Ronald R Johnson

Personality III: Other People

A page from the sermon “Personality (Third Phase),” preached by Lloyd C Douglas at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor on 2/1/1920. In Sermons [5], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.

This is from the sermon, “Personality (Third Phase),” preached by Lloyd C. Douglas at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor on February 1, 1920. (In Sermons [5], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.):

“Now, as sons of God, we automatically constitute a human brotherhood. I do not intend to review that argument, already treated at some length, except to remind you that we found it to be true that no man can properly express his personality until he recognizes this principle as an immutable law of his life. Until he has built this principle into his thinking, he is an Ishmaelite among strangers. His hand is against every man’s hand. His personal interests are always taking priority over every other man’s interests.

“In this connection, I stated that there are no practiced tricks of manner or gesture or posture or appeal or approach to a stranger that will correctly imitate the attitude of a man who, without artifice but in deep sincerity, follows the inclination of his own heart and greets all men as his brothers.

“I was greatly impressed to notice, in yesterday’s Literary Digest, the following, under the department given to ‘Business Efficiency.’ A well known banker was quoted as saying:

“‘When I entered the banking business a good many years ago, I had a number of copy-book ideas about how I should meet people. Always give a firm, strong grip in shaking hands, look the other man in the eye when you talk to him, let him know that you are glad to see him, etc. These were some of my ideas. They didn’t last long, though. Old Mr. Block, president of the institution, called me over to his desk one day in his abrupt manner. ‘Young man,’ he said, ‘you are a promising chap in this bank…. [But] I don’t like the way you meet people. And I don’t think they like it, either. You act as though you were doing it by rule. Act naturally. Don’t be affected. If you are sincerely interested in the other fellow, he’ll know it even if you growl. Take that for what it’s worth.’ So [continues this banker] I believe that ‘man-to-man’ sincerity is the best method of dealing with all persons. This is all there is to it. It’s so simple, it’s hard to believe.”

Douglas continues:

“Now, my reason for quoting this man’s opinion is twofold. I’m glad to hear him say that success in human relations is all based upon sincerity. But it is even more to the point to hear him saying that it is so simple it is almost unbelievable. This is the principle that the Master-man was always insisting upon.

“Religion was everywhere encrusted with old crystallized rites and ceremonies which had quite lost their meaning for all but a very few people. Some said that the temple was God’s headquarters and that there He must be found, if at all. Others were equally sure that He was to be discovered in the sacred groves.

“But, said Jesus, God is a Spirit. And the direct course to Him was a simple recognition of His Fatherhood, our sonship, and the sure consciousness of this indissoluble bond. Indeed, the Nazarene came to believe that only in the ingenuous attitude of childhood could this fact be properly comprehended. ‘Except ye become as little children,’ said He, ‘ye shall not enter into His spiritual kingdom.’

“Equally simple were human relationships. The other man is my brother. If he wrongs me, he is still my brother. If he asks forgiveness, I must forgive him. If not, he is still my brother. When I hate him, I cannot love God, who is his Father as well as mine. Said the Galilean Teacher, if I damn my brother in unmeasured terms, I have done both him and myself and our common Father a grave injustice for which I deserve to be brought to book. But it is much worse that I should call my brother a fool, which reflects upon the dignity of his life and the value of his personality.

“If I would discipline myself to a proper understanding of all men, I must place myself in such a simple-hearted attitude toward them that if I am asked to walk a mile, I shall express willingness to walk two miles. If I am asked for my coat, I shall be willing to part also with my jacket. I may not have to do that in actual practice, but that must be my attitude. And when I have schooled my mind to look upon all men in this way, my own personality has its chance to find expression.

Personality III: Getting Past the Fear of God

by Ronald R Johnson

This excerpt is from the sermon, “Personality (Third Phase),” preached by Lloyd C. Douglas at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor on February 1, 1920. (In Sermons [5], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.):

“…we are rapidly tending toward a much more satisfactory and reasonable attitude toward God. Men began their thinking of Him by contemplating Him in fear. He was always angry, and they were always afraid. They, then, emphasized their awe of Him and gave themselves over to the invention of poor little superlatives concerning His greatness, thinking that He might be flattered by their praise into favoring them. Their only process of making Him great was to debase themselves, on the ground that the smaller they were, the greater He became.

“Then they began speaking of their love for Him; but it was rather difficult to associate the love-idea with the old fear-concept. Even today, when we fancy ourselves quite freed from most of the crude old terrors once indigenous to theological considerations, we still speak of Him with much reserve, and in hushed voices, usually adopting a tone employed solely for this purpose. And many an admonitory ‘Tut, tut!’ is directed toward small children by their parents when, out of their simple-hearted acceptance of the parental instructions that God is indeed their Father, they venture to play with Him a bit, or invite His interest in their small concerns.

“No, we think, that will not do. God is far too great to be spoken of in the same terms with our work or our play, or to be merry with us, though we do not find it at all incongruous to solicit His attendance upon our dismay, or a witness to our tears. We seem to have a notion that there is something inevitably sad about God.

“Of course, our better judgment tells us, when we stop to think about this matter calmly, that God is apparently much interested in the things we consider small, judging by the growing importance of the infinitesimally little things which only lately have come into being for us by the aid of the high-powered microscopes. And of course He must be interested in the forces and facts of life which make us merry and happy, else He would not have endowed us with the capacity for appreciating them and turning them to account.

