Alexander Irvine - From the Bottom Up

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I was elected a member of the teamsters' union while the teamsters
were on strike. I was in their headquarters night and day, doing what
I could for them; but I was unable to offset the bad leadership which
landed nine of them in jail.

On May 1st, I left Pilgrim Church. My farewell sermon was a fair
statement of the case. The sermon was published in the press. The
Hartford _Post_ made the following editorial comments on it:

"ONE CHURCH AND ITS PASTOR

"Plain speaking is so much out of fashion that when examples of it
are discovered they rivet attention. Undoubtedly there was a good
deal in the farewell sermon of the Reverend Alexander F. Irvine,
who has just closed a pastorate of four and one-half years in the
Pilgrim Congregational Church in New Haven, that was applicable
only to that church, but possibly some statements have more or
less general application. At any rate, it is an interesting case
and the sermon was remarkable for its almost brutal directness,
its cutting satire, its searching exposition of the wholesale
spirit of charity mixed with kindly humour which runs through it.

"After four years and six months of labour, a clergyman is
certainly qualified to speak of the characteristics of the
pastorate. In most cases the farewell sermon is, however, a mass
of 'glittering generalities,' a formal, perfunctory affair. Often
it is omitted altogether. The pastor simply goes out, leaving the
church to its fate, commending it to the care of the Almighty.
His private views are not expressed. Mr. Irvine retired in
considerable turmoil, but he made his parting memorable by
expressing his sentiments, and his frankness was absolute.

"In reviewing his pastorate, Mr. Irvine spoke of the children's
services on Wednesday nights, the men's Bible class and a group of
sixty added to the church at its fiftieth anniversary as among the
happy features of his administration. But he went on to say that
those new members were not welcomed by the 'Society' because they
brought no money into the treasury. The clash that went on during
those four and one-half years is revealed by what the pastor said
on this matter. He tried to democratize the church. He wanted to
get in 'new blood.' He tried to interest the workingmen, as many
other pastors have tried to do and are trying to do, with varying
success. We hear a great deal about the church and the masses, how
they are drifting apart. Here is a minister who tried to bring
them together. He had services when all seats were free, and
workingmen were invited. He interested many of them, and many
joined the church. But the attempt was a failure, for the church
as a whole didn't take kindly to people without money. 'In the
making of a deacon,' said Mr. Irvine, 'goodness is a quality
sought after, but the qualifications for the Society's committee
is cash--cold cash. If there is a deviation from this rule, it is
on the score of patronage. Power in the case of the former is a
rope of sand; in the latter it is law.' Again on this line, Mr.
Irvine said: 'It was inevitable that these workingmen should be
weighed by their contributions. That is the standard of the
Society.'

"How true it is that this standard is applied in more churches
than the Pilgrim Church in New Haven those who are in the churches
know. It is not true, of course, universally, but this is not by
any means an isolated case. Possibly the organization of the
Congregational churches is faulty in this respect. There is the
church and there is the Society. The Society's committee runs the
business of the church. It is apt to be made up of men to whom the
dollar is most essential, and often the committee exercises
absolute power in most of the affairs of the church. In this case
it froze out a man who wanted to go out and bring in men from the
highways and byways, and now he has gone to establish what he
calls the church of the democracy. It is to be a church
independent of the rich. There are such churches--not many, to be
sure--but they come pretty close to the gospel of the New
Testament.

"'A man here may do one of three things,' said the democratic
clergyman in his good-bye address. 'He may degenerate and conform
to type. He may stay for three or four years by the aid of
diplomacy and much grace. He may go mad. Therefore, an essential
qualification for this pastorate is a keen sense of humour. If my
successor has this he will enjoy the community ministry for a few
years and will do much good among the children--he will enjoy the
view from the parsonage, the bay, the river, the mountains. He
will make friends, too, of some of the most genuinely good people
on earth. He must come, as I came, believing this place to be a
suburb of paradise, and blessed will that man be if he departs
before he changes his mind.'

