No clergyman can spoil the whole of Sunday, for there is always the dinner, and having found a table d’hôte in harmony with the Herr Director’s national and religious ideals, we continued our discussion somewhat fitfully, if, at times, rather vehemently.
One of the things the Herr Director missed in the church where we tried to worship was reverence. He missed it everywhere and thought it due to the fact that we do not teach religion in the public schools.
This was rather amusing to me, for just prior to that statement he had told me of one of his nephews who, upon approaching his final examinations, said: “If it were not for this accursed religion I could get through without trouble;” and I called his attention to the fact that although I had no difficulty with my “exams” in religion, invariably having an “Ausgezeichnet” which is equivalent to an A, I was always “Schlecht” in conduct.
I had found religious instruction a very irreligious procedure, for the man who taught it was irreligious enough to whip me so that I could not lie upon my back for a week, the cause being that I would not say yes to his credo. Moreover I told the Herr Director I thought all religious instruction irreligious which did not teach the child its whole duty to society, but taught religion from only the narrowing racial or sectarian standpoint.
Religion, I pointed out to him, can after all not be taught; it has to be caught. It is a contagion which comes from a spiritual personality, and our public schools are not religious or irreligious because certain subjects are found or not found in their curricula, but because the teachers have this spiritual personality or lack it. I am convinced that this ethical quality predominates in our public schools, not only because so many of our teachers are women, but because we are fundamentally a religious people.
At this point I became conscious that the attention of the Herr Director and the Frau Directorin had flagged; for their response to my homily was an eloquent tribute to the tenderness of the breast of a Long Island duck, which they had been enjoying while I talked. As they were consequently in a lenient mood towards the whole world and therefore the United States, I renewed my laudable and difficult effort, and, as is often best, through the medium of a story.
At the time the elective system was introduced into Harvard University, attendance upon chapel was made voluntary. “I understand,” said a severe critic of this procedure, “that you have made God elective in your college.”
“No,” replied the astute president, “I understand that God has made Himself elective everywhere.”
The point of my story was lost upon both my guests. When I paused, the Frau Directorin asked me how it was possible to serve so lavish a bill of fare for so little money, and the Herr Director asked the waiter why they called this a Long Island duck when the portions were so short. Thus the conviction was forced upon me that our environment was not conducive to the discussion of the American Spirit and that I must await a more auspicious occasion.
Late in the afternoon that occasion came; not on Fifth Avenue but on one of those streets where churches are fewest and humanity thickest; where Sunday brings liberation from toil, where cleanliness and godliness have an equally difficult task in coming or abiding; where nations and races must mingle and cannot easily blend, where the America which is to be is in the making, and where the Spirit must manifest itself if we are to be a nation with common ideals.