“But it is hard to overcome race-memory of a God-concept — age-old — based on fear.

“Now, if this God-consciousness is ever to aid us in the discovery of ‘personality,’ we must leave off the old groveling relationship and stand erect, head up, confident and unafraid, when we contemplate Him; thus

[Douglas indents the following and puts it in quotes:]

“‘If He thought my life valuable enough to endow me with divine aspirations and longings that I cannot myself understand, the best that I can do by way of showing my appreciation is to act up to the part, and be His son, insofar as my capacities and my faith permit.’

“I do not flatter the artist by telling him that his best picture is a hopeless daub. Nor do I honor God by protesting that I, one of His human creatures, am a worthless worm of the dust. It is only as I glory in my heritage and express devout thanks for the supernal, that I find [Him] within me, that I realize what His Fatherhood means to the discovery of my own personality.”

Now, we can argue that Douglas didn’t fully appreciate the complexities of the idea of “fearing” God — and I don’t think he did fully appreciate them — but we mustn’t let that prevent us from grasping the very important point he is trying to make: that the idea of “fearing” God was never meant to prevent us from having a closer relationship with Him. That’s what Douglas is trying to convey. I’ll tell you more about his sermon in my next post.

Personality III: Making Sense of the Human Soul

by Ronald R Johnson

The title page from the sermon “Personality (Third Phase),” preached by Lloyd C Douglas at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor on 2/1/1920. In Sermons [5], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.

The following excerpt is from the sermon, “Personality (Third Phase),” preached by Lloyd C. Douglas at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor on February 1, 1920. (In Sermons [5], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.):

“In coming to what I shall call, purely for accommodation’s sake, the ‘Third Phase’ of this theme which we have been discussing lately, I am conscious that we have only scratched the surface of it. And probably the largest contribution I shall have made to this subject is to have proved, by the feebleness and sketchiness of my treatment of it, how tremendously large and important the matter really is. But if I shall have done little more than excite fresh interest in this vital fact which bears so significantly upon all the practical problems of human experience, the time we have given to it will have been well spent.

“Very briefly, we have adduced the following facts concerning ‘Personality.’

“However he may have come by it, every normal man is possessed of a distinct personality unlike any other. It is his by right of birth. It makes no difference when or where he is born, or of whom — he is unique in that there is but one of his kind, and he is that one.

“When, therefore, he speaks of his ambition to develop his personality, he means that he desires to discover his personality. In no sense is his personality to be likened to a machine which may be assembled or remodeled in the interest of increased efficiency or impaired to the point of uselessness by faulty manipulation. But it is rather to be considered as an organism which grows exactly as a seed grows into a plant, with possibilities for flowering and bearing fruit — but only one particular kind of flower, and one distinctive manner of fruit. Or, lacking suitable care and proper nourishment, eventually going the way of all starved and neglected organisms.

“Again, we noted some of the interesting facts relative to this uniqueness of the individual soul: its infinite longings, its unaccountable aspirations, and its grave concern about its destiny, all pointing to an origin quite above nature and to an inner urge inexplicable on natural grounds.

“It is not at all difficult for biology to explain the human brain as the inevitable product of the increasing demands which the evolving man-type has put upon the nervous system, culminating in a highly complicated nerve-ganglion housed in the skull. It is no less difficult to explain the heart as the natural product of a system of circulation requiring just such a power plant as this cardiac marvel.

“Moreover, when biology sits down beside sociology to discuss the development of human relationships on natural grounds, it is able to make some very plausible deductions about the achievement of such instincts as parental solicitude — maternal sacrifice, paternal courage, etc. — as merely demonstrating the law of race preservation (a principle also attested by certain beasts of the field and birds of the air). Biology may go further and endeavor to show that all chivalry, and the most beautiful and idealistic examples of romance, which bear fruit not only in classic story, art, and masterpiece of music but [also] in the everyday experience of mortals, are proofs only of such sex-attraction as is inexorably demanded by nature, seeking to insure the perpetuity of the human race.

“But, after all these theories have been spun out, ad infinitum, and checked up scientifically and agreed to by everybody, there still remains quite a sizable area of human character and conduct which refuses to be explained on any naturalistic hypothesis.

“How, for instance, certain social groups, at tremendous cost to themselves in privation, loneliness, and loss of everything humanly desirable, including the infraction of the age-old law of self-preservation, have suffered for an ideal whose realization involved no terrestrial rewards and promised no material gains whatsoever. How the very greatest of human leaders were men who not only forgot self, utterly, in pursuit of their ideal but thereby won universal approbation and immortality in the regard of their posterity, proving that humanity in the mass, however much it may lack the capacity for breaking little laws of nature, in order that it may obey the larger laws of the spirit nevertheless recognizes real greatness to be greatness of mind and soul.

“The only possible explanation of this curious fact resides in the ancient belief of men that the human soul contains a spark of the Divine Life. And since the soul is not a machine but an organism, it serves our thinking to speak of the Almighty God as our Father and of ourselves as the spiritual reproductions of his Master-mind. Now, this fact dignifies human life and exalts human personality.

