This incident illustrates the seared, calloused, surfeited condition of the average mind in the churches.  It is glutted with sham, and atrophied by the reiteration of high-sounding but meaningless, pious phrases.

I managed to persuade them to so amend their by-laws that children baptized into the church became by that act church members.  They did not know that by that amendment they were setting aside two-thirds of their creed, because they didn’t know the creed.

One of my sermons at the Jubilee attracted the attention of Philo S. Bennett, a New York tea merchant, who made his home in New Haven.  We became very close friends.  One day Mr. Bennett and Mr. W.J.  Bryan called at the parsonage.  I happened to be out at the time, but dined with them that evening.  Next morning a church member, who was a sort of cat’s-paw for the rich men, called at the parsonage and informed me of the “disgust” of the leading members.  “They won’t stand for it!” he said vehemently.

When I spoke at the city hall they catalogued me as a Socialist, and when Mr. Bryan called, they moved me into the “free and unlimited coinage of silver” column.  By “they,” I mean four or five men—­men of means, who absolutely ruled the church.  The deacons had nothing to say, the church had as little.  “The Society” was the thing.  The “Society” in a Congregational church is a sort of secular adjunct charged with the duty of providing the material essentials.  Their word is law, the only law.  In their estimation business and religion could not be mixed, nor could things of the church be permitted to interfere in politics.  The purchase of an alderman was to them as legitimate as the purchase of a cow.  Some of them laughed as they told me of buying an election in the borough.  It was a great joke to them.  They were patriotic, very loudly patriotic, and their special hobby was “the majesty of the law.”

I was to be punished for that water company affair, and a man was selected to administer the punishment.  I had brought this man into the church; I had created a church office for him, and pushed him forward before the men.  He was supposed to be my closest friend.  He came to the parsonage one morning, to talk over casually the question of salary.

“Now,” he said, “you don’t care how we raise your salary, do you?”

“Of course not.”

“Well, the Society’s hard up this year and can only raise $1,600; but the church will raise the other $400, and I have one of them already promised.”

This seemed a most unusual proceeding, but I was unsuspecting.  A few months afterward this man, with tears in his eyes, said: 

“Mr. Irvine, whatever happens you will be my friend—­won’t you?”

He was doing their work, and wincing under the load of it.

“Brother,” I said, “when I know whether you are playing the role of Judas or John, I will be better able to answer you.”

At the end of the year it all came out.  I was literally fined $400 for attending that meeting.