Introducing the American Spirit Part 2

"No," I replied, "it merely proves that we are trying to save one day a week from the contamination of our materialistic existence."

"It merely proves," he echoed, "that you have inherited from your Anglo-Saxon ancestors the worst thing they could leave you: their hypocrisy. I stepped behind a curtained bar this morning and found it running at full blast. You evidently do your drinking in private on Sunday and your praying in public. You know we in Germany do the opposite."

"No, you do your praying and drinking both in public, and both seem to be a part of your religion," I answered. "Very likely you are right.

There is about us this taint of hypocrisy; but that only shows that we are a deeply religious people, conscious of the fact that our ideals are upon a higher plane than our performance. We are not as eager as you are to proclaim our frailties from the housetop.

"The average American wants you to believe him to be a pretty decent fellow till you find him out to be different; while you Germans make a virtue of a certain kind of brutal frankness, which is worse than hypocrisy, since you try to make it an excuse for all sorts of private and national sins. The real criminal is never a hypocrite."

I do not know what would have happened to me if at that moment we had not reached St. Patrick's Cathedral. The full, rich organ notes seemed to soothe the Herr Director's ruffled spirit, and our discussion ended as we entered the welcoming portal.

In a church which in all places and all ages remains the same, there was nothing for my guests to see or hear to which they were not accustomed.

There was the priest, alone with the great mystery which he was enacting, and by his side the diminutive ministrants. The crowd which filled every available s.p.a.ce in that huge interior was silent and reverent. Now the tinkling of a bell, like a command from Heaven, bade all kneel, and now the same bell bade them rise. The incense, the stately chant, and then the hushed, expectant throng going forward to partake from the priest's hand of the means of grace, which he alone could offer in the name of the one Holy Catholic Church--all this could not fail to impress us.

Into the august and solemn atmosphere there came from a near-by church the chimed notes of a hymn-tune such as the people once sang defiantly when they proclaimed their religious freedom. It was a spiritual war tune which soldiers could sing, and strangely enough it seemed to fit into this atmosphere as if it were the one thing which the service needed. It recalled the self-a.s.sertion of the people before their G.o.d, their man G.o.d, who was born in a stable, who worshipped as He worked, and worked as He worshipped, hurling His anathemas at those who blocked the gates of the kingdom to them who would enter, yet did not enter themselves.

Evidently the Herr Director felt as I felt; for he whispered to me, "The Reformation." When I nodded my approval, he said: "But see how unmoved she is, this rock-founded church. It will take something more than hymn-tunes to disturb her."

We left the Cathedral while the hungry mult.i.tude was being fed with the Sacrament of our Lord, and our spirits, too, had been fed, although we were not of that fold.

While the Roman Catholics were finishing their worship, the Protestants were making ready to begin. The first bells had chimed appealingly, not commandingly, and a thin stream of worshippers appeared on the Avenue, growing thinner as it divided, entering one or the other of those edifices where men were to worship according to the dictates of their conscience, their taste, or their social position.

Many strangers, like ourselves, were looking critically at the church bulletins as yesterday we had looked into the show windows, and it was the Frau Directorin who said she felt as if she were going shopping for religion.

The Herr Director said that he had no objection to our inventing or importing as many religions as we pleased; but he did object to our exporting any, for we were making the task of regulating and controlling them very difficult. Moreover he did not see how we could develop any kind of common, national ideals with such a confusion of religions. "You have, or pretend to have, a democratic government, and your strongest church is monarchic to the core."

I had to admit that religiously we are a very chaotic people, and that we are daily adding to that chaos; yet these facts might prove what I had been trying to make clear to him: That this is fundamentally a religious country, and that as a whole we are the most religious people in the world. I supported this statement by quoting a good German authority, the late Prof. Karl Lamprecht, who thinks we have a great future as a people, because we are "capable of religious improvement."

"Improvement!" The Herr Director sniffed derisively. "Wherever I look I see improvements: churches turned into theaters, theaters into churches, and residences which are still perfectly good turned into sky-sc.r.a.pers.

Chaos is not an improvement upon order. Nothing is finished, nothing complete, not even your religion."

