“I was secretary to the dean of the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.”
40 Acres and No Mule
OLD MR. FORBES stood just inside the great door and beamed happily on the members of the congregation as they entered the church. He had stood exactly there on practically every Sunday for fifty years, and he always beamed. Today was special, though, and the beam, if possible, was a little beamier than usual. He was delighted that it was such a fine day and that so many of the congregation had come to hear the new preacher’s first sermon.
The people of New Hope were fond of saying that old Mr. Forbes looked just like Winston Churchill, and he was accustomed to hearing them say it. His mirror told him that he did possess the same cherubic countenance and portly figure, but the Churchillian likeness ended there, for instead of the bulldog jut of the jaw, Mr. Forbes’s face wore simply the benign look of eternal good will.
Fervently Mr. Forbes hoped that Mr. Churchill did not have, either, his own trouble with his upper plate. Long familiarity with its propensity for dropping down had made automatic his habit of speaking through two fingers pressed gently against his upper lip, and, as an actor would have said, throwing his lines away. His voice always issued downwind, so to speak, for once (horrible memory) his plate had dropped when he was making a speech at a Rotary dinner. It had been so unnerving, as well as frightening, for he had almost swallowed the teeth whole, that Mr. Forbes had never tried to make a speech again, and to guard against any further such embarrassment he had developed the aforementioned habit.
It served him very well, though it led to some misunderstandings occasionally, such as the time old Mrs. Martin had called to ask about her bank balance and had understood him to say nine hundred dollars, when he had actually said five hundred, and feeling wealthy she had gone on a spree of riotous spending. Mr. Forbes had felt obliged to cover her widestrewn checks.
As executive vice-president of the Bank of New Hope, and after fifty years of service, Mr. Forbes’s salary was exactly two hundred dollars a month, and the shock of having to make good four hundred dollars’ worth of Sallie Martin’s bad checks had almost, but not quite, driven him to trying Grippo, the adhesive powder so widely advertised for slipping dentures.
Of course, he had eventually got the four hundred dollars back, along with a lecture from Sallie about stupid old men with ill-fitting teeth, but he did not like to recall the feeling of loss and insecurity at withdrawing such an amount from his savings. Mr. Forbes put money in the bank. He rarely drew it out.
Because he had never married, the bank and his church were the anchors of Mr. Forbes’s life. The congregation referred to him as “a pillar of the church,” and, in truth, his Sabbath presence was as certain and as predictable as the stone structure itself. For thirty years he had been treasurer of the church, it being the unanimous opinion of the congregation that no one was more eminently fitted to handle their funds than the vice-president of the bank. Mr. Forbes had given the finances of the church the same careful and scrupulous attention he gave to the affairs of the bank, reporting conscientiously each month to the board.
In addition to being treasurer, he had willingly and happily served in many other capacities. He was always, for instance, chairman of the Every-Member Canvass to raise the annual budget. He had labored long and diligently on the Committee to Shingle the Parsonage Roof, and saved the congregation nearly one hundred dollars thereby. The women of the church had never ceased to be grateful to him when he had rescued them from the mire of their entanglement over the church carpeting, they having failed to multiply the length by the breadth correctly.
Mr. Forbes was also an inveterate delegate to all conventions and conferences, along with the minister. Once, trailing clouds of glory, he had even been sent to a national conference, and although it had been twenty years ago he still liked to tell of it. “When I attended the national conference . . . ,” he often prefaced quite casual observations.
But where Mr. Forbes really shone was on the Committee to Call a New Minister. It would never have occurred to the church to leave him off that committee, for one of the stars in Mr. Forbes’s crown was his personal acquaintance with the president of the seminary. Mr. Forbes had gone to college with President Hughes and, in private at least, was privileged to call him John.
Only six times in fifty years had it been Mr. Forbes’s pleasure to advise and counsel with a Committee to Call a New Minister, for the New Hope church was in the habit of keeping its ministers a long time. But each time the procedure had been the same. “Why don’t you get in touch with President Hughes, Mr. Forbes?”
