The thing was talked over afterward in the back end of a small store where all the church policies were formulated. One of the members was sent to the parsonage to question and warn me. My visitor spoke of former pastors who had been "called of God" elsewhere for much less than I had done. Another man came later, and asked for a promise that I would keep out of such affairs in the future.
This was the first fly in the ointment, the first break in the most cordial of relationships between me and the church.
The church had been organized fifty years when this incident occurred. We were preparing to celebrate the golden jubilee.
I gathered the officers together, and we went over the articles one by one. Not a man in the church believed in "everlasting damnation," but they voted unanimously to leave the hell-fire article just as they had found it. They had all subscribed to it, and it "hadn't hurt them."
"Do you mean to tell me," I asked, "that none of you believe in eternal punishment, and yet you are going to force every man, woman, and child who joins your church to solemnly swear before God that they do believe in it?" There was a great silence. "Yes, that's exactly what's what," one man said.
This incident illustrates the seared, calloused, surfeited condition of the average mind in the churches. It is glutted with sham, and atrophied by the reiteration of high-sounding but meaningless, pious phrases.
I managed to persuade them to so amend their by-laws that children baptized into the church became by that act church members. They did not know that by that amendment they were setting aside two-thirds of their creed, because they didn't know the creed.
One of my sermons at the Jubilee attracted the attention of Philo S. Bennett, a New York tea merchant, who made his home in New Haven. We became very close friends. One day Mr. Bennett and Mr. W.J. Bryan called at the parsonage. I happened to be out at the time, but dined with them that evening. Next morning a church member, who was a sort of cat's-paw for the rich men, called at the parsonage and informed me of the "disgust" of the leading members. "They won't stand for it!" he said vehemently.
When I spoke at the city hall they catalogued me as a Socialist, and when Mr. Bryan called, they moved me into the "free and unlimited coinage of silver" column. By "they," I mean four or five men—men of means, who absolutely ruled the church. The deacons had nothing to say, the church had as little. "The Society" was the thing. The "Society" in a Congregational church is a sort of secular adjunct charged with the duty of providing the material essentials. Their word is law, the only law. In their estimation business and religion could not be mixed, nor could things of the church be permitted to interfere in politics. The purchase of an alderman was to them as legitimate as the purchase of a cow. Some of them laughed as they told me of buying an election in the borough. It was a great joke to them. They were patriotic, very loudly patriotic, and their special hobby was "the majesty of the law."
I was to be punished for that water company affair, and a man was selected to administer the punishment. I had brought this man into the church; I had created a church office for him, and pushed him forward before the men. He was supposed to be my closest friend. He came to the parsonage one morning, to talk over casually the question of salary.