"That is satire, and possibly out of place in the pulpit, but it
may be that the words could be applied without stretching the
truth to other pastorates. 'The preacher is their "hired man." He
may be brainy, but not too brainy--social, but not too
social--religious, but not too religious. He must trim his sails
to suit every breeze of the community; his mental qualities must
be acceptable to the contemporary ancestors by whom he is
surrounded, or he does not fit.' The bitterness in those words is
evident, but the truths they contain are important.

"It may be that more sermons with equal plain speaking would do
good. It may be that the conservatism, not to say the Phariseeism,
of the modern church requires a John the Baptist to pierce it to
the core, and expose its inner rottenness. The church that does
not welcome the poor man and his family with just as much
heartiness, sincerity and kindly sympathy as it does the rich man
and his family is certainly not worthy of the great Teacher who
spoke of the great difficulty the rich man has in entering the
kingdom of God."

I have delivered about two written sermons in twenty-five years. That
farewell message was one of them. I wanted to be careful, fair, just.
I could not escape the belief that at least seven of my predecessors
who had been pushed out by unfair means had left with a lie on their
lips. Pastor and people, in dissolving relationship, had always
assumed and often explicitly stated on the records that the departing
minister "had been called of God" elsewhere. If God was the author of
their methods of dismissal, He ought to be ashamed of Himself.

There was no interregnum. The Sunday following that farewell sermon I
preached my first sermon as pastor of the newly organized People's
Church of New Haven. About thirty people left the old church and
joined the new. Among them was a saintly woman, who had been a member
for half a century of Pilgrim Church. We had one man of means--Philo
Sherman Bennett, the friend of Mr. Bryan. The opening meeting was in
the Hyperion Theatre. The creed was simple, and brevity itself: "This
church is a self-governing community for the worship of God and the
service of man." A Jewish Rabbi read the Scriptures, a Universalist
minister made an address, and a judge of the city led in prayer. Part
of my address was a series of serious questions: "Will this movement
raise the tone of society? Will it increase mutual confidence? Will it
diminish intemperance? Will it find the people uneducated and leave
them educated? Will the voice of its leader be lifted in the cause of
justice and humanity? Will it tend after all to elevate or lower the
moral sentiments of mankind? Will it increase the love of truth or the
power of superstition or self-deception? Will it divide or unite the
world? Will it leave the minds of men clearer and more enlightened, or
will it add another element of confusion to the chaos? These are the
tests we put to this new church and to our personal lives."

We had an old hall in the outskirts of the city, on a railroad bank.
There we opened our Sunday School and began our church activities. I
got a band of Yale men to go to work at the hall. The son of Senator
Crane, of Massachusetts, became head of the movement, but that plan
was spoiled by a man of the English Lutheran persuasion, who was an
instructor in Yale. It appeared that the church of which this man was
a member had been trying to rent this old hall and, not succeeding in
that, they claimed the community. This instructor complained to the
Yale authorities, and without a word to me the Yale band was
withdrawn. A few weeks after the Lutherans claimed another community,
and went to work in it.

In the middle of our first year our little church received a
staggering blow in the death of Mr. Philo S. Bennett. We had become
very intimate. I dined with him once a week. He was about to retire
from business, and after a rest he was to give his time to the church
idea. He inquired about buildings, and he had fixed his mind on a
$25,000 structure. He spoke to others of these plans, but in Idaho,
that summer, he was killed in an accident. Mrs. Bennett sent for me
and I took charge of the funeral arrangements. Mr. Bryan came on at
once and helped. After the funeral he read and discussed the will. I
was present at several of these discussions. The sealed letter written
by the dead man was the bone of contention. Then the lawyers came in
and the case went into the courts. The world knew but a fragment of
the truth. It looked to me at first as if a selfish motive actuated
Mr. Bryan, but as I got at the details one after another, details the
world can never know, I developed a profound respect for him. He was
the only person involved that cared anything for the mind, will or
intention of the dead man, and his entire legal battle was not that he
should get what Mr. Bennett had willed him, but that the designs of
his friend should not be frustrated: not merely with regard to the
fifty thousand--he offered to distribute that--but with regard to the
money for poor students.

