“All your stuff at Central, Otto,” said Dr. McGarry, “is paternalistic. You hand out rations to the dear pee-pul and keep ’em obedient. You talk about socialism and pacifism, and say a lot of nice things about ’em, but you always explain that reforms must come in due time, which means never, and then only through the kind supervision of Rockefeller and Henry Ford. And I always suspect that your activities have behind ’em the sneaking purpose of luring the poor chumps into religion—even into Methodism!”
The whole ministerial meeting broke into yelps.
“Well, of course, that’s the purpose—”
“Well, if you’ll kindly tell me why you stay in the Methodist Church when you think it’s so unimportant to—”
“Just what are you, a minister of the gospel, seeking except religion—”
The meeting, on such a morning, was certain to stray from the consideration of using egg-coal in church furnaces to the question as to what, when they weren’t before their congregations and on record, they really believed about the whole thing.
That was a very dangerous and silly thing, reflected Elmer Gantry. No telling where you’d get to, if you went blatting around about a lot of these fool problems. Preach the straight Bible gospel and make folks good, he demanded, and leave all these ticklish questions of theology and social service to the profs!
Philip McGarry wound up his cheerful attack on Dr. Hickenlooper, the first morning when Elmer disgustedly encountered him, by insisting, “You see, Otto, your reforms couldn’t mean anything, or you wouldn’t be able to hold onto as many prosperous money-grabbing parishioners as you do. No risk of the working-men in your church turning dangerous as long as you’ve got that tight-fisted Joe Hanley as one of your trustees! Thank Heaven, I haven’t got a respectable person in my whole blooming flock!”
(“Yeh, and there’s where you gave yourself away, McGarry,” Elmer chuckled inwardly. “That’s the first thing you’ve said that’s true!”)
Philip McGarry’s church was in a part of the city incomparably more run-down than Elmer’s Old Town. It was called “The Arbor”; it had in pioneer days been the vineyard-sheltered village, along the Chaloosa River, from which had grown the modern Zenith. Now it was all dives, brothels, wretched tenements, cheap-jack shops. Yet here McGarry lived, a bachelor, seemingly well content, counseling pick-pockets and scrubwomen, and giving on Friday evenings a series of lectures packed by eager Jewish girl students, radical workmen, old cranks, and wistful rich girls coming in limousines down from the spacious gardens of Royal Ridge.