Douglas’s Regret

by Ronald R Johnson (www.ronaldrjohnson.com)

While still in North Manchester, Indiana, Lloyd Douglas wrote a book called More Than a Prophet. It’s a hard book to categorize. Although he considered it fiction, it wasn’t a novel, and it certainly wasn’t anything like the novels he would write later in life. It seems more like a prose poem.

It’s about John the Baptist… before he was born. That’s right. Although there is no other hint anywhere in Douglas’s writings or sermons that he believed that we humans pre-existed before our earthly lives, he does seem to have believed that John the Baptist did. Or at least he believed it when he wrote this book. In this story, the pre-existent John is actually an angel, and he volunteers to become a human in order to prepare the way for Christ. It’s a highly imaginative work, and in places the language is quite lovely. It’s also surprising that some of the more seasoned ministers, to whom he sent a copy, didn’t chafe at its theological implications; for this story says that the pre-existent John was an angel who almost joined forces with Satan, and came to earth to atone for his sin.

Here’s the review I posted about it on Amazon a number of years ago:

Potential readers should be aware that this book is unlike any of the novels for which Lloyd Douglas is famous. It was published more than twenty years before his bestsellers, when he was newly graduated from Wittenberg College’s divinity school. It is of historic interest because it was written just before he committed his life to an updating of the faith, to meet the demands of the modern age. There is nothing modern in this book, and there is very little in it that is even of earthly interest. The hero of the story is an angel, and much of the action occurs in the heavens. All the dialogue is in Elizabethan English.

Nevertheless, there is something wondrous about Douglas’s narrative voice in this book. It has a strange cadence, like poetry. The landscape of the story is also more grand and sweeping than in any of his later novels, since it takes us beyond the material world. And it is fascinating to read his account of what happens to the devil and his army of mutinous angels – this from an author who, later on, was quite passionate about denying the existence of a devil. If you think you know Lloyd Douglas, this slender book is full of surprises.

It is a difficult book to read, however, and most readers would be best advised to avoid it. But for those who respect the mind of Lloyd Douglas and want to trace his evolution as a religious thinker and as a popular writer, it may be well worth the effort.

Reviewed November 3, 2008 on Amazon

When Douglas was unsuccessful at finding a publisher for the book, he borrowed some money and printed 1000 copies, optimistic that he could sell them himself. He was a good salesman in other respects, but he never sold more than 500 copies of the book, and he ended up lugging them around from one parsonage to another over the course of his ministry. It became one of the great regrets of his life, most of all because he was unable to repay the debt. It wasn’t until he got his first royalty check from Magnificent Obsession (in 1929) that he was finally able to pay back the person who had loaned him the money.

Years after its publication, he gave his daughter Betty a copy and wrote this inscription: “More Than a Prophet was less than a profit.” In their book, The Shape of Sunday, Betty and her sister Virginia admit, with a great sense of guilt, that they were unable to read the book all the way through.

Having said all this, however, I found the book fascinating. I gave it 3 out of 5 stars on Amazon because I wanted to warn potential buyers that it’s not a typical Lloyd Douglas novel. But it does provide a snapshot of his spiritual state at that time in his life, and of his theology. Combined with his sermons and the magazine articles that he would soon begin to publish in abundance, this book presents us with a super-serious young man who thought deeply, and with great originality, about things that most Christians take for granted. He especially felt the need to understand – and then to explain to others – some of the Bible’s more enigmatic passages. In fact, this tendency (to focus on problematic scripture verses) was the driving force behind his writing, his speaking, and his career decisions in the years to come.

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Moving Up In the World

by Ronald R Johnson (www.ronaldrjohnson.com)

When the young Lloyd Douglas and his wife Besse moved from North Manchester, Indiana to Lancaster, Ohio in the summer of 1905, it seemed like they had stepped into a larger world. The towns were a little over 200 miles apart, but the life that Lancaster offered them had many more opportunities.

For one thing, the people in North Manchester had known Douglas as a boy; despite his drive and energy, it was hard for him to recreate himself. Lancaster gave him a fresh start, and he took advantage of it.

