god – The Lloyd C Douglas Page

The Demotion of Death, Part 4

From Lloyd C. Douglas, “The Demotion of Death,” in the January 27, 1921, issue of The Christian Century.

The following is the conclusion of Lloyd Douglas’s essay, “The Demotion of Death,” which appeared in the January 27, 1921, issue of The Christian Century. He is talking to an audience largely of ministers, sharing his experiences visiting the sick. He writes:

“Not infrequently, we are called into consultation by some person whose days are numbered. Here one needs expect to find no cowardice, no whimpering, no hysterical rebellion against an unfriendly fate; but a type of courage that makes one marvel at the superb possibilities of the human spirit when confronting destiny with the heroism of faith. And if we would do our congregations an estimable service, we might tell them something of our experiences and observations – just to hearten them for their own vicissitudes. Surely this is much better than to be everlastingly bombarding them with the indictment of cowardice and faithlessness.

“A few days ago, I talked with a man who had – just that day – been given notice. He was a man of forty. The surgeons had just informed him that his case was inoperable; that he had, probably, three months to live. He told me about it with no more agitation than if he had been informing me of a trip he expected to make, early in March, to some foreign country. There was no sigh of resignation; no repetition of the phrase, ‘Thy will be done,’ which is so often the plaint of the passively desparing; no queries why a good God could have permitted this thing to come upon him. He had just one problem: how to make the very most of the next ninety days! How to get the most out of them; how to put the most into them!

“And he made me proud, that day, that I was privileged to be of the same order of Nature as he. I told him so. I felt myself fairly shaken with emotion as I realized myself standing in the presence of a soul so fine-grained, so endowed with spiritual courage, that it could meet a crisis – the Crisis – with such poise and serenity! In the light of such experiences, I know that there is latent in the human soul possibilities still undreamed of. We are in a process of spiritual evolution. We have come up from crude beginnings, and we have attained to a grandeur of spirit that stirs us deeply whenever we contemplate these vast soul-gains! It doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when He shall be made clearly manifest to us, and we see Him as He is, we shall be like Him!”

The Demotion of Death, Part 2

by Ronald R Johnson

An excerpt from Lloyd C. Douglas, “The Demotion of Death,” Christian Century, 1/27/1921.

The following is from Lloyd Douglas’s essay, “The Demotion of Death,” which appeared in the January 27, 1921, issue of The Christian Century. He is talking to an audience largely of ministers, and has just finished saying how Christ’s crucifixion changed people’s attitudes toward death. He writes:

“From that day, there has been growing up in the soul of men a new and peculiar kind of spiritual courage that has demoted Death from his erstwhile position as enemy of mankind, to the office of warder at the gates of a city which only they regard with dread who have become so infatuated with the material things of life that they know that when they leave these things, they leave their all!

“There is no human happiness at all comparable to that of ‘walking fearlessly.’ One may truthfully speak of this raw spiritual courage as the finest grace of the evolving soul because it permits men to travel unafraid even of the valley of the shadow. What significant gains in this field have been registered even in the past three or four decades! I am not an old man, but I have seen marked changes in the attitude of my own generation toward the mysterious agency that men call death. I can easily recall the most intrusive and painful emphasis that used to be placed upon all the somber trappings, significant of mortality, when a house had been bereaved; the hysteria; the uncontrolled grief; the tightly-closed shutters; the whispers of the neighbors as they tiptoed about through the gloom; the long-drawn-out cruelty of funeral rites, and the too often harrowing effect of their words who had been called in to offer official comfort, and to whom a funeral, where no mortal fainted under the soul-racking discussion of loneliness on the one hand and worms on the other, was very poorly executed, indeed. And do you not remember the shock as you used to hear the heavy spadefuls of clods spattered upon the pine box lid as a grisly accompaniment to the ancient words of the committal service – that almost incredibly dismal and despairing rite which even the heathen in their blindness would probably repudiate as an awful thing to do!”

[Douglas’s essay will continue in my next post.]

The Demotion of Death, Part 1

by Ronald R Johnson

The title page from Lloyd C. Douglas, “The Demotion of Death,” Christian Century, 1/27/1921.

