Forming a Committee

The next morning Mr. Hypocrisy and his relatives met to celebrate the success of having so far duped the faithful ones; and rid themselves of the troublesome Mr. Sincerity. The other three who had refused the dope were overlooked for the time.

“Well,” said Mr. Love-the-World, “I believe things are now established upon a safe and sound basis, and therefore we can rest easy as to both our prestige and purse.”

“Not at all,” piped up Mrs. Apostasy, who had arrived during the night, and to whom a full statement of the facts had been given. “I have had much experience, and know that this loose-end way of running church affairs is not practical after they have come to the point where we now stand. For, you know, Old Sincerity has a great number of relatives of like disposition with himself, and they will give us endless trouble. There are his cousins, Love-God and Fearless, Great-Faith and Humility, and several others who care not even for their own necks, so unruly are they. The only thing I can see to be done is to form ourselves into a committee. Of course this must be kept quiet at first. And I have a copy of a set of laws and by-laws which I have used with very little variation for more than six hundred such boards. Of course, they can be elaborated upon after the faithful ones get more accustomed to them. They are worded in such a way that they can appear as anything or nothing, just as our convenience shall demand. Of course, there will be some who will accuse us of forming a sect, as this, in the minds of the faithful, is the greatest of sins. So when they thus accuse us, we can show our innocent by-laws—or not as we see best—and say, ‘Why, this is only a board of deacons, like they appointed at Jerusalem to serve tables’; but in reality we will be a board of bishops. But we will insert a few elusive words such as ‘advise,’ ‘restrain,’ etc., which appear nothing, but when enforced to their full meaning, there is really no limit to them at all.

“Now in regard to our prestige; this committee must be the only means through which anyone can expect to receive any information about church affairs. This will forever shut the mouths of the Sincerity family; and the eternal questioning about our doings will be stopped. Besides this we will very emphatically impress our infallibility upon the faithful ones, and make it a most heinous sin and heresy for them either to ask questions or to answer the same. This being accomplished one might think that the purse question were also settled. But there is another difficulty concerning this matter, as you will learn by experience with the faithful ones here. Now, since they have taken dope, and invested in our friend’s wares, you will see that they will find much less pleasure in supplying the needs of their pastor and other things pertaining to the King’s business.

“Moreover we must also send a committee of at least two—I think Mr. Policy and Mr. Love-the-World—out to visit all the flocks, to deal with them as this local flock has been dealt with; and to impress them, as we said, with our infallibility, with the heinousness of questioning us, and with the folly of narrow-mindedness. And you may be sure the effect will be the same in every place. Therefore some new scheme must be provided for money-getting lest our purse suffer loss.

“Now, one of Brother Hypocrisy’s greatest sorrows during the past years has been that although he was a great man, still Old Sincerity has been receiving much the more funds. And upon our friend’s making complaint about the matter, Sincerity answered: ‘Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure’; ‘And there is that withholdeth more than is mete, but it tendeth to poverty’; and, ‘Give of thy gold, though small thy portion be: Gold rusts and shrivels in the hand that keeps it; It grows in one that opens wide and free; Who sows his harvest is the one who reaps it.’ Besides that, Sincerity said in a most insinuating way that God gave him gold to use, not to love; and it came to his hands as if by magic. Now this is all right to preach to the flocks, but our friend, Hypocrisy, thinks as far as he is concerned that the Scripture, ‘Strong men retain riches,’ is more applicable to him. And now that we may stop the gold from running through the hands of this openhanded Sincerity family, we must see that it all comes to our hands, so that we may have full control, and thus the unruly ones can be finished off by starvation, and our honorable relatives, who otherwise would receive nothing, will be well supplied.

“Now the first step will be to have it all under our control; but lest under the circumstances there be not much to control, we must make giving compulsory, or at least a sort of article of faith so that there will be a stigma upon the one who does not give his part; and of course it won’t be much trouble to know just what that should be.” Upon this the meeting was adjourned, as there was not time to discuss other subjects until a later date.