“In this connection, it ought to be said that we are rapidly tending toward a much more satisfactory and reasonable attitude toward God…”

[More about that in my next post.]

Personality II: Reserve Power

by Ronald R Johnson

A page from the sermon “Personality (Second Phase),” preached by Lloyd C Douglas at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor on 1/25/1920. In Sermons [5], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.

It is Sunday, January 25, 1920, and Lloyd Douglas is still preaching his series on “Personality” at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor. (This is from Sermons [5], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.) Douglas says:

“Another desirable grace is Reserve.

“Having sold yourself to yourself and having gone out to market yourself, the very best advertising you can have is satisfied customers.

“There is a type of personality that is good for a short haul but will not stand up under an endurance test. He makes a dreadful mistake who, in an effort to impress his personality on other people, rushes at them with much palaver and a great noise. He gives the impression of having all his stock in the front window. It may be entirely untrue. He may have a great deal in reserve; only he doesn’t act like it.

“People of strong personality always give one the impression of having a tremendous amount of power that is stored against a correspondingly great demand.

“The bubbler, who is always in a state of effervescence, may have a great deal of energy laid back for a rainy day, but it isn’t sure that he has to the casual observer. At all events, don’t feel that this kind of human kinetics that is forever pip-pipping at the safety-valve is to be imitated.

“Of course, if you are a natural bubbler and can’t help it, bubble on. We don’t worry much about your future. You’ll get along, and the world will be a whole lot better off for your having been in it.

“But, all things considered, if somehow you can give out the impression that you have a little spiritual energy in repose — secreted somewhere about you — it helps greatly to make other people think that your personality is strong. And a very good way to make people think that you have it is to have it. In fact, not many people will think that you have it unless you do have it.

“We all need to cultivate Enthusiasm. But that virtue has been sufficiently extolled in our time and needs no advocate.

“Advice can be had, in plenty, to spread your canvas to the breeze; but do not forget also to carry a little ballast. It makes a longer voyage, and a safer one. Don’t talk more than you think, if you would develop some reserve power. Don’t, for the sake of seeming animated and enthusiastic, become a mere chatterbox. Don’t let it be suspected, as you talk, that your voice is in advance of your thoughts, or that, somehow, your mouth and your mind had become disengaged. Keep something back.

“Before you offer your opinions, take them out and look them over carefully. A little practice of this kind makes for that reserve power we were talking about. Mostly we refer to it as poise.

“I am sure it could be shown that they have most in reserve, and are best poised spiritually, who have deliberately planned to give some time, when it could be snatched from other duties, for reflection upon very serious considerations.

“Like ‘Destiny.’ Whence — whither — why?

“The problems of our beginnings and our ends; our future, our ambitions, and our goal; our strivings, our longings, and our consecrations — think of them in whatsoever terms you will, they are, in their last analysis, considerations which throw us back upon God.”

[Then he quotes excerpts from the poem, “Each In His Own Tongue,” by William Herbert Carruth. It’s not clear to me why he chose to recite parts of this poem, but it does address the big questions of life and includes the line, “Some call it Evolution/And others call it God.”] He continues:

“It will give you personal power to have, in reserve, some deductions of your own which have led you irresistibly into the presence of Him who is your Father.

“This is no idle fancy but an attested fact, that ‘they who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.”

Personality II: Graces of Character

by Ronald R Johnson

“Now, there are a few graces of character which are possible to some degree in every life and worthy of mention in a discussion of this topic. Not for anything would I suggest that you attempt imitation of such graces as exhibited in others, for that would be a flat denial of our course of procedure. But it is well to keep in mind what these graces are, and then to try to express your own thought of them, in your own particular way.

“The first is Optimism.

“We have been fairly well fed up on that principle of late; and perhaps my mention of it is only carrying coals to Newcastle. It has not been long since we were so depressed of spirit that we took the smile cure as a remedy for our dismal mood. Everywhere we went, somebody was coaxing us to ‘pack up our troubles in our old kit-bag and smile.’ The effect of it was very good. Some people were induced to smile who had almost lost the knack. The thing became epidemic, and has, by no means, lost its influence upon our thinking. All things considered, a smile will carry you farther than a frown wherever you go, and with whomsoever you have dealings.

“Just now, however, I am thinking about an inner, permanent optimism that is deep-rooted in a fixed philosophy of life.

“There must be a very definite plan in the mind of the Creator, for the development of mankind. Apparently we are moving, as a race, toward some goal which He thinks is for our good. Then we must be on the way up, for surely He would not plan for the disaster of His own creation. I think that statement will stand, without argument.

“If, then, we are on the way up, every man has within him that which, if rightly used, will contribute toward this achievement. It will do me no harm in the development of my personality to keep saying to myself, quite frequently, ‘We are on the way up!’

“Now, this belief, not unlike the doctrine concerning the brotherhood of man, is much easier to talk about than to accept as a practical fact. There are a great many people in the world whose general conduct fails to reveal even a scintilla of interest in the altus [Latin for ‘high’], to say nothing of the altior [higher]. But we must ascribe this to faulty training, unfortunate environment, and peculiar combinations of ruinous circumstances.

“Some men seem to love darkness rather than light, but it is because they have had so little light that they do not understand its value. We must cultivate something of the sympathy of Him ‘who, looking upon the multitude, was moved with compassion, for he saw them as sheep without a shepherd.’ Whatever depressing sights we see — of human need and organized iniquity — it is our business to understand that, as a race, we are on the way up.