The following is from Lloyd Douglas’s essay, “The Demotion of Death,” which appeared in the January 27, 1921 issue of The Christian Century. He writes:

“The world was old, weary, and jaded before there was vouchsafed to the race, through the words and deeds of Jesus, that which would dispel the gloom of life at the point where the shadows had ever rested most darkly. The Hebrew prophets spoke of death – when, rarely, they spoke of it – as a mystery too vast to be encompassed by human thought or phrased in human speech. The spiritual leaders of other peoples rose to their very highest points of faith when expressing the vague hope that the soul might persist. But all men walked uncertainly as their slanting shadows lengthened toward the east. Solemnly did they respect their obligation to preserve the bodies of their fathers, hoping that their children would deal no less considerately with theirs – but, beyond the sepulchre, there waited nothing more than was comprehended by an undefined wish.

“Thus, life lacked the buoyancy, the zest, the zeal, the urge, that came upon it by way of his spiritual contribution who has become known to the civilized world as Master and Lord. Not until he came was victory proclaimed at that part of life which surely is the most important of all parts of it! Not until he came did the soul become the motive power of life; lasting through all changes; superior to all changes; containing an indestructible spark that was as supreme over the body as the body was supreme over its clothes!

“Consistent with his own belief, this man of the vision splendid went to his own death with a serenity that made them marvel who had been so disinterested in his tragedy that they gambled for his robe. Not a tremor was in his voice as he declared to his sorrowing disciples, ‘Let not your heart be troubled. In my Father’s house are many mansions.’ Not a trace of agitation in his tone as he remarks to the fearful crowd, that lined his way to the hill Golgotha, ‘You need not weep for me! If you weep, let it be for yourselves and your generation.’ Ah – to what heights did the evolving soul of humanity arise that afternoon when he hung, dying, to whom death was but a guide to a land uninvaded by sorrow!”

[Douglas’s essay will continue in my next post.]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 5j: The Rummage Sale Ad

by Ronald R Johnson

From Lloyd C. Douglas, “Wanted – A Congregation; Fifth Phase – Making Worship Worshipful,” in the 9/9/1920 issue of The Christian Century.

“This paean of praise sweeps into a great crescendo, closing on a ‘seventh’ which is immediately followed by the dominant chord – the first syllable of ‘Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow,’ in which everybody unites. Then the minister and the congregation sit down.

“Mr. Blue understands that his projected service of worship has now arrived at a very critical moment. Shall the doors be thrown open now, while the tardy tramp to their seats? It does not appear so. At this moment, the choir, without prelude or pause, bursts into its ‘praise anthem’ – ‘bursts’ because that is the way it must go into it! There must be no fussing for the place in the book, no tinkling introduction of a dozen measures; the choir must plunge into its praise anthem. And surely we have been richly endowed with such musical blessings! This should be one of the great events of the service – this anthem of praise. When it is done, the choir is seated. The service of worship – strictly speaking – is ended. Now let the tardy in, while the organist plays some incidental music, probably an improvisation of the score of the next hymn to be sung immediately before the sermon.

“Here follows the Scripture Reading, and after it the solo. Unless the solo is good, it should be left out. Until we can have inspiring solos, let us have none. Let us not permit our children to compare our church music with that of the moving-picture show, to our discredit. Then, the prayer.

“Blue has now arrived at the ‘announcements.’ Mentally he reviews the customary performance. Belated messages, turned in after the bulletin had gone to press, are now to be read: ‘The Ladies of Group Five have a very fine eggbeater for sale at the small price of Fifty Cents.’

“Here the preacher smiles foolishly and comments thereon. It is assumed, he says, that whenever Group Five – goodole Group Five – goes on the market with an eggbeater, it is some eggbeater – a veritable world-beater of an eggbeater, etc. (For shame!) He continues reading:

“‘These eggbeaters may be had from any member of Group Five or by telephoning Mrs. O. D. Liverus [Douglas means for us to pronounce this, “O deliver us!”] at her residence – number 9191-x.’

“It is this sort of drool from the pulpit that makes the intelligent and devout want to crawl under the seat, just through abject humiliation! But what is a man to do – Blue asks himself – when Mrs. O. D. Liverus comes down to the study before the service and hands me this note, saying, ‘I know I shouldn’t do this, but oh, Mr. Blue, Mr. Blue!’ Mr. Blue resolves that he will stand pat, hereafter, on his decision. ‘Positively no announcements will be read from the pulpit!’

“And suppose Mrs. Liverus gets angry! Well, it’s time the saints were getting over their touchiness. Christianity shouldn’t make people so edgy as all that. And when it does, there is something the matter with it.

“This brings us up to the church ‘offering.’ And, because the time is all gone, it brings us also to the close of this story. The writer hereby invites the editor to urge him to a chapter on ‘Church Finances’ – which is a live matter, and needs discussion.

