9. In the Camp of Salvation

The summer season and religion. – The exodus of pastors. – Religious camps. – On the shore of the ocean. – Warriors of salvation. – Sunday. – A colored preacher and a Negro hymn.

American summer is truly a fiery furnace. The heat begins very early; already by the end of May the mercury in the thermometer approaches 40 degrees and soon after adopts this point as its permanent residence, making only occasional excursions higher. Life itself becomes a burden, and daily bulletins report whole dozens of death cases from sunstroke. What is most difficult is that the heat scarcely diminishes at night; the night brings only an oppressive stuffiness. The bed is hot even to the feel of hands, and Americans go to sleep placing a fan beside them and setting a pitcher of ice water nearby. During the day there is no relief even under the shade of chestnut trees, which abundantly line the sidewalks. The very leaves of them instead of coolness breathe scorching heat. There is no need to even speak of the stuffiness that exists inside buildings with a large gathering of people. It is simply unbearable.

Such stuffiness manifests itself with particular force in church gatherings. Despite the fact that in churches, thanks to a definite number of pews, there is plenty of space, perspiration breaks out on all faces and streams down the cheeks. Church trustees come to the aid of the worshippers and prepare entire mountains of Chinese fans worth five kopecks, which are distributed before the beginning of services to all the pews. Every worshipper, regardless of gender and age, has in his hands this instrument of coolness. Men, women, and children – all work the fans vigorously, and the rustle produced by them fills the church with some strangely musical noise. With the purpose of producing coolness, other, more effective measures are taken. So, the walls and floor in the church are lined with ice and air is artificially passed through it, which, having passed through this cold purification, loses a considerable portion of its oppressive heat and appears as a pleasant breeze. But such arrangements are effective only in spring, when the mercury has not yet risen to its highest point. Already by June such measures prove insufficient, and then Americans resort to another method of fighting the heat: they simply close churches. So the summer season in religion arrives, church vacations. Newspapers daily publish announcements informing of the closing of one church or another – until a certain date, and on the front church columns notices are posted with the same content. Not all churches close, of course, but at least two-thirds of them are given over to summer rest. Parishioners depart to their country houses and the pastors themselves, breathing the fresh air of fields and forests, replenish themselves with new strength for the activity of the following year. Most of the pastors are very educated and at the same time wealthy people, and therefore they usually devote the summer to distant excursions and travels. A particularly large number of them depart for Europe. Each summer ocean ship takes them by the dozens, and newspapers constantly print lists of them under the heading: “the exodus of pastors.” There they spend the summer in capital cities, predominantly in Paris, London, Vienna, Rome, and others, stocking themselves with new impressions from the moral and religious life of mankind. Some even depart for Jerusalem and other sacred cities. The multitude of their correspondence sent to newspapers serves in a certain way as a substitute for their live teaching words for parishioners. The parishioners themselves, from the highest wealthy classes, in thousands depart for summer in Europe and spend the summer season in Switzerland or other pleasant European corners. Europe is still to this day the homeland for Americans, and they find in it many such charms as America does not present.

But not everyone departs for Europe; a multitude remains at home. How then does this multitude spend the summer season? I have previously noted the facts of the energy of religious feeling among Americans. The presented fact of the closing of churches for an entire summer may appear to be a contradiction. In fact, it only serves as confirmation. With the closing of churches the religious need does not cease; it demands satisfaction, and in America it has found a remarkable solution, representing one of the most peculiar sides of the religious life of the American people. Not being able to conduct worship in actual temples, the people have transferred worship to the open air and there created summer mobile temples made of canvas, like tabernacles. The new part of New York, the so-called “Upper City” still presents many vacant lots covered with greenery. With the arrival of summer most of these vacant lots became white with tents, on whose front usually appears a large inscription: “Every evening – a sermon! Free admission!” These are the so-called religious camps, similar to military camps, but here not warriors of destruction but warriors of salvation, fighting against the dark kingdom[1]. People gather each evening in the tent, where sacred hymns are sung and sermons are preached. This is the simplest form of religious camp. But outside the city it takes on a more complex form, developing into an actual camp with many tents serving as dwellings for whole thousands of people throughout the summer. To give a clear picture of American religious camps, I will describe my journey to one of them – on the shore of the ocean, in the so-called Ocean Grove, in the neighboring state of New Jersey.