And with becoming modesty Mr. Forbes had always accepted the commission, reporting to the committee afterward, “President Hughes says this young man is one of the best students the seminary has ever had. He says we could not go wrong to call him.”
That usually ended the matter, for it was assumed that between President Hughes and Mr. Forbes the New Hope church could call only the best young men. Of course, anyone graduating from seminary was a good man, and it was simply one of those fortunate dispensations of Providence that through Mr. Forbes’s friendships with President Hughes they were always able to get the best of the good men.
So it had happened that once again, after fifteen years of a quiet and satisfying ministry, the pulpit being empty, Mr. Forbes had approached President Hughes. A young man had been found. Alfred Snowden his name was, and President Hughes had spoken of him affectionately as Alf. “He’s a real live wire,” he had told Mr. Forbes. “He’ll do you a good piece of work.”
It was typical of the New Hope church that they never insisted on hearing a ministerial candidate. Mr. Forbes took care of all that, and when Mr. Forbes said a young man would make them a fine minister, it was good enough for them. So no one had yet heard young Mr. Snowden preach. This was his maiden sermon before them, and proudly and happily Mr. Forbes greeted them as they came in. Once again he had been able to serve his people well.
The organ prelude began quietly. Mr. Forbes closed the great door and slipped into his place in the back pew. He liked to sit there because he could hear late-comers and meet them, with admonishment for silence if the pastoral prayer had begun or if the congregation was in the middle of a hymn, and keep them waiting until the appropriate time for seating.
The organ sounded the processional and the choir solemnly filed in. Young Mr. Snowden entered from his study. Mr. Forbes blinked. The young man did not wear the academic robe as he was entitled to. Instead he was dressed, quite decently, of course, and unobtrusively, in a dark business suit. But New Hope ministers always wore the Geneva gown. It had been freshly cleaned and pressed and hung handily on the hook back of the door. Mr. Forbes made a mental note to remind the young man.
With decorum the new minister took his place in the huge carved chair at the back of the pulpit and bowed his head in silent prayer. Then he led the congregation in the familiar call to worship, the recitation of the Creed and the Gloria. Mr. Forbes nodded approvingly. The young man made a fine appearance. He was tall, quite handsome with his mop of black hair and his voice was splendidly resonant.
It was time, now, for the first hymn. On the order of service it was listed as “A Mighty Fortress is Our God,” and the riffle of pages accompanied the congregational search for the correct one. But suddenly young Mr. Snowden waved aside the order of service, smiled winsomely down on his people and said, “I think we need a more stirring hymn this morning.” He turned to the organist and asked, so all could hear, “Do you know ‘There’s Power in the Blood’?”
She nodded, momentarily bereft of speech, and uncertainly shifted the stops in front of her and played the opening bars. Mr. Snowden smiled happily. “This hymn isn’t in the hymnal, but I’m sure you all know it. Shall we stand? And let’s all sing out joyously. Let’s put some power in it! Let’s make the rafters ring!”
The rafters of the New Hope church were not used to ringing and they failed to respond to the weak efforts of the congregation. In fact, Mr. Snowden seemed the only one to know the words of the song and his rich baritone had almost to carry it alone.
At its end he motioned for the people to be seated. “I’m sure,” he said, “that we all revere the good old hymns of the Presbyterian church, but some of them are about as full of life as a funeral dirge. We need more joy in our music, more life, more surge and power. We shall sing at least one of the more lively songs each Sunday from now on.”
Heads turned in the direction of Mr. Forbes. He met their concentrated gaze bravely, but privately he was terribly dismayed. How could this young man have attended seminary three long years without learning the basic facts of hymnology — that good music and good poetry were both essential? What had John Hughes sent them in Alf Snowden?