North Manchester was a town of 2,500 people; Lancaster had 10,000 residents, and it was a little less than 40 miles southeast of Columbus, the state capital. Although the map below shows how the area looks today, with highways that didn’t exist at the time, we can still see that it was a more populous area with many more social opportunities than Douglas had had in Indiana.

Speaking of social opportunities, when Douglas was installed as pastor at the First English Lutheran Church in Lancaster, the guest speaker was Frank Garland, Synod President and pastor of a large Lutheran Church in Dayton. Douglas did a fine job of networking while in Lancaster, but Garland himself ended up being an extremely helpful contact, as we will see later.

One family in particular formed lifelong bonds with Douglas: the Vorys Family. Arthur, the father, had an important position in state government, and his four sons learned a lot from Douglas in their catechism classes with him. Arthur went on to form a law firm with three other partners, and his son Webb Vorys took leadership of the firm a generation later. The firm is still active today.

During his time at Lancaster, Douglas was approached by Milton Valentine, the editor of the Lutheran Observer, to write articles for that paper. Douglas didn’t just honor the editor’s request; he wrote articles that stood out.

While in Lancaster, Besse gave birth to their two daughters, Betty and Virginia.

Douglas ramped up his public speaking, crisscrossing the region to give graduation addresses and other speeches. At his own church, he started an innovative Men’s Group that brought in a younger crowd. He spoke at the nearby YMCA (when it was still largely a religious institution) and became a favorite among the young men there. He was even instrumental in getting the city of Lancaster to create its first hospital.

It was just the kind of place that gave Douglas a chance to show what he could do. Over the next several posts, I’ll go into more detail about his accomplishments there.

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Greatness Trying to Break Out

by Ronald R Johnson (www.ronaldrjohnson.com)

“Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?”

That was the text of Lloyd Douglas’s sermon at Grace Lutheran Church in Muscatine, Iowa (USA), sometime in the spring or summer of 1905. They were considering calling him as pastor, and they ended up doing so; but he turned them down. He was on his way to bigger and better things than they could offer him in small-town Iowa.

His sermon topic, taken from John 1:46, says it all. He had spent the last two years as the pastor of another small-town church in North Manchester, Indiana, and he was ready for a break-out.

“Nazareth,” he said, “is for us whatever fetters and binds. It may be a town; it may be poverty; may be disease; may be the one black stain on the escutcheon of a family. Nazareth may be a long vista of years when education was denied; may be an occupation, hated and scorned.”

It was an odd choice of topic, for he was speaking to people in a little town in Iowa, and for Douglas, who had always hoped to make his mark on the larger society, this place was a backwater. It’s strange that he even accepted the invitation, knowing that it was for the purpose of calling him to be their pastor. But it’s even stranger that he stood before them and hinted that they were living in a modern-day Nazareth. He was always trying to reach young people, and it almost seems like he was saying to some imaginary boy or girl in the pews, “Don’t lose hope. I grew up like you, but I’m moving on… and so can you!” His sermon was not aimed at those who were complacent; it was meant for the restless ones in his audience – people just like himself.

For even though he did (for whatever reason) make the trip back to Iowa (he had served as a student pastor at a church in Des Moines in 1902), he was even at that moment being wooed by another congregation in Lancaster, Ohio. This, too, was a small-town church, but it was close to Columbus (a larger metropolitan area that was also the state capital), and it was growing. Douglas wanted to contribute to that growth. But until he got a solid offer from Lancaster, he felt he needed to keep the poor souls of Muscatine, Iowa, on the hook. And that is the only reason I can give for the fact that he was now, on this Friday evening, preaching to them about how boring it was to “come from Nazareth.”

But whatever his listeners thought the sermon meant, or however they might have applied his message to their own lives, it is clear how Douglas applied it to himself. He had been born and raised in Nazareth, but he was determined to get out of it, one way or another. And so this rather odd sermon was a sort of Declaration of Independence, even if nobody who heard it on that occasion knew what he really meant.

He concluded with a note of warning – whether to himself or to his hearers is not clear. He said, “There are responsibilities attached to any departure from Nazareth. The reconstruction of environment brings added capabilities and commensurate burdens. The road leading from Nazareth may pass the cross.”

Be that as it may, he was ready to go; and a short time later, he did, for he was offered the job in Lancaster and moved there in the summer of 1905. But the two years he had just spent in North Manchester were not wasted, for even though he was restless to leave such humble surroundings, his work in that little town had already shown signs of his future greatness.

