Part 11 (1/2)

Joe invited the others to the new Carbrook home on the Heights into which his people had lately moved. The Heights was a new thing to J.W.--a rather exclusive residential quarter which had been laid out park-wise in the last four or five years; with houses in the midst of wide lawns, a Heights club house and tennis courts and an exquisite little Gothic church.

”When our folks first talked about moving out here I thought it was all right; and I do yet, in some ways,” explained Joe. ”But the Heights is getting a little too good for me; I'm not as keen about being exclusive as I used to be. I've thought lately that exclusiveness may be just as bad for people inside the gates, as for the people outside. But here we are, as the Atlantic City whale said when the ebb tide stranded it in front of the Board Walk. What are we up to, us three?”

”We're up to finding out about the town churches,” said J.W. ”Maybe they can help the town more than they do, but we don't know how, and so far we haven't found anybody else who knows how.”

And Marcia said: ”At least we know some things. We have the figures.

About one Delafield citizen in seven goes to church or Sunday school on Sunday. Church members.h.i.+p is one in ten. And as many people go to the movies and the Columbia vaudeville and the dance halls and poolrooms on Sat.u.r.day as go to church on Sunday, to say nothing of the crowds that go on the other five days.”

Joe Carbrook whistled. ”That's a tough nut to crack, gentle people,” he said, ”because you've simply got to think of those other five days. The chances are that four times as many people in Delafield go to other public places as go to church and Sunday school.”

”What can the churches do?” asked J.W. ”You can't make people go to church.”

”No,” a.s.sented Marcia, ”and if you could, it would be foolish. We want to make people like the churches, not hate them. One thing I believe our churches can do is to put their public services more into methods and forms that don't have to be taken for granted or just mentally dodged.

Half the time people don't know what a religious service really stands for.”

”Meaning by that----?” Joe queried, as much to hear Marcia talk as for the sake of what she might say.

”Well, they have seen and heard it since they were children. When they were little they didn't understand it, and now it is so familiar that they forget they don't understand it,” Marcia responded, not wholly oblivious of Joe's strategy, but too much in earnest to care. ”I've heard of a successful preacher in the East who seems to be making them understand. He says he tries to put into each service four things--light, music, motion; that is, change--and a touch of the dramatic. Why not? I think it could be done without destroying the solemnity of the wors.h.i.+p. They did it in the Temple at Jerusalem, and they do it in Saint Peter's at Rome and in Westminster Abbey and Saint John's Cathedral in New York. Why shouldn't we do it here in our little churches?”

”Make a note of it, J.W.,” ordered Joe. ”It's worth suggesting to some of the preachers.”

J.W. made his note, rather absently, and offered a conclusion of his own:

”The church must take note of the town's sore spots too. I've found out that crowding people in tenements and shacks means disease and immorality. Isn't that the church's affair? Angus MacPherson has taught me that when the jobs are gone little crimes come, followed by bigger ones; and sickness comes too, with the death rate going up. Babies are born to unmarried mothers, and babies, with names or without, die off a lot faster in the river shacks and the east side tenements than they do up this way. Maybe the church couldn't help all this even if it knew; but I'm for asking it to know.”

”I'll vote for that,” Joe a.s.serted, ”if you'll vote for my proposition, which is this: our churches must quit trying just to be prosperous; they must quit competing for business like rival barkers at a street fair; they must begin to find out that their only reason for existence is the service they can give to those who need it most; they've got to believe in each other and work with each other and with all the other town forces that are trying to make a better Delafield.”

”That's right,” said J.W. ”I was talking to Mr. Drury this morning, and I asked him what he would think of our starting a suggestion list. He said it ought to be a fine thing. But he wants us to do it all ourselves. Just the same, we can take our suggestions to him, and then, if he believes in them, he can talk to the other preachers about them, and, of course, about any ideas of his own. Because you know, I'm pretty sure he has been thinking about all this a good deal longer than we have.”

It was agreed that the list should be started. Marcia was not willing to keep it to themselves; she wanted to have it talked about in League and Sunday school and prayer meeting, and then, when everybody had been given the chance to add to it, and to improve on it--but not to weaken it--that it be put out for general discussion among all the churches.

”And then,” said Joe Carbrook, ”we might call it 'The Everyday Doctrines of Delafield,' If we stick to the things every citizen will admit he ought to believe and do, the churches will still have all the chance they have now to preach those things which must be left to the individual conscience.”

That was the beginning of a doc.u.ment with which Delafield was to become very familiar in the months which followed; never before had the town been so generally interested in one set of ideas, and to this day you can always start a conversation there by mentioning the ”Everyday Doctrines of Delafield,” The Methodist preacher gave them their final form, but he took no credit for the substance of them, though, secretly, he was vastly proud that the young people, and especially J.W., should have so thoroughly followed up his first suggestion of a civic creed.

THE EVERYDAY DOCTRINES OF DELAFIELD

1. Every part of Delafield is as much Delafield as any other part We are citizens of a commonwealth, and Delafield should be in fact as well as name a democratic community.

2. Whenever two Delafield citizens can better do something for the town than one could do it, they should get together.

And the same holds good for twenty citizens, or a hundred, or a thousand. One of the town's mottoes should be, ”Delafield Is Not Divided.”

3. Everything will help Delafield if it means better people, in better homes, with better chances at giving their children the right bringing-up, but anything which merely means more people, or more money, or more business is likely to cost more than it comes to. We will boost for Delafield therefore, but we will first be careful.

4. Every part of Delafield is ent.i.tled to clean streets and plenty of air, water, and sunlight. It is perhaps possible to be a Christian amid ugliness and filth, but it is not easy, and it is not necessary.

5. Every family in Delafield has the right to a place that can be made into a home, at a cost that will permit of family self-respect, proper privacy, and the ordinary decencies of civilized living.

Every case of poverty in Delafield should be considered as a reflection on the town, as being preventable and curable by remedies which any town that is careful of its good name can apply.

6. Delafield believes that beauty pays better than ugliness.