Sinclair Lewis

“ Oh, my dear people, my dear people, I am not going to preach tonight--we are all so weary of nagging sermons about being nice and good! I am not going to tell that you're sinners, for which of us is not a sinner? I am not going to explain the Scriptures. We are all bored by tired old men explaining the Bible through their noses! No! We are going to find the golden Scriptures written in our own hearts, we are going to sing together, laugh together, rejoice together like a gathering of April brooks, rejoice that in us is living the veritable spirit of the Everlasting and Redeeming Christ Jesus! ”

“ As I heard a big New York preacher say one day: he knew how imperfect the ministry is, and how many second-raters get into it, and yet if he had a thousand lives, he’d want to be a minister of the gospel, to be a man showing the philosophy of Jesus to mankind, in every one of ’em. And the church universal, no matter what its failings, is still the only institution in which we can work together to hand on that gospel. Maybe it’s your fault, not the church’s, young Frank, if you’re so scared of your people that you lie at funerals! ”

“ He drowsed through page on page of Ingersoll’s rhetoric and jesting. Suddenly he sat up, looked suspiciously over at the silenced Jim, looked suspiciously at Heaven. He grunted, hesitated, and began rapidly to copy into the German note-book, from Ingersoll:
Love is the only bow on life’s dark cloud. It is the Morning and the Evening Star. It shines upon the cradle of the babe, and sheds its radiance upon the quiet tomb. It is the mother of Art, inspirer of poet, patriot and philosopher. It is the air and light of every heart, builder of every home, kindler of every fire on every hearth. ”

“ Elmer was safe nowhere. No sooner had he disposed of one disciple, by the use of spirited and blasphemous arguments patiently taught to him by Jim, than another would pop out from behind a tree and fall on him.
At his boarding-house--Mother Metzger's, over on Beech Street--a Y.M.C.A. dervish crowed as he passed the bread to Elmer, "Jever study a kernel of wheat? Swonnerful! Think a wonnerful intricate thing like that created itself? Somebody must have created it. Who? God! Anybody that don't recognize God in Nature--and acknowledge him in repentance--is dumm. That's what he is!" ”

“ The basket-ball player was patting his other arm, begging, "Dear old Hell-cat, you've never let yourself be happy! You've been lonely! Let yourself be happy with us! You know I'm no mollycoddle. Won't you know the happiness of salvation with us?"
A thread-thin old man, very dignified, a man with secret eyes that had known battles, and mountain-valleys, was holding out his hands to Elmer, imploring with a humility utterly disconcerting, "Oh, come, come with us--don't stand there making Jesus beg and beg--don't leave the Christ that died for us standing out in the cold, begging!" ”

“ He was sharply awake as her fingers slipped up his cheek, across his temple, into his swart hair.
"Your hair is so thick," she said drowsily.
"Your heart beats so. Dear Sharon--"
Suddenly, clutching his arm, she cried, "Come! It is the call!"
He was bewildered as he followed her, white in her nightgown trimmed at the throat with white fur, out of his room, down the hall, up a steep little stairway to her own apartments; the more bewildered to go from that genteel corridor, with its forget-me-not wallpaper and stiff engravings of Virginia worthies, into a furnace of scarlet. ”

“ He could see the implications in their level faded eyes; he could see Sharon swayed by their scorn and delivered from such uncertain fascination as his lustiness and boldness had cast over her.
“Damn!” he said. “I’m just as good as they are!”
He came reluctantly down-stairs to the shabby, endearing drawing-room, with its whatnot of curios—a Chinese slipper, a stag carved of black walnut, a shell from Madagascar—with its jar of dried cattails, its escritoire and gate-legged table, and a friendly old couch before the white fireplace. ”

“ A little way down the street, beside the red brick wall of the Congress Hotel, some one was talking from the elevation of a box, surrounded by a jeering gang.
"What they picking on that fella that's talking for? They better let him alone!" rejoiced Elmer, throwing off Jim's restraining hand, dashing down the side street and into the crowd. He was in that most blissful condition to which a powerful young man can attain--unrighteous violence in a righteous cause. He pushed through the audience, jabbed his elbow into the belly of a small weak man, and guffawed at the cluck of distress. ”

