of healing. At the height of his career in the nineties he disappeared and never was seen again. He left this penciled note to one Alderman Fox of Denver: "Mr. Fox-My mission is ended and the Father calls me. I salute you. Francis Schlatter. Nov. 13." CHAPTER XX CORYBANTIC CHRISTIANITY Brighten the corner where you are! Some one far from harbor you may guide across the bar, W Words by INA DULEY OGDON. INONA LAKE is the symbol of a business that has arrived. It is the practical and spiritual headquarters of the full-fledged twentiethcentury evangel preacher and Gospel singer, tabernacle builder, advance agent, publicity and advertising expert, and committee organizer. Barnstormers no longer count and come-outers cannot make a scratch on the graphs charting seasonal and regional progress of the wholesaling of salvation. Nothing is left to chance. Routing and booking and returns are absolutely assured. For the American revival of religion has eliminated waste, competition and barren ground and has stabilized the big industry of redemption. It is the year 1916. The better minds are in council. William Jennings Bryan has sanctified the circumambient Indiana atmosphere with an address on "Faith." Now the Rev. William Ashley Sunday, D.D., purveyor extraordinary to the great national diversion of taking delight in damnation, is expounding for the benefit of the mantled cr brethren. His text is Second Chronicles 18: 13-"As the Lord liveth, even what my God saith, that will I speak." "These are the words of a Man of God who didn't put on his glasses and look into the pews to see who occupied them before he announced his text," says this Ajax of the tabernacles. "This fellow's name was Micaiah." Micaiah, be it remembered, was a prophet of bad news that had a habit of coming true. King Ahab of Israel had him locked up but that did not prevent Ahab's foretold defeat in battle and the dogs from licking his blood. Dr. Sunday continues to expatiate on Micaiah: "His sermons were not written on the head of his barrel of flour. His preaching did not hinge on what he had to eat. The condition of his cellar had nothing to do with his liberty in the pulpit. He was not afraid of getting canned for taking dead aim at some influential sinner on the front seat. "He was a six-cylinder preacher. A patch on his coat didn't make him think he was not called to preach. His only anxiety was to please his God. He didn't care a hang about the kind of success that can be set down in numbers. "Micaiah was a preacher who put it across. The traffic cops lifted their hats to him and stopped everything while he made his lordly way across the streets." That was Micaiah. This is Dr. Sunday: "People don't get mad because I preach the truth. But I make them so blamed uncomfortable that they never feel the same afterwards when they are doing wrong. "The Arrow of God [first used by Edwards, Rev. J., 1735] is on the wind. It will find you where you hide behind rich tapestries, whether you clothe yourself in sealskin and silks, ride in limousines or hoof it, in bank or drawing room, even in a coal-mine or the cabin of a locomotive." Micaiah and William, there they are at Winona together. The one has been jovially jigged a few thousand years from the Book to a latter-day pulpit. The other is in the midst of the most lucrative year any evangelist ever had. It was a war-profit year for the country, neutrally selling shoes and shells, beans and bayonets for the millions who were getting shot at for the sake of Christian civilization. It was on the eve of the Liberty Loan "drives" to pay for a glorious adventure in pure altruism. Micaiah never had such pickings. There were no "patches" in Billy Sunday's fur coat. He did not have to worry about the contents of flour barrel or cellar. Traffic "cops" did make way for his "limousine." But, unlike his beau-ideal of a prophet, he had a concern for numbers which his pot-shots at "influential sinners" only increased. Every campaign-Omaha, Syracuse, Trenton, Boston, New York-culminated in the statistics of success. Instead of any danger of his being "canned," welcoming parades hailed him wherever he went and farewell collections would put a strain on adding machines. At the end of the route he probably could have matched remunerations with many a captain of industry and come out ahead. Always he has started with a bang. His first day in Omaha brought out twenty-eight thousand people who chipped in $3,024.51; in Syracuse thirty-five thousand poured $2,217.04 into the chiming pans; in Trenton thirty-one thousand scraped together $1,110.45. One haul of the Gospel net at Syracuse drew in two thousand six hundred converts. The Trenton record is typical: total attendance in the seven weeks, eight hundred twenty thousand five hundred; accounted converts, sixteen thousand seven hundred fortyfive; collection for current expenses, $29,661.14, for charity, $3,598.73, and for William A. Sunday himself—$32,358.03. This foots up to $65,617.90. Thus the cost to the community of each "trail-hitter," whether he tracked any sawdust on to a church aisle carpet or not, was $3.91. Boston's church members paid an average of sixteen cents apiece for the Awakening of 1909. Chapman, Alexander and sixty other Class A-1 preachers and singers as well as all sundries stayed within $20,000. And at least ten thousand were added to the churches. In seven years the rate had jumped from $2 for certainties to $3.91 for uncertainties. The business of redemption had reached the peak of expansion and expensiveness and had become shoddy. Still Dr. Sunday insists that he has always split his personal gratuity seventy-thirty or fifty-fifty with his staff of ten or a dozen-including Homer ("Rody") Rodeheaver, trombonist, chorister and "Mister Bones" of the troupe-and, though he steadfastly refuses to give an accounting or to answer strictures on the subject of how well it pays to serve the Lord, his intimate friends declare that he tithes his income and have no doubt of his generosity and sense of stewardship. What he did with $44,000 rendered unto him in Pittsburgh is between him and his God. Some day while he is balancing up with his old crony, Saint Peter, a probate court will disclose to a curious world what profiteth a man to jazz up Jesus, syncopate salvation and capitalize corybantic religion for the multitude. So long as he is still on earth and able to shout "SAFE!" as he slides to the home-plate of acrobatic grace, he will be defiant. He is not a bit sensitive about his gate receipts. |