“Part of my life-task is to demonstrate my belief in this theory, in such manner as to call out an expression of it in the lives of others. They want to think so, too. Some of them have met discouragements that were entirely too much for them. But, by instinct, they still want to believe that, in spite of conditions, life is tending upward.

“If this faith is strong enough in your heart, it will show up in the tone of your voice, in the light of your eye, in every word you speak and every act you perform. People will like you. They will think of you with warm appreciation. For you are helping them to hold on to an idea which they desire to have.

“Mostly it works out this way:

“Your belief that we, as a race, are en route to higher attainments gives you faith in the natural willingness of humanity to become party to this upward course. I think it makes a great deal of difference in the development of personality, whether one assumes that humanity would prefer to go up or down.

“Once you assume that every normal man has that within him which makes him desire to rise, your contacts with him inspire him to take a step upward. He likes you for that. You needn’t preach to him about the importance of his being his very best. Not at all. If you have this idea imbedded in your personality, he will see it reflected in your manner. He likes you, because you help him to find himself. You impute your ideals to him which he very greatly desires to have.

“This mental habit of yours makes you on the alert to discern the peculiar points of merit in another man, and you address yourself to the man he might be if he gave these peculiar points of merit a chance to develop. You pick them out and hold them up before his eyes so he can see them. He likes you for that. He is a bigger man, everyway considered, when he is in your presence. Your personality hasn’t overshadowed his or put him at a disadvantage. That would make him hate or fear you. But you have a trick of calling out the very finest attributes he possesses. You can’t do that unless you are on the alert to discover, in every man, the forces which will contribute toward their upward trend.

“If you wish to test this out in your own experience, just mentally call the roll of the people you know whom you think of as having powerful and pleasing personalities and you will find that, in every case, they are persons in whose presence you are at your very best and from whose presence you go with a light step and a sense of self-value. This is easily explained on the ground that such persons are able to recognize, at a glance, your distinctive points of merit and address themselves to your highest potentiality.

“And if you would have this priceless grace of character in your life so that you may address yourself to the potential best in other people, you may have it at the cost of patiently building into your subconsciousness the belief that there is, in all men, that which, if properly utilized, will bring us, as a race, up to the higher ground.

“Plenty of people are to be found who are ready and willing to ‘weep with them that weep,’ who have neglected to learn how to ‘rejoice with them that do rejoice.’ Blessed are they who find time to mingle their tears with the seriously afflicted. The world is very heavily in their debt. But it is a great art to discover in other people what things are promoting their happiness, and share their pleasure with them.

“A very young friend of mine said to me the other day, ‘See my new shoes!’ And I felicitated her upon the shoes, as she knew I would. And she was pleased — with the shoes. I doubt not she considered me rather stupid not to have noticed the shoes without having my attention called to them. If I had been quite on the alert, I should have remarked about the shoes before being invited so to do. That would have been a red-letter day for me in her estimation.

“Now, men and women are, in more ways than this, just grownup children, eager to have recognition of their attainments and merits. The person who is quick to observe all the good and gracious and joy-producing facts in the life of his friend — well, he never needs worry much about how to express his personality. And, as to success, he can have about anything he desires.”

Douglas went into this a little more deeply, and I’ll tell you about that in my next post.

Personality II: Handicaps

by Ronald R Johnson

This is from Week 2 of a three-week series on “Personality” by Lloyd C Douglas at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor, preached on January 25, 1920. (This is from Sermons [5], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.)

Regarding the expression of one’s personality:

“Some of you are aware of certain physical defects which militate against the satisfactory expression of your personality. And they are defects, too, which will seriously handicap you. It need not be so, but it is so, because you have thus decreed it, and that is a matter in which you have it all to say. The chances are that what you consider to be a serious defect is but a feature of that personality which you have not yet discovered, and that, instead of being a worrisome liability which you have not yet discovered, it is a distinct asset. Or it might be an asset if you willed it so.

“A many may lose an arm, but that doesn’t necessarily make a cripple of him unless he thinks so. Whenever he stops thinking of himself as a cripple, he stops being a cripple. I know of a case of a young man who arrived at a consciousness of his own personality and his value to himself and the world only by way of losing a leg. He goes about supporting his body on a crutch, but his mind isn’t on crutches, as some of you who heard him recently at the Des Moines Student Convention would be willing to testify.

“I know another man who wasn’t anybody until he had fed all the fingers of his left hand into a planing-mill where he worked as a mechanic. He did not become a cripple. He became one of the most influential lawyers in this country.

“Here is a young man who fears he may never be able to express his personality because he is only five feet three in height. Napoleon was five feet two.

“Here is a person who is conscious of being extremely unbeautiful of countenance. He is ugly. So was Lincoln. This homely and discouraged brother can worry about his appearance if he wants to, and thus have good cause for worry. Or he can make his homeliness an asset, until not for anything in the world would he permit a change of face. He will come to feel about it as Montaigne did when he ordered the artist who was preparing to do his portrait to paint him with all his warts. He knew that a wartless Montaigne wouldn’t be Montaigne at all. The warts were part of his personality.