To Ocean Grove run two roads—a sea route and a railway. In the heat of summer, of course, choice always falls on the first; so I made my way to the Hudson River shore, where among a multitude of steamships of every description stood a magnificent four-story floating palace of a steamer, the “Plymouth Rock.” It was on Saturday, when the machinery of workaday life begins to brake with its wheels and crowds of people surge in mass toward country summer retreats—to breathe fresh air and find rest from six days of the feverish toil and worldly bustle. The “Plymouth Rock” rapidly filled with people, mainly from the middle class—craftsmen, mechanics, clerks of every kind. The final whistle sounded and the floating palace began to move. On either side, things blurred past—on the left the brown masses of New York, and on the right the picturesque heights with the capital of the neighboring state of New Jersey settled upon them. These two states are separated only by the stream of the Hudson River, and their capitals look upon each other from opposite shores, forming as it were one city, yet having their own distinct laws and their own particular self-government. Ahead, the magnificent stream of the river spread wider and wider, crossed in every direction by a dense swarm of boats, ships, and steamships, and in the distance the very gates to the ocean opened up. A sea breeze, as though by divine blessing, swept across the deck, and the crowd, exhausted by the stuffiness of the city atmosphere, began with eagerness and bliss to inhale the living breath of grandfather-ocean. And now came the very gates themselves, with hills as their door-posts and bronze-banded Cerberi watching silently from behind the ramparts. These are the very same gates which form the only access for ships to New York, and through which I first entered the New World on the ship “Scythia” late last year. Now I involuntarily recalled the state of mind in which I had entered here. At the present time I see nothing remarkable about this place: the hills are exactly like those I have seen a thousand times over in Russia, and the sand is like any sand. But then all of this seemed something altogether different, and the very shore of America seemed to me more like the shore of the moon or some other planet, rather than earth. With strained, trembling attention I peered into each hillock, each bush, and each grain of sand and—to my amazement—saw in them something so extraordinary, so new. Now none of this was so anymore, and I could only laugh silently at myself and involuntarily repeat the profound saying of an ancient sage, that man is “the measure of all things.”

Meanwhile, on deck came the sounds of an orchestra—an inevitable fixture on every American steamship. As usual, I expected some spirited, merry tune, but suddenly heard something entirely different. The orchestra took up a sacred hymn, and its sounds were taken up by the mass of passengers, and soon the whole forward part of the ship merged in fervent singing of an extremely popular hymn: “There is a Land That is Fairer Than Day” with its concluding verse: “we shall meet on that beautiful shore by and by” (in the sweet by-and-by). The hymn hymns the life beyond the grave, and I could not help but wonder how this exhausted laboring class, setting out for a holiday rest, preferred hymns of this sort to others in which they could find more merriment. But then I remembered that this steamer was not heading to any ordinary country amusement resort, but to a “religious camp.” This was a ship of soldiers of salvation. Looking at the inscriptions on the walls, I found that they were all written with texts from Scripture: “love one another,” “praise God,” and the like, and even on the very life-jackets was written: “In God We Trust.” But what struck me most of all was one inscription which appeared in many places on the steamer. The inscription read: “The Plymouth Rock is a steamer of temperance.” I guessed what was going on, but for further clarification I went to the bar and asked for a glass of California red wine. The bartender looked at me in surprise and silently stretched his hand toward a notice hanging above the bar. The notice once again spoke of temperance. “Surely you don’t have even red grape wine?” I asked. “No, sir, not a drop of anything! And no one asks for it,” added the manager of the “temperance bar” with a faint smile about the breaker of the rule. A strange people, I thought. We don’t have such temperance bars in Russia. And the orchestra continued to play sacred hymns and the voices of passengers supported them with a powerful wave.

