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Douglas’s Advice to Student Leaders

From the April 1920 issue of The Intercollegian.

The following is “An Open Letter to the President-Elect of the Students’ Christian Association,” by Lloyd C. Douglas, in the April 1920 issue of The Intercollegian, the monthly magazine of the YMCA.

“My Friend:

“It is no small matter that you have been chosen as the official head of your Student Association for the coming year.

“Your election implies that you possess natural gifts as an executive; that you are known to be loyal to the best traditions of your school; that you have won popularity without compromise, and are considered fit to serve as an example for your fellows.

“Who accepts election to any office involving a trust — especially if that trust invests in him the moral leadership of the group exercising the right of suffrage — may expect to experience a purely natural sensation of pride over the honor; for unless he considers it an honor, they blundered who elected him to it.

“If that honor has been worthily bestowed, however, the feeling of pride is rapidly supplanted by a consciousness of responsibility. If entirely honest with yourself, you will contemplate your new trust with humility.

“Perhaps it is not going too far to say that from now until you leave your college as an alumnus your words will carry deeper significance, and your conduct invite closer scrutiny, than the words or deeds of any of your comrades.

“It may not serve you ill to inquire somewhat concerning your predecessors in this unique position. Certain faculty men will be glad to tell you about Robinson, ’07, who vitalized his student generation and made clean sportsmanship a matter of college pride; and of Slocum, ’12, who gave popularity and perpetuity to the honor system in examinations; and of Bannister, ’17, who gave new beauty to patriotism on the campus before he marched away — Bannister, whose strong young face has been done in bronze on the college gate.

“Neither will it do you hurt — though this promises to be depressing — to hear how Watkins, ’09, saw in his promotion to this trust only another office to add to the long string of favors thrust upon him by friends who were said to have been organized and unduly influenced in his behalf. You will be told how Watkins, having received the congratulations of the student public, wore his new badge of preferment self-consciously for a month, then resigned, pleading pressure of other work.

“They will also tell you about Cummings, ’18, who claimed he didn’t know what he was getting into, and begged off in October, just as the most important duties of his office were accumulating.

“When the new president-elect of the Student Association in 1936 asks Old Dean Williams to tell him something about the men who preceded him as moral leaders of your college, what will be said about you?

“Will you be cited as a kinetic energy that energized the whole student body for the period of his administration, or as a sorry misfit who soon wearied of his trust?

“Perhaps it will be well for you, just now, to burn a few of the bridges which may tempt retreat in an hour of physical exhaustion or discouragement. Call your new cabinet about you; open your heart to these men, while the fresh inspiration of your trust is aflame; confide to them your hopes that the coming year, under your and their leadership, may lift your student generation up on higher ground.

“They will not take it amiss if you ask them to kneel with you and ask for that peculiar power which is otherwise inaccessible. It would be a fine way to begin your administration. It is not difficult to see you thus laying the cornerstone of a presidency that shall bring honor to you and uncounted gains to your college.

“Why do Association cabinets sometimes grow listless and disinterested? It is presumed that the personnel was carefully chosen. Somebody must have thought these men were capable. There must have been an hour when they themselves expressed some interest and enthusiasm, else they would not have accepted the commission. Just where and when and how did they lose their zeal?

“More often than otherwise, the president, if entirely honest, could explain this condition on the same grounds as he accounts for his own misgivings over his failure. To his mind, the office never had been anything but a job that added another line of type to his complicated letterhead.

“May one add, who has had a chance to observe at close range some of these triumphs and defeats of college leaders, that the first few days of your experience in your new office will not only determine your administrative success, but will be highly prophetic of your future career.

“You have it all to say, in this little group of days, whether you are to be remembered as the man who dignified his office and left his personality ineffaceably stamped upon his alma mater, giving her cause to revere him, or as the man who humiliated his office and then ‘chucked it.'”

Under the Juniper Tree

by Ronald R Johnson

The front page of the February 1920 issue of The Intercollegian (the magazine of the YMCA).

It was early 1920, a little more than a year after the end of the First World War. Although the war was over, peace was illusive. Lloyd Douglas, watching global developments from Ann Arbor, Michigan, was concerned about the future. His essay, “Under the Juniper Tree,” published in The Intercollegian’s February 1920 issue, was prompted by a youth convention of some sort, probably involving the YMCA. I have been unable to get information about that conference, but here is Douglas’s response. The biblical reference is to the story of Elijah under the juniper tree in I Kings 19.