[The sermon discussed above is described in an undated newspaper clipping on p. 31 of Scrapbook 1 in Box 5 of Douglas’s private papers at the Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. The sermon was entitled, “Environment: Its Limitations and Possibilities.”]

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Douglas’s Open Letters to the Shut-Ins

by Ronald R Johnson (www.ronaldrjohnson.com)

During his first pastorate at Zion Lutheran Church in North Manchester, Indiana (USA), Lloyd Douglas published a weekly newsletter. One of the notable features of the paper was a weekly editorial addressed specifically to the homebound members of his congregation. These open letters are fascinating because they are so tender, thoughtful, wise, and compassionate, while at the same time being pretentious, pompous, condescending, and preachy (coming as they do from a young man just out of seminary talking to people two or three times his age).

The article I am about to share with you is from The Church and Sunday-School, Published by Zion Lutheran Congregation, North Manchester, Indiana, Vol. 1, No. 2, September 11, 1903, p. 3. It’s in Douglas’s earliest scrapbook, p. 15, Box 5 of the Lloyd C Douglas Papers at the Bentley Historical Library.)

FOR THE ‘SHUT-IN’
Do not think, dear brother or sister, that because you are afflicted, we have forgotten you. Our prayers ascend for you very often, and our hearts yearn for the time when you can be with us again. If some of us are so busy with toils and cares that we do not come to see you, do not take that to mean that we are not inquiring about you often and wishing best possible things for you. The church is doing splendidly; all the departments are taking on new life. Really, you would not recognize some of our auxiliaries, they have changed so. The prayer-meeting is becoming in favor with a great many people. The Sunday-school is witnessing an ingathering of some who had outgrown it years ago and are just now getting back. We are anxious to have you with us, but until you can come, will you do us the service of praying for the church and her work? On Wednesday evening, for instance, ask God to speak to those who are not housed up as you are, and tell them to go to His House and receive strength for better service.

The next week (Vol. 1, No. 3, September 18, 1903), he wrote this on pp. 3-4:

Dear afflicted one—we are still missing you. You wish that you might come to our services, and we wish, too, that you might. You will be happy when we tell you that we are on the high road to prosperity. Do you remember the little handful of people who used to come to Prayer-meeting? Well, we have doubled, and trebled our number. Just at present we are having Bible Readings. Look up the topic for Wednesday Evening in the Calendar, and find all the Scripture references you can on that subject—just so you will feel that you are having a part in our work. Know how to do that? Here is an example: Next Wednesday evening the topic is ‘Baptism.’ Find some verse relating to Baptism—John 3:5. In the verse you will find a letter that refers you to a marginal reference. Find this letter in the margin and it will refer you to Mark 16:16. Read that verse and discover a clue to other verses on the subject. This is systematic Bible study. You will be greatly helped by it. Do not forget to pray for others in affliction. No matter how distressed you are, you will always find someone who is worse off than yourself. Let your prayer for your own happiness be made in humble submission. Ask God to remove your affliction, if it is His Will, and if not His Will, to give you Divine Grace for your trials, that you may bear them.

In Vol. 1, No. 6, October 9, 1903, p. 3, he said,

Dear Friend: We are confident that you were thinking very seriously last Sunday morning while your brothers and sisters in the church were gathering about the altar to receive the ‘Broken Body’ and ‘Shed Blood’ of the Savior. We wished you, too, might have been with us, and we prayed for you, that the Savior would manifest Himself to you in the Spirit of the Comforter while this sacrament was being ministered. There are few burdens so heavy that might not be still heavier. Be thankful for the blessings you have, and pray for grace to sustain you in your trials.

Sometimes he just filled them in on what was happening at the church. But these words excerpted from a longer communication in Vol. 1, No. 5, October 2, 1903, pp. 2-3, are especially touching:

Dear Afflicted One: The Autumn days are fast approaching, bringing with them the knowledge to you that your possibilities for getting to church are more meagre than they were in the summer. However, you can hold sweet communion with your Saviour wherever you are. Time was when men thought the only way to worship God was in His Temple; that adoration and praise were only to be rendered in the House of Prayer. Those were the days of burnt offerings, and as such offerings were made through the media of the priests, the Temple was the only place where such worship might be rendered. But now conditions are changed. ‘The Sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise.’ Since Christ is our Great High Priest, we may worship God through Him, and since He is a Spirit, it is not necessary that we should defer our prayers until the time we may go into a church set apart for sacred homage to the King.

