A page from Lloyd C. Douglas, “Saving the Minister’s Soul,” The Christian Century, 4/14/1921.
[The following is from the article, “Saving the Minister’s Soul,” which Lloyd Douglas published in The Christian Century in the April 14, 1921, issue. He is speaking to his fellow ministers about how they can find inspiration even in their busy lives. He writes:]
“In every congregation, there are a few elderly folk who are living on the income of spiritual capital amassed in days before we became too busy to take counsel of our hearts. I used to know a little old lady who was blind; that is, her physical organs of sight were not functioning. The eyes of her soul were very keen. I looked forward with keen delight to the next visit in her humble home. She always expressed gratitude that the minister called so frequently and stayed a while; but I never brought her anything to be compared with the treasures I carried away. Some of these fine old saints are prepared to do great things for us if we approach them properly. How often we rush in, pat them on the shoulder, tell them what a whale of a sermon we preached last Sunday, wish them well, and run away – tatting up another good deed done to ‘the sick and imprisoned’ – when, by sitting quietly at their feet and encouraging them to do the talking, we might have come away with a fresh sense of the glory of the human spirit and the desirableness of a life that is ‘hid with Christ in God.’
“If we only stopped long enough to think about it, the bereaved have rich treasures for us of an inspirational character. How little we make use of them, for our own good, in the moments when grief has fairly transfigured their lives! How we do imagine that we must, ourselves, do all the talking, apparently never dreaming that it is our business, at such times, to stand with bowed head and expectant heart, waiting for a message lifted up on the wings of pain.”
[Douglas will continue his essay in my next post…]
An excerpt from “The Bread Problem,” an editorial in the February 17, 1921, issue of The Christian Century, written anonymously by Lloyd C. Douglas.
[This is the conclusion of an editorial, “The Bread Problem,” which Douglas wrote without a by-line for The Christian Century’s February 17, 1921, issue. After briefly surveying the problem of hunger in the aftermath of the First World War, he narrated Christ’s first temptation in the wilderness, to make bread out of stones. He writes:]
“From that scene in the Jeshimon Wilderness, Anno Domini 30, let us return and take another glance at what we have before us in the early spring of 1921. Exactly how did our world get into its present miseries? We say that is an economic question. But is it? Well – say that the immediate cause of it was the war. Well – how did the world get itself head-over-ears in war? By walking in the ways of righteousness and brotherhood? By efforts at spiritual culture? By reliance upon his guidance who continually endeavors to attract our attention to the truth about human relationships? No; we got into war – the whole brood of nations – excusing nobody, laying the blame at every door impartially – through indifference to the cultivation of those principles which Jesus said would make for permanent peace!
“Even now – with so ghastly and complete a demonstration of the fact that war solves no problems whatsoever; that war not only wastes while it is waged but leaves a slimy trail behind it through uncounted years – there are plenty of us advocating more costly armies, more big gunboats, more deadly poison gas! In all the welter and wreckage – face to face with the problem of the world’s starvation – still – still – ‘armi virumque cano!’ [‘I sing of arms and men’: the opening line of Virgil’s Aeneid.]
“Fully satisfied that organized greed and diabolical selfishness have not only foisted war upon the world, time after time, but have stood by to loot the pockets of its victims while they went forth hypnotized to death by appeals to their patriotism, still do we sit, complacently, declaring that the world’s chief difficulty is ‘a problem in economics.’ Economics? Nonsense! The world’s problem, today, is a spiritual problem! Humanity’s soul must be saved!
“What may we do about it? There is much that we can do. We can turn the searchlight in upon ourselves to see how far we, as individuals, are menaced by this temptation to believe that our own problems are questions in economics! Do I live by bread alone? What inspired to my choice of a life work – bread alone? For what reasons have I gathered friends about me – that they may use me, or I them? Have I cultivated them for bread alone? Is success, to my thinking, the sort of thing that has cornered some market; stacked up corn in warehouses against years of idleness; nailed down natural resources to make them inaccessible to other hands as fully entitled to them as myself?