“Oh, we’ll make a preacher out of this Blue fellow yet! For one thing, he is getting over his timidity. He has found out that he has a very important work to do and must not be influenced too much by traditions and customs, especially when said traditions and customs are bad.

“It is a red-letter day in the preacher’s experience when, after somebody has said, ‘Oh, but – Mis-ter B-loooo – we just nev-ver do it that way!’ he is able to reply, smilingly but confidently, ‘Oh, yes we do – from now on!’ There is excellent psychology in that. Instantly the preacher becomes worth more to that particular parishioner. Oh – there may be a little sulking; but it all comes out right in the end.

“It is a high spot in the discouraged preacher’s life when, after the choir director has looked over the projected order of worship and has remarked, ‘We simply cannot do it!’ – the minister is able to reply, ‘Well, we’re going to, nevertheless!'”

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 5h: The Call to Worship

by Ronald R Johnson

“To render this effectively will require a great deal of patient rehearsal by the quartet; but Blue knows that when these four men begin to realize the inspirational possibilities of this part of the service, they will gladly spend the time.

“You and I have a great deal to say about the wickedness of the stage, and doubtless there is even more that might be said on the same subject; but we should be ashamed when we remember that the stage is able to grip the public’s imagination because of the indefatigable zeal and patience with which the actors school themselves in their parts. Why, before a performance is actually presented, and during the last few days of rehearsal, these people toil for uninterrupted hours, pausing neither for meals nor sleep, that they may work together to produce the desired effect at certain psychological moments! And, sometimes, preachers go into the pulpit and try to read a hymn on the spur of the moment and bungle and fumble and haggle at it until the sensitive want to cry out in mingled pain and disgust. No less often, they do not know what the Scripture Lesson is to be until the opening hymn is being sung; and they get up and read it without any advance preparation whatsoever. More frequently, they haven’t the vaguest notion what the pastoral prayer is going to consider, or how it is going to consider it – a terra incognito, both as to form and content!

“Any preacher who in his practice of ophthalmology tries to remove the mote from the eye of the actor, while himself guilty of such blunders of indolence and indifference, had better desist until he is able to extract the two-by-four which interferes with his own vision. But that isn’t get on very fast with Blue’s new order of service, is it?”

[Douglas will continue his essay in my next post…]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 5g: No Laughing Matter

by Ronald R Johnson

[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 has just described the kind of folksy praise hymn that a lot of churches were starting to adopt by 1920. He continues:]

“Well – this was the sort of ‘praise hymn’ with which Broad Street church had tuned itself up to worship for some weeks. It was a shame; and we do wrong to laugh. It is no laughing matter. When one considers the welfare of the honest stranger who may have gone into that place on such an occasion, almost frantically starving for something that would nourish his soul, and had sensed that surge of revulsion which sweeps over a sensitive spirit forced to witness glaring indecencies and blasphemies, one understands that this is too serious to be taken lightly.

“Blue is to have no more of this. His first hymn will be a hymn of praise, in fact as well as in name, and conditions are going to be created to make the congregation sing. Then comes silence – after the ‘amen’ with which the hymn closes – and Blue means to see to it that the ‘amen’ is sung with vigor and volume, remembering that most of the ‘amens’ sung in his church are rendered as if two-thirds the congregation and half the choir understood that there were to be no ‘amens’ that day. Either do it or quit it! What must be the thought of the keen-witted man who sees the church committing exactly the same blunders and running amuck in precisely the same places in the service, Sunday after Sunday? Perhaps he thinks the manager of the institution is too stupid to have noticed or too lazy to have mended.

“The new order of service for Broad Street church begins, properly, with that impressive silence following the first hymn – not a long pause, but one full of meaning. And then the minister is to say:

“‘In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. The Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him.’

“Immediately following the reading of these words, a male quartet is to sing, unaccompanied and very softly, a beautiful setting of the sentence:

“‘Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.'”

[Douglas’s essay will be continued in my next post…]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 5f: Old Friend Blue Again

by Ronald R Johnson

“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.)”

[Douglas’s essay will continue in my next post…]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 5e: Off-Hand Prayers

by Ronald R Johnson

[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 has just claimed that “non-conformist” churches have gotten too far away from beauty in their worship services, and he acknowledges that any attempt at making worship beautiful again might lead to the accusation of being “mystical.” He continues:]

“Yet this problem must be solved somehow. ‘Evolutionary momentum’ has been at work again. The service became so ornate that it met disaster and made an open bid for gross paganism four hundred years ago. Now it has become so denuded of its beauty that its stark ugliness repels. 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!”

