Page:Elmer Gantry (1927).djvu/338

 That was Philip McGarry of the Arbor Methodist Church.

Philip McGarry, Ph. D. of the University of Chicago in economics and philosophy—only everybody who liked him, layman or fellow-parson, seemed to call him "Phil"—was at the age of thirty-five known through the whole American Methodist Church as an enfant terrible. The various sectional editions of the Advocate admired him but clucked like doting and alarmed hens over his frequent improprieties. He was accused of every heresy. He never denied them, and the only dogma he was known to give out positively was the leadership of Jesus—as to whose divinity he was indefinite.

He was a stocky, smiling man, fond of boxing, and even at a funeral incapable of breathing, "Ah, sister!"

He criticized everything. He criticized even bishops—for being too fat, for being too ambitious, for gassing about Charity during a knock-down-and-drag-out strike. He criticized, but amiably, the social and institutional and generally philanthropic Dr. Otto Hickenlooper, with his clubs for the study of Karl Marx and his Sunday afternoon reception for lonely traveling-men.

"You're a good lad, Otto," said Dr. McGarry—and openly, in the preachers' Monday meetings: "You mean well, but you're one of these darned philanthropists."

"Nice word to use publicly—'darned'!" meditated the shocked Reverend Elmer Gantry.

"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