“We do well who, through these Lenten days, assay the ore of our own characters and assist other people to test the quality of their motives to see if, perchance, we who have talked so volubly and knowingly of humanity’s great needs – the causes of its distress; the reasons of its hunger – may not be housing and arming the forces which make these problems more and more acute and perplexing.
“The Master found the complex problem of the world a simple spiritual problem at its root. Taking counsel of the God in his own heart, he found that man does not live by bread alone, but by the discernment and acceptance of his will who ‘standeth behind our lattice, keeping watch over his own.'”
[This last sentence was probably a quotation from memory (and therefore not quite accurately) of a line from James Russell Lowell’s 1845 poem, “The Present Crisis.” The poet complains of:
“Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,— Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.”
This same poem contains the all-important line, “New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth.” Douglas would quote that line repeatedly throughout the 1940s, very much aware that it was necessary to stop Hitler’s armies, despite everything he said in this 1921 editorial.]
An excerpt from “The Bread Problem,” an editorial in the February 17, 1921, issue of The Christian Century, written anonymously by Lloyd C. Douglas.
[The following is from an uncredited editorial that Lloyd Douglas wrote for The Christian Century under the heading, “The Bread Problem,” which appeared in the February 17, 1921, issue. He has just finished talking about world hunger following the aftermath of the First World War. He writes:]
“In this penitential period of 1921, we turn naturally to the story of our Lord’s temptation which provides a reason and a setting for this Lenten season. And we find, to our surprise, that the ancient narrative is vital, vascular, directly apropos of our present anxiety.
“The temptation followed the baptism immediately. Rising from the water, bearing in his soul heaven’s confirmation of his messiahship, Jesus went into the wilderness. Apparently he felt that he was not ready to face the crowd whom John had astonished with the announcement that the Messiah was among them, or any crowd, until he had struggled further through the problems vexing the world he had come to save.
“The first question thrust into the active consciousness of the young Galilean, after his voluntary exile into the wilderness, was essentially this: ‘What do men live by?’ At the moment, he was able to answer the question promptly, decisively. So far as he was concerned, the greatest thing in the world was bread! Because he happened to be hungry, the world’s problem seemed to be a clear case of economics! The cry of his people and the call of his own appetite united to tempt him to command the very stones at his feet to be transformed into bread!
“We need not debate whether this narrative is wholly, or in part, allegorical. Of course, we are fully conscious of our power to turn stones into bread – at least so long as the saltpeter beds of Chili continue to provide our wheat fields with the nourishment that makes them productive. [Douglas is referring to fertilizer.] If we are minded to let the Master have the power to do the same, by processes unknown to any but himself, there is no reason why he should be deterred from it by our lack of faith. If anyone sees it simply as an allegory, the lesson still stands inviolate. Those who cannot help viewing it this way rightly resent the charge that they fail to catch the point of the story.
“The point at issue was this: Is humanity’s problem a question in economics? Jesus thought it through and decided in the negative. Man does not live by bread alone. Man lives through his discovery and acceptance of the will of God.
“From that scene in the Jeshimon Wilderness, Anno Domini 30, let us return and take another glance at what we have before us in the early spring of 1921.”
[Douglas will continue his editorial in my next post…]
From “The Music of the Church,” by Lloyd C. Douglas, in the 1/13/1921 issue of The Christian Century.
The following is from “The Music of the Church,” an article Lloyd Douglas published in The Christian Century on January 13, 1921. He has been saying that it is the pastor’s responsibility to make sure the church’s music is good. He continues:
“Now there are a few facts that every preacher really ought to know about choir anthems. First, the choir must never attempt anything that is too difficult to be rendered well. It is much better that the quartet should spend two hours trying to get together on ‘Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross’ – and then sing it with an eye single to one purpose – than to invest an equal amount of time on ‘The Radiant Morn’ – and tote it to the shambles. Every quartet wants to sing ‘The Radiant Morn.’ There are about a dozen church quartets on the Western Hemisphere that have any warrant for making the adventure. It is much more effective for the choir to learn ‘Hark, Hark, My Soul,’ so that it can sing it with good interpretation than to butcher Tchaikowsky’s ‘O Come, Let Us Worship,’ or Gounod’s ‘Sanctus.’
