The Lloyd C Douglas Page

Thy Will Be Done

by Ronald R Johnson (www.ronaldrjohnson.com)

This is an article entitled, “Thy Will Be Done,” by Lloyd C Douglas, published while Douglas was pastor of the Zion Lutheran Church in North Manchester, Indiana (USA), sometime between 1903 and 1905. The date and name of the periodical are not given, but he is identified as being in North Manchester, which was his first pastorate. The essay is on p. 23 of Scrapbook 1 in Box 5 of Douglas’s private papers at the Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

Even in his day, people questioned why bad things happen to good people. Douglas doesn’t answer that question, but he challenges the belief that such tragedies are God’s will. The last paragraph is especially noteworthy:

A steamer burns just off the New York coast and brings destruction to hundreds of our own faith, and before we recover from the shock the newspapers tell the story, in broad type, of a wreck on the railroad near Chicago, that sends more than a score of Sunday-school workers to instant death, and twice that number to the hospitals, from which they will be taken later, maimed and invalided.

And we are all praying, ‘Thy will, O God, be done!’ I am wondering what we mean when we offer that petition. Can it be that we conceive these tragedies, which bring suffering and sorrow into hundreds of homes, to be the will of our Heavenly Father, who proclaims himself the Strong Tower of Defense and Preserver of his children? Has not the Great Ruler a right to better treatment at the hands of his friends, who have taken a vow of fealty to him?

When Christ came to earth his supreme mission was to do the Father’s will. Being of one purpose, the Second Person of the Trinity manifestly dare not overthrow or thwart the designs of the First Person; yet, with this fact facing us, we find the Master-Man healing all manner of diseases, proving that diseases were not in accord with God’s will: opening sightless eyes and soundless ears; causing the lame to walk and the dead to return to life. It is not to be thought of that the Savior would defeat his Father’s plans; so the conclusion is inevitable: God did not and does not approve of the affliction of humanity.

Christ did not come heralded as the Great Tormentor, but as the Great Physician.

To lay these afflictions at the charge of God, therefore, is to do him grievous wrong and dishonor the attributes of divine goodness. It is no more God’s will that men and women should suffer pain, illness, or bereavement than that sin should have entered into the world and victimized the human race.

The statement, ‘Whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth,’ is inspired and true; but does he send his chastisements in the form of wholesale slaughter? God imposes tests of faith upon his children, but does he ordain general massacres as such tests? The hero of the greatest faith-test in Old-World story was asked to conclude his operations while the knife was still upraised.

The Christian world does not want to believe in a God who manifests no mercy—nor need it, if his Word is properly interpreted.

At the time of the fall, man received the threatened curse. Not only was this divine judgment levied upon man, but applied quite as forcibly to nature. Nature has been made for man, and, in a sense, her destiny was coupled with the destiny of man; so when he fell, nature fell too. ‘Thorns and thistles’ were to grow unhindered. The winds, that had gently stirred the foliage in the Garden of Eden were now to blow unbridled. Storms would rage; conflagrations destroy; floods devastate. What sin was to man’s soul, nature’s ravages would be to his body. And nature inflicts her depravity upon the just and the unjust, because her redemption, while provided in the atonement, has not yet been accepted.

Redemption, to be efficacious, must be embraced by its object. The oak tree cannot say: ‘I accept the redemption provided for me in the atonement.’ Man can say that, and secure for himself the personal application of such salvation, but not until this redemption of individuals shall have been perfect—in a word, not until all men have been judged in the light of this redemption will nature be restored; which restoration is foreseen in the ‘new heaven and new earth.’

Until that time the ‘rain falls on the just and the unjust,’ and the floods come, and the wind blows and beats upon the house on the rock, and the house upon the sand. And he, who told the story of the two foundations, would prefer his friends to think of him rather as the rock than as the devastating flood.

North Manchester, Ind.

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The Musical Side of Lloyd C Douglas

by Ronald R Johnson (www.ronaldrjohnson.com)

Lloyd Douglas was not only a minister and writer but also a musician. While he was in college and divinity school, he earned money through a number of part-time jobs, one of them being church organist. And when he was a student pastor in Des Moines, Iowa, during his last year of seminary, this notice was printed in the local paper:

“A pleasant surprise was experienced by many of the members of St. John’s Lutheran church yesterday morning, when on entering the sanctuary they found themselves confronted by a large chorus choir, whose organization has been quietly under way for some time. When Rev. L. C. Douglass, [sic] assistant pastor of the church, came to the city this spring it was hinted that inasmuch as he was a trained musician the musical end of the religious services would in the future be greatly strengthened. Those who expected this have not been disappointed. The new choir as organized by Mr. Douglass has fifteen voices and more are being added.”

