John Wesley, Jr. Part 11

Joe invited the others to the new Carbrook home on the Heights into which his people had lately moved. The Heights was a new thing to J.W.--a rather exclusive residential quarter which had been laid out park-wise in the last four or five years; with houses in the midst of wide lawns, a Heights club house and tennis courts and an exquisite little Gothic church.

"When our folks first talked about moving out here I thought it was all right; and I do yet, in some ways," explained Joe. "But the Heights is getting a little too good for me; I'm not as keen about being exclusive as I used to be. I've thought lately that exclusiveness may be just as bad for people inside the gates, as for the people outside. But here we are, as the Atlantic City whale said when the ebb tide stranded it in front of the Board Walk. What are we up to, us three?"

"We're up to finding out about the town churches," said J.W. "Maybe they can help the town more than they do, but we don't know how, and so far we haven't found anybody else who knows how."

And Marcia said: "At least we know some things. We have the figures.

About one Delafield citizen in seven goes to church or Sunday school on Sunday. Church members.h.i.+p is one in ten. And as many people go to the movies and the Columbia vaudeville and the dance halls and poolrooms on Sat.u.r.day as go to church on Sunday, to say nothing of the crowds that go on the other five days."

Joe Carbrook whistled. "That's a tough nut to crack, gentle people," he said, "because you've simply got to think of those other five days. The chances are that four times as many people in Delafield go to other public places as go to church and Sunday school."

"What can the churches do?" asked J.W. "You can't make people go to church."

"No," a.s.sented Marcia, "and if you could, it would be foolish. We want to make people like the churches, not hate them. One thing I believe our churches can do is to put their public services more into methods and forms that don't have to be taken for granted or just mentally dodged.

Half the time people don't know what a religious service really stands for."

"Meaning by that----?" Joe queried, as much to hear Marcia talk as for the sake of what she might say.

"Well, they have seen and heard it since they were children. When they were little they didn't understand it, and now it is so familiar that they forget they don't understand it," Marcia responded, not wholly oblivious of Joe's strategy, but too much in earnest to care. "I've heard of a successful preacher in the East who seems to be making them understand. He says he tries to put into each service four things--light, music, motion; that is, change--and a touch of the dramatic. Why not? I think it could be done without destroying the solemnity of the wors.h.i.+p. They did it in the Temple at Jerusalem, and they do it in Saint Peter's at Rome and in Westminster Abbey and Saint John's Cathedral in New York. Why shouldn't we do it here in our little churches?"

"Make a note of it, J.W.," ordered Joe. "It's worth suggesting to some of the preachers."

J.W. made his note, rather absently, and offered a conclusion of his own:

"The church must take note of the town's sore spots too. I've found out that crowding people in tenements and shacks means disease and immorality. Isn't that the church's affair? Angus MacPherson has taught me that when the jobs are gone little crimes come, followed by bigger ones; and sickness comes too, with the death rate going up. Babies are born to unmarried mothers, and babies, with names or without, die off a lot faster in the river shacks and the east side tenements than they do up this way. Maybe the church couldn't help all this even if it knew; but I'm for asking it to know."

"I'll vote for that," Joe a.s.serted, "if you'll vote for my proposition, which is this: our churches must quit trying just to be prosperous; they must quit competing for business like rival barkers at a street fair; they must begin to find out that their only reason for existence is the service they can give to those who need it most; they've got to believe in each other and work with each other and with all the other town forces that are trying to make a better Delafield."

"That's right," said J.W. "I was talking to Mr. Drury this morning, and I asked him what he would think of our starting a suggestion list. He said it ought to be a fine thing. But he wants us to do it all ourselves. Just the same, we can take our suggestions to him, and then, if he believes in them, he can talk to the other preachers about them, and, of course, about any ideas of his own. Because you know, I'm pretty sure he has been thinking about all this a good deal longer than we have."

It was agreed that the list should be started. Marcia was not willing to keep it to themselves; she wanted to have it talked about in League and Sunday school and prayer meeting, and then, when everybody had been given the chance to add to it, and to improve on it--but not to weaken it--that it be put out for general discussion among all the churches.

"And then," said Joe Carbrook, "we might call it 'The Everyday Doctrines of Delafield,' If we stick to the things every citizen will admit he ought to believe and do, the churches will still have all the chance they have now to preach those things which must be left to the individual conscience."

That was the beginning of a doc.u.ment with which Delafield was to become very familiar in the months which followed; never before had the town been so generally interested in one set of ideas, and to this day you can always start a conversation there by mentioning the "Everyday Doctrines of Delafield," The Methodist preacher gave them their final form, but he took no credit for the substance of them, though, secretly, he was vastly proud that the young people, and especially J.W., should have so thoroughly followed up his first suggestion of a civic creed.

THE EVERYDAY DOCTRINES OF DELAFIELD

1. Every part of Delafield is as much Delafield as any other part We are citizens of a commonwealth, and Delafield should be in fact as well as name a democratic community.

2. Whenever two Delafield citizens can better do something for the town than one could do it, they should get together.

And the same holds good for twenty citizens, or a hundred, or a thousand. One of the town's mottoes should be, "Delafield Is Not Divided."

3. Everything will help Delafield if it means better people, in better homes, with better chances at giving their children the right bringing-up, but anything which merely means more people, or more money, or more business is likely to cost more than it comes to. We will boost for Delafield therefore, but we will first be careful.