“Here is a man who stammers. He thinks he is doomed. So he is, if he thinks that. Some of the most delightfully attractive people who have ever graced human society have stuttered their way through life, not only unimpaired by this apparent defect but actually making their peculiarity a part of the personality which became beloved.

“One could go on, multiplying illustrations by the hour of people who turned their obstacles into stepping stones. And I suppose it would be even more voluminous if one were to amass the literature to be had concerning those who have permitted their apparent defects to eat, like a cancer, into their very souls, making them diffident, morose, self-conscious, and ineffective — not to speak of their unthinkable wretchedness. One man believes that, if he were taller, he might command attention; another would be gayer; another would be wittier; another would weigh fifty pounds more. Why, if mere avoir dupois is his standard of success, he wouldn’t succeed if he weighed a ton. Verily, the life is more than meat.

“So, we have to get back again to the principle that if one is to express his personality, he must express his personality, just as it has been bequeathed to him, rejoicing that he is exactly as he is, for it is the sum total of him that makes him an individual.

“Get that fixed in your mind. Stop wishing you were somebody else. Stop trying to act like somebody else. Be yourself.

“The girl who tampers with her eyebrows in the hope that she may look a little more like all the other girls who have tampered with their eyebrows has quite a large distance to go before she discovers her personality. Obviously, she doesn’t want a personality, since she is so bent upon destroying what little there is.

“Be yourself. You’re really so much nicer that way.”

Personality II: Fatherhood and Brotherhood

by Ronald R Johnson

Title page of the sermon, “Personality (Second Phase),” preached by Lloyd C Douglas at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor on 1/25/1920. In Sermons [5], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.

It is Week 2 of a three-week series on “Personality” by Lloyd C Douglas at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor. It is January 25, 1920. (This is from Sermons [5], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.)

“Here is a man,” says Douglas, “anxious to make a place for himself in the estimation of society; eager to find that one task which he may perform better than any other task; hopeful of leaving an impress of his influence upon his generation — what is it, in his case, but a simple matter of salesmanship?

“And the article for sale? Himself. That is really all he has to market: himself. And before he goes out to create a demand for himself, he must first sell himself to himself. It will be extremely difficult for him to make anyone else believe that he is worthy of regard unless he himself thinks so. It will be next to impossible for him to express his personality in his contacts with other people until he has become conscious of the value and importance of his personality.

“Now, last Sunday (as you may recall) we spent most of our time investigating the reasons one may properly hold for believing in the worth of oneself. We began our thinking by predicating of ourselves divine sonship. I do not intend to review that argument at this time but only to add a few sentences to it. Whoever is conscious of the fact that he is, in a very real sense, a spiritual reproduction of the Infinite and directly accountable to the Infinite for the use he makes of his personality has that in his life which guarantees him power in the exact proportion to his faith in this fact. If he is but dimly, vaguely, fleetingly conscious of this fact (as, for example, in such moments as the present one, when the idea is forced upon his attention), then he receives a dim, vague, fleeting stimulus to realize this personal power which accrues through an occasional recognition of his supreme inheritance.

“If, however, every morning of his life, upon waking, it is a settled habit of his to fix his first conscious thought upon the hope that he may, through the day, walk worthily of the vocation whereunto he is called, by right of high birth, keenly sensible of his trusteeship of a personality for which he is to be held strictly to account; if, at night, his last conscious thought before he sleeps (the thought which he stows away in his subconsciousness to dominate its operations during the hours when active consciousness retires from the field in favor of the deeper, permanent self), if that thought is a mental recognition of the bond between his spirit and the Divine Giver and Keeper of his spirit, then this fact of his supreme importance as a child of God gradually becomes automatic in its effect and controls his life without his willing it so to do.

“In his case, the power of this spiritual contact is no longer a mere sporadic life, such as the heart may sense in a moment of high inspiration, when temporarily exposed to the dazzlingly bright possibilities of a God-led personality, but constitutes a steady pull, good for all weathers and in all climates, and guaranteed to keep him poised in the midst of all tests, discouragements, and temporary losses.

“It was an easy and logical step, in our argument, to pass from the fact of our divine sonship to the correlated fact of our human brotherhood. The universal brotherhood of all men, everywhere. Now, ‘universal’ is a very large word, but when we use it here, we must take it as it stands: all-inclusive. If all men are not my brothers, then God is not the Father of any of us. If God is your Father and mine, ehtn He is also the Father of everybody — our fellows and our foes, our countrymen and foreigners — everybody, white, red, yellow, brown and black, clean or dirty, cultured or crude, educated or benighted.

“Of course, we talk glibly about our belief in the brotherhood of man, but when we consider it in its practical outworkings, it is an idea entirely too big for any man to absorb or accept in a moment. It requires patient cultivation if one is to build it into one’s thinking so that the effect of it will be manifest in one’s personality. It implies that no matter how unattractive another person may be to me, he has, within him, that which sets him apart from all other men: a personality which I am bound to respect if I respect my own.

“This, I insist, is a hard saying. It means that when I see a dense crowd of men, untrained of mind and uncouth of manner, pouring out through the open gates of a great factory at noon, leaden of eye and dull of feature, I must recognize in them my spiritual brothers, each one of whom, though perhaps only very dimly conscious of the fact, possesses a personality like unto which there is not, in all the world, another. There isn’t a square inch of skin on his body that has a duplicate in the universe. He, too, was made for a distinctive purpose. If conditions make it difficult for him to realize that end, that fact has nothing to do with my appreciation of the dignity of his personality.