“ Benham taking him out to the back-porch and presenting him with a check for five thousand dollars, Elmer had the feeling of possessing a family, of being rooted and solid and secure.
For the wedding there were scores of cocoanut cakes and hundreds of orange blossoms, roses from a real city florist in Sparta, new photographs for the family album, a tub of strictly temperance punch and beautiful but modest lingerie for Cleo. It was tremendous. But Elmer was a little saddened by the fact that there was no one whom he wanted for best man; no one who had been his friend since Jim Lefferts. ”

“ So, in the dark malodorous car, hot with late spring, filled with women whose corsets creaked to their doleful breathing, with farmers who snored in shirt-sleeves, Elmer stood behind the seat in which a blur marked the shoulders of Art Nichols and a radiance showed the white presence of Sharon Falconer. To Elmer she seemed to kindle the universe. She was so precious, every inch of her; he had not known that a human being could be precious like this and magical. ”

“ Elmer felt his lungs free of library dust as he pumped. He broadened his shoulders, rejoiced in sweating, felt that his ministry among real men and living life was begun. He pitied the pale Frank a little, and pumped the harder . . . and made Frank pump the harder . . . up and down, up and down, up and down. It was agony to the small of his back and shoulders, now growing soft, to labor on the up-grade, where the shining rails toiled round the curves through gravel cuts. ”

“ Pardon me, gentlemen, for intruding, but it makes me, not as a preacher but just as a humble and devout Christian, sick to my stomach to hear a fellow feel that he knows so blame' much he's able to throw out of the window the Christ that the whole civilized world has believed in for countless centuries! And try to replace him with a lot of gassy phrases! Excuse me, Mr. Styles, but after all, religion is a serious business, and if we're going to call ourselves Christians at all, we have to bear testimony to the proven fact of God. ”

“ The train consisted of a day-coach, a combined smoker and baggage car, and a rusty old engine and tender. The train swayed so on the rough tracks as it bumped through the drooping light that Elmer and Jim were thrown against each other and gripped the arm of their seat. The car staggered like a freighter in a gale. And tall raw farmers, perpetually shuffling forward for a drink at the water-cooler, stumbled against them or seized Jim’s shoulder to steady themselves. ”

“ What is it makes us different from the animals? The passion of Love! Without it, we are--in fact we are nothing; with it, earth is heaven, and we are, I mean to some extent, like God himself! Now that's what I wanted to explain about Love, and here's how it applies. Prob'ly there's a whole lot of you like myself--oh, I been doing it, I'm not going to spare myself--I been going along thinking I was too good, too big, too smart, for the divine love of the Savior! ”

“ Elmer fully believed it, for that delightful moment. "These boys are classmates of mine, and they're going to have a chance to speak!"
Eddie Fislinger bleated to his mates, "Oh, fellows, Elm Gantry! Saved!"
Even this alarming interpretation of his motives could not keep Elmer now from the holy zeal of fighting. He thrust aside the one aged man who stood between him and the baker--bashing in the aged one's derby and making him telescope like a turtle's neck--and stood with his fist working like a connecting-rod by his side. ”

“ Ah, it fills the world with melody, with such sacred melodies as we have just indulged in together, for what is music? What, my friends, is music? Ah, what indeed is music but the voice of Love!"
He explained that hatred was low.
However, for the benefit of the more leathery and zealous deacons down front, he permitted them to hate all Catholics, all persons who failed to believe in hell and immersion, and all rich mortgage-holders, wantoning in the betraying smiles of scarlet women, each of whom wore silk and in her bejeweled hand held a ruby glass of perfidious wine. ”

“ Sharon, you're a good deal of a damn fool. You think I'm going to deny flirting with Lily. I won't take the trouble to deny it! If you don't appreciate yourself, if you don't see that a man that's ever associated with you simply couldn't be interested in any other woman, then there's nothing I can say. Why, my God, Shara, you know what you are! I could no more be untrue to you than I could to my religion! ”

“ Say! Any of you ever stop and think how much you're handing yourself when you figure you can get along without divine intercession? Say! I suppose prob'ly you're bigger than Moses, bigger than St. Paul, bigger than Pastewer, that great scientist--"
President Quarles was exulting, "It was a genuine conversion! But more than that! Here's a true discovery--my discovery! Elmer is a born preacher, once he lets himself go, and I can make him do it! O Lord, how mysterious are thy ways! Thou hast chosen to train our young brother not so much in prayer as in the mighty struggles of the Olympic field! ”

