5. Papa’s Young Protégé

I have tried to give you a fair and honest picture of this great and good man who could so easily have been a success as an actor or a novelist, who could have been a successful lawyer had he continued in that profession, who could have graced some metropolitan pulpit had he aspired to such a distinction. But his heart was in the open country and he loved best the simple life of country people.

Sometimes, I think, he had a brief touch of nostalgia when he remembered his days as an attorney. He often reminded his congregation, when preaching on some text in Romans or Galatians, or Ephesians, that the Apostle Paul was a lawyer. His favorite sermons pictured Paul pleading his cause before Felix, or Agrippa, or Gallio.

He had no interest in the high-pressure evangelism so widely practiced at the time of his ministry. He thought it dishonest; to work on the emotions of a congregation, night after night, in a “protracted meeting,” where three or four leather-lunged people would be encouraged to moan and howl in competitive prayer while the choir sang, “Just Now: Come to Jesus Just Now, Just Now.” It was his belief that most persons who embraced the Christian faith in such circumstances were quickly disillusioned. Oh, he could have stirred an audience to panic, if he had wanted to; no doubt of that! But he detested such tactics; and, in my opinion, his integrity adds to his stature.

My papa was about as free of prejudice as any person I ever met. He was always a booster for the underdog, always gave a suspect the benefit of the doubt. Although a loyal supporter of the Foreign Missions undertaken by his denomination, he often told me privately (what it would have been imprudent to say publicly) that an American Christian should think twice before deriding the age-old, inherited faith of a foreigner’s race and nation. How often he repeated the Master’s recorded words, “And other sheep have I which are not of this fold.”

Papa often stressed the importance of kindness and peace in the home. Divorces were rare in those days, and persons who invoked this solution of their domestic problems were usually considered to have brought a measure of disgrace upon themselves, regardless of the reason for it. My papa felt that almost any solution was preferable to family bickering and strife.

He knew of one household in which the parents hadn’t spoken to each other for twelve years. When supper was ready, Maw would say, “Tildie, tell yer pap supper’s ready,’ and Pap, seated a few feet away, would be told that supper was ready. All the communication these people had with one another was cleared through one of the children, several of whom were born while this feud was on.

The older people of our church in Monroeville remembered a choice story about the family of a minister who had served them many years before we came along. It was a large, noisy family composed of parents who often disagreed and a half-dozen or more teenage-and-up sons and daughters who didn’t always see eye to eye on domestic problems; but, for all that, Monroeville liked them. It is a disquieting fact (but a fact) that people are more often loved for their imperfections than for their inimitable righteousness.