The sermon that followed was all right, as far as it went. The young man properly read the entire chapter of Scripture from which his text was taken, adhering to the tradition of not lifting a few verses out of context. But actually it amounted, when he began to talk, to little more than a prospectus of what Mr. Snowden proposed to do. “We must reach the youth of our church,” he insisted, “and Mrs. Snowden and I have outlined a program of vital activities for our young people. Some of us,” he smiled benignly, his young, cheerful face belying his own inclusion, “are getting older, and the mantle of services must fall on younger shoulders. We want, now, to invite all the young people of the church to a get-together at our home this evening. There will be no night service, therefore . . . and it is my hope that the congregation will seriously consider doing away with it altogether so that we may stress the evening activities with the young people.”
Once again heads turned toward Mr. Forbes. It was true that the night service attracted only a handful of elderly people, all of whom had been at the morning service also, but to abandon it altogether was little short of heretical. Mr. Forbes felt a sinking in the pit of his stomach. This live wire of President Hughes’s might prove to be a little too live, he thought. New Hope was, after all, a very small town.
No one knew quite what to say when the service ended. Loyally, Mr. Forbes took his place beside the young minister to introduce him to the families of the church, and as the young people streamed by, mostly they contented themselves with a bewildered look at Mr. Forbes and a thin smile and word of welcome to Mr. Snowden. Mr. Forbes didn’t blame them. Never had President Hughes sent them so revolutionary a character as this young man. He must have a word with him.
When the last of the people had left he turned to the young man. “Mr. Snowden, you’re new here and there may be a few things you’d like to know about our church. This church is over one hundred years old. I’ve been a member here since boyhood . . .”
The preacher waved his remarks aside. “Yes, I know, Mr. Forbes. I know this is an old church, and it’s almost a dead church. I’m going to put some life into it.”
Mr. Forbes, in turn, ignored the minister’s remarks. “Now, about the robe, Mr. Snowden . . .”
“I don’t believe in wearing the robe, Mr. Forbes. I am a man, a very common, ordinary man, and I do not wish to be lifted up above the congregation.” Mr. Snowden said this very earnestly.
“But the minister should be lifted . . .”
“No, sir . . . the minister should be down where his people are!”
Mr. Forbes laid two tremulous fingers against his lip. “And no night service, Mr. Snowden!”
“I explained how I felt about that in my sermon,” the young man said. “I want to stress the young peoples’ program.”
“But we’ve always . . .”
“That’s just the trouble with old churches,” the young man went on. “They’ve always done things in the same old way. What this church needs is some new blood. It needs a charge of dynamite, to tell the truth.”
Mr. Forbes did not recall ever having been so disturbed, but he drew himself up to his full height. “Just be careful, sir,” he warned, “that you don’t blow it sky-high with too big a charge.”
“Oh, never fear. I’ll be careful, all right. And call me Alf. I’m just a hail-fellow-well-met sort of guy, you know.”
Never in his life had Mr. Forbes called his minister by his first name. The dignity of the ministry prohibited it. It would, in his opinion, be like saying “Old Buddy” to God. “I will not call you Alf, Mr. Snowden,” he said with conviction. “You may be hail-fellow-well-met all you please, but you are the servant of God in our midst and I, for one, intend to remember it.”
He went home, trembling for the future.
But if Mr. Forbes did not call the new preacher Alf, everyone else in town did. In no time at all he could walk around the square and be hailed on all sides with, “Hi ya, Alf . . . Hey, Alf, when are you and the missus coming over for supper?”
The townspeople liked him, there was no mistake about it. He went around in sneakers and an old sweat shirt on weekdays, played first base on the softball team with professional efficiency and wrangled with the umpire as mercilessly as any other member of the team. He was in great demand as a speaker at all the community affairs, and he held an audience helpless with laughter with his fund of funny stories. He was in the middle of every civic enterprise, tireless in organizing benefits, heading up the Red Cross drive, sparking the fund for the new swimming pool, and dozens of times a day Mr. Forbes listened to the delighted comments of his friends and neighbors. “Say, that new preacher you’ve got is a humdinger. He’s all right. He’s really waking this little old town up!”