We missed Mr. Bennett, not only for his moral and financial help, but
because of his great business ability. During the coal strike of
1902, for instance, when coal was beyond the reach of the poor, we
organized among the working people a coal company. The coal dealers
blocked our plans everywhere. We were shut out. Then the idea came to
us to charter a shipload and bring it from Glasgow. It was the keen
business ability of Mr. Bennett that helped us to success. We needed
$15,000 to cable over. I laid the plans before Mr. Bennett; he went
over them carefully and put up the money. Before we needed it,
however, we had sold stock at a dollar a share, and the coal in
Scotland brought in an amount beyond our immediate needs. This, of
course, was "interfering with business men's affairs," and the dealers
in coal were not slow to express themselves. I was a director of the
coal company for some time. The newspapers announced that I was going
into the coal business to make a living; but I had neither desire nor
ability in that direction. It was a great day in New Haven when our
ship entered the harbour and broke the siege. We sold coal for half
the current price.

The idea of a church building had held a number of people in our
little church for a long time, but after Mr. Bennett's death that hope
seemed to die, and those to whom a church home was more than a church,
left us; those of that mind that didn't leave voluntarily were lured
away by ministers who had a building. The amount of ecclesiastical
pilfering that goes on in a small city like New Haven is surprising.
Conversion is a lost art or a lost experience, and the average
minister whose reputation and salary depend upon the number of people
he can corral, usually has two fields of action: one is the Sunday
School and the other is the loose membership of other churches. The
theft is usually deliberate.

When my income was about forty dollars a month, subscribed by very
poor people, a pastor who had been building up his church at the
expense of his neighbours, wrote me that he was trying to persuade one
of our members to join his church. It was the most brazen thing I had
ever known. He felt that our dissolution was a matter of time, and he
wanted his share of the wreckage. He went after the only person in our
church who had an income that more than supplied personal needs.
Afterward, this same minister entered into a deal with the trustees of
the hall we used, by which the hall and the Sunday School were handed
over to him. Of course, we made no fight over the thing--we just let
him take them. This is called "bringing in the Kingdom of God."

We were not free from dissension within our own ranks, either. Mr.
Bryan came to lecture for us in the largest theatre in town. Admission
was to be by ticket, on Sunday afternoon. The committee of our church
that took charge of the tickets began to distribute seats--the best
seats and boxes--to their personal friends. Thousands were clamouring
for tickets. It was an opportunity to give the city a big, helpful
meeting, and to do it democratically and well. But the committee would
brook no interference.

I announced in the papers that all tickets were general admissions,
and "first come, first served" would be our principle. Sunday morning,
when I was half-way through my discourse, one of the committee handed
me a note. I did not open it until I finished. It was a threat that if
I did not call off the democratic order, the committee would leave the
church. The meeting was a great success, and the committee made good
its threat. What the writer of the following letter expected of me I
have no idea, nor did his letter enlighten me:

"DEAR SER:

"Wen I gave my name for a church member it was fer a peeples
church, not a fol-de-rol solo and labour union church.

"Drop my name."

We had at our opening a solo by the finest singer in the city, and I
had thanked the labour unions for their help. His name was dropped.

An educated woman thought she saw in our simple creed an open door she
had been seeking for years. She joined us with enthusiasm. One day I
was calling on her, and as I sat by the door I saw a dark figure pass
with a sack of coal on his back. The figure looked familiar.

"Pardon me," I said, as I stepped out to make sure.

"Hello, Fritz!" I called. The coal heaver had only trousers and an
undershirt on, and looked as black as a Negro. Sweat poured over his
coal-blackened face. We gripped hands. The lady watched us with
interest.

"Do you know him?" she asked.

"Yes, indeed!" I said. "And you must know him, for he is one of our
deacons."

She never came back. Democracy like that was too much for her. The
deacon himself left our church a few months later because he
discovered that I did not believe in a literal hell of "fire and
brimstone," whatever that is.