“In the next place, the choir should not attempt to present a new anthem every Sunday. That means nothing else than that the piece has been given only brief rehearsal. Possibly all that these loyal folk have achieved in that one rehearsal is a scrappy knowledge of the harmony. As to its interpretation, they have had not chance to attend to that. They just grind it out – happy if they all contrive to get through at the same time. It is much better if the choir should plan to present one new anthem each month, and repeat old ones frequently. The best choirs do it. If the piece is good, it will bear repetition. If it is not, it should never have been done in the first place. Quite to the contrary is the repeated sermon! Any sermon that the parson can repeat with a feeling of assurance that his congregation will not recall it never was worth preaching. Is that not a fact? When you preach an old sermon, do you pick one of the big ones that made everybody sit up? You do not? We are right, then, about this, as usual. It is not so of the anthem. The congregation likes an old anthem, if it is well done. Preachers who are poor readers of the Scripture Lesson should select obscure passages. The people have heard the familiar ones done well, and cannot forget about it.”
I will share Douglas’s concluding remarks in my next post.
From “The Music of the Church,” by Lloyd C. Douglas, in the 1/13/1921 issue of The Christian Century.
The following is from “The Music of the Church,” an article Lloyd Douglas published in The Christian Century on January 13, 1921. He has been saying that it is the pastor’s responsibility to make sure the church’s music is good. He continues:
“If the preacher is careless whether or not his church ever commands any attention and respect, let him put up with what he has had vouchsafed unto him. But if he hopes to make something of his church, he must deal with his music problem firmly. He must boldly announce that his church will have good music, or none! Far better to have no music at all than what passes for the same in far too many of our Protestant churches. And where does the responsibility rest, at last? With the choir? Not at all! With the music committee? Not a bit of it! It resides with the manager of the whole institution – the preacher. When the music is bad, the congregation is depleted; when that happens, who gets the blame? The choir? The music committee? Not for a minute.
“No; it is the preacher’s business, after all. He may pretend to wash his hands of it and lay the responsibility elsewhere; but verily he has his reward (which, likely as not, involves a move to some other locality where he stands a good chance of swapping the worst chorus-choir on the face of the earth for the awfullest quartet that ever jangled discords). Here shows up the importance of the preacher’s knowing something about music himself. He should be in a position to speak to his choir in a tone of authority. It is not enough that he should be vaguely conscious that the noise behind him on Sunday is raucous and infuriating; he should know exactly what the trouble is, and spare no pains to mend it.
“This demands of the preacher that he should have acquired some musical training. It is not very important that he should be a ‘practical musician.’ Indeed, it has happened that a preacher’s ability to sit down on the organ bench and demonstrate precisely how he would like to have a certain passage rendered has earned him an enemy guaranteed to hate him and his to the third and fourth generation. If the preacher is a good organist, he can well afford to keep this one candle of his under a bushel. And if he has a trained voice, he had better use it to talk with. The preacher-soloist who steps from the pulpit to the choir and back again had better take a day off and decide which of these two very excellent callings is his – and put all of his time on the vocation he decides to retain.
“But it will never be against him, in the opinion of the choir, if he reveals the fact that he knows good music from trash. How many preachers like to draw a chuckle from the choir by deprecating their complete ignorance of the devotional and inspirational music of the church – as if it were something to grin about! Just about as funny as if the doctor should remark that he had never taken any interest in clinical thermometers! And all this foolishness of asepsis in surgery! Of course, the preacher intends this pleasantly as a pretty little compliment to the choir for knowing so very much about something concerning which even he knows nothing; but it’s a poor joke, any way you take it.”