“ What had he learned?
Enough Hebrew and Greek to be able to crawl through the Bible by using lexicons—so that, like all his classmates once they were out of the seminary, he always read it in English. A good many of the more condemnatory texts of the Bible—rather less than the average Holy Roller carpenter-evangelist. The theory that India and Africa have woes because they are not Christianized, but that Christianized Bangor and Des Moines have woes because the devil, a being obviously more potent than omnipotent God, sneaks around counteracting the work of Baptist preachers. ”

“ The poker was, he assured you, a real whaling harpoon, picked up, surprisingly cheap, at Nantucket. Its rude shaft was decorated with a pink bow. This was not the doing of the bishop but of his lady. Himself, he said, he preferred the frank, crude, heroic strength of the bare woods, but Mrs. Toomis felt it needed a touch, a brightening--
Set in the rugged chimney of the fireplace was a plaque of smooth marble on which was carved in artistic and curly and gilded letters: "The Virtue of the Home is Peace, the Glory of the Home is Reverence." ”

“ Even if some details of dogma aren’t true—or even all of ’em—think what a consolation religion and the church are to weak humanity!”
“Are they? I wonder! Don’t cheerful agnostics, who know they’re going to die dead, worry much less than good Baptists, who worry lest their sons and cousins and sweethearts fail to get into the Baptist heaven—or what is even worse, who wonder if they may not have guessed wrong—if God may not be a Catholic, maybe, or a Mormon or a Seventh-day Adventist instead of a Baptist, and then they’ll go to hell themselves! Consolation? ”

“ Yes, you’re the worst of all, Phil! You do know something of human beings. You’re not like old Potts, who’s always so informative about how much sin there is in the world and always so astonished when he meets an actual sinner. And you don’t think it matters a hang whether a seeker after decency gets ducked—otherwise baptized—or not. And yet when you get up in the pulpit, from the way you wallow in prayer people believe that you’re just as chummy with the Deity as Potts or Gantry. Your liberalism never lasts you more than from my house to the street-car. ”

“ Do you want to punish them? Do you? Don't you love some one more than you do your sins? If you do, stand up. Isn't there some one here who wants to stand up and help a fellow business man carry this gospel of great joy to the world? Won't you come? Won't you help me? Oh, come! Come down and let me shake your hand!"
And they came, dozens of them, weeping, while he wept at his own goodness.
They stood afterward in the secluded space behind the white-and-gold platforms, Sharon and Elmer, and she cried, "Oh, it was beautiful! Honestly, I almost cried myself! Elmer, it was just fine!" ”

“ You bet, Hell-cat! I'm willing to fight you for the glory of God! God needs you! Can you think of anything finer for a big husky like you than to spend his life bringing poor, weak, sick, scared folks to happiness? Can't you see how the poor little skinny guys and all the kiddies would follow you and praise you and admire you, you old son of a gun? Am I a sneaking Christian? ”

“ But since the last night of the football season, with the glorious bonfire in which the young gentlemen had burned up nine tar barrels, the sign of the Jew tailor, and the president’s tabby-cat, Elmer had been tortured by boredom.
He regarded basket-ball and gymnasium antics as light-minded for a football gladiator. When he had come to college, he had supposed he would pick up learnings of cash-value to a lawyer or doctor or insurance man—he had not known which he would become, and in his senior year, aged twenty-two this November, he still was doubtful. ”

“ Where are you staying in Lincoln?
"Now see here, Brother Gantry--"
"Elmer!"
"Oh, don't be ridiculous! Just because I'm so fagged out that it's nice to play at being a human being, don't try to take advantage--"
"Sharon Falconer, will you quit being a chump? I admire your genius, your wonderful work for God, but it's because you're too big to just be a professional gospel-shouter every minute that I most admire you. You know mighty good and well that you like to be simple and even slangy for a while. ”

“ Jim was selfish enough, but it was with the selfishness of a man who thinks and who is coldly unafraid of any destination to which his thoughts may lead him. The little man treated Elmer like a large damp dog, and Elmer licked his shoes and followed.
He also knew that Jim, as quarter, was far more the soul of the team than himself as tackle and captain.
A huge young man, Elmer Gantry; six foot one, thick, broad, big handed; a large face, handsome as a Great Dane is handsome, and a swirl of black hair, worn rather long. ”