After some newsy items, he concluded with this (and it could serve as a benediction for us all):

May the compassionate Christ be very dear to you in your afflictions. ‘No pathway so thorn-strewn that He cannot guide securely; no night so long and dark that He, the Bright and Morning Star, does not bring the dawn; no burden so heavy that He, the burden-bearer, does not beg to share it; no trial so sore, no temptation so threatening, no sorrow so sad, that He, the compassionate, does not say in tenderness: ‘Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’

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A New Dispensation

by Ronald R Johnson (www.ronaldrjohnson.com)

When Lloyd Douglas took over as pastor at Zion Lutheran Church in North Manchester, Indiana (USA) in the spring of 1903, he did not consider it business-as-usual. He may have been in a little town, but he intended to shake things up. Just months after he arrived, he began publishing a four-page weekly newsletter. It is typical (now, at least) for congregations to have newsletters, but this was on high-quality paper and had a photograph – not just a drawing – on the front cover. In 1903, it was unusual even for local newspapers to include photographs. (The image below is from Douglas’s earliest scrapbook, p. 15, in Box 5 of the Lloyd C Douglas Papers at the Bentley Historical Library.)

“This paper is to herald the arrival of the ‘new dispensation,'” he wrote. “It has been advisable to issue it [the newsletter] at this time because many of us feel that we have begun a new epoch in the life of the church. We have decided to work harder, to pray more.” [Underlined in the original, and “pray more” is double underlined.]

Later in this same issue, he shamelessly borrowed Admiral Horatio Nelson’s message to the British fleet before the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805: “Remember that we are starting in on a ‘New Dispensation,’ and we must say as was said to Britain’s sons: ‘England (The Church) expects every man to do his duty.’”

No doubt his enthusiasm was contagious, but he could also get carried away, issuing orders to “the troops,” forgetting that most of them were older – indeed, far older – than he was.

The following week, he wrote: “Those of our readers who attended last Sunday’s services need not be told that there is a ‘great awakening’ in our work. It was manifest in many ways. There were visitors attending who have not been in our church for months; there were members with eyes open to the comfort of the stranger; there was soulful singing and a spirit of deep devotion to be noticed. These are elements of success, and as they continue to be practiced we will observe an increasing attendance at church services. The work is now but fairly started…” Nor did he intend to see it slack off.

“Where, indeed, shall we begin to tell of the transformation at work in the Sunday-school?” he asked later in that issue. “The Bible Class has suddenly grown to a size which warrants a division…. There were people in Sunday-school last Sunday who had thought long ago that they had outgrown it completely, but they say they are coming again.”

Douglas’s arrival in the sleepy little town of North Manchester was about as abrupt as that of a tsunami. He had lots of energy and an endless supply of ideas. But there was only so much he could do in such a small town, especially in a place where everybody knew him as a youngster; so his ministry didn’t really take off until he left for his next pastorate in 1905. But we can see signs of his later genius even here. The newsletter is an example. He wrote each article of each issue himself, and he did it in an intimate voice as if he were speaking to you, the reader. When his parishioners died, he himself wrote the obituaries for the newspaper, and he did it with all the passion and eloquence of a novelist. On at least two occasions he preached a sermon series on weeknights, as if he were a big-name evangelist. He seemed surprised when the young people of his congregation did not flock to his new Sunday afternoon catechism class.

But he wasn’t “all work and no play.” While he was in North Manchester, he pulled some strings to help get Dr. F. M. Porch of Louisville, Kentucky, the position of pastor at Grace Lutheran Church in nearby Columbia City, then wooed and won his daughter – Bessie Io Porch – and made her his wife. He also wrote a book. It was a busy two years!

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The Early Years of Douglas’s Ministry

by Ronald R Johnson (www.ronaldrjohnson.com)

Lloyd Douglas attended seminary at Hamma Divinity School, Wittenberg College, in Springfield, Ohio (USA). During his final year of study (1902-1903), he was Associate Pastor at St. John’s Lutheran Church, Des Moines, Iowa.

