Archival Research – The Lloyd C Douglas Page

Personality II: Graces of Character

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:

“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.”

Personality I: Gimmicks

by Ronald R Johnson

“Even the average man pricks up his ears when you hint that you can hand him some patent for improving his personality. He thinks it may make him a better salesman; a more successful politician; a more adept and resourceful pleader of whatever causes are uppermost in his mind.”

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.)

“The word [personality] is in very common use. It ricochets from lip to lip, and almost any child of twelve will attempt to define it for you. Full-page advertisements in the magazines are frequently tooled around the finger of a determined man, pointing his finger directly in your face and shouting, ‘I will teach you how to have personality!’

“And, desirous of a personality, you may send for his book, which can be had for a dollar and a half, and the book tells you how to begin, as follows, to wit:

“‘Stand up straight! Don’t sprawl like a jellyfish!

“‘Look ’em in the eye!

“‘Brace your neck firmly against the back of your collar — and be sure that your collar is clean. Take your hands out of your pockets!

“‘Now then, if you are ready, say: I can! I will!

“‘Say it a little louder this time: I WILL. I WILL. I WILL!'”

[Douglas continues…]

“Now, all of this is very good exercise, and doubtless has the merit of correcting some slouchy habits, which fully justifies the price of the book; and it possibly stimulates circulation, though not nearly so much as dumbbells, of a cold winter morning, by an open window. But personality? No! You don’t invent a personality, or earn a personality by hard labor, or manufacture one over a pattern furnished by somebody else. You discover a Personality; and when you discover it, you discover that it is yours and that there is not another like it in the whole world! There may be better ones, but not another like it. And the process of achieving it, therefore, is not by a system of calisthenics or self-hypnosis, but by a quiet, serious, patient self-search.

“A man may howl, ‘I must! I can! I will!’ until he is hoarse and hysterical, but the only effect it produces is to put him through his usual motions with a little more than his usual impetuosity (an added quality not invariably valuable; it depends).

“‘Walk right into your employer’s office,’ says the book, on page 162. ‘Look him squarely in the eye and tell him you’re worth more money!’ Well, maybe you are, but not because you did that!

“No; all these patent tricks for developing ‘personality’ merely offer a temporary prescription for self-delusion. One can galvanize the leg of a dead frog and make him kick a few times in a manner exceedingly lifelike, but the frog will never develop into a swimmer. What he requires is power on the inside. The battery will not help him very much, or for very long.

“A man may decide: ‘Henceforward I propose to be successful — to possess a forceful personality — to surmount my difficulties and laugh at obstacles!’ But he soon finds that his little dose of strychnine loses its stimulating effect. He has begun at the wrong end of the proposition. He is just trying to act as he might act if he really had personality.

“What he needs to do is to go deeply into the problem of his own life and discover what tenable reasons he may hold for a belief that his is a distinctive character.”

I’ll continue this in my next post.

Personality I: Worms Need Not Apply

by Ronald R Johnson

Title page of 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.

“In its broadest connotation, Religion designates the feelings and acts of men who quest The Infinite to determine their mutual relationship.” [This is from a sermon by Lloyd C. Douglas, preached at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor on January 18, 1920. It was the first of a three-part series on the subject of “Personality.”]

“Whatever else Religion is must be considered casual, incidental, or accessory. Religion is the human search for God.

“Now, this very first premise, if it has any weight at all in man’s consciousness and experience, inevitably exalts human personality. I do not mean that it merely inflates the ego and magnifies the first personal pronoun by a few thousand diameters; for, if the God-seeker is honest, he is bound to be humble. And surely it is highly commendable, when one addresses oneself Godward, to approach Him in some such mood as that of the ancient desert sheik who, stretching his bronzed arms toward the gloriously star-strewn sky, exclaimed in wonderment: ‘When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou has ordained — what is man that Thou art mindful of him?’

“But, though his sense of awe and bewilderment never leaves him, the seeker either becomes personally exalted by his quest or he abandons it, baffled, and thereafter refers to God as ‘X.'”

“So the adventurer sets forth upon his tour of discovery, crying from the depths of his humility, ‘I am but clay, and Thou the omnipotent artist!’ But, erelong, he is demanding, with high faith and a confidence that has nothing of effrontery in it: ‘Mold me — from clay to statue — from statue to flesh — from flesh to manhood — to manhood triumphant — celestial — until I awake in Thy likeness!’

“Any system of religious inquiry that begins with the premise that man is but a crawling worm, unworthy the consideration of his Maker, is merely impudent when it talks of aspiring to a conscious bond of spiritual contact between the human and the Divine. But in that moment when a man begins to think of God as his Father and of himself as God’s child, he rises to the dignity of a new creature, from whom old things, like petty fears and vain imaginings, have passed away, and for whom all things are become new; a creature of vast capacities, whose exalted social station as a ‘child of God’ invites him — nay, compels him — to ‘leave his low-vaulted past’ and ‘build more stately mansions for his soul.’

“In other words, so long as a man maintains that he is ‘on his own,’ mumbling vague nothings about himself as a mere chemical compound, somehow produced by a series of fortuitous accidents in the laboratory of Mother Nature; washed up out of the primeval ooze to shed his fins and learn to walk on his hind feet; or, with no more logic (or less insolence), prattling of his self-containment in such orotund phrases as Henley’s ‘I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul,’ as if he were running around loose in the universe like an uncharted chunk of sizzling triolite, expatriate from some volcanic star — he cannot be expected to think very much of himself, and he would be a fool if he did. He and the soft-shell crab and the exiled meteorite are equally dignified, and all of the same order as to destiny. He admits it himself, and one has too much courtesy to dispute him.