The chairman of our trustees was a business man who was very much
engrossed with the New Thought. He saw a great future for me if I
would get "in tune with the infinite." I was more than willing. He
expounded to me the wonders of the new regime. Would I take lessons in
healing? Certainly! He paid an American Yogi a hundred dollars to
teach me. I was unaware of the cost. At first it was by
correspondence. His chirography looked like a plate of spaghetti. I
was instructed how to take a bath and when. The second letter ordered
me to sleep with my head to the East. I was "a Capricorner, buoyant,
lucky," so he said. At the end of a month I paid him a visit. He
showed me how to manipulate a patient--absent or present--and how to
charge!

The correspondence was taken verbatim from a ten-cent book on
astrology; I got tired, and handed the letters over to my wife. She
took them seriously, and when she had made what she thought was
progress she inadvertently told the chairman of the trustees. That
settled him. He resigned forthwith, and we saw him no more.

I thought we had reached the point where there was nothing further to
lose; but I was mistaken. I had been charged with being a Socialist,
and, curious to know what a Socialist was, I began to study the
subject. What I feared came upon me: I announced myself a Socialist.
That settled the Single Taxers; they left in a bunch! No, hardly in a
bunch; for two of them remained.

The Universalists invited us to use their church for our Sunday night
meetings. We thought that a fortunate windfall. We were to pay five
dollars a night. We did so until one week we had nothing to eat and we
let the rent wait. The trustees of the Universalist Church met and
passed a resolution something like this: "Resolved, that in order that
the good feeling existing between the People's Church and the
Universalist Church be maintained, that the People's Church be
requested to pay the rent after each service." We paid up and quit.

The most intelligent man in our church was a young draftsman in the
Winchester Arms Company. He was a man of boundless energy and great
courage. He lost his job. No reason was given. His wife, before her
marriage, had been a trained nurse, and in her professional life had
nursed the wife of a bank president, who was a director in the gun
company. One day these ladies met, and the lady of the bank said she
would find out why the husband of her former nurse was discharged. The
director got at the facts, and gave them to his wife, _sub rosa_: "He
belongs to Irvine's church--and Irvine is an anarchist." The young man
got another job in another city. After a few discharges of that kind,
men who did not want to leave the city got scared and gave me a wide
berth.

I looked around for something to do to earn a living. I found a young
bookbinder in a commercial house, and as he was a master craftsman, I
advised him to hang out a shingle and work for himself. He did so.
When I was casting around for a new method of earning a living I
thought of him, and asked him to take me as an apprentice. He did so,
and I put an apron on and began to work at his bench. One day, when
the reporters were hard up for news, one of them called for an
interview.

"Have you ever published any sermons, Mr. Irvine?"

"Yes; one, and a fine one."

"Where was it published?"

"Right here in New Haven!"

"A volume?"

"Yes."

I went to my case and produced a book--I had sewed it, backed it,
bound and tooled it. It was my first job, and I was proud of it. I am
proud of it now. It is the best sermon I ever preached.

Another day a professor in the Yale Medical School called to have some
books bound at the bindery.

"Who is that fellow at your bench?" he asked.

"Mr. Irvine," the bookbinder replied.

"The Socialist?"

"Yes."

He took the young man aside and told him that he could expect no
recognition from the "best citizens" as long as he kept me. Off came
my apron, and I looked around again.

I was very fond of Dr. T.T. Munger. In his vigorous days his was a
great intellect, and when in his study one day he told me that I had
no gospel to preach, I felt deeply the injustice of the charge. I
could not argue. I would not defend myself. I valued his friendship
too highly. I hit upon a plan, however. I had published in a labour
paper seventeen sermons for working people. I went to a printer and
told him that, if he would print them in a book, I would peddle them
from door to door until I got the printer's bill. They were printed in
a neat volume, entitled "The Master and the Chisel." I paid the
printer's bill, and gave the rest away. I sent one to Dr. Munger; and
this is what he said of it:

"DEAR MR. IRVINE:

"Many thanks for the little book you sent me. I have read nearly
all the brief chapters, and this would not be the case if they
were dull. That they certainly are not. Nor would they have held
my interest if they did not in the main strike me as true. I can
say more, namely, that they seem to me admirably suited to the
people you have in charge, and good for anybody. They have at
least done me good, and often stirred me deeply. Their strong
point is the humanity that runs along their pages--along with a
sincere reverence. I hope they will have a wide circulation."