Just then we were compelled to pa.s.s along a wooden walk from which we looked into a canyon blasted out of the rock, upon which still stood the foundation of the house which was being turned into a sky-sc.r.a.per.

"You see, that is the way we improve; we go deeper each time," I remarked.

"But in religion," the Herr Director retorted, "you do not go deeper, you go higher, and that is no improvement."

For the second time the chimes were pealing, and we entered a sanctuary of friendly yet dignified English Gothic. An usher, who looked very American and well fed and out of place, guided us to a pew in the more than half empty church, from which nothing was missing in the way of ecclesiastical furnishings. One thing it lacked and that no architect can build and no money can buy--Spirit.

The organ was played by a master, the processional was splendidly staged, the rector looked prosperously pious, prayers were read and confessions uttered without any disquieting, spiritual agony, and the anthems were correctly sung by the picturesque boys' choir. The curate preached a sermon on manliness; a sermon so thin and emasculated that even the Frau Directorin, whose English is limited, could understand it, and said she would like to come again "for the good English."

I left the church deeply disappointed, and to the Herr Director's taunts about "improvements" I did not reply, realizing more than ever how difficult and dangerous is this task of introducing the _Spirit_, especially when one goes to church in the spirit of pride, rather than in the spirit of meekness.

No clergyman can spoil the whole of Sunday, for there is always the dinner, and having found a _table d'hote_ in harmony with the Herr Director's national and religious ideals, we continued our discussion somewhat fitfully, if, at times, rather vehemently.

One of the things the Herr Director missed in the church where we tried to worship was reverence. He missed it everywhere and thought it due to the fact that we do not teach religion in the public schools.

This was rather amusing to me, for just prior to that statement he had told me of one of his nephews who, upon approaching his final examinations, said: "If it were not for this accursed religion I could get through without trouble;" and I called his attention to the fact that although I had no difficulty with my "exams" in religion, invariably having an "_Ausgezeichnet_" which is equivalent to an A, I was always "_Schlecht_" in conduct.

I had found religious instruction a very irreligious procedure, for the man who taught it was irreligious enough to whip me so that I could not lie upon my back for a week, the cause being that I would not say yes to his credo. Moreover I told the Herr Director I thought all religious instruction irreligious which did not teach the child its whole duty to society, but taught religion from only the narrowing racial or sectarian standpoint.

Religion, I pointed out to him, can after all not be taught; it has to be caught. It is a contagion which comes from a spiritual personality, and our public schools are not religious or irreligious because certain subjects are found or not found in their curricula, but because the teachers have this spiritual personality or lack it. I am convinced that this ethical quality predominates in our public schools, not only because so many of our teachers are women, but because we are fundamentally a religious people.

At this point I became conscious that the attention of the Herr Director and the Frau Directorin had flagged; for their response to my homily was an eloquent tribute to the tenderness of the breast of a Long Island duck, which they had been enjoying while I talked. As they were consequently in a lenient mood towards the whole world and therefore the United States, I renewed my laudable and difficult effort, and, as is often best, through the medium of a story.

At the time the elective system was introduced into Harvard University, attendance upon chapel was made voluntary. "I understand," said a severe critic of this procedure, "that you have made G.o.d elective in your college."

"No," replied the astute president, "I understand that G.o.d has made Himself elective everywhere."

The point of my story was lost upon both my guests. When I paused, the Frau Directorin asked me how it was possible to serve so lavish a bill of fare for so little money, and the Herr Director asked the waiter why they called this a Long Island duck when the portions were so short.

Thus the conviction was forced upon me that our environment was not conducive to the discussion of the American Spirit and that I must await a more auspicious occasion.

Late in the afternoon that occasion came; not on Fifth Avenue but on one of those streets where churches are fewest and humanity thickest; where Sunday brings liberation from toil, where cleanliness and G.o.dliness have an equally difficult task in coming or abiding; where nations and races must mingle and cannot easily blend, where the America which is to be is in the making, and where the Spirit must manifest itself if we are to be a nation with common ideals.

I like to take my friends to the East Side of New York City. I glory in its self-respect, its brave struggle against poverty and disease, its bright children filling all the available s.p.a.ce and a.s.serting their childhood by playing in the busy street, defying its noisy traffic. They make of each hurdy-gurdy the center of a great festival, dancing as the elves are said to dance, because it is their nature to.