During his first year of his first pastorate, in North Manchester, Indiana, the church newsletter ran this piece:

“We need a dozen good singers to lead the music in Sunday-school. We also need some violins, cornets, and clarinets, to give strength and vigor to our songs. Speak to your musical friend about it.”

Note that this was just for the Sunday School; not for the service. He was even more serious about the music for the service. A few weeks later, this was included in the church newsletter:

“You may have noticed that no announcements have been made from the pulpit for several weeks. We are happy that our conditions are such now that permit us to worship through the whole service without a single issue proposing itself to distract our minds from our devotion. On the first page of this paper may be found the announcement of every service for the week. By looking over this ‘Calendar’ occasionally, you will be able to note all the coming meetings of the church auxiliaries, and remember them more distinctly than if they had been read on Sunday from the pulpit.”

This was a practice that Douglas would insist upon throughout his ministerial career: no announcements during the worship service. The reason for this was his belief that, once people stepped inside the sanctuary, the architecture, the music, and everything that was said from the pulpit should draw their spirits upward. Nothing should be allowed to bring them crashing down abruptly – certainly nothing as trifling as an announcement about the upcoming Bake Sale.

Of all the places he ministered, the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor was the one in which he most nearly achieved his ideal.

He was able to secure the services of Earl V Moore, the University of Michigan’s Organist-in-Residence, as the Music Director of First Congregational Church, and together they created a service of worship that people called “symphonic.” He tried to describe it in the book version of Wanted: A Congregation (Chicago: Christian Century Press, 1920). Here is just a brief passage in which he talks about the opening of the service (pp. 206-207):

“That organ prelude… should be one of the most significant events of the service. People come in from the racket of traffic on the streets. They have been shouted at, and assaulted with all manner of raucous and discordant noises, all the week. They should be given a chance to relax and consult their own souls. Not only should they be given this opportunity, but they should be furnished with an incentive! They ought not be overpowered with a great noise – a thunderous blare of metallic clamor. This organ selection should begin with an impassioned tug at the heart-strings. By easy stages, it should woo the spirit up on higher ground, growing in volume, almost imperceptibly, until, near its close, it seems to be building up toward some definite action. The people must be filled with a desire to express themselves.

“Without a pause… the organist will modulate into the score of the opening hymn. Just think of the effect of it… the organ piling harmony upon harmony, higher, richer, fuller, until in one great, triumphant chord, it peals out the majestic measures of ‘O God, the Rock of Ages’ or ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’ or ‘Our God Our Help in Ages Past.’ And the choir comes to its feet, and the congregation rises as one man – and then they sing!”

He had much more to say on this subject, but this is enough for tonight. No wonder the faculty and staff – and even the students – filled his Ann Arbor church to capacity. I know I’d wait in line to get into a service like that.

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Having Reserves on Hand

by Ronald R Johnson (www.ronaldrjohnson.com)

At the beginning of Douglas’s first career scrapbook is a newspaper clipping about the earliest sermon I can find. It’s undated, but it was sometime during 1902, when he was serving as Assistant Pastor at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Des Moines, Iowa, during his last year of seminary.

Already at this stage in his preparation for ministry, he is drawing on examples from the technology of the time to make commonsense observations about both spiritual life and psychology. This sermon also demonstrates his powerful use of language and his ability to recognize objections that people might have about the text, and to answer them well.

His subject was the Parable of the Virgins, and his text was Matthew 25:4, “But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps.”

The newspaper clipping states that he “showed how the parable ends in a dissatisfying way to those who do not read what precedes and what follows. The apparent selfishness of the five who entered into the wedding feast allowing their less fortunate sisters to stand outside vanishes when the lesson is applied which the Teacher wished to present.”

Commenting on the phrase, “He shall come like a thief in the night,” Douglas said, “Like the swift agony of fire in a sleeping city. Like the spring of a wild thing as you walk through the quiet glades of a forest. Like all great trials, now and forever, exactly when you least expect them. Then [Christ] foresees how there will be a division of them that spring up to meet the demands of the new day. How some of them will have the reserves of light and life – and the power to hold right on to the end; while others, not having these reserves, will be obliged to give up and lose their place – to submit to the loss and stand outside. . . . We must have something to fall back on when the trial comes or we can never spring forward to any great purpose.”

He continued: “The physician insists that the best thing possible is to keep on hand a supply of reserve power to assist when he comes to help you through your battle between life and death. Here then is the first meaning of oil in my vessel with my lamp. It lies in my very life.” But Douglas said that the oil can also represent reserves of character.