“An old statesman sat, fagged and gloomy, under a juniper tree. The place was a wilderness. The hour was twilight. The man was a fugitive.

“He had tried, unsuccessfully, to make something of a nation that was rotting. Too much war, too much social injustice, too much idle riches at the top and sour poverty at the bottom. All of these conditions had ‘done her in.’ Everybody was restless; the air was charged with revolution; two percent were profiteering on ninety-eight percent, and ninety-eight percent were rolling up their tattered sleeves to settle with the two percent. A mess it was — by all the rules of reckoning!

“The old statesman had given up the sacrificial struggle and wanted nothing else than to die. He tumbled into a forlorn heap under a juniper tree. Thus, the juniper tree became, forever and ever, a symbol of wretchedness. Even the berries thereof have been put under the ban.

“A Voice spoke to the despairing statesman. By no means was his cause lost. There were seven thousand still loyal to the best interests of the endangered kingdom. These seven thousand constituted the key to the desperate situation. Let them be lined up for service and the nation’s mistakes could be rectified.

“All of this happened in 920 B.C.

“At the opening of 1920 A.D., seating accommodations under the juniper tree were entirely inadequate to take care of the prophets who feared we were destined to perish of our quick and easy riches. Materialism rampant; indifference the vogue; selfishness at the crescent; almost everybody with his hand in the bag, up to the shoulder.

“A telegram from Des Moines!

“Seven thousand!’ Seven thousand who? — what? — whence?

“Seven thousand potential leaders of the nation’s future affairs forego their holidays, at no little cost to themselves, to meet in a great convention and pledge their lives to lift, help, heal, serve, redeem!

“Moreover — these seven thousand were but picked representatives of seven times seven thousand who feel precisely as they feel about the responsibilities now facing the trained leadership of the republic.

“Let the juniper tree be cut down for a celebration bonfire! We are not so badly off as we thought! This country simply cannot make enough mistakes to abrogate the influence of these indomitable young dynamos!

“When the census taker inquires about your occupation, tell him you are a wood-cutter — specializing in juniper trees!

“We are on the way up once more!”

Fur Coats

by Ronald R Johnson

The following is from an essay by Lloyd Douglas entitled, “Fur Coats,” published in the December 1919 issue of the YMCA’s monthly magazine, The Intercollegian.

“It was a good train, and we had been doing our fifty miles an hour all afternoon. But the trip was long, the book I had been reading had depressed me, and I was feeling the need of some congenial human society when the young doctor sauntered down the aisle and, upon receipt of my smile of welcome, dropped into the vacant chair.

“‘What’s the book?’ he inquired. I told him. It was Professor Cram’s brilliant little volume, Walled Towns.

“‘What’s it about?’ he persisted. I read him a few selected passages, specializing on the author’s indictment of modern society.

“‘This man thinks,’ I remarked, ‘that one of our chief errors is ‘the quantitative standard’ — the worship of bigness, the rejection of ‘the passion for perfection in favor of the numerical equivalent’ — exhibited alike by ‘the ignorant contractor, trying, by the aid of galvanized iron, to produce an effect of a tawdry, lying magnificence,’ and the exploiters of ‘foolish luxuries, and so-called amenities of life which we were far happier without.’ Pretty dismal invoice of the times, don’t you think?’ — for I hoped this young man might restore my optimism.

“‘Well,’ replied the doctor gravely, ‘I don’t believe he has overstated the case. I am blue, today, over certain matters closely related to this.’

“I told him to unpack his troubles from his old kit-bag and we’d look ’em over. He did so. He was on his way back, he said, from the annual ‘homecoming’ at his alma mater — one of the greater state universities of the middle west. There had been a thrilling football game, and a crowded program of social events.

“‘Nothing in all that to be blue about,’ I observed. ‘You must have had a mighty good time.’

“‘I am never going back!’ he said passionately. ‘Never!’

“Whereupon I handed him the inevitable ‘Why?’ — and waited for the story.

“‘Even at my own fraternity house,’ he began, with suppressed indignation, ‘I felt like a cat in a strange attic. The only values there were money values! The new outfit was cold, hard, worldly-wise, blasé, candidly snobbish! Many of the old grads were back. The youngsters coolly appraised their cars, their clothes, and accepted or rejected them on a financial basis. Some of the old fellows brought their wives out to the dance. The woman who appeared without a fur coat was extremely fortunate if she wasn’t snubbed by that selfish, silly, inordinately stupid bunch of new-rich!’