“Now, I am reiterating all this with as much insistence as I can because the development of personality hangs upon it, and because there is little use going into details until we have mastered this rudiment. I cannot properly express my own personality until I am ready to concede that every other man also possesses a personality which is as much entitled to respect as my own.

“Once that fact is firmly fixed in your mind, your contacts with all other people are so satisfactory to them, so flattering to them (if you will permit that phrase) that you instantly win their confidence and respect. Whoever he may be, he knows, by the manner in which I take his hand and meet his eyes with mine, he knows exactly what his status is, in my estimation. And there is no practiced trick of manner, no artificial energy of hand-clasp, no pumped-up enthusiasm of salutary smile, that will deceive him as to my thought of him.”

All of this was really just a recapitulation of what Douglas had said the previous week. In my next post, I’ll tell you where he took the subject from here.

Prohibition Begins

by Ronald R Johnson

The front page of the New York Tribune, Saturday, January 17, 1920, proclaims: “American Nation Permanently ‘Dry.'”

I’ve been telling you about the sermon series Lloyd Douglas preached on the subject of “Personality” at the University of Michigan in January 1920, and in my last several posts I shared his message from Sunday morning, January 18, 1920. Although I haven’t mentioned it, that weekend was on everyone’s radar at the time, and certainly must have been important to the students who filled the balcony of the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor, where Douglas was pastor.

For that was the beginning of the Prohibition Era in America.

According to the Eighteenth Amendment, “the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.”

“The prohibitionist cause had always been linked to anti-immigrant sentiment,” writes Lisa McGurr in her book, The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2016). During the Great War (WWI) “the nation’s large brewing companies, overwhelmingly in the hands of men of German descent, were further stigmatized as ‘enemies’ and ‘traitors.’ The Anti-Saloon League shamelessly pandered to the hostility to all things German to win the amendment’s passage. The league identified the antiliquor crusade as the ultimate patriotic act. The time had come, wrote one pamphleteer, for a split between ‘unquestioned and undiluted American patriots and slackers and enemy sympathizers.’ The most patriotic act of any legislature or citizen was to ‘abolish the un-American, pro-German, crime-producing, food-wasting, youth-corrupting, home wrecking, treasonable liquor traffic'” (pp. 33-34).

McGurr continues: “With the war effort and wartime patriotism at full throttle, congressional majorities well in excess of the two-thirds requirement submitted the Eighteenth Amendment to the states on December 22, 1917…. On September 18, 1918, Congress introduced a plan for wartime Prohibition at the time that many states were considering ratification [of the Constitutional Amendment]. In doing so, it once again linked the war against alcohol to the war effort. By January 1919, ratification was complete…. World War I sped the process for the achievement of the Eighteenth Amendment to an extent unexpected by even its most avid supporters” (p. 35).

“The House passed a vigorous enforcement code on July 23, 1919” and “the Senate followed suit on September 5.” It was called “The National Prohibition Act, better known as the Volstead Act, after its author, Minnesota congressman Andrew Volstead” (p. 36). It was to go into effect on Friday night, January 16, 1920, at midnight, making alcohol illegal in America as of Saturday, January 17.

Lloyd Douglas’s daughter Virginia tells this story in her book, The Shape of Sunday, about one of her father’s weekly meetings with his music director, Earl V. Moore:

“Always after the Rotary Club luncheon at the Michigan Union, Daddy and Earl Moore had a little conference to discuss how things had gone the previous Sunday and review their plans for the following one. One time in 1920 they met as usual and Mr. Moore handed Daddy the program of anthems, hymns, and solos which were being prepared by the choir for the next Sunday,” which happened to be January 18.

“Daddy’s eyes ran down the list and suddenly he raised a horrified hand to his head. ‘Earl! You can’t do this to me.’

“Earl Moore’s face expressed complete bewilderment.

“‘Don’t you know,’ groaned Daddy, ‘what happens at midnight this coming Saturday?’

“Mr. Moore thought and then remembered that at the stroke of twelve that night Prohibition was to go into effect in the United States. The solo he had chosen for Jimmie Hamilton to sing was ‘Ho! Everyone That Thirsteth'” (p. 106).

I can well imagine the balcony rocking with laughter as the University of Michigan students reacted to that!

One more comment before I leave this. There’s a passage in Douglas’s novel Magnificent Obsession that went over my head the first time I read it. It’s in Chapter Three, when Tom Masterson is trying to describe to Joyce Hudson the change that has come over their friend Bobby Merrick. Merrick got in a boating accident while drunk, and the aftermath made him a new man. The chapter opens with this:

‘You say he’s different,’ pursued Joyce interestedly. ‘How do you mean — different? Sober, perhaps?’

Masterson chuckled.

‘Don’t be a fool!’ she growled. ‘You know very well what I meant.’

A page or two later, Masterson tells her:

‘…I just kidded him a little, but he didn’t take it nicely…. ‘What’s the big idea?’ I said. ‘Gone over to Andy Volstead?’

‘What did he say?’ demanded Joyce as the pause lengthened.