It was already around 8 o’clock in the evening when the steamer, gently swaying on the quiet swell of the ocean, approached Ocean Grove. The sun was already hiding behind the hills and pouring forth a sea of fiery-golden rays along the shore and across the horizon. Along the undulating shore, descending to the ocean in golden sand, a multitude of tents turned white, and on either side rows of simple wooden summer houses stood out. The steamer stopped at the pier, a long bridge jutting out to sea. Not knowing what to do, I began to walk about among the tents, which stretched out in endless rows across the hills. All was dead around—not a sound, not a rustle of bushes. A chill came over my soul. After watching for about ten minutes the magical interplay of the ocean with the rays of the setting sun, I did not notice where the whole mass of passengers had gone. Suddenly from behind one ridge of hills came the singing of many voices, and I headed that way. “Brother, do you love Jesus?” suddenly came a voice as I passed by one tent. A shudder involuntarily ran through my body, and I stammered an affirmative answer in confusion. “Also love your neighbor and pray for me—a sinful old dog!” said the same voice in some heavy tone, and—I quickened my pace. Beyond the hill a large clearing opened up and it was darkened with people. It was an evening service. The crowd had settled on the grass with a pastor standing before them on a special raised platform before a small table. The pastor appointed a hymn; nearby someone’s resonant voice rang out and the whole gathering instantly took it up; thousands of voices merged into one ecstatic musical wave and it reverberated somehow monstrously in the neighboring hills, wrapped in the semi-darkness of night. After several hymns a preacher came forward with a speech. He first read a prayer that God would bless his word, make it fruitful like spring rain is fruitful for the sown fields, like dew for those thirsting for truth, and like a two-edged sword for hardened hearts. The prayer was lengthy and consisted of a list of all manner of petitions like those presented. Its reading was distinct and to each petition the people responded in chorus—“amen.” The preacher chose as his text the words: the love of God is like mountains. In contemplating mountains the preacher always got the idea of their likeness to God’s love. Their foundations are as vast as God’s all-encompassing love, and their interior is as deep as God’s love is deep. They are as unchanging as God’s love is unchanging. Everything in nature changes over time, but mountains stand from age to age. Finally, they do not require proof of their existence, just as God’s love requires no proof. A blind man cannot see them, but climbing them he feels their presence; so every weak person feels the action of God’s love upon himself. The improvised orator continued in this manner to stretch his comparisons, and remarkably, they made a strong impression on the crowd. Throughout the crowd individual exclamations rang out now and then—“amen,” “hallelujah.” Meanwhile the sky began to sparkle with bright stars, more eloquent than the orator in speaking of God’s love and glory, and from the dark belly of the ocean floated forth a fiery moon. When its pale silvery rays spread across the hills and across the huddled crowd on the clearing, it was a wondrously beautiful sight, made even more lovely by the concluding hymn, which glorified the majesty of the Creator.

After the service the people scattered to their tents, while temporary visitors went to hotels, arranged in whole rows around the camp. Speculation in America does not sleep and knows how to take advantage of every opportunity. This place was recently a wilderness, but as soon as it was chosen eight years ago as the site of a religious camp, light yet massive hotels sprang up all around. In the tents there live constantly during summer up to two thousand people, and in the hotels up to three thousand, while by Sunday up to twenty thousand gather. A service like the one described is held each day, and all life in the “camp” bears a strictly religious character. This can be said to be an American monastery, and if there were a separation of sexes, it would be a true monastery. In any case, these are certainly warriors of the spirit, struggling against the world and its charms. The intensity of religious enthusiasm here sometimes reaches frenzy, and during prayer often a whole crowd is seized by an irrepressible rapture and begins to cry out in broken exclamations: “Glory! glory! hallelujah! hallelujah!” These gatherings are for the most part Methodist, though people of every denomination participate in them. All the hotels have restaurants attached. But on the doors of all restaurants a large sign invariably states one and the same thing: “A Restaurant of Temperance.” Within a mile all around the camp it is forbidden to have any other restaurant except one of temperance—that is, without a drop of wine or any intoxicating liquor. When I took my little room and gazed from the window at the starry sky, across which the moon rolled majestically, spreading its magical light across the tents, all around the camp could still be heard the sounds of sacred hymns, gradually dying away in the night stillness.

Sunday opened with a magnificent morning. It is the day of rest and all nature seemed to be fulfilling the great commandment. Sunday in general is held in high honor in America, but in the religious camp the strictness of its observance reaches an incredible rigor. On weekdays one can always get a newspaper here; on Sunday their delivery is prohibited, since selling them constitutes commerce, and any commerce on Sunday is unlawful. On this same basis it is forbidden for various small traders to appear in the camp—with fruit, milk, buns, flowers, and so forth, for cabbies to bring passengers into the camp, and generally on Sunday it is forbidden to come to the camp on horseback. How strictly these rules are observed can be seen from the following incident. Once General Grant, when he was President of the United States, wished to visit this religious camp. It was Sunday. Knowing the Sunday laws of the country and the strict additions to them in the camp, he previously requested permission from the camp authorities to come on his horse into the camp. But the soldiers of salvation did not break their strict rules even for the president. They measured off one mile from the camp and marked a point to which the president could ride on his horse. The rest he had to walk, and—the president obeyed.