But Douglas’s comments weren’t all negative. In my next post, I’ll share his encouragement to ministers on this subject.
From Lloyd C. Douglas, “Mr. Bryan’s New Crusade,” published in The Christian Century, 11/25/1920.
[The following is the conclusion of Lloyd Douglas’s essay, “Mr. Bryan’s New Crusade,” published in The Christian Century on November 25, 1920. He writes:]
“A few days ago this eminent lecturer spoke to a large audience of laymen in Chicago. The chance was his to make a notable contribution to that convention. What does it get from him? Why – the monkey jokes, of course! And the red cow! It is to be presumed that hundreds of laymen, going home from that convention under the impression that they had heard a great scientist speak his mind about evolution, will be on the alert now to detect the slightest deflection from orthodoxy on the part of their pastors. Let the good brother phrase his remarks in the language of modern scholarship, insisting upon a faith that may be held without damage to one’s intellectual self-respect, and he takes a chance of hearing unfavorably from the deacon who has just returned from the convention where ‘Darwinism’ – and all things scientific – had been weighed and found wanting.
“I write this partly to relieve my feelings, but mostly because there is no doubt in my own mind that we ministers, who have thought our way through these problems at no little cost of time and effort, should refuse any longer to tolerate such presentations of religion as that indicated above, if we may by any possibility put a stop to it! For Mr. Bryan to speak in any presence concerning the relation of religion and science is a piece of presumption! King David prayed, ‘Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins!’ David apparently considered this a serious offense – presumption. And David, being something of an expert on sinning, surely ought to be an authority.
“One is not forgetting that Mr. Bryan is a great and good man who means well and is loved devotedly by great masses of people. He has it in him to make a large contribution to religion. But however rich and active may be the wine of his faith and his enthusiasm, he really ought to stop trying to vend it in the old bottles. Oh – oh – but how fearfully old are the bottles!”
The title page of Lloyd C. Douglas’s article, “Mr. Bryan’s New Crusade,” in the November 25, 1920 issue of The Christian Century.
Over the past several weeks, I’ve been sharing Lloyd Douglas’s series, “Wanted – A Congregation!” as it appeared over five installments in The Christian Century during the summer of 1920. Now that he had made a name for himself at the Century, he continued to be a frequent contributor throughout the first half of that decade. His next article, which appeared in the November 25, 1920, issue, was about three-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan. It was entitled, “Mr. Bryan’s New Crusade.”
It was prompted by Bryan’s recent public appearance at the University of Michigan, where he (apparently) ridiculed the theory of evolution. It made Douglas so mad, he wrote the following essay.
“Monkeys are funny animals. A joke about a monkey is good for a hearty laugh anywhere. The very word ‘monkey’ will provide a smile, even if nothing should be predicated of the subject. Vaudeville actors understand that when all other tricks fail to provide suitable entertainment, is there not the time-tried monkey joke? Certain popular lecturers have always known that no Chautauqua crowd on a hot afternoon in July is too dull, stupid, or sleepy to react promptly under a few carefully chosen words relative to this little animal which seems to symbolize humor – though so inexpressibly sad of countenance.
“Elderly readers will recall that a long time ago, the Hon. William J. Bryan began employing this interesting this interesting and amusing device to entertain his vast audiences from the lecture platform. His own use of the monkey was made in connection with satire and ridicule hurled at the Darwinian theory of evolution. Anybody who had seriously read Charles Robert Darwin’s theory of ‘the descent of man’ was in a position to know that Mr. Bryan was taking great liberties with this celebrated scientist’s hypothesis but saw no reason why the lovable and good-natured lecturer shouldn’t be permitted license to distort, misquote, and otherwise incorrectly present the Darwin belief, if it was understood that he was doing it only in play and for the sole purpose of raising a laugh.”
