“It must be a tremendous inspiration to you, Burner,” I said, “you seem to enjoy it so!”
“Enjoy it!” he gasped. “I revel in it! Just think how blank my mind was when I came here! I thought they wouldn’t take me. I had never been to college, and had little preparation. When they did take me and give me my chance, I resolved to make up for lost time, Priddy. Other seminaries would have refused me, and I should never have gone into the ministry. Of course it is the biggest inspiration that has ever come to me. It is my first real chance!”
I soon learned that I had found in the East what I had found in Evangelical University, a professional school that was willing to bend to the service of the ambitious but unprepared student. But in the Seminary there was more point and breadth to the teaching; the studies were more thorough, intellectually more satisfying; so, with Burner and with many others who, like myself, had never been to college, I began the exciting adventure into disciplined truth.
It was rich fare to which I was invited, during that first year: the tough meat, Hebrew, which even moderately digested, meant exegetical strength in Old Testament lore, the tenderer portions of Greek which nourished one’s New Testament appetite; entrées of psychology and philosophy; well-baked and spiced Church history, and a various dessert of special lectures comprising every viand from the art of preaching to nerve-stirring appreciations of social movements.
The social life of Evangelical University had been so narrow that I was ready to appreciate the broadness of that permitted us in the Seminary. The professors had us in their homes for teas and dinners. The intimate touch between us and our teachers formed part of the discipline of those years. There was hardly any sign of that academic aloofness which I had always supposed to be characteristic of eastern institutions. I ran into the room of a sick classmate one Saturday morning, only to find him being nursed by the professor of theology. The utmost freedom of thought was given us in the speculations of the classrooms. It was an atmosphere where bigotry and dogmatism could not live overnight. Our lives, by being linked to that of the Seminary, began to be linked to the life of the city; for the churches and the people showed us many thoughtful courtesies, took us into their circles, and made many winter evenings merry and profitable.
I still had to rely upon my own efforts for money, but the days of loading brick, raking lawns, making furnace fires, were gone now, and I was enabled to earn money in a more professional way. I was given the task of organizing some children for one of the smaller churches of the city. One hundred of them met me on Sunday afternoons, in the body of the church, where for an hour we tried to get along harmoniously together and incidentally learn some concrete definitions of the Kingdom of God. I tried to preach through pictures on a blackboard and through objects like keys and nails, knives and flowers. Many of the little ones were not used to church etiquette, so I had to wander away from the Kingdom of God many times to instruct some of them concerning the necessity of taking off caps in church, of the inhumanity of pulling one another’s hair braids, of the injudiciousness of poking pins in one another’s necks. Often, too, when the neighborhood, after a Sunday feast of mutton and peas, was enjoying its mid-afternoon slumbers, some of the boys would whirl the church bell and make startled men and women imagine it was the fourth alarm of a fire. I had to correct that practise. We held several socials during the year, socials of a unique character. My assistants would keep the door locked in the little chapel until the oil lamps had been lifted out of danger. The popcorn and candy would be put on tables in heaps and the signal of admission given. Into the room the horde of yelling, scrambling children would come and fill it with all manner of wild romping. The refreshments would be given, there would follow another wild frolic, and at half-past eight the children would go home persuaded that they had had “a dandy time! Three helpings of popcorn and all the lemonade you could drink!”
When the first of May arrived, I announced a picnic for the children, and though the day was cold, more than our actual membership appeared—with individual lunches. When we arrived at the grove I had to stand guard over the lunches until the noon hour. Then, after an afternoon of disordered fun and fight, I managed to secure order on the way home by permitting the children to hold the ribbons of the May-pole and to trail behind in orderly procession, singing, as we entered the residential section of the city, very piously and earnestly, “Onward, Christian Soldiers!”
Meanwhile the arched elms on the seminary campus leafed out and shaded the walks with cool shadows. The students met after supper, threw off their coats, and played ball until darkness. The robins began to perch on my bedroom window ledge and waken me by their dulcet flutings long before breakfast. The fumes of burning leaves came through the open windows from the campus. It was spring and it was graduation time for the seniors.
It was the season of the year when at Evangelical University the students, like Thropper, would be planning to earn money during the coming vacation by taking subscriptions for “The Devil in Society” and similar objects; but my summer was to be one full of inspirational and serviceable possibilities. It had been arranged for me, by the seminary president, that I should take two schoolhouses in a far-away district and preach during the long vacation. At last I was to actually enter upon my chosen profession.