“Character, like the flywheel to the engine, by its sheer weight carries its possessor through otherwise impossible strains. It may be heavy. In the initial revolutions of this great life cycle, it may seem like an impediment, but when the pulleys of adversity and trouble are coupled on by the belts which lie waiting to bind them to the motor of every human life, then character, the flywheel, carries the reserve power within itself necessary to withstand the strain.

“I wonder if there are not many of us here who have neglected this matter of attaching a flywheel to the engine we strive to keep running. The adversities to which we are coupled – the sorrows we are obliged to have belted to us, the temptations that seem so heavy – all grind the very bearings out of our lives, because we have not made provision for them. There is no great wheel, by whose giant weight the heavy, dragging machinery of human events may be kept in motion. The power required comes direct from the primal force: no assistance, no reserve.”

“Faith, hope and love,” Douglas said, “are the most powerful allies to employ in this reservation, this conservation of force.” Those without faith, he said, cannot be given it when needed, any more than the wise virgins could give their reserves of oil to the foolish ones. But: “Millions have met the same troubles, but have risen through their reserves into the very light and life of God.

“No disaster has overcome them utterly; no trial broken them clear down; no matter that the heavens were black as midnight, except for the pain of it, the reserves were there, and they drew on them till the last and went in to the joy of the Lord.

“Now is the time to store away reserve power! Not when the herald announces the coming of the bridegroom; not after the shopkeepers have closed their stores and gone home to bed; not when the storms of adversity have concentrated their forces for a sudden attack, and come sweeping along the cold and barren crag of an empty life, leaving grief and desolation in their wake; not when the sands of life have run to their last grain, and the blinds are drawn to prepare for death—now is the accepted time.

“Oh, for some new added function of the conscience which could strike the hours as do the clocks, warning us that time is drawing shorter and urging the necessity of preparation.

“Oh! for some indicator attached to the soul that would point to burning figures of fire and show how low or how high was the reserve force. Reserve power! And then, when it is yours to go, when the trials of life have been passed successfully, when the adversities to which men are subject no longer claim you for their victim, then only one more earthly act remains for you, and that, the glorious pilgrimage out of this world and into the Courts on High you will go with lamp trimmed and burning.

“And it will abide! As it lighted your pathway here; as it was the lode star in the firmament of your life; so it will illumine your voyage across the Dark Stream, shining brighter and brighter until it is eclipsed by the glorious rays of the Sun of Righteousness.”

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Ten Commandments for the “College” Church

by Ronald R Johnson (www.ronaldrjohnson.com)

Photo of University of Illinois campus from Jack A. Scanlan Scrapbook, 1907-1911, University of Illinois, Archives Research Center, RS 41/20/39. This is how the campus looked when Lloyd Douglas arrived in 1911.

Reprinted below is a humorous article by Lloyd C. Douglas published in the magazine, The Intercollegian, April 1919. During ten of his years as a minister, Douglas was on a university campus, first as the religious director of the YMCA at the University of Illinois (1911-1915), then as Senior Minister of the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor, adjacent to the University of Michigan (1915-1921).

Of particular note is the Tenth Commandment. Douglas had obviously run out of numbers, so he crammed several commandments into the last one. I especially like how he warns against asking big-name faculty members to teach Sunday School if their “spiritual thermostat” is below the freezing point.

The commandments are listed with Roman numerals:

I AM the Spirit of Christianity. Thou shalt have no other business but to promote me.

Thou shalt not squander thy time by offering dissertations upon Genesis as a text book on anthropology, biology, geology, astronomy, or any other ology or onomy appertaining to the heavens above or the earth beneath or the waters under the earth; thou shalt not bother thyself overmuch with philosophical explanations of strange matters concerning which thou knowest nothing; for I, the Spirit of Christianity, am now exercised more about other things; notably, the character of thy summons in behalf of lofty ideals and worthy living.

II.

Thou shalt not specialize upon indictments of Organized Christianity because of its ancient mistakes, for they are amply able to speak for themselves without thy help, and thy task is to remedy such blunders rather than commemorate them.

III.

Remember the Faculty and keep its respect. Students come and go, and their opinions are easily modified; but the Faculty Man stays, and likewise do his convictions. Let him once give thee a black eye, and thou shalt be thus adorned for some time. In him thou shalt invest much of thy time and thought, that his good opinion of thy motives and methods may be won, lest he consider thee out of harmony with Truth and intolerant of truth-seekers, whereupon he hooteth at thee in his lecture-hall, after the which thou mayest as well lock thy door and throw away the key thereof.