The tide was ebbing, but it was not yet out. The announcement that I
was a Socialist brought, of course, the members of the party around
me, but on Sunday nights, when they came, expecting a discourse on
economic determinism and found me searching for the hidden springs of
the heart, and the larger personal life, as well as the larger social
life, they went away disappointed and never came back.

As I looked around, however, at the churches and the university, I
could find nothing to equal the social passion of the socialists--it
was a religion with them. True, they were limited in their expression
of that passion, but they were live coals, all of them, and I was more
at home in their meetings than in the churches.

CHAPTER XVIII

I BECOME A SOCIALIST

I soon joined the party and gave myself body, soul and spirit to the
Socialists' propaganda. The quest for a living took me to a little
farm on the outskirts of the city. There were eighteen acres--sixteen
of them stones.

Gradually I began to feel that my rejection was not a mere matter of
being let alone, of ignoring me; it was a positive attitude. There was
a design to drive me out of the city. On the farm I was without the
gates in person but my influence was within, among the workers. We
spent every penny we had on the farm. I hired a neighbouring farmer to
plow my ground and plant my seed, for I had neither horse nor
machinery. I told him I had a little cottage in the woods in
Massachusetts that I was offering for sale and I would pay him out of
the proceeds. At first he believed me and did the work.

It took me two months to get that cottage sold and get the money for
it. The farmer's son camped on my doorstep daily. Every day I met him,
in the fields or on the road. I spoke in such soft tones and promised
so volubly every time he approached me that he got the impression
that I had no cottage--that I was a fraud and cheating his father. He
spread that impression. He began after a while to insult me, to make
fun of me. I debated with myself one afternoon whether when he again
repeated his insults I should thrash him or treat him as a joke. I
decided on the former. Meantime the check for the cottage came and
relieved the situation. Despite my inability to become a Yogi, I
believed in the New Thought. My wife and I used to "hold the thought,"
"make the mental picture," and "go into the silence." We did this
regularly.

I had an old counterfeit ten-dollar bill for a decoy. I shut my eyes
and imagined myself stuffing big bundles of them into the pigeon-holes
of my desk.

I got an incubator, filled it with Buff Orpington eggs and kept the
thermometer at 103 deg. F. My knees grew as hard as a goat's from watching
it. In the course of events, two chickens came. We had pictured the
yard literally covered with them. These poor things broke their legs
over the eggs. My wife was more optimistic than I was.

"Wait," she said, "these things are often several days late." So we
waited; waited ten days and then refilled the thing and began all over
again.

We lost an old hen that was so worthless that we never looked for her.
In the fullness of her time she returned with a brood of fourteen! She
had been in "the silence" to some purpose!

"Well, let's let the hens alone," my wife said with a sigh; "they know
this business better than we do." But we kept on monkeying with mental
images--it was great fun.

During our stay on that farm I did four times more pastoral work than
I had ever done in my life. I was the minister of the nondescript and
the destitute. I presided over funerals, weddings, baptisms, strikes,
protests, mass meetings. Nobody thought of paying anything. To those I
served I had a sort of halo, a wall of mystery; to me it was often the
halo of hunger--of the wolf and the wall--yes, a wall, truly, and very
high that separated me from my own.

An incident will show what my brethren thought of my service to the
poor. I was in the public library one day when the scribe of the
ministerial association to which I belonged accosted me:

"Hello, Irvine!"

"Hello, C----! Splendid weather we're having, isn't it?"

"Splendid," replied C----; and in the same breath he said, "say, you
don't come around to the association; do you want your name kept on
the roll?"

I hesitated for a moment, then said: "Whatever would give you most
pleasure, brother--leaving it on or taking it off--do that!"

That was all--not another word--he reported that I wanted my name
removed, and that practically ended my ministerial standing in the
Congregational ministry.

The Jewish Rabbi who had taken part in our opening service met me on
the street one day.

"Dr. Smyth and I are coming to see you, Irvine," he said.

"I'll be mighty glad to see you both, Rabbi. What are you coming for?"

"Well, we think it's too bad that the labour gang use you as a sucker
and we want to see if we can't get a place in some mission for you."

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