Page:Elmer Gantry (1927).djvu/85

 half of them very long and impressive, and the others very short and explosive and minatory—minatory being one of his own best words, constantly useful in terrifying the as yet imaginary horde of sinners gathered before him.

He was no longer embarrassed by using the most intimate language about God; without grinning he could ask a seven-year-old boy, "Don't you want to give up your vices?" and without flinching he could look a tobacco salesman in the eye and demand, "Have you ever knelt before the throne of grace?"

Whatever worldly expressions he might use in sub rosa conversations with the less sanctified theological students, such as Harry Zenz, who was the most confirmed atheist in the school, in public he never so much as said "doggone," and he had on tap, for immediate and skilled use, a number of such phrases as "Brother, I am willing to help you find religion," "My whole life is a testimonial to my faith," "To the inner eye there is no trouble in comprehending the three-fold nature of divinity," "We don't want any long-faced Christians in this church—the fellow that's been washed in the blood of the Lamb is just so happy he goes 'round singing and hollering hallelujah all day long," and "Come on now, all get together, and let's make this the biggest collection this church has ever seen." He could explain foreordination thoroughly, and he used the words "baptizo" and "Athanasian."

He would, perhaps, be less orchestral, less Palladian, when he had been in practise for a year or two after graduation and discovered that the hearts of men are vile, their habits low, and that they are unwilling to hand the control of all those habits over to the parson. But he would recover again, and he was a promise of what he might be in twenty years, as a ten-thousand-dollar seer.

He had grown broader, his glossy hair, longer than at Terwillinger, was brushed back from his heavy white brow, his nails were oftener clean, and his speech was Jovian. It was more sonorous, more measured and pontifical; he could, and did, reveal his interested knowledge of your secret moral diabetes merely by saying, "How are we today, Brother?"

And though he had almost flunked in Greek, his thesis on "Sixteen Ways of Paying a Church Debt" had won the ten-dollar prize in Practical Theology.