“But, once one rises to greet the Spirit of God with the confident attitude of one who walks, unafraid, into his father’s presence, he must recognize the extent of his obligation to talk and act as becometh the high-born! No longer does he grovel, or whine, or fear. Life has no bounds for him; circumstance no chains; adversity no bars! Even Eternity loses its unnamed terrors; Death its sting; the grave its victory! He is built of that which is imperishable, and he knows it! He is a son of God.

“‘Dust thou art — to dust returnest’ was not spoken of his soul!”

But the objective, Douglas says, isn’t for this questing soul to remain where he is in his development. The objective is to grow into a relation with God. That’s why it’s sad that so many “personality” experts rely on gimmicks. I’ll tell you about that in my next post.

How Douglas Got People’s Attention

by Ronald R Johnson

Unidentified clipping, n.d. In 1918 Scrapbook, Lloyd C Douglas Papers, Box 5, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.

“WANTED — An unsuccessful and discouraged man to hear a sermon-lecture on ‘Personality’ at the Congregational church (corner of State and William streets), Sunday morning at 10:30. Costs you nothing but your time.”

“WANTED — Student who never attends church services anywhere but is interested in the development of his ‘personality,’ to come to the Congregational church next Sunday morning at ten-thirty.”

These are the kinds of random ideas Lloyd Douglas came up with, and he wasn’t bashful about following up on them. In January 1920 he was about to launch a series of sermons on “Personality” at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor, and although the church was already filled on Sunday mornings, he thought they could reach even more people. Douglas was especially interested in reaching the kind of people who didn’t enjoy going to church, because he didn’t like it very much himself — or at least he didn’t like the way most churches conducted their services. He did things differently at the First Congregational Church, and he wanted to extend the church’s reach.

So he composed some notices for the types of people he wanted his sermon-series to reach, and he placed them in the local paper as Want-Ads. The newspaper even ran a story about it.

Clipping from Ann Arbor Times-News, n.d. In 1918 Scrapbook, Lloyd C Douglas Papers, Box 5, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.

He also followed up with more conventional advertisements:

Unidentified clipping, n.d. [but apparently 1/11/1920]. In 1918 Scrapbook, Lloyd C Douglas Papers, Box 5, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.

It was this sort of thing that made Douglas “the talk of the town,” no matter what town he happened to be working in at the moment. It also made his church the place to be on Sunday morning — if for no other reason than to satisfy people’s curiosity about what he would say. I’ll tell you what he did say in my next post.

Finding Contentment in a Busy World

by Ronald R Johnson

From the text of an untitled sermon preached by Lloyd C Douglas at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor on 1/4/1920. In Sermons [5], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.

Seeking contentment isn’t a private affair, according to Lloyd Douglas. “The influence of just one fault-finding, captious, crabbed soul in a household will sour the whole institution. The radiant personality of one well-poised apostle of contentment will pervade and inspire a whole social group.”

This is from a sermon by Lloyd Douglas on January 4, 1920, at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor. (In Sermons [5], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.) Douglas says:

“Here is a family where life runs at sixes and sevens every day. The members of the household are very much on edge all the time. Everybody ragging and badgering everybody else. Not often does a remark of commendation get by for anybody, anywhere, without someone’s qualification. You can depend upon it that some one member of that institution is responsible or was responsible. Maybe it has gone so far nothing could stop it short of a miracle of grace. The children of the household go out, at length, to set up establishments of their own, where they are more than likely to conform to the traditions bequeathed to them; and so the bad work goes on.

“Here is another home where harmony and happiness are more to be desired than anything else. Slow to anger; plenteous in mercy; in honor, preferring one another; generous, even to a fault. You can depend on it — there is a soul in that establishment who has learned the secret of successful living, maybe in the old home, possibly through contact with a splendid friend, maybe through a consistent study of that Life that towers majestically above all other lives.

“It is no new philosophy that makes thought responsible for all action. It was not new when the Lord stated that thoughts and actions had so very much in common that an unlawful wish was equivalent to an unlawful act. It is a simple psychological law that any type of thought, if entertained for a sufficient length of time, will, by and by, reach the motor tracks of the brain and finally burst forth into action.

“Moreover, we build our philosophy of life — by which life becomes increasingly beautiful or ugly for ourselves and everybody related to us — by the attitude we take toward the more or less inconsequential events which belong in our everyday experience. For it is not in the great and heroic tests of life that we stand trial so much as in the attitude we take toward the minor events, where we develop the strength that may be drawn upon at a moment of sudden stress, or where we neglect to store the energy whose lack, in a critical moment, spells our disaster and defeat.

“Waiting patiently, graciously, smilingly, for the belated train means considerably more than just that. It means a very distinct gain to the permanent character, by which life is charged with a certain static energy which may be drawn upon in an hour when there is much more desperate waiting on hand than for a tardy train.”

[This next part refers to Douglas’s earlier reference to a scene from Christopher Morley’s Haunted Bookshop, in which a Mr. Mifflin talks about turning the drudgery of dishwashing into a moment of meditation.]

“And when the dishpan begins to take on what Mr. Mifflin calls ‘a philosophic halo’ and the warm, soapy water becomes a sovereign medicine to retract the hot blood from the head, there is decided gain in mental poise that means very much more than the transfiguring of an ignoble task. It means the storing of a peculiar kind of spiritual energy that may be taxed someday for larger uses than dishwashing.

“I fancy that if our generation needs any one remedy, more than another, for its ills, that remedy can be found in a patient, consistent effort to achieve contentment in the particular phases of life that have seemed most trying. A little less rush and a little more thought. A little less scramble and a little more simple-hearted enjoyment of and contentment in the homely, the commonplace acts and tasks which are as gall and wormwood until we transfigure them by our changed attitude toward them.”