Page:Elmer Gantry (1927).djvu/72

 with it, earth is heaven, and we are, I mean to some extent, like God himself! Now that's what I wanted to explain about Love, and here's how it applies. Prob'ly there's a whole lot of you like myself—oh, I been doing it, I'm not going to spare myself—I been going along thinking I was too good, too big, too smart, for the divine love of the Savior! Say! Any of you ever stop and think how much you're handing yourself when you figure you can get along without divine intercession? Say! I suppose prob'ly you're bigger than Moses, bigger than St. Paul, bigger than Pastewer, that great scientist—"

President Quarles was exulting, "It was a genuine conversion! But more than that! Here's a true discovery—my discovery! Elmer is a born preacher, once he lets himself go, and I can make him do it! O Lord, how mysterious are thy ways! Thou hast chosen to train our young brother not so much in prayer as in the mighty struggles of the Olympic field! I—thou, Lord, hast produced a born preacher. Some day he'll be one of our leading prophets!"

The audience clapped when Elmer hammered out his conclusion: "—and you Freshmen will save a lot of the time that I wasted if you see right now that until you know God you know—just nothing!"

They clapped, they made their faces to shine upon him. Eddie Fislinger won him by sighing, "Old fellow, you got me beat at my own game like you have at your game!" There was much hand-shaking. None of it was more ardent than that of his recent enemy, the Latin professor, who breathed:

"Where did you get all those fine ideas and metaphors about the Divine Love, Gantry?"

"Oh," modestly, "I can't hardly call them mine, Professor. I guess I just got them by praying."

Judson Roberts, ex-football-star, state secretary of the Y. M. C. A., was on the train to Concordia, Kansas. In the vestibule he had three puffs of an illegal cigarette and crushed it out.

"No, really, it wasn't so bad for him, that Elmer what's-his-name, to get converted. Suppose there isn't anything to it. Won't hurt him to cut out some of his bad habits for a while, anyway. And how do we know? Maybe the Holy Ghost