“‘A fur coat!’ I echoed, somewhat dazedly.

“‘Yes!’ snapped the doctor, angrily, ‘a fur coat! That’s the sign of the order now! The Inner Guard at the Greek portal asks the Outer Guard, ‘Who comes there?’ And the Outer Guard replies, ‘Looks like an old grad!’ Says the Inner Guard, ‘How did he get here?’ ‘Motored!’ ‘Spiffy car?’ ‘Not so very!’ ‘Come alone?’ ‘Wife with him!’ ‘Fur coat?’ ‘No!’ ‘Tell ’em we’re sorry!’

“‘But,’ I stammered, ‘what’s going to become of our justly celebrated Democracy if we have this sort of thing going on, right at the tap-root of the leadership we are training to bring us out of our social wilderness?’

“The doctor didn’t know. Presently, we discovered that we weren’t cheering each other’s mood very much, and he went back to his seat while I resumed the little book at the place where Professor Cram was saying, ‘Neither is education a universal panacea for this persistent disease of backsliding; it is not even a palliative or a prophylactic. The most intensive educational period ever known had issue in the most preposterous war in history [WWI, which had ended a year earlier], initiated by the most highly educated of all people, by them given a new content of disgrace and savagery, and issuing at last into Bolshevism and an obscene anarchy that would be ridiculous but for the omnipresent horror!’

“‘But the war!’ I reflected. ‘Surely it was guaranteed to furnish us a new outlook on life! It was to prove ‘a great regenerative agency, out of whose fiery purgation would issue forth a new spirit that would redeem the world.’

“I turned back to the little book and found the professor saying, ‘Every great war exhibits at least two phenomena following on from its end: the falling back into an abyss of meanness, materialism, and self-seeking, with the swift disappearance of the spiritual exaltation during the fight; and the emergence, sooner or later, of isolated personalities who have retained the ardor of spiritual regeneration and who struggle to bring the mass of the people back to their lost ideals.’

“Are these ‘isolated personalities’ now in preparation for their sublime task? Are they in college this winter? And what do they think of the ‘fur coat’ standard of human values?”

Paste These Words in Your Hat

by Ronald R Johnson

From Douglas’s essay, “Wedding Clothes,” published in the May 1919 issue of The Intercollegian.

This is from “Wedding Clothes,” by Lloyd C. Douglas, in the May 1919 issue of The Intercollegian, the YMCA’s monthly magazine.

“The prince was about to be married. His father, the king, planned a banquet in honor of the nuptials. Only the blue-blooded and full-pedigreed were invited. They sent regrets. The king was enraged. He told his servants to go out and bring in anybody and everybody. The servants brought them.

“Some came because they were curious to see the king’s palace; some to eat; some to drink; some to be able to boast later that they had been there; some to follow the crowd. None of them felicitated the prince or inquired for the bride or cared a whoopteree for the wedding.

“Robes were provided at the door to cover the guests’ rags and patches, on the theory that if you can’t have interior respectability, you’d better try to rub some of it on the outside. One unkempt fellow said, ‘I’ll not wear their togs. They can take me just as I am, or throw me out!’ So they threw him out. It may have been a trivial reason for expulsion, but out he went.

“The man who told this fable added, ‘Many are called, but few are chosen.’

“A long time ago, men were born into the Kingdom of Larger Opportunity. Then, so many of the pedigreed fell down on their jobs that the K. of L. O. was thrown open to the general public. They began coming from all quarters to attend the feast of wisdom provided by our institutions of higher learning.

“Some came because it was their parents’ wish; some because they had finished high school, and what else was there to do; some to participate in the sports and the games; some to enjoy the fun and frolic of student life; some to follow the crowd. They are still coming. Many are called, but few are chosen. The majority are pitched out of the K. of L. O. as soon as they enter — sometimes for trivial reasons.

“One man is rejected from the K. of L. O. because he doesn’t know how to speak his own language. Some people know five languages; he doesn’t know any. The vernacular has always served his purpose. Says he, “‘I done it’ is just as good as ‘I did it,’ haint it, so long as I really went and done it?” Then, the day comes when the Big Man, who has it all to say whether our young hero gets his chance in the K. of L. O., hears him talk, passes him up as either too stupid to have noticed the difference between his uncouth speech and the language of cultured men, or too lazy to have mended his slovenly talk, or too indifferent to care. Anyway, out he goes. Oh, not to perish utterly; just to become a second-rater, holding the light and grinding the knives and washing the dishes and collecting the data for some other fellow who hasn’t half his morals but twice his manners.

