“Because the Baptists and the Methodists have all the numbskulls—except those that belong to the Catholic Church and the henhouse sects—and so even you, Horace, can get away with being a prophet. There are some intelligent people in the Episcopal and Congregational Churches, and a few of the Campbellite flocks, and they check up on you. Of course all Presbyterians are half-wits, too, but they have a standard doctrine, and they can trap you into a heresy trial. But in the Baptist and Methodist Churches, man! There’s the berth for philosophers like me and hoot-owls like you, Eddie! All you have to do with Baptists and Methodists, as Father Carp suggests—”
“If you agree with me about anything, I withdraw it,” said Horace.
“All you have to do,” said Zenz, “is to get some sound and perfectly meaningless doctrine and keep repeating it. You won’t bore the laymen—in fact the only thing they resent is something that is new, so they have to work their brains. Oh, no, Father Carp—the Episcopal pulpit for actors that aren’t good enough to get on the stage, but the good old Baptist fold for realists!”
“You make me tired, Harry!” complained Eddie. “You just want to show off, that’s all. You’re a lot better Baptist and a lot better Christian than you let on to be, and I can prove it. Folks wouldn’t go on listening to your sermons unless they carried conviction. No, sir! You can fool folks once or twice with a lot of swell-sounding words but in the long run it’s sincerity they look for. And one thing that makes me know you’re on the right side is that you don’t practise open communion. Golly, I feel that everything we Baptists stand for is threatened by those darn’ so-called liberals that are beginning to practise open communion.”
“Rats!” grumbled Harry. “Of all the fool Baptist egotisms, close communion is the worst! Nobody but people we consider saved to be allowed to take communion with us! Nobody can meet God unless we introduce ’em! Self-appointed guardians of the blood and body of Jesus Christ! Whew!”
“Absolutely,” from Horace Carp. “And there is absolutely no Scriptural basis for close communion.”
“There certainly is!” shrieked Eddie. “Frank, where’s your Bible?”
“Gee, I left it in O. T. E. Where’s yours, Don?”
“Well, I’ll be switched! I had the darn’ thing here just this evening,” lamented Don Pickens, after a search.
“Oh, I remember. I was killing a cockroach with it. It’s on top of your wardrobe,” said Elmer.