shipload and bring it from Glasgow. It was the keen business ability of Mr. Bennett that helped us to success. We needed $15,000 to cable over. I laid the plans before Mr. Bennett; he went over them carefully and put up the money. Before we needed it, however, we had sold stock at a dollar a share, and the coal in Scotland brought in an amount beyond our immediate needs. This, of course, was "interfering with business men's affairs," and the dealers in coal were not slow to express themselves. I was a director of the coal company for some time. The newspapers announced that I was going into the coal business to make a living; but I had neither desire nor ability in that direction. It was a great day in New Haven when our ship entered the harbour and broke the siege. We sold coal for half the current price.

The idea of a church building had held a number of people in our little church for a long time, but after Mr. Bennett's death that hope seemed to die, and those to whom a church home was more than a church, left us; those of that mind that didn't leave voluntarily were lured away by ministers who had a building. The amount of ecclesiastical pilfering that goes on in a small city like New Haven is surprising. Conversion is a lost art or a lost experience, and the average minister whose reputation and salary depend upon the number of people he can corral, usually has two fields of action: one is the Sunday School and the other is the loose membership of other churches. The theft is usually deliberate.

When my income was about forty dollars a month, subscribed by very poor people, a pastor who had been building up his church at the expense of his neighbours, wrote me that he was trying to persuade one of our members to join his church. It was the most brazen thing I had ever known. He felt that our dissolution was a matter of time, and he wanted his share of the wreckage. He went after the only person in our church who had an income that more than supplied personal needs. Afterward, this same minister entered into a deal with the trustees of the hall we used, by which the hall and the Sunday School were handed over to him. Of course, we made no fight over the thing—we just let him take them. This is called "bringing in the Kingdom of God."

We were not free from dissension within our own ranks, either. Mr. Bryan came to lecture for us in the largest theatre in town. Admission was to be by ticket, on Sunday afternoon. The committee of our church that took charge of the tickets began to distribute seats—the best seats and boxes—to their personal friends. Thousands were clamouring for tickets. It was an opportunity to give the city a big, helpful meeting, and to do it democratically and well. But the committee would brook no interference.

I announced in the papers that all tickets were general admissions, and "first come, first served" would be our principle. Sunday morning, when I was half-way through my discourse, one of the committee handed me a note. I did not open it until I finished. It was a threat that if I did not call off the democratic order, the committee would leave the church. The meeting was a great success, and the committee made good its threat. What the writer of the following letter expected of me I have no idea, nor did his letter enlighten me: