"I don't want them," Dr. Dennis said, stoutly. "I wouldn't give a dime for a hundred such workers; they are an injury to the cause. I want Sunday-school workers who have a personal, vital sense of the worth of souls, and a consuming desire to see them converted. All other Sunday-school teaching is aimless."
Mr. Harrison looked thoughtful.
"We haven't many such, I am afraid," he said, gravely; but I agree with you in thinking that they should at least be Christians. Still, I suppose that it is not impossible that some one of these ladies may be converted."
"Not at Chautauqua," Dr. Dennis said, as one who had looked into the matter and knew all about it. "I am not entirely in sympathy with that meeting, anyway; or, that is, I am and I am not, all at once. I think it would be a grand place for you and me. I haven't the least doubt but that we would be refreshed, bodily and mentally, and, for that matter, spiritually. If the whole world were converted I should vote for Chautauqua with a loud voice; but I am more than fearful as to the influence of such meetings on the masses—the unconverted world. They will go there for recreation. Their whole aim will be to have a glorious frolic away from the restraints of ordinary home-life. They will have no interest in the meetings, no sympathy with the central thought that has drawn the workers together, and the tendency will be to frolic through it all.
"The truth is, there will be such a mixing of things that I actually fear the effect will be wholesale demoralization. At the same time I am interested in the idea, and am watching it with anxiety. Since I have heard of the delegation from my own church I have been more convinced still of the evil influences. It makes me gloomy to think of the fruitful field such a place will be for the fertile brain of that little Eurie Mitchell. She is too wild now for civilized life The four walls of the church and the sacred associations connected with the building serve to keep her only half controlled when she is actually attending Sabbath service. There will be nothing to control her in the woods, and she will lose what little reverence she possesses. I tell you, the more I think of it, the more certain I am that for such people these great religious jubilees, holding over the Sabbath, do harm."
"You put it more gently than our friend Mr. Archer," Mr. Harrison said, smiling. "He is in a condition of absolute scorn. He gives none of them credit for honesty or genuine interest. He says it is a running away from work, a regular shirking of what they ought to be doing, and going off into the woods to have a good time, and, by way of gulling the public, they pretend to season it with religion."
Dr. Dennis laughed.
"That sounds precisely like him, and is quite as logical as one could expect, coming from that source," he said, indifferently. "Why doesn't it occur to his dull brain, that thinks itself such a sharp one, that the leaders thereof are men responsible to no one save God and their own consciences for the way in which they spend their time? There is nothing earthly to hinder their going to the woods, and staying three months if they please to do so."
"Oh, but I have left out one of the important reasons for the meeting. It is to make money; a grand speculation, whereby the fortunes of these same leaders are to be made at the expense of the poor victims whom they gather about them."
Again Dr. Dennis' shoulders went upward in that peculiar but expressive shrug.