IV.

Honor the student traditions of thy university, however silly they may seem to thee, that thy days may be longer in the academic community wherein thou hast chosen to live thy life and perform thy work.

Thou shalt not scold.

VI.

Thou shalt not commit sectarianism.

VII.

Thou shalt not bawl out the fraternities.

VIII.

Thou shalt not cause thy most loyal students to flunk their courses by spending too much time scouring thy pots and pans, engineering thy pop-corn festivals, lest they evermore think of thee as one doth regard the tailor who built him the ill-fitting pants.

IX.

Thou shalt not covet university credits for thy courses in religion.

Thou shalt not covet the instructor’s right to consider it unprofessional to be interesting; thou shalt not toady to the professor who knifeth thee in the back after thou hast caused him to be made toastmaster of a student banquet within thy gates, nor ask them to teach thy classes in Bible study who, though they have large names and many letters affixed thereunto, register less than 32 degrees on their spiritual thermostat; thou shalt not covet the student’s slang, airs, dress, indifference, cold-bloodedness, or any other thing that undignifies thee and nullifies thy usefulness and causeth him to thrust his tongue in his cheek when he passeth thee by.

[These “commandments” may be of interest also – and profit – to Association Secretaries and other Christian workers in academic communities. – Edit.]

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Jesus’ Interest in Everyday Problems

by Ronald R Johnson (www.ronaldrjohnson.com)

From Lloyd C. Douglas, These Sayings of Mine (NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1926), pp. 55-56:

[A]ny man who desires friendship with Jesus should consider it a pleasant thought that the Master was so deeply concerned with the problems of men’s lifework. He knew where the fishing was best. He knew about the industrial problems of the vineyard. The little domestic cares of the homemaker were very real issues, in his regard. He had thought deeply about the problems of kings going to war, and ambitious men seeking to build tall towers with few brick. He could talk helpfully to shepherds; but that was not because he had the mind of a shepherd. He was not ill at ease in the presence of Nicodemus ben Gorion, probably the wisest old gentleman in Jerusalem. He who only yesterday was sitting on the edge of a fishing-boat, talking in terms of affectionate intimacy with a group of Galileans, this evening smiles at the mental chaos of the Holy City’s wisest seer and remarks: ‘Art thou a master in Israel, and knowest not these things?’ He was able to call the obscure Nathaniel by his name when he saw him sitting under the fig-tree. Jesus entered whole-heartedly into the problems of humanity.

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Praying from the Pulpit As If Ordering Pork Chops from the Butcher

by Ronald R Johnson (www.ronaldrjohnson.com)

In the summer and fall of 1920, Lloyd Douglas published a series of articles in Christian Century magazine called, “Wanted – A Congregation.” The series was aimed at ministers who were discouraged because they had low attendance at their church services. Throughout his life, Douglas was blessed with well-attended churches. In fact, while he was at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor, the congregation voted to build a new structure because there was not enough room for the crowds that wanted to hear him. He published this series during his tenure at that church.

The passage quoted below is from the 5th article in the series: “Wanted – A Congregation, Fifth Phase – Making Worship Worshipful,” published in the Christian Century on September 9, 1920:

“We preachers have become dreadfully poor psychologists. There is an instinctive heart-hunger for the mystical in worship that we have been unable to satisfy with our crude, bungling attempts at ritual and the rasping dissonances of the alleged music rendered by our untrained choirs. There has been entirely too much extemporaneous and ill-considered matter introduced into our ‘services of worship.’ Our ‘free’ pulpit prayers, for example, have been so very free that they jar unpleasantly on the sensitive ear of the naturally devout. Indeed, our public prayers are filled with impertinences that are only saved from being blasphemous by the fact that we know not what we do. We pick up disgusting tricks of addressing The Absolute in terms of a contemptuous familiarity. How often one hears preachers mouthing that raucous phrase whose vogue the reverential fail to comprehend, ‘Now, Lord, just send us’ – whatever-it-is – in the same inflection one uses when telephoning the butcher, ‘Now, Sam, just send us a few lean pork-chops, this time, can’t you? No; no sausage, today, thank you. Yes – that will be all, Sam. Thanks – very much!’

“Now, this will not do! Some of us have been wondering what is the matter with our churches; and some of us have been berating the generation for its godlessness. Many of us may find, upon investigation, that we have disgusted our potential constituency with our unwitting want of reverence. Many a sensitive man would greatly prefer to take a book of essays with him to a shady bend in the river, on Sunday morning, than attend our church; whereas his whole soul cries out for a much closer contact with the divine than he can achieve by his communion with nature. But – it is a great deal better for that man’s spiritual welfare that he should go out, Sunday morning, and watch the river, than to go to some church where the music is so ugly it positively frightens one, and the preacher talks to the Great Unseen as if he were chaffing with his next-door neighbor over the back fence. Let it be repeated – this will not do! We who have been committing these serious blunders must mend our ways!”

