“You represent a saint’s church,” I remarked, glancing at the card. “I travel a good deal and I haven’t found a church specially designed for sinners like me. I’m uncomfortable among the saints. I’m not quarrelling with your church or its name, but I’ve long had a feeling that our church nomenclature needs revision. Still, that’s a personal matter. You’ve done your duty by me, and I’d be glad to come if I didn’t have another engagement.”
The pages of a Chicago morning newspaper that lay across my knees probably persuaded him that I was lying. However, after a moment’s hesitation he sat down beside me.
“That’s funny, what you said about a church for sinners—but we have one right here in Warburton; odd you never heard of it! It was written up in the newspapers a good deal. It’s just across the street from St. John’s on Water Street.”
I recalled now that I had seen a strange church in my walk to the hotel, but the new St. John’s had so absorbed my attention that I had passed it with only a glance. It came back to me that it was a white wooden structure, and that boards were nailed across its pillared portico as though to shut out the public while repairs were in progress.
“Saints excluded, sinners only need apply?”
He nodded, and looked at me queerly, as though, now that I had broached the matter, he considered the advisability of telling me more. It was ten o’clock and half a dozen church-bells clanged importunately as a background for the Adeste Fideles rung from St. John’s chimes.
“‘The Church For Honest Sinners,’ might suit you, only it’s closed—closed for good, I guess,” he remarked, again scrutinizing me closely.
He played nervously with a pack of cards similar to the one with which he had introduced himself. Other men, quite as unmistakably transients as I, were lounging down from breakfast, settling themselves to their newspapers, or seeking the barber-shop. Something in my attitude toward the church for which he was seeking worshippers seemed to arrest him. He was a handsome, clear-eyed, wholesome-looking young fellow, whose life had doubtless been well sheltered from evil; there was something refreshingly naïve about him. I liked his straightforward manner of appealing to strangers; a bank teller, perhaps, or maybe a clerk in the office of one of the manufacturing companies whose indifference to the welfare of their laborers I had come to investigate. Not the most grateful of tasks, this of passing church advertisements about in hotel lobbies on Sunday mornings. It requires courage, true manliness. My heart warmed to him as I saw a number of men eying us from the cigar-stand, evidently amused that the young fellow had cornered me. A member of the group, a stout gentleman in checks, held one of the cards in his hand and covertly pointed with it in our direction.
“If there’s a story about the sinners’ church I’d like to hear it,” I remarked encouragingly. “It seemed to be closed—suppose they’re enlarging it to accommodate the rush.”
“Well, no; hardly that,” he replied soberly. “It was built as an independent scheme—none of the denominations would stand for it of course.”