Roberts’ voice softened. He was pleading. He was not talking, he said, to weak men who needed coddling into the Kingdom, but to strong men, to rejoicing men, to men brave in armor. There was another sort of race more exhilarating than any game, and it led not merely to a score on a big board but to the making of a new world—it led not to newspaper paragraphs but to glory eternal. Dangerous—calling for strong men! Ecstatic—brimming with thrills! The team captained by Christ! No timid Jesus did he preach, but the adventurer who had joyed to associate with common men, with reckless fishermen, with captains and rulers, who had dared to face the soldiers in the garden, who had dared the myrmidons of Rome and death itself! Come! Who was gallant? Who had nerve? Who longed to live abundantly? Let them come!
They must confess their sins, they must repent, they must know their own weakness save as they were reborn in Christ. But they must confess not in heaven-pilfering weakness, but in training for the battle under the wind-torn banners of the Mighty Captain. Who would come? Who would come? Who was for vision and the great adventure?
He was among them, Judson Roberts, with his arms held out, his voice a bugle. Young men sobbed and knelt; a woman shrieked; people were elbowing the standers in the aisles and pushing forward to kneel in agonized happiness, and suddenly they were setting relentlessly on a bewildered Elmer Gantry, who had been betrayed into forgetting himself, into longing to be one with Judson Roberts.
His mother was wringing his hand, begging, “Oh, won’t you come? Won’t you make your old mother happy? Let yourself know the joy of surrender to Jesus!” She was weeping, old eyes puckered, and in her weeping was his every recollection of winter dawns when she had let him stay in bed and brought porridge to him across the icy floor; winter evenings when he had awakened to find her still stitching; and that confusing intimidating hour, in the abyss of his first memories, when he had seen her shaken beside a coffin that contained a cold monster in the shape of his father.
The basket-ball player was patting his other arm, begging, “Dear old Hell-cat, you’ve never let yourself be happy! You’ve been lonely! Let yourself be happy with us! You know I’m no mollycoddle. Won’t you know the happiness of salvation with us?”
A thread-thin old man, very dignified, a man with secret eyes that had known battles and mountain-valleys, was holding out his hands to Elmer, imploring with a humility utterly disconcerting, “Oh, come, come with us—don’t stand there making Jesus beg and beg—don’t leave the Christ that died for us standing out in the cold, begging!”
And, somehow, flashing through the crowd, Judson Roberts was with Elmer, honoring him beyond all the multitude, appealing for his friendship—Judson Roberts the gorgeous, beseeching:
“Are you going to hurt me, Elmer? Are you going to let me go away miserable and beaten, old man? Are you going to betray me like Judas, when I’ve offered you my Jesus as the most precious gift I can bring you? Are you going to slap me and defile me and hurt me? Come! Think of the joy of being rid of all those nasty little sins that you’ve felt so ashamed of! Won’t you come kneel with me, won’t you?”
His mother shrieked, “Won’t you, Elmer? With him and me? Won’t you make us happy? Won’t you be big enough to not be afraid? See how we’re all longing for you, praying for you!”
“Yes!” from around him, from strangers; and “Help me to follow you, Brother—I’ll go if you will!” Voices woven, thick, dove-white and terrifying black of mourning and lightning-colored, flung around him, binding him— His mother’s pleading, Judson Roberts’ tribute—