From “Wanted – A Congregation, Fifth Phase – Making Worship Worshipful,” Christian Century, September 9, 1920, Volume 37, Number 37, pp. 14-17.

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Against a Parochial View of God

by Ronald R Johnson (www.ronaldrjohnson.com)

The controversial side of Lloyd C Douglas…

From a farewell sermon entitled, “Five Years of Akron,” delivered at the First Congregational Church of Akron on October 31, 1926. (He was on his way to a pastorate in Los Angeles.) This is reprinted in Living Faith, pp. 77-92:

I have attempted to present an idea of Deity which portrays Him as a conscious kinetic energy, speaking to the world through all the media of His creation; not a parochial Jehovah, or Zeus, or Apollo, especially concerned with the welfare of any particular class of people at any particular time in history – but a Universal Father of all mankind.
And, because I have so believed, I have made no effort to disguise my opinion that every alleged quotation of God’s voice, reported in holy books (ours or any other’s) which reveals Him as a parochial God, or engaged in any thought or action not consonant with the thoughts and acts of a cosmic and universal God – is no more to be believed or credited, because written several thousand years ago by some pious shepherd, than if it were to have been written yesterday afternoon on some preacher’s typewriter.

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What is the Gospel Doing for You?

by Ronald R Johnson (www.ronaldrjohnson.com)

Quotable Quotes from Lloyd C. Douglas

From a sermon entitled, “Christianity – The Cult of Adventure,” preached at the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles on Sunday, July 15, 1928, and reprinted in The Living Faith, pp. 62-76.

What is this gospel doing for you? Is it developing your personality, and empowering you with larger capacity for making and keeping friends? Does it help you do honest business more successfully? Does it make your home harmonious? Does it make you a better companion at the breakfast table? Does it make your automobile safer for pedestrians on the street? Does it open your purse to the call of poverty? Does it make you humble with your opinions?
Does it inspire you to see more beauty in art and nature and the hearts of common men and women? Does it make you passionately eager to put something into the world that will square, at least in part, for what you are taking out of it? Does it move you to a genuine interest in the welfare of other people, no matter how far apart they may be from you, in code and manners, belief and morals, aims and hopes?
Does it enable you to understand how all things do work together for good, in sunshine and shadow, in joy and pain, in calm serene and stress and storm, to them that love God?

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A Prayer for Insight

by Ronald R Johnson (www.ronaldrjohnson.com)

Lloyd Douglas wrote out the prayers he uttered in worship, because he did not want to make them up on the spur of the moment. They were meant to be thought-provoking, as well as to lead the congregation in prayer. Here is one of them, reprinted in The Living Faith, p. 299:

We beseech Thee to make known to us more and more clearly each day the duties we are expected to perform if we are to fulfill our destiny. We plead for that serenity of spirit which trusts confidently that Thy will may and must and can be done on earth as it is done in heaven.

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They Kept This Secret for Over a Hundred Years…

by Ronald R Johnson (www.ronaldrjohnson.com)

In his novel, Magnificent Obsession, Lloyd Douglas encouraged his readers to invest in the lives and talents of other people, but to do it secretly. By empowering others and doing it secretly, he claimed, we could strengthen our relationship with God in ways that would be visible in our personal and professional lives. Many of his readers wrote to him asking whether he truly believed what he was saying or was he just writing a story?

The answer is that he not only believed it; he lived it.

The obvious question is, If he spent his life investing secretly in other people, then how would we ever know… since he (and his beneficiaries) kept it a secret?

I’ve been studying the life and works of Lloyd Douglas for many years, and I believe I have uncovered one of the investments he made while he was working at the University of Illinois from 1911 t0 1915. A young man named Roger Zombro had recently set up shop as a clothing merchant on Green Street, just off campus. Lloyd Douglas had no money, but he made a huge – and clever – investment in Zombro’s future… an investment that changed both of their lives. As far as I can tell, neither of them ever broke their silence about it. What Douglas did has remained a secret for over 100 years. It’s a remarkable story.

I tell about it – and I share the detective work I did to uncover it – in a 32-page booklet entitled, The Secret Investment of Lloyd C Douglas. To get a free copy of this PDF document, please fill out the form below. I can’t wait to share this fascinating story with you. And I’d love to hear what you think about it.

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