A Hen, a Dog, and Evangelists

UP on our farm there was once a hen who occasioned some discussion between John and me. The hen-yard was surrounded by a high wire netting. Just outside this our dog, during the day, was kept tied to a trolley which ran back and forth on a long wire. Every morning one particular hen used to stuff herself through under the netting, and for the rest of the day she wandered freely in the wide forbidden lands of orchard, garden, and swamp. Every evening she returned, and began to pick her way along beside the netting, looking for that hole that she had come out through. Of course she never could find it. No hen ever can. It grew late, and dusk was coming on. Back and forth, back and forth she stepped, more and more nervously, cocking her head at the invisible top of the netting, fluttering, giving low, anxious cackles, until at last her pacing brought her near the dog’s wire. Out he burst from his kennel, and with a rush that set the wire jangling, made for the hen. She shrieked, fluttered, then with a mighty effort, born of consuming panic, flew up into the air — up — up — and over the netting. And there she was, back in the hen-yard! Once over, she emitted a few clucks of reminiscent rage, a few more clucks of growing satisfaction, and then, in the increasing dusk, she pattered comfortably into the hen-house.

This happened, not once or twice, but many times. So far John and I were both agreed. It was only as to the psychology of the incident that we differed. John gravely propounded the theory that the hen, finding the hole gone, and feeling herself unable of her own strength to fly over the netting, deliberately put herself in the way of the dog, so that he might, by scaring her almost to death, invoke in her powers which she herself could not unaided summon to her use. In other words, she could not make herself fly over the netting, but she could make the dog make her do it.

This theory I could not accept. Hens, I objected, although excellent creatures, were not subtle. Subtle or not, said John, the theory is correct. He even maintained that occasionally the hen, finding the dog asleep or indifferent in his kennel, walked back and forth near by until she had teased him into activity.

The question has never been settled, and there will be no more data, for the hen-house has been moved, and that particular hen has long since been gathered to her mothers. But I often think of her. I have been thinking of her especially during these last years, when the saving of cities through evangelists has been much in our minds.

It is not, after all, a very far-fetched parallel. The cities have escaped from the fold of the righteous and have wandered in forbidden fields. Dusk is coming on, and they want to get back, but they can’t. They can’t find the holes they came out through, and they can’t fly high enough to get back that way. And so they appeal to the dog — the evangelist. He comes down upon them with a rush. He evokes in them powers they have not been able to evoke in themselves — and they make the magnificent flight, back again into the fold.

The evangelist, it is true, does not accomplish this entirely by scaring them almost to death. He does some scaring, of one sort or another, but he also undoubtedly has other methods as well. The reactions between the hen and the dog were comparatively simple. The reactions between a city and an evangelist are complex in proportion as cities are more complex than hens, and evangelists than dogs. But between the two processes there is a certain real similarity.

Moreover, the process is one that is not confined to cities and evangelists. It is going on continually in all human relations. Are we not all continually finding ourselves in the situation of the hen? Do we not often long to summon to our use powers which, we believe, are latent in us, but which we seem unable to set free? And if they ever are set free, is it not always through the influence of some outside power?

All inspiration, whether it reaches us through persons, through books or other forms of art, which are only derivatives of persons, or through nature, is nothing more or less than this. The inspiration of religion itself is the extremest instance of this same process. Saint Francis and John Stuart Mill, to take temperaments as diverse as may be, each made the appeal to something outside himself, — Saint Francis called it God, Mill called it Nature, — and each through it rose to new heights, although the tablelands where Mill finally walked have little in common with the sun-lit peaks of Saint Francis. The evangelizing of cities, then, is merely calling into operation, on a large scale and in a conspicuous way, a law which holds good in all our spiritual life. Why then is it the object of so much criticism?

To this question there will be many answers. I shall not try to give them. But in thinking the matter over it occurs to me that there is one thing we have not scrutinized: that is, the nature of the fold into which cities are trying to get. For the hen had a very simple objective. She was trying to get back into the hen-yard; she wanted to go to roost, and she wanted to be where she would get a morning feed of grain. Once in the hen-yard, she could say complacently, ‘I have arrived.’

But for cities is there any such fold? Or for souls? I fancy not. And here, perhaps, is the weak point in the evangelistic scheme. It rather assumes something like a hen-yard, it rather assumes that one magnificent effort will enable one to arrive. The hen, it will be remembered, after a few moments of agitated but rapidly subsiding reminiscence, settled contentedly upon the roost. This is what is said to happen much too often after the rush of an evangelistic movement. Perhaps, however, the responsibility for this is rather with the churches, since it is they who must follow up the movement begun by the evangelist. Theirs is the harder task. Their stumbling-block, which is also their opportunity, is found in these same latent powers of humanity which are always craving to be summoned into activity (hence the surge toward the evangelist), but which always have a tendency to sink back into latency. This is forever the difficulty of the church. It is not a new difficulty. It was probably not new when Moses encountered it in a people who continually and magnificently rose at his appeal, and continually and suddenly fell away again when the freshness of contact had passed.

Yet in this continual need of fresh contacts human beings make their strongest appeal. We cry to one another for help, for inspiration. We get it; and then, so very soon, we need it again — need, not the same help, the same inspiration, but new. For nothing involving human relations can ever settle into a formula. Nothing we can do for one another, whether through our churches or through other channels, is ever done finally.