In the church he was rousing a few things, too. After the initial shock had worn off most of the congregation rallied around him, and the young people were crazy about him. Never had the church had so vital a youth program. On all sides Mr. Forbes heard them talking. “Alf says . . .” “Preacher wants . . .” “The parson told us . . .” and so forth. There were fish frys, wiener roasts or hay rides almost every week and Sunday night had been duly given over to their interests. They had a basketball team, a bowling team, and Alf was even teaching them to square dance.
Little by little Mr. Forbes began to feel as if he were a stranger in a strange world. The roof of the church did not fall in, but frequently he wondered why it didn’t. He still, however, had his post as treasurer. He could still watch over the temporal affairs of his straying people.
Even that came to an end, however. One night at a board meeting, gently but firmly Mr. Snowden recommended his replacement by a younger man. He put it well, but nothing could ameliorate the dismissal. “Mr. Forbes has served the church long and faithfully. It is time he had a rest. It is time younger shoulders took up the mantle of service.”
In the silence that followed, broken only by the roar and pounding in his own ears, Mr. Forbes thought how fond Mr. Snowden was of that phrase — the mantle of service on young shoulders. In Mr. Forbes’s opinion, young shoulders were often too impatient to carry such a mantle, and too inexperienced and unwise. Older shoulders, accustomed to the load and devoted to it, usually found it easier to carry. And a church wasn’t something to play around with.
The men of the board looked uneasily at him. With dignity he spoke. “Mr. Snowden is probably right. I have served in this post too long, perhaps. I shall be glad to step aside.”
It was not true, of course. He could never be glad to step aside, and he would be lost without this compelling concern. But there wasn’t much else he could say, and some element of fairness in him made him say, even to himself, “Maybe I am too old. Maybe we older ones are too old. Maybe we do need to step down and step aside. Maybe, even in religion, we need to move with the times.”
Nothing, however, could have kept Mr. Forbes from being in his pew on Sunday mornings. Preachers might come and go, the order of service might be altered, but the New Hope church went on forever, and Mr. Forbes went on with it. After his resignation as treasurer, however, he no longer arrived early and stood within the great door to greet the congregation. He somehow hadn’t the heart any longer. But he was always in his pew.
He suffered through the rousing, lively opening hymns, much better sung now that Mr. Snowden bought new hymnals. He took little comfort from the social gospel that the young minister so zealously preached, but there was at least the reading of the Scripture and the age-old affirmation of the Apostles’ Creed. When the young preacher decided to omit the recitation of the Creed from the service, Mr. Forbes even tried to admit that perhaps it, too, in its archaic language, was outmoded. But he always said it to himself at the appropriate place. And valiantly he defended the minister against any small criticism that riffled the surface, such as that over the square dancing in the church basement. Mr. Snowden was his minister. No one should criticize him in his presence. “There’s nothing wrong with square dancing,” he maintained stoutly, “in the church basement or anywhere else. It’s just a kind of singing game, a sort of play party game.”
It was perhaps six months after Mr. Snowden had been called that it became generally known that his wife was expecting a baby. The jokes Mr. Forbes heard addressed to the young preacher after that sometimes made his ears burn, but he told himself not to be an old fogy. Young people nowadays talked about anything, freely and openly. But he remembered with heartache how delicately their former pastor had handled the birth of each of his six children. No one had dared to call coarse and vulgar things to Mr. Johnson. Privately, Mr. Forbes could not help feeling that there were some things too personal for open discussion.
It was Mr. Forbes’s habit to eat his lunch in the Best-Food-in-Town Grill. Strangers were wont to say that if that was the best food in town they’d hate to eat the worst, but it did very well for Mr. Forbes. He was sitting on his usual stool one day, the third one from the front, and the proprietor had just brought his plate lunch, the Blue Plate Special — roast pork and gravy, mashed potatoes, peas and carrots and cole slaw. With a good appetite Mr. Forbes attacked it. The proprietor leaned an elbow on the counter. “Say, Mr. Forbes, what about this young preacher of yours saying the miracles in the Bible are just a lot of hogwash?”
Mr. Forbes laid down his fork and took a sip of water. “I’m sure he never said anything of the kind, Pete. You know how these things get exaggerated.” But his stomach was fluttering and his appetite was gone. It sounded just like Mr. Snowden.
