[This is from a sermon entitled, “The Father of Our Country,” preached by Lloyd C. Douglas at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor on February 22, 1920. (In Sermons [5], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.)]
“Now, if a man proposes to be a servant of his time, it means that his chief errand in life is to give rather than to get. There is something peculiarly apt about Paul’s admonition to them that have something to give.
“Says the Tarsan: ‘Let him that gives, do it with simplicity.’
“No big show of it; no large spread of it; no self-conscious parade of it; for many a seemly virtue has been made extremely obvious for having been too broadly advertised by its possessor.
“Not too serious about it, either, as if to say, ‘Here, I have skimped and saved and done without — for you, you no-account; I have slaved till my fingers bled, in order to hand you this inestimably valuable whatever-it-is; and now that it is yours, don’t let me ever catch you forgetting what an awful time I had getting it for you.’
“Why, you and I know people who, when they give anything, raise such a hullabaloo about it and make such a profound and painful fuss over their magnanimity that they who benefit by the generosity would as leave do without the good thing as to witness the scene in the shambles before the altar of sacrifice has been reached.
“George Washington had much to give, and he gave it with simplicity. He apparently never thought of himself as a great man who must of necessity weigh his every word so that when history laid hold of him it should find him guiltless of a split infinitive or caught with some idea slightly less than cosmic in its application. I don’t believe he was thinking much about the future or attempting to prescribe for universal maladies of the social order. He was doing his honest best to serve his own people, of his own generation, and minister to the needs of the hour.
“One mark of his simplicity was his modesty, a not altogether unbecoming grace in a man elected by his countrymen to execute their wishes. When, for example, he was appointed commander-in-chief of the United States armies, he declared himself utterly unfit for the position and begged to be permitted to serve his country, at war, in some subordinate capacity. And when finally he accepted this trust, he took the office without salary, stoutly maintaining that only the feeling that he might be shirking his duty if he declined reconciled him to the idea of serving in this conspicuous position.
“Moreover, it is stated of him that Washington was always a determined skeptic as to his fitness to fill the positions to which he was successively elected, plainly shrinking from promotions involving larger responsibilities. When Washington gave of himself, he gave with simplicity.
“Examination of his state papers reveals them as of immediate concern with the problems of the exact day and hour of their composition. Therefore they are of great interest to succeeding generations. Had he been writing under the delusion that he was a prophet or a seer, it would not have been so. Neither would his utterances have amounted to much in his own time, or to anything later.
“He was just a simple-hearted American citizen — of deep patriotism and genuine concern for his neighbors, trying to do and say that which might best meet the needs of his country at the hour. And, having acted in that attitude, his words have become invested with much wisdom for his posterity…. No prophet; no sage; no seer; no political mystic, conscious of the powers of divination; but only a simple-hearted, great-souled, fine-fibered Christian gentleman — the welfare and contentment of his countrymen his most urgent thought.”
[I will share the last part of Douglas’s sermon in my next post.]
The Lloyd C Douglas Page 