Does it sound like Douglas approved of that? Just wait. His essay will continue in my next post.
From Lloyd C. Douglas, “Wanted – A Congregation; Fifth Phase – Making Worship Worshipful,” in the 9/9/1920 issue of The Christian Century.
[The following is from the last installment of the series, “Wanted – A Congregation!” which Lloyd Douglas published in the Christian Century during the summer of 1920. This final essay is entitled, “Fifth Phase: Making Worship Worshipful,” and it was in the September 9th issue. Douglas says:]
“Readers of these articles will have noticed that whenever the writer would ease his mind of something a bit too rough and radical to be fathered with the first personal pronoun singular, he solemnly imputes the burden to one hypothetical D. Preston Blue, who serves in the capacity of official goat, and sends him forth into the wilderness. How do you like that ‘wilderness’ idea? Well – that’s where the goat went, did he not? But, we’re getting derailed here. Lend a hand, won’t you, and let us jack this thing up on the track again.
“D. Preston Blue, on vacation, has been suffering of severe misgivings over his ‘order of service.’ He has resolved to plan a brief ritual with some inspirational possibilities. After much careful and prayerful study, he has made a service which proceeds somewhat as follows. It will be recalled that Blue proposes to have the opening hymn sung without other announcement than is to be found on the printed bulletin. There is a great deal to be said about the bulletin for which no time or space is provided here – how it ought to be made, what purposes it should serve, and the excellent service it may render as an advertising medium.
“This opening hymn is frankly announced on the bulletin as ‘The Hymn of Praise’ – and it must be exactly as advertised. Blue reflects upon the time when a peripatetic tent-preacher had taken all Centerville by the ears, and a great (as to numbers) chorus nightly sang at the top of its lungs such doggerel as distinguished the singing evangelist’s own hymnbook (which was to be had at the opening of the meeting and during several impressive intervals thereafter, for the absurdly low price of forty cents) – that he, Blue, had temporarily adopted the book in his own services, at the request of a warmed-over brother who, in the tent, had found again something he declared he had lost (and never missed). So – for several weeks Broad Street began its worship on Sundays by singing ‘Brighten the Corner Where You Are’ or ‘You in Your Corner and I in Mine’ and several other ‘corner’ hymns which appear to have been produced, as to libretto, by Mr. Uriah Heep in collaboration with Pollyanna; the music brought forth by somebody who had attempted, unsuccessfully, to compose the score for a jazz opera, and had marketed his rejected offspring for the purpose indicated above. (If any blame attaches to these remarks, see Blue.)”
The title page from Lloyd Douglas’s series, “Wanted—A Congregation,” in the Christian Century, “Fourth Phase—The Service of Worship,” dated 9/2/1920.
[The following is from the fourth installment in Lloyd Douglas’s series, “Wanted—A Congregation!” in the summer and fall of 1920. This installment, dated 9/2/1920, is titled, “Fourth Phase—The Service of Worship.” The series is about the Reverend D. Preston Blue, who is on a campaign to enlarge his congregation. This episode takes place after he has begun to succeed in building his audience.]
“It was ten o’clock. Stiff in every joint but entirely oblivious to his physical discomfort, the Rev. D. Preston Blue sat on the verandah of the borrowed bungalow overlooking the water, his mind disturbed by very serious reflections. An old man had said something to him that afternoon which had haunted his thoughts for hours. Doubtless the old fellow’s quaint remark, and the incident producing it, possessed some sermonic value. And while questing a possible spiritual significance, our friend had discovered that the cryptic words were aimed directly at one Rev. D. Preston Blue, pastor of the Broad Street Church of Centerville. As the conviction deepened that the words, ‘Thou art the man!’ had been spoken, Blue looked less and less like a carefree man on vacation. He sat with pursed lips, corrugated brow, flexed muscles, and accelerated pulse….