I like to point out the faces of Patriarchs, Prophets and Madonnas--faces seamed by care and sorrow, yet lighted by a divine radiance and as unconscious of it as were those upon whom it shone in such fullness on that great East Side of the Universe which we now call the Holy Land.

I like to have my friends meet my East Side friends, the young working girls, who dress in good taste, help support a family, and maintain an unstained character in spite of small wages and the temptations of a great city. I like them to meet the growing boys who are hungry for the best the city holds, and who dream the dream of making the East Side in particular, and New York in general, a better place in which to live.

I am never ashamed to take my friends into the tenement houses, except as I am ashamed that they exist at all, with their stenches and the dearly bought s.p.a.ce with twenty-four hours of darkness and no free access of air. Of the people who live within I am never ashamed, for they are the brave ones, to whom labor is prayer, and living a sacrifice. I like best to show off the East Side of New York on Sunday, for here it is most welcomed with its respite from labor, its chance at clean clothes, its opportunity to visit and be again something more than a machine.

On Fifth Avenue the Sabbath is made for the few, on the East Side it is made for the many; on Fifth Avenue G.o.d seems hard to find, on the East Side He comes down upon the street. They are indeed worse than infidels who do not feel His Spirit brooding over the crowd, and His guardian angels watching over those children--else how could they survive? Best of all I know where those Angels live, and it is there I took the Herr Director and the Frau Directorin; I was sure they would never leave the place doubting that we are a religious people. Evidently the children also knew where their Angels live for the place was in a state of siege.

It is not strange that they knew, for their ancestors had walked and talked with angels, and they were not yet old enough to have lost the faith of their fathers. Troops of children there were; mere children carrying children, and where there was an only child, which is rare on the East Side, it was brought by a grandfather and grandmother, children themselves now, and old enough to again believe in angels.

There were flowers in the room and they were for the children; bowers of roses, red roses, wafting their incense and driving out the mouldy, tenement house air which clung to the little ones. There was music, and they sang--sang as I know G.o.d wanted them to sing--gay, happy songs, which seem to be denied the children who sing in the churches.

How I wished that the picturesque little choir boys on Fifth Avenue, who sang sixteenth century music and Augustinian theology, might have had a chance to sing as those East Side children sang--full throated, l.u.s.tily, joyously; songs which made them shiver from very joy, and which made the Frau Directorin weep copiously.

How I wished that the priest who chanted Psalms in Latin, and the other priest who intoned them in English as dead as Latin, could have been there and have heard those children recite the same Psalms, in East Side English. Yes, I have often wished that David himself might hear them; I am sure he would be proud that he had a share in writing them, even as the priests might be ashamed that they had never known just what precious reading they are.

No one preached to the children although they heard the good tidings, and no one told them to be good although they were given a chance to know how good G.o.d is, when men give Him a chance.

There was a sacrament, a holy one; roses were given the children, and the Angels who gave them shed their blood, for the roses had thorns. The next week the children were to be taken where the roses grew, and they would see that

"A garden is a lovesome thing, G.o.d wot!

Rose plot, Fringed pool, Fern'd grot-- The veriest school Of Peace:--"

But they would not have to see the garden to know that G.o.d is.

We broke bread with the Angels and looked into their joyously weary faces, and then we talked about the very thing I wanted my guests to know, namely: That underneath all our religious or rather credal chaos, we have a national creed if not a national religion.

The Herr Director suggested that the fundamental doctrine of our creed is "in gold we trust," and then he began a dissertation upon our national materialism.

Perhaps so, I conceded; but I doubted that we are more materialistic than the people of the older world, in fact I was inclined to believe that we are less so; which of course the Herr Director stoutly denied, and I as stoutly affirmed. In justice to myself I must say that when my country's honor is not at stake I am less dogmatic.

"Perhaps we are equally materialistic," I continued, "but we are certainly more generous. We make money faster than the people of the Old World, but we also give it away faster, and I believe that there is no country in which there is such a contempt for the merely rich man."

"I suppose the second article in your national creed," the Herr Director interrupted, "is that you are the biggest country and the best people under the Sun.