‘He said, ‘Hell, no!’ and then mumbled down in his throat that he’d gone over to Nancy Ashford.’

Nancy Ashford is the superintendent of the hospital, and she has talked him into turning his life around and making something of himself. But it’s just like Lloyd Douglas to make a joke out of the Volstead Act — something that religious people, by and large, took very seriously.

Personality I: Are You a ‘Traveling Menagerie’?

by Ronald R Johnson

A page from the sermon, “Personality (First Phase),” preached by Lloyd C Douglas at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor on 1/18/1920. In Sermons [5], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.

The following is from the first of a three-part series on “Personality,” by Lloyd C. Douglas at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor, on January 18, 1920. (In Sermons [5], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.):

“Now… let us sum up what we have been considering this morning as the first phase of this vitally important subject.

“No man needs hope for success in any human endeavor unless he possesses and expresses ‘personality.’ His first step is to become conscious of his personality. His awareness of the high dignity of his own person as an individual (not merely a legal citizen and a voter) but an individual, exactly like unto whom there is not, never has been, and never will be another; a child of God, stamped with an image divine — all this makes him confident of his capacities and eager to achieve his rightful destiny. Thus he becomes conscious of his personality. Then, character-growth begins.

“As he proceeds from strength to strength in this consciousness of his high and holy station as the trustee and custodian of this particular soul — like unto which there is not another soul in the whole universe — he finds in himself a growing interest in life’s real and permanent values and an increasing distaste [for] and distrust of the sordid, the petty, the inconsequential, and the mean. He becomes fine-fibered! His horizon recedes. His eyes are lit with clearer vision. His ears are sensitized to myriad voices in nature, of whose existence he had previously been unaware. He finds strange magic in words formerly without meaning, such as the natural eye hath not seen, and the natural ear hath not heard; the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him; for He reveals them to us only by His Spirit.

“Again: with this Godward relationship established, he becomes a citizen of the world — all men his brothers; and in that fraternal attitude, he begins to express his newfound personality. This is no vague theory. This is a law of life, certified to and attested by the careers of all eminent men whose names are familiar to the pens and brushes and chisels of those who grant earthly immortality to the great.”

[Anticipating next week’s sermon:]

“As to the practical processes by which personality may most effectively be expressed, this must be reserved for further treatment in the succeeding addresses of this series.

“Those processes deal with the general principles of ‘personality-expression’ as demonstrated in the lives of useful and celebrated people. I hope you may decide to follow on through with this subject…”

But “without these primary considerations [that he has spoken about today], no man can best express his personality. He can imitate, yes. He can imitate more or less successfully the most gracious and pleasing characteristics observed in other people. He can plagiarize their personalities; ape their manners; repeat their bon mots; retail their ideas for whatever they will fetch; and feed on the crumbs that fall from their neighbors’ tables. But, until a man finds himself, he is a mere counterfeit of some other person whom he admires, or a composite of a group of personalities whose lives he envies. And, all the time, if he should set out upon a tour of self-discovery, he would find within his own life that one individual personally before whom the gates of opportunity might be flung open wide, all along the way.

“Many a man — if entirely honest — when asked who he is, would be obliged to reply:

“‘Well, sir, my name is Jones — John Jones. But I am really just a kind of human mosaic in which various and sundry fragments of other characters have been rather neatly pieced together.

“‘I have tried pretty well to affect a big, deep voice like that of my friend James Robinson. Of course, occasionally in moments of excitement I forget and pipe out a few tones in an untrained voice that probably belongs to the self I might have been, but ordinarily I speak like Robinson. I laugh like William Brown, or as nearly like that as possible. My little tricks of gesture, facial expression, posture, etc., I have just gathered up a bit at a time, from goodness-knows-where. I should hate to have to account for the original sources of them all. Aside from these scraps of what appears to be my personality, the rest of me has just been blown together by the breeze.'” [Douglas carries this even farther, having the person admit that he picked up the saying, “What do you know about that?” somewhere along the way and now says it in response to almost anything, varying it sometimes as “I’ll say it is!” or “I’ll say they do!” or “I’ll say it wasn’t!” or, if all else fails, “I’ll say!”]

Douglas concludes: “Now, you can be a traveling menagerie like that if you wish, lugging about with you little pieces of other personalities, but you need never hope to be anything but an echo…. Or you can, by resolute search, find yourself, and when you have found yourself and have learned to express yourself, you may have whatever you wish, for all things are yours.”

Personality I: A Firm Handshake is No Substitute for This

by Ronald R Johnson

“I think it can be shown that the discovery of personality is just a matter of realizing one’s proper relationships.”

[This is from the first of a three-part series on “Personality,” by Lloyd C. Douglas at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor, on January 18, 1920. (In Sermons [5], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.)]

“Who and what am I? An animal that has been trained by ages of culture and restraint to observe certain social usages imposed upon me by contemporaneous society? An animal that has learned to eat with a fork and sit on a chair — and refrain from snatching food out of others’ hands?

“Well, if I am that, I had better buy the book on ‘personality’ [see the previous post] and learn a few more tricks of pose, gesture, stride, and the proper way to ask for a raise. But once I become convinced that I am considerably more than a trained animal — nothing else or less than a child of God, stamped with an image divine — then a new field of conquest and opportunity opens which has no barriers or limits except such as I raise myself.”