“He sure did . . . right here at this counter . . . just yesterday. I heard him myself, so it’s not exaggerated. Said if Jesus really healed anybody it was because he knew something about medicine and disease. Said Jesus wasn’t really resurrected from the dead, either. Not in his body. Said it wasn’t possible. Said nobody believed in such things anymore because they just weren’t possible.”
Mr. Forbes slid off the stool and drew himself up. “I believe in them, Pete, and I have not yet joined the ranks of nobody!”
He stalked out of the restaurant. Anger raced through him. The preacher had gone too far. He remembered, too late now, that they had not examined Mr. Snowden on his orthodoxy. It had not seemed necessary. It could be assumed that any young man, examined by seminary and admitted as a candidate for the ministry, further schooled for three years, would be sound theologically. But somewhere along the line something had gone wrong with this young man. Mr. Forbes intended to set it right.
Thirty minutes later, in Mr. Snowden’s living room, Mr. Forbes heard the young man repeat his heresy. Once again he was gentle. “Mr. Forbes, belief in the miracles is not necessary to the faith. Actually, they tend to weaken the faith of modern young people. They know such things could not happen. They go against all the laws of nature. It’s like insisting the world is square when it has been proven round. Religion must keep pace with the times. We must discard those old ideas. The spirit of Christ, not the Christ of the miracles, must be our message today.”
Mr. Forbes took his hat and prepared to leave. “The miracles of Christ were his spirit, Mr. Snowden, and Christ crucified and risen is still his most divine message.”
Mr. Snowden patted his arm. “Now, Mr. Forbes, perhaps we don’t see eye to eye on the details of this, but I think we both mean the same thing.”
Mr. Forbes shook his head. “No, sir, we don’t. Mr. Snowden, I’ve sung your rousing songs and learned to like some of them right well. I miss the recitation of the Creed, but I can always say it to myself. I wish you would wear the robe, but I can see that it is not necessary, and no one in the church has been happier than I over your work with the young people. But don’t try to take the miracles out of the Gospels, Mr. Snowden. That’s not keeping pace with the times. That’s taking the divine heart out of your message and your faith, and when the heart is gone, there’s nothing left.”
Mr. Snowden smiled. “Well, keep your miracles, too, Mr. Forbes. As for me, I can do without them.”
Mr. Forbes left, needing four fingers to keep his plate in place. He pondered what to do. He could, of course, and perhaps should, take the problem to the church authorities, for it was, after all, a matter of heresy. But he shrank from doing so. In the first place, the New Hope church had never wrangled with a minister, and he hated to see it get involved. In the second place, and he confessed it wryly, he hated to admit he had erred in recommending the man. But neither of these was as important as his sudden reluctance to see the young preacher hurt. His life’s work would be ended were he to be brought to trial before a church court. Remembering the love the townspeople felt for the young minister, the devotion of all the young people, the tireless zeal with which Mr. Snowden labored in good works, Mr. Forbes did not see how he could be the instrument to deal him such a death blow. Lord, he prayed finally, humbly, Thy will be done.
It was two months later that Mrs. Snowden’s time came, and the whole town knew of it, of course. They also knew that she must have a Caesarean section. Gaily, on the appointed day, Mr. Snowden drove her to the hospital, acknowledging all the good wishes called to him with a wave of his hand and a good-natured grimace at the bets on the sex of the child. Then the town settled down to wait for the good news.
Toward the middle of the morning Mr. Forbes was in his office, pondering an application for a loan, when the proprietor of the Best-Food-in-Town Grill stuck his head in the door. “Hey, Mr. Forbes, have you heard? The preacher’s wife is pretty bad off!”
“How bad off?”
“Well, something went wrong and they say she hasn’t got much chance to pull through.”
Mr. Forbes reached for his hat. His place was beside his pastor at such a time as this.