Before he graduated from seminary in Spring, 1903, he already had his first job lined up: in January, Zion Lutheran Church of North Manchester, Indiana, extended a call to him, asking him to begin his ministry with them in May. He had come to guest preach in October of the previous year. Here is a flyer about his upcoming visit, from his earliest scrapbook, p. 15, in the Lloyd C Douglas Papers, Box 5. A note in his handwriting says, “Found the town of N. Manchester full of these things when I came to apply once while in school.”

North Manchester was virtually home for Douglas. He was born in Columbia City, just 23 miles away, and his father and mother, Rev. and Mrs. A. J. Douglas, were currently living in Columbia City. A. J., who had been an educator and a judge before becoming a minister, was so well respected in that region that a section of the Columbia City Library was dedicated to him. This was not just a homecoming for Lloyd Douglas; he was coming back as a favored son.

The map below shows these two towns and their proximity to Fort Wayne:

While homecomings can be good, they can also be bad, especially for an ambitious young man like Douglas. He wanted to break loose from both his rural background and his upbringing, and he hoped to become known out in the world.

He was pastor at Zion Lutheran for two years, leaving in August, 1905, to serve the English Lutheran Church in Lancaster, Ohio. It was in Lancaster, over the next four years, that young Lloyd Douglas made a name for himself within his denomination.

He distinguished himself in three ways: as a pastor, as a speaker, and as a writer.

As a pastor: He spread his wings as a minister, building a following that extended beyond the doors of his church to the community at large.

As a speaker: Douglas traveled by train to other cities and established a reputation as an orator, especially popular with young people.

As a writer: He became a frequent contributor to The Lutheran Observer, submitting pieces that were relevant, provocative, and quotable.

His rise was so quick, in fact, that in the summer of 1909, after being a minister for only six years, he was offered the chance of a lifetime: the opportunity to be Senior Minister at Luther Place Memorial Church in Washington, DC.

Over the next several months, I will talk in more detail about the steps that led him so quickly to such an exalted position within his denomination. But I will begin with those first two years in a small town in Indiana.

Here is an interior shot of Zion Lutheran Church as it appeared in 1903, also from p. 15 of his first scrapbook. The upper left corner shows the church’s exterior:

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The Lloyd C Douglas Papers at the Bentley Historical Library

by Ronald R Johnson (www.ronaldrjohnson.com)

After Lloyd Douglas died, his daughters donated 6 boxes of his private papers to the Bentley Historical Library on the campus of the University of Michigan. Douglas had spent several happy years as senior minister of the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor, a church which includes within its edifice a chapel in his honor; so the University of Michigan seemed like a logical place for his papers to be kept in archive.

My own exploration of those papers began with Boxes 5 and 6, which contain his scrapbooks. Here is the cover of the earliest scrapbook in the collection. He originally used it for notes he took during his “Liturgies” course while in seminary but then turned it into a scrapbook.

Douglas’s scrapbooks are a wealth of information. They contain mostly newspaper clippings of his sermons, and these are very detailed, giving us the next best thing to the sermon transcript itself. They also contain letters, programs, newsletters, newspaper accounts of wedding ceremonies and funerals at which he officiated and speeches he gave at high school graduations and Veterans events; and he even pasted in the articles he published in various periodicals. There is one page of train tickets, giving just a sample of the many trips he took for speaking engagements. (See the left page of the following two-page spread):

We also have the letters of “call” he received from each of his congregations, including the salary and other compensation offered. Obviously, these scrapbooks are rich in information.

Boxes 1 through 2 contain his extensive correspondence with his daughters and with his editor at Houghton Mifflin Publishing Company. Here is a letter he sent his oldest daughter Betty from a hotel in Chicago in 1926:

These files mostly cover the years after Douglas became a bestselling author, from the early 1930s to the end of his life in 1951. In some respects they are more insightful than the scrapbooks, since they give us his unguarded thoughts conveyed to people he trusted. But they also don’t give us the context quite as nicely as the scrapbooks do, and we often have to infer what is happening from the clues within the letters themselves.

