occasion in the life of each of us which seems an earthquake, and which is as
commonplace as first love, and Calvin decided that his father was a fool, trapped in antique, useless habits of thinking.–How
many of us marry our first love? How many of us retain the heady, delightful conviction that the old man was all wrong? How
pleasant it would be, indeed, if each of us could strike across untrodden green meadows in the ancient journey! Good friends,
who have broken your ankles and scratched your skins and fallen in holes in the green meadows before groping back to the old
dirt path, was not that first leap over the stile, into the long grass, unutterably sweet?
Calvin found it so. The first World War took him off the farm and into the roaring excitement of a military camp near a city,
and awe for the Good Book crumbled and vanished before the scathing profanity of the incredibly wise shoe salesmen and shipping
clerks with whom he mingled. By the time he was transported to England, Calvin was an enthusiastic, even a crusading, heathen;
but performance lagged behind conviction, as it usually does, and while in camp he actually did nothing worse than become
very drunk two or three times.
Performance overtook conviction in London. The reader will forgive me if I omit the distressing particulars, but, as he may
guess, there was a young lady named Grace. Suffice it to say that young Calvin Stanfield began to feel the unease of remorse
at approximately the time that his life began to be endangered. It should not be a source of satisfaction to rational churchmen,
as it seems to be, that men on battlefields return to their old beliefs: the cries of a scared child to its father have no
logical or intellectual force: but anyway, Calvin Stanfield had a sudden great accession of faith while cowering in a shell
hole during his first engagement. He quoted aloud psalms of David that were very much to the point, and he vowed that if he
were delivered from this pit he would believe and do. He kept his word, and during the rest of that conflict which we once
thought of as a Great War, he was known in his regiment as Holy Cal.
So much must be told in order that the reader may understand the motions of Father Calvin Stanfield. The rest would make an
absorbing study for a few of my patient audience who are interested in folkways, comparative religion, and sociology. His
return to his native valley, his growing reputation among the farm people for sanctity, his impulsive usurpation of the local
pulpit and self-ordination when the starving minister abandoned the parish in the black time of the Depression, and the coagulation
of a few acts of charity on his part into a self-sustaining rural communal settlement which rapidly expanded, all these things
are not without color and excitement, but they took place entirely without the interposition of any pretty young ladies. It
is plain and believable, I trust, that a man like Calvin Stanfield should become a lay preacher, and should take dispossessed
rural families into his home to labor alike and share alike; and that such a group, fired by religious fervor and released
from debt loads and competitive markets, should prosper and grow by degrees into a large, successful co-operative enterprise
in agriculture. Such was the Faithful Shepherd, and such was his Fold. In the interest of brevity–for I am sure that some
readers, accustomed to staccato loves, killings, hates, rapes, and reconciliations in the modern manner, consider me painfully
periphrastic–I will omit recounting how the name “Faithful Shepherd” was acquired, since it would require my reproducing most
of the text of Stanfield’s first sermon, preached impromptu one gray Sunday morning when the flock arrived at the local church
and found that the minister had quietly abandoned his post.
Father Stanfield has finished his prayers. Now he rises and goes down the wooden stairs of
commonplace as first love, and Calvin decided that his father was a fool, trapped in antique, useless habits of thinking.–How
many of us marry our first love? How many of us retain the heady, delightful conviction that the old man was all wrong? How
pleasant it would be, indeed, if each of us could strike across untrodden green meadows in the ancient journey! Good friends,
who have broken your ankles and scratched your skins and fallen in holes in the green meadows before groping back to the old
dirt path, was not that first leap over the stile, into the long grass, unutterably sweet?
Calvin found it so. The first World War took him off the farm and into the roaring excitement of a military camp near a city,
and awe for the Good Book crumbled and vanished before the scathing profanity of the incredibly wise shoe salesmen and shipping
clerks with whom he mingled. By the time he was transported to England, Calvin was an enthusiastic, even a crusading, heathen;
but performance lagged behind conviction, as it usually does, and while in camp he actually did nothing worse than become
very drunk two or three times.
Performance overtook conviction in London. The reader will forgive me if I omit the distressing particulars, but, as he may
guess, there was a young lady named Grace. Suffice it to say that young Calvin Stanfield began to feel the unease of remorse
at approximately the time that his life began to be endangered. It should not be a source of satisfaction to rational churchmen,
as it seems to be, that men on battlefields return to their old beliefs: the cries of a scared child to its father have no
logical or intellectual force: but anyway, Calvin Stanfield had a sudden great accession of faith while cowering in a shell
hole during his first engagement. He quoted aloud psalms of David that were very much to the point, and he vowed that if he
were delivered from this pit he would believe and do. He kept his word, and during the rest of that conflict which we once
thought of as a Great War, he was known in his regiment as Holy Cal.
So much must be told in order that the reader may understand the motions of Father Calvin Stanfield. The rest would make an
absorbing study for a few of my patient audience who are interested in folkways, comparative religion, and sociology. His
return to his native valley, his growing reputation among the farm people for sanctity, his impulsive usurpation of the local
pulpit and self-ordination when the starving minister abandoned the parish in the black time of the Depression, and the coagulation
of a few acts of charity on his part into a self-sustaining rural communal settlement which rapidly expanded, all these things
are not without color and excitement, but they took place entirely without the interposition of any pretty young ladies. It
is plain and believable, I trust, that a man like Calvin Stanfield should become a lay preacher, and should take dispossessed
rural families into his home to labor alike and share alike; and that such a group, fired by religious fervor and released
from debt loads and competitive markets, should prosper and grow by degrees into a large, successful co-operative enterprise
in agriculture. Such was the Faithful Shepherd, and such was his Fold. In the interest of brevity–for I am sure that some
readers, accustomed to staccato loves, killings, hates, rapes, and reconciliations in the modern manner, consider me painfully
periphrastic–I will omit recounting how the name “Faithful Shepherd” was acquired, since it would require my reproducing most
of the text of Stanfield’s first sermon, preached impromptu one gray Sunday morning when the flock arrived at the local church
and found that the minister had quietly abandoned his post.
Father Stanfield has finished his prayers. Now he rises and goes down the wooden stairs of
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