He hurried to the hospital and was directed to a small hall outside the operating room. Mr. Snowden was pacing the floor, his hair rumpled, his old sweat shirt pulled down from his throat as if to give him more air. He grabbed Mr. Forbes’s hand. “Pray, Mr. Forbes! If you’ve ever prayed in your life, Mr. Forbes, pray now!”
“I am praying, Mr. Snowden,” Mr. Forbes said, but he went to his knees automatically and closed his eyes.
He stayed there, unconscious of the passing of time, hearing a sobbing breath from the minister now and then, hearing his footsteps take up the relentless walk back and forth, hearing him plead aloud, “God, I can’t lose her . . . I can’t lose her. Please, God, don’t take her away!”
It may have been an hour, it may have been two, but the doctor finally came. Mr. Snowden started up, thinking he was being called for the last moments with his wife, but the doctor gripped his hand and smiled. “She’s all right, Mr. Snowden. She’s come through and she’s safe now.” He untied the mask, which he had slipped down, and stood fingering it, shaking his head. “It was a miracle . . . literally a miracle.” He looked up at Mr. Snowden. “She died right there on the operating table. Her heart stopped beating and she had no pulse, and there was nothing we could do. We tried everything. We had given her up. Then for no reason we could understand, the heart started beating again, the pulse strengthened and before our very eyes she started living again. Simply a miracle, I tell you.”
“A miracle!”
The doctor nodded. “There is no other way to explain some of the things we doctors see occasionally, Mr. Snowden. Your wife died, and no skill of ours brought her back to life. What happened in that operating room was a resurrection from the dead.” Briskly, then, he spun on his heels. “You may see her in about thirty minutes.” And he walked swiftly off down the hall.
The minister looked at Mr. Forbes. Still awed he said, “I was the one who could do without miracles!”
“None of us can,” Mr. Forbes said gently. He put his hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Our human intelligence is so meager compared to the Great Intelligence that governs us all that it is barely on the fringe of understanding, son. Sometimes we think we have learned everything, but all we can ever know is but a drop in the vast sea of God’s compassionate wisdom.”
“But miracles!”
“They don’t make sense, do they? But do you truly believe that human experience and wisdom are all of experience and wisdom?” Mr. Forbes smiled. “I had a course in logic in college, and I learned there that everything is possible, both scientifically and logically. How much more possible it is in faith. Just because something happens outside the realm of ordinary experience doesn’t mean it can’t happen. Why, life itself doesn’t make sense. We don’t know whence we came, or why. On the face of it, life is impossible, and there is no greater miracle. Why should we wonder at the miracles of healing? With God, nothing is impossible.”
Mr. Snowden took a deep breath. “Mr. Forbes . . .” He hesitated a moment, then plunged on. “I feel as if just now I am being called to the ministry . . . to the real, divine ministry.”
Mr. Forbes put on his hat and pushed tentatively at his upper plate. He smiled through his two fingers. “Perhaps you are. Perhaps you are. God works in wondrous ways, and a minor miracle often accompanies a greater one.” He took the minister’s hand in both of his. “When you see your wife, give her my love.”
Mr. Snowden’s eyes misted. “Yes, sir . . . I will.”
Mr. Forbes hurried out the door, his own eyes misted and his heart singing within him. There was a spring in his heels as he bounced down the long hill to the town square. He knew he would be able to recite the Apostles’ Creed aloud next Sabbath, and he thought Luther’s hymn might open the service. Young Mr. Snowden might even wear a robe, now . . . but these things were as nothing. The exultation in Mr. Forbes’s heart had nothing to do with them. It had to do with the brush of angels’ wings hovering over a human life, and with the holy privilege of witnessing the call of a disciple. He had seen beyond all expectation the Lord’s will being done.
He came to the town square and bent his steps toward the bank. At the Corner Drug he stopped before a crowded display in the window. He contemplated the display a long, long time, then, squaring his shoulders, he marched firmly through the door. “Jim,” he said, “give me a tube of the Grippo, will you?”
Only the Lord could pass a major miracle, but Mr. Forbes could achieve a minor one himself. He was going to stick his teeth in tight and quit that foolishness of talking through two fingers!