“No,” I replied, “it merely proves that we are trying to save one day a week from the contamination of our materialistic existence.”
“It merely proves,” he echoed, “that you have inherited from your Anglo-Saxon ancestors the worst thing they could leave you: their hypocrisy. I stepped behind a curtained bar this morning and found it running at full blast. You evidently do your drinking in private on Sunday and your praying in public. You know we in Germany do the opposite.”
“No, you do your praying and drinking both in public, and both seem to be a part of your religion,” I answered. “Very likely you are right. There is about us this taint of hypocrisy; but that only shows that we are a deeply religious people, conscious of the fact that our ideals are upon a higher plane than our performance. We are not as eager as you are to proclaim our frailties from the housetop.
“The average American wants you to believe him to be a pretty decent fellow till you find him out to be different; while you Germans make a virtue of a certain kind of brutal frankness, which is worse than hypocrisy, since you try to make it an excuse for all sorts of private and national sins. The real criminal is never a hypocrite.”
I do not know what would have happened to me if at that moment we had not reached St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The full, rich organ notes seemed to soothe the Herr Director’s ruffled spirit, and our discussion ended as we entered the welcoming portal.
In a church which in all places and all ages remains the same, there was nothing for my guests to see or hear to which they were not accustomed. There was the priest, alone with the great mystery which he was enacting, and by his side the diminutive ministrants. The crowd which filled every available space in that huge interior was silent and reverent. Now the tinkling of a bell, like a command from Heaven, bade all kneel, and now the same bell bade them rise. The incense, the stately chant, and then the hushed, expectant throng going forward to partake from the priest’s hand of the means of grace, which he alone could offer in the name of the one Holy Catholic Church—all this could not fail to impress us.
Into the august and solemn atmosphere there came from a near-by church the chimed notes of a hymn-tune such as the people once sang defiantly when they proclaimed their religious freedom. It was a spiritual war tune which soldiers could sing, and strangely enough it seemed to fit into this atmosphere as if it were the one thing which the service needed. It recalled the self-assertion of the people before their God, their man God, who was born in a stable, who worshipped as He worked, and worked as He worshipped, hurling His anathemas at those who blocked the gates of the kingdom to them who would enter, yet did not enter themselves.
Evidently the Herr Director felt as I felt; for he whispered to me, “The Reformation.” When I nodded my approval, he said: “But see how unmoved she is, this rock-founded church. It will take something more than hymn-tunes to disturb her.”
We left the Cathedral while the hungry multitude was being fed with the Sacrament of our Lord, and our spirits, too, had been fed, although we were not of that fold.
While the Roman Catholics were finishing their worship, the Protestants were making ready to begin. The first bells had chimed appealingly, not commandingly, and a thin stream of worshippers appeared on the Avenue, growing thinner as it divided, entering one or the other of those edifices where men were to worship according to the dictates of their conscience, their taste, or their social position.