Paraphrasing I John 3:2, Douglas continues: “Sons of God — and while it doth not yet appear what we shall be, we know that when He shall have become clearly manifest to us, we shall be like Him. Now, a man who believes that, with all his heart, simply cannot think of himself in terms of deprecation.

“I am conscious that you are saying, ‘Oh yes, theoretically that is all very well; but isn’t it a practical fact that some of the most attractive and effective ‘personalities’ in the world are possessed by persons who give but very little attention to their divine sonship?’ I freely admit this, if one is obliged to judge by outward seeming. Some very potent and pleasing ‘personalities’ are in the custody of certain men who, from all appearances, have no religious interests, tagged and labeled as such. But, if you will take the trouble to investigate, you will find, deeply imbedded in the early training of such characters, that which exalted the importance of a man to himself.

“Moreover, he judges of this matter superficially who refuses to predicate God-consciousness of a man merely because that man boasts no oral creed and has never subscribed to theological postulates. The point I am trying to make is: that no man can discover and develop his personality until he has first become convinced of the value and importance of his personality. He only sets out in search of it after he has determined that it is worth the quest.

“Therefore, I believe that this simple faith in God’s Divine Paternity of the human soul is the most stimulating thought that can be relied upon to motivate and energize the life of the individual.

“Now, the second step in the discovery and development of ‘personality’ is similar to the first, in that it, also, is a matter of relationships. This second step, indeed, is corollary to the first.

“So soon as a man decides that God is his Father, his relations with other men are automatically established on a basis of brotherhood. All men are his brothers. They are dissimilar as to minor points but possessed of a host of common interests and mutual ties.

“Just for example: one of the most coveted graces of character, in which ‘personality’ may be said to speak for itself strikingly, is an easy affability toward a stranger. Who does not envy the man who, in the first instant of meeting, is able to present himself with such cordiality that he at once inspires respect, confidence, and admiration?

“What is the secret of this? Well, your man greets the stranger as a brother, not with his guard up, bristling with suspicion and a ‘show-me’ air, but as if they two had a very great deal in common. And the stranger may remark to himself, ‘What a delightful personality that man possesses!’

“Why, to be sure he has. He didn’t have to consult a book on personality, either, under the chapter, ‘How to Greet a Stranger.’ For, having accepted the principle of universal brotherhood, he needed only to follow the natural inclinations of his heart in order to present himself attractively and with a cordiality that inspired respect and confidence.

“So long as he is subconsciously defending his own interests, mentally distrustful of the other, he cannot express ‘personality’ at all. And the book will not aid him while he persists in a self-centered state of mind.

“Let me cite a few cases in point. Much has been said about the hand-clasp and how it expresses ‘personality’ — and it does. A man extends you a limp, clammy, flabby, flaccid hand, and you shake it as much or as little as you think the case justifies, and put it down, saying to yourself, ‘He has no personality.’

“But suppose he really wants to achieve personality. How is he to be advised? Shall he be taught how to shake hands? Will that solve his problem? Let him be taught, then. Suppose the next time he meets you, he grips your fingers and pumps away like a congressman home on furlough. Do you say to yourself, ‘Ah, he has personality’? Not at all. Indeed, you are rather shocked at the incongruous. He is nobody in every respect except that he is able to give a fair imitation of a man of ‘personality’ when he shakes hands. He has been treated, by somebody, for a symptom. His disease rages on, unabated.

“What, after all, is his trouble? Well, he is living a centripetal life; other men are not his brothers; he is a thing apart, unrelated and unobligated. He has walled himself in, possibly not by a fixed resolution to do so, but he is walled in! He meets you. He puts out his hand for you to shake. He thinks he is conferring a favor upon you by letting you shake it. He isn’t especially interested. He knows that when you have shaken it all you care to, you will quit and then he can have it back. He notes your smile of salutation and observes that you are glad to meet him. He, too, is glad — not glad to meet you but glad that your meeting him has given you such obvious pleasure.

“Every conscious thought and subconscious inclination of his revolves around himself, describing a very little orbit because he is a very little man. Now, you can teach him how to shake hands, if you care to spend the time — just as you can teach a dog to shake hands — but you haven’t corrected his real difficulty. He has no ‘personality’; that is to say, he expresses no ‘personality’ until he discovers the relation he sustains to other people, by virtue of their all having a Father in common; or, lacking belief in a common Father, nevertheless resolves that he is closely related to all the rest of humankind.

“Take another case. Here is a man who is concerned only with his own line of work; makes wheelbarrows, we will say. Talks of nothing else. Doesn’t know anything else. Mention some other matter of human interest and the only effect it has on his imagination is to remind him of something connected with the production of wheelbarrows. Get him out of his wheelbarrow and he is helpless.

“What is to be advised in his case? Think you that it will solve this man’s problem to go to him in a spirit of undoubted candor and command him, in the name of society, to let up about his wheelbarrows? Oh, no; that will only deprive him of the power of speech.

“He is just spinning around himself, that is all. He can’t be anybody until he quits that; and the only thing that will stop his ingrowing ego is a brand-new appraisal of his fraternal relations to other men. He must become a brother or remain a clod. For him there is no middle ground.”