Religion: Son-of-a-Pastor

To what, good purpose can a cowThat brings no calf or milk be bent?

And why beget a, son who proves A dunce, and disobedient?

—THE PANCHATANTRA

A score or more of stern Baptists ranged themselves in a circle in the study of Rev. Roach Straton, Manhattan’s loud-speaking Fundamentalist. It was a steaming day; flies buzzed at the window. The visitors mopped their brows and readjusted their scowls. They were nervous, suspicious; their task was weighty.

Before them was a sallow, gangling youth of 21, a candidate for ordination in the Baptist ministry. It was their privilege and duty— like stringy-bearded rabbis in a yeshiveh—to probe the secret depths of this young man’s immortal soul and determine whether or no he was fit to serve their God as a toiler in His vineyard. An hour passed as they plied their searching questions—on the perilous issues between Fundamentalism and Modernism; on social service work, missionary endeavor, charity.

So humid did the study become that it was voted to remove to the nearby Calvary Church auditorium. There were many more questions to ask. True, this lanky cub was the son of no less a lionthan Roach Straton himself. True, Roach Straton had trained this supple shoot (Hillyer Hawthorne Straton) with his own unswerving hand; had taught him righteousness with his own fierce tongue—the hand and tongue that have repeatedly been brandished to denounce modern young womanhood (“The high society girl is the lowest thing on earth!”); that have scoured Berlin, Paris and London for loathsome pictures of vice to buttress the faith of Americanos (“I saw there what I never saw here—girls actually taking out their lipsticks in public. They used so much paint on their lips that they soaked it off with the soup and were obliged to make up again between courses!”); that have engaged “well-posted” young men to conduct Roach Straton to resorts whence might be drawn anathema upon modern dancing for a thoughtless, urbane congregation (“For surely, my friends, if there is any choice . . . the odds are all in favor of hugging on the sofa, as the dance is hugging set to music, and music always has an exciting effect . . . rhythmical motion . . . stimulus of music . . . bodily contact . . . danger . . . wreck . . . ruin!”)

True, this coltish Hillyer Hawthorne Straton, this tall boy with the generous ears of an innocent, had had a splendid start toward a holy life. Yet, there was something depraved about the easy hang of his well-made, collegiate clothes; something free-and-easy, almost loose, about the clear voice in which he answered their questions with unabashed promptitude. There was a modernistic tinge to his record at Mercer College: he had built and operated a radio station.

As the prying reached to Hillyer Hawthorne Straton’s private creed and personal practices, a Negro among the inquisitors asked him what he thought of “sanctification,” and it almost seemed as though the glib answers suddenly betrayed shallowness as the youth hesitated and then chose to answer a different question shot simultaneously by some one else. Ah no, thought the stern elders, you cannot be too sure of youth’s probity nowadays. And this boy had been pressed resolutely to the Lord’s work by his father. He might be, at heart, no voluntary gospel-man, though his own story of receiving the “call” at a street-revival led by his father sounded genuine. Nor had he, that they knew, ever tasted temptation and iniquity to know its horrors and be made strong through revulsion, as had his father, who by his own exultant confession was once “deep in sin, loving sin, following sin, living for sin. . . .” The elders’ questioning went on for another hour.

In the end the elders passed on Hillyer Hawthorne Straton and his father ejaculated that he was a “good straight boy … a source of great pride and rejoicing” to his parents. There came a rumor that another inquisition might be held, and Hillyer Hawthorne Straton showed his mettle by remarking that, if it were held, “Oh, boy! Won’t the fur fly!”

He told pressmen that he had told the elders that he believed fully in the Bible “as inspired by God and written by Him—the infallible Book.” He spoke as his father had coached him to speak: “I believe the world is going plumb to hell! I believe that it is bad, and always has been bad, and it’s going to get worse. But up to the present time it’s no worse than it has been.”

He believed the Baptist God would guide him in selecting a seminary to study in. The world an-ticipated that God would express Himself on this point through his servant, Roach Straton. There was no evidence pro or con as to whether the son of Roach Straton’s begetting would prove a dunce, but thus far he had shown himself to be the model reverse of disobedient.