“From two to four that afternoon, stalled in mid-lake, Blue had tinkered hopelessly with a cantankerous little motorboat – an invention closely resembling a violin solo in that, when it is good there are only a few better things, and when it is bad there is positively nothing worse. The preacher had unscrewed all the nuts and taps that would come off the engine, had wiped each one carefully on his trouser leg, and, having inspected them with the gravity of ignorance, had screwed them back on again. He had cranked until he reeled with vertigo and reeked of perspiration. His knuckles were bloody, his throat was parched, his temples throbbed, and his patience was gone.”
[The following is an excerpt from the third installment of Lloyd Douglas’s series about the fictitious minister, Rev. D. Preston Blue in the Christian Century during summer/fall 1920. The series was called, “Wanted – A Congregation!” The third installment, dated 8/26/1920, was titled, “The Sermon Sample.”]
“We have seen the minister’s process of enlisting his congregation’s interest in his new aspiration to develop an inspiring crowd. He has sworn them in to the task of doing their utmost to get their friends out to church on the particular date he has announced. But, as he recalls their pitifully ineffective efforts to perform such service in the past, he decides that they should be shown the way. He resolves to suggest a process to them.
“He goes to his printer with a card in mind – a card 6 x 3-1/4 – to be placed in their hands for distribution. Wait a minute! One knows exactly what you are going to say – that Blue is wasting his money – that the people will make no use of these cards at all. Just hold up a minute, please! Blue has some ideas that may be new.
“The reason that most of the ‘envelope stuff’ that the minister usually issues for advertising purposes is a mere waste of time, money, and effort may be accounted for on the ground that the printing is cheap – looks cheap – and the text dull and trite. One cannot afford to be economical in this business. Oh, what stupid cards many preachers circulate among their people – cards composed with no care whatsoever – mostly in the nature of a sad note beginning, ‘Dearly Beloved’ and closing with ‘Faithfully yours.’ No – that is a waste of good money. All the people who will read a card beginning ‘Dearly Beloved’ will get to church without any assistance.
“Blue is going to preach on ‘Shipwrecks.’ Isn’t it the most simple thing in the world for him to inquire of the printer whether he owns a ‘cut’ of a ship? Well – the printer doesn’t happen to have one; but he does own a big catalog of a type foundry; perhaps if Mr. Blue will look through that book, he may happen upon the very thing he has in mind.
“This book is a great revelation to the Rev. D. Preston Blue. He had never known there was such a thing. Here he has access to all manner of little cuts – ships, dynamos, dredges, fire apparatus, trees – of all kinds and sizes – flowers, birds, patriotic eagles, doves of peace, bluebirds ‘for happiness.’ Why – just to sit and study that book for an hour is good for enough material to stock a dozen sermons. Blue tells the printer to order him enough of the tiny cuts to make a border (36 pt.) all around the card, and two cuts of ships (inch) for marginal decoration. He leaves copy for the card, as follows:
SHIPWRECKS
A SERIES OF OCTOBER SUNDAY MORNING SERMONS
At the Broad Street Church
By Rev. D. Preston Blue
October third – ‘THE TITANIC’
October tenth – ‘THE EASTLAND’
October seventeenth – ‘THE IBERNIA’
A cordial invitation is extended to you by ______.
“There are one hundred active families in Broad Street church. That is – if one is not too punctilious about fine shadings of such words as ‘active.’ Blue has decided that he will make up enough of these cards to supply every family with five, except about twenty homes which may be trusted to make good use of so many as ten each. He proposes to mail one hundred cards himself to ‘prospectives’ and out-of-town friends who are on his mailing list – former members of the church removed to other places, occasional benefactors to the work of Broad Street church. All told, Blue needs 700 cards. He orders them printed in two colors – an orange border, with blue for the composition and marginal cuts. Cuts never cost very much, if ordered out of the regular stock.”
Douglas wasn’t making this up. Here is the card he used for a series of sermons he preached at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor, adjacent to the University of Michigan, in January 1916:
The Lloyd C Douglas Page 