Box 3 contains sermons and speeches. Even though his scrapbooks give us detailed newspaper reports of his sermons, Box 3 includes actual sermons. Douglas always typed out his sermons on Saturday afternoon, then delivered them extemporaneously on Sunday. Here’s an example of a sermon he preached in Boston in 1931. At this point in his career, he used little pages that would fit in his hand, but the punch holes show that he kept them in a small three-ring binder.

Box 4 has files pertaining to his most famous novel, The Robe, as well as miscellaneous items, including day planners and small notebooks.

Here are the chapter summaries he had in mind for a travel book he never wrote:

I’ve spent years studying these boxes (my first visit was in 2005), and I still have a lot more to see. But now that I’ve given you the overview, in future blog posts I can share with you some of the things that I have learned from these sources.

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There He Stands

by Ronald R Johnson (www.ronaldrjohnson.com)

Quotable Quotes from Lloyd C. Douglas

From a Christmas booklet entitled, An Affair of the Heart (1922). Douglas is talking about the details of the Christmas story that may challenge the intellect, and he says that the fact of Christ’s influence on human history is far more miraculous than any of the stories surrounding his birth.

But we may think as we like about the process whereby this remarkable character was presented to humanity, there he stands! By all the rules, he is doomed to defeat; but there he stands – manger-born, peasant-bred, poverty-ridden, misunderstood, scorned, spurned, whipped, slapped, and crucified – there he stands! the supreme figure in the life of the race; all the history of nearly twenty centuries strangely interwoven with that crimson thread dyed with his blood!

There he stands – by all the rules, a failure! – by all the tests of logic and the requirements of history, defeated! – by actual demonstration, the greatest, gripping, binding, lifting, driving energy ever turned loose in this world!

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The Pastor is the Head Custodian, Like It or Not

by Ronald R Johnson (www.ronaldrjohnson.com)

Quotable quotes from Lloyd C. Douglas

From The Minister’s Everyday Life (1924), p. 67:

[Y]ou may as well make up your mind to it that you are now, and are always going to be – no matter how conspicuously you may be located later – the actual custodian of church property; and if you think to win the approbation of your constituency by permitting their buildings and equipment to fall into decay, for the sake of paring down expenses, you are making a great mistake. True, you are not employed as the caretaker of the church property; but you had better take care of it, nevertheless. The congregation will forgive you an occasional slump in the pulpit but it will view with much regret and distaste an unmowed front lawn, an untidy back yard, an untrimmed hedge, a gate off its hinges, unraked leaves, broken fence-pickets, unshovelled snow and ice on the walks, and an old shirt protruding through a broken window of the attic, at the residence of the parson.

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The Influence of Jesus on Western Culture

by Ronald R Johnson (www.ronaldrjohnson.com)

Quotable Quotes from Lloyd C. Douglas

From These Sayings of Mine (1926), pp. 34-35. Douglas raises the question: What would be left of Western culture if we eliminated every trace of Jesus from our daily lives?

If it is suspected that the poets and prophets have sentimentally overrated the Master’s importance to civilization, let the critic put this overestimated teacher where he belongs by dropping his name and all allusions to his career from [the critic’s] own speech. Let him resolve that he will consistently refuse to enter any building in which there is an ascription of honor to this teacher; that he will not again look upon any statue or painting which has to do with this man or his message; that he will avoid hearing any music which involves this theme; that he will not read any more history in which the cause of Christianity is at issue. Let him proceed further and discontinue the use of any benefits, inventions, or energies produced as a direct result of education fostered by Christianity.

He will discover that long before he has finished deleting Jesus from his life, he has jeopardized everything he holds in esteem. Pontius Pilate, in an uncomfortable moment of perplexity, inquired of the crowd that sought Jesus’ life: ‘What, then, will ye do with Jesus?’ This query seems to echo through the centuries. Of course, any individual who stolidly refuses to recognize the question can contrive to live his whole life without giving it his attention; but only as a pensioner upon the people who do recognize it as worthy of a reply. No social group, however, can evade this query and continue to advance. Their answer to it will determine whether they propose to live in the fog of ignorance and enslavement to fear, or in the light of increasing knowledge and the liberty which knowledge confers; for Jesus is the light of the world!

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