4. Every part of Delafield is ent.i.tled to clean streets and plenty of air, water, and sunlight. It is perhaps possible to be a Christian amid ugliness and filth, but it is not easy, and it is not necessary.

5. Every family in Delafield has the right to a place that can be made into a home, at a cost that will permit of family self-respect, proper privacy, and the ordinary decencies of civilized living.

Every case of poverty in Delafield should be considered as a reflection on the town, as being preventable and curable by remedies which any town that is careful of its good name can apply.

6. Delafield believes that beauty pays better than ugliness.

Therefore she is for trees and flowers, green lawns, and clean streets, paint where it properly belongs, and everybody setting a good example by caring for his own premises and so inciting his neighbor to outdo him.

7. The only industries Delafield needs are those which can provide for their operation without forcing workers to be idle so much of the time as to reduce apparent income, and so to cause poverty, sickness, and temptation to wrongdoing. The standard of income ought to be for the year, and not by the day; in the interest of homes rather than in the interest of lodging houses and lunch rooms.

8. Delafield can support, or should find ways to support, the workers needed in her stores, shops, and factories, at fair pay, without making use of children, who should continue in school, and without reckoning on the desperation of those made poor by their dependence on a job.

9. Amus.e.m.e.nts in Delafield can be and ought to be clean, self-respecting, and available for everybody. This calls for playgrounds and weekday playtime, as well as plenty of recreational opportunities provided by the churches, without money-making features.

10. The forms of amus.e.m.e.nt provided for pay can be and should be influenced by public opinion, positively expressed, rather than by public indifference. Any picture house would rather be praised for bringing a good picture to town than condemned for showing a bad one. Picture people enjoy praise as much as preachers do.

11. Delafield's many organizations should tell the whole town what they are trying to do, so that unnecessary duplication of plan and purpose may first be discovered and then done away with.

12. Whenever a Delafield church, or club, or society, proposes to engage in a work that is to benefit the town, the plan ought to be made known, and in due time the results should be published as widely as was the plan. This will help us to learn by our Delafield failures as well as by our Delafield successes.

13. The churches of Delafield are Delafield property, as the schools are, though paid for in a different way. Neither schools nor churches exist for their own sakes, but for Delafield, and then some.

14. Every church in Delafield should have a definite parish, and every well-defined section or group should have a church.

The churched should lead in providing for the unchurched, and the overchurched might spare out of their abundance of workers and equipment some of the resources that are needed.

15. The first concern of all the churches should be to reach the unchurched and to make church friends of the church-haters.

This goes for all the churches; it is more important to get the sense of G.o.d and principles of Jesus into the thought of the whole town than to set Protestant and Roman Catholic in mutually suspicious and hateful opposition; devout Jew and sincere Christian must realize that righteousness in Delafield cannot be attended to by either without the other.

16. The churches of Delafield believe that all matters of social concern--work, wages, housing, health, amus.e.m.e.nt, and morals--are part of every church's business. Therefore they will not cease to urge their members always to deal with these matters as Christian citizens, not merely as Christians.

17. Every child and young person in Delafield ought to be in the day school on weekdays, and in Sunday school on Sunday.

Delafield discourages needless absence from one as much as from the other.

18. Delafield wants the best possible teachers teaching in all her schools. She insists on trained teachers on week days, and needs them on Sundays. Therefore she believes that teacher-training is part of every church's duty to Delafield.

"There's one thing about all this that bothers me," said J.W. when they had finished the final draft of the Every Day Doctrines, "not that it's the only one; but some of these Doctrines stand small chance of being put into practice until the church people are willing to spend more money on such work. It can't be done on the present income of the churches, or by the usual money-raising methods."

"That's a fact," Joe Carbrook agreed. "I'd already made up my mind that the Carbrooks would have to dig a little deeper, and so must everybody else who cares."

"Yes, but how to get everybody else to care; that's the trouble," J.W.

persisted. "Dad's one of the stewards, you know, and they find it no easy job to collect even what the church needs now. They have a deficit to worry with every year, almost."

Marcia Dayne was the only other member of the "Let's Know Delafield"

group who happened to be present at this last meeting. She had been waiting for a chance to speak. "I'm surprised at you two," she said.

"Don't you know the only really workable financial way out?"

"Well, not exactly," J.W. admitted. "I suppose if we could only get people to care more, they would give more. It's a matter of letting them know the need and all that, I guess. For instance--"

Marcia was not ready for his "for instances." "John Wesley, Jr.," she interrupted with mock severity, "as a thinker you have shone at times with a good deal more brilliance than that. If you had said it just the other way 'round you would have been nearer right. People _will_ give if they care, of course, but it is even more certain that they will care if they give. The thing we need is to show them how to give."

Joe Carbrook broke into an incredulous laugh. "In other words, my fair Marcia, you want Christians to give before they care what it is they are giving to, or even know about it. Don't you think our church will be a long time financing the Every Day Doctrines on that system?"

Joe and Marcia never hesitated to take opposite sides in a discussion, and always with good-humored frankness. So Marcia came back promptly: "I know you think it unreasonable," she said, "but there's a condition you overlook. We became Christians long before any of us thought about studying Delafield's needs. And if we and all the rest of the Christians of the town had accepted our financial relation to the Kingdom and had acted on it from the start, there would always be money enough and to spare."