[Douglas’s essay will continue in my next post…]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 5d: Evolutionary Momentum

by Ronald R Johnson

[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 has just said that the problem with most churches is that they ignored “the ‘incurably’ religious passion in men’s hearts for a beautiful, reverential, dignified and consistent means of church worship.” He goes on to explain:]

“There is a curious phenomenon in nature known to biology as ‘evolutionary momentum.’ A certain animal develops a tusk or a horn or a set of spines, for purpose of defense. By natural selection, only such members of the species survive as are best equipped with the peculiar protection. But, after an interminable length of time, this thing upon which the animal’s ancestors had relied for defense has so increased in length and weight that it becomes a serious menace. After that – Nemesis! By a process of ‘evolutionary momentum,’ the weapon becomes the machinery of his defeat who carries it. What was once a safeguard becomes a shackle. The virtue becomes a vice.

“When our forefathers repudiated the Vatican, they decided to pitch out of the church everything that was loose at both ends. True, many a dingy old tenet which might have been more honored by the breach than the observance was permitted to remain – but everything that had any color, form, or beauty was enrolled on Protestantism’s index expurgatorius. Gradually, the service of worship was denuded of its vestments, its historic symbolism, its awesome solemnities, its majestic music, its stately grandeur, its subtle appeal to the mystical quality of the human mind.

“Doubtless the whole business of ceremonialism and symbolism had been grossly exaggerated. One suspects that it was this overdevelopment of the ritual that had as much as anything to do with the great protest which sent such a flock of awkward fledglings fluttering out of the old nest. It was a typical case of ‘evolutionary momentum.’ Generation after generation, these embellishments had been added to the service of worship until the accretion of ornate rites toppled of its own weight. Thereupon, new tendencies arose, pledged to have no more of such nonsense. They kept the faith. At this point, they kept the faith!

“Our so-called ‘service of worship,’ in such churches as employ you and me to serve as their pastors, surely ought to satisfy the most exacting of our colonial fathers who had come to hate the sights, sounds, and scents of ritualistic worship. It is only rarely that the service of worship in a ‘non-conformist’ church excites a feeling of reverence. To be sure, many churches have not failed here. I am just talking about your church and mine. We know very well that our ‘service of worship’ needs the breath of life put into it! But how are we going to manage it without being accused of ‘mysticism’ or something else a very great deal worse?”

[Douglas’s essay will be continued in my next post…]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 5c: Failures and Their Causes

by Ronald R Johnson

“Regarded specifically, it is true that many churches have been unable to present a very attractive portrait of his life and love who spoke of a social commonwealth of souls in that gripping phrase – ‘The Kingdom.’ Possibly such failures may be traced to a large number of causes. At least three of these causes stand out rather prominently. One type of failure may easily be accounted for on the ground of an overemphasis upon some minor point of doctrine which has been permitted to grow so huge as to drain the very life of the cultus that produced it – like a monstrous sarcoma. It may have gone in for feet-washing as a necessary and important ceremonial rite, for example. At first, this performance may have had some real symbolic beauty – though the imagination of the writer is far too sluggish to understand what beauty could ever have been thus expressed to the occidental mind; he merely assumes that such may have been the case, at first. But once the ceremony had lost its pristine spontaneity, it must have become a heavy load to carry. The sect could not relax its grip upon its burden, however. What it had written, it had written! Presently, so far as that body of believers is concerned, there is nothing much to Christianity except to get one’s feet washed, and so large a volume of effort is required for the persistence of this rite that there is very little energy left for the main task. It is the old case of the tail wagging the dog. It is also like the steamboat of Lincoln’s story that had a ten-foot boiler and a twelve-foot whistle. Every time it whistled, it stopped. I fancy that the sacrament of feet-washing is now nearly enough passe to be safely mentioned as a case in point to cover a great many similar pathological conditions still present with us. Such deflections from the main task of the church account for part of her present discomfiture.

“A second type of failure may be explained on the ground of an untrained and ineffective leadership in the pulpit. No church can get on very well or for a very long time which willfully does violence to human intelligence. To endure, a church must be able to command the respect of thoughtful people. But this is a truism requiring no argument; at least not in this presence.

“The third and by far the most prevalent type of failure may be accounted for on the ground that the churches of this order have almost completely ignored the ‘incurably’ religious passion in men’s hearts for a beautiful, reverential, dignified and consistent means of church worship.”

[Douglas’s essay will continue in my next post…]