Introducing the American Spirit. Edward Alfred Steiner
pursuit of a proper place of worship, in anything but a worshipful mood. I was bent upon showing that which is vastly more difficult to interpret than sky-scrapers, the Herr Director was doubtful that we had any religious spirit at all, and the Frau Directorin mourned the fact that she had to leave behind her so much paper which might have served such good purposes if she had it at home.
Fifth Avenue recovers something of its departed exclusiveness on Sunday morning; for although the cheaper stores are crowding upon those which never descend to bargain counters, this is not true of the churches. They still are in good repute, and await the stated hour of service on Sunday morning without excitement, having advertised nothing, offering no ecclesiastical bargains; content to live as the birds of the air, whom the “Heavenly Father feedeth.” The street was almost deserted; here and there a taxicab darted on its way to or from the railway station; the hour of the limousines had not yet come, and the people who strolled along were evidently, like ourselves, unfashionable sojourners seeking a tabernacle in Gotham’s wilderness.
Sauntering along the street was less interesting than usual, for not only were there no crowds, the shop-windows were all artistically curtained and there was nothing to see. The Frau Directorin did not like it at all, “for what good is it to walk along the shopping streets if you can’t look into the shops?”
“You see, my dear,” the Herr Director remarked, “that is to help you obey one of the ten commandments which womankind is especially prone to break, ‘Thou shalt not covet.’ Incidentally it proves that we are in a country in which you are allowed to do as you please every day and do nothing on Sunday.”
“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 space 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-assertion of the people before their God, their man God, 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 multitude 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-scrapers. Chaos is not an improvement upon order. Nothing is finished, nothing complete, not even your religion.”
Just then we were compelled to pass 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-scraper.
“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’hôte in harmony with the Herr Director’s national