“Another is thrown out because he doesn’t know how to eat; thinks a knife will do, so long as he is careful not to cut his face. Another is thrown out because he is so beastly ungracious. Another is thrown out because, when he shakes hands, he offers a flabby, flaccid pudding to the Big Man who, having shaken it and put it aside, says, ‘He will not do. It’s his hand. There’s no bling in him!’ And, all the time, the bling may be in him — only one wouldn’t suspect it by shaking the dead fish attached to his wrist.

“The pity of it all is that every year men graduate and go out to win their way in the world, and mess things up for society, who lack any moral purpose, who would willingly double-cross their own grandmothers for a dollar, while other men, who have studied themselves round-shouldered and half-blind preparing to do their share of the world’s work — honest, industrious, sincere — are pitched out of the K. of L. O. for lack of some insignificant decoration, like the wedding garment.

“Many are called, but few are chosen.

“Paste these words in your hat.

“For the man who gave them to us always knew what what he was talking about.”

Ten Commandments for the ‘College’ Church (Revisited)

by Ronald R Johnson

Reproduction of “Ten Commandments for the ‘College’ Church,” an essay that Douglas published in The Intercollegian in their April 1919 issue.

I featured this article in an earlier post some years ago, but it’s appropriate to post it again now, as part of a series on Douglas’s essays in The Intercollegian from January 1919 through June 1920. Here is my earlier post:

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

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

The commandments are listed with Roman numerals:

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

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

II.

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

III.

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

IV.

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

Thou shalt not scold.

VI.

Thou shalt not commit sectarianism.

VII.

Thou shalt not bawl out the fraternities.

VIII.

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

IX.

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

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

[The editor added this note at the end: These “commandments” may be of interest also – and profit – to Association Secretaries and other Christian workers in academic communities. – Edit.]

Passenger or Crew Member?

by Ronald R Johnson

From Lloyd Douglas’s essay, “Taking the Grade,” published in The Intercollegian’s January 1919 issue.

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to post the essays Lloyd Douglas published in The Intercollegian (the monthly magazine of the YMCA) from January 1919 through June 1920. Today’s article is entitled, “Taking the Grade,” and it was published in the January 1919 issue. (Let me just say in advance: some of Douglas’s essays haven’t aged well. This one was written right after the end of WWI.)

“A thoughtful friend of mine, who is something of a maxim-wright, informs me that ‘eventful eras produce prophets.’ If this is true — and it does jingle like an honest-to-goodness proverb — we must have been passing through an uncommonly stirring period, judging by the densit of the present population on the Isle of Patmos.

“These prophets seem to constitute a new species of the genus seer, in that they are agreed on at least one premise, to wit: we are entering upon an age of unprecedented possibilities for the advancement of civilization.

“Now the unanimity of this forecast surely cannot be charged to collusion among the prophets, for the business of prophesying is strictly a one-man job. The prophets do not ‘collude.’ Never yet have they held an annual conference to elect officers and have their picture taken. Prophets are about as chummy as comets.

“Therefore, when all of them declare, with certitude, each independently of the others, that we are now en route to better things — and that, too, in face of the traditional uncheerfulness of their trade — the combined effect of their predictions is very heartening.

“We will consider this as a settled fact, then–an incontrovertable, non-sinkable, self-bailable, time-lock, sunk-hinge Fact. The world is about to ‘take the grade’ to the upper levels. After a long and uneventful journey across the prairie, civilization makes ready to climb to a clearer and cleaner atmosphere. But the prophets have not said that the world is going to toboggan up to that altitude. Coasting is only good for movement in the opposite direction.

“Whoever is interested in this proposed ascent of civilization will join the crew. Erstwhile coal-passers will ply their shovels at the furnace doors. Persons previously on the passenger list will go forward to the tender and help the stokers. Certain husky people will get out behind and push. A few daring ones may go ahead and pull — though this is dangerous business, involving the risk of being run over; it is sincerely to be hoped that nobody will try to pull who hasn’t had a lot of previous experience in pushing.

“Of course, there are to be many passengers. Special cars will be made up for various parties, such as the dirty nations, the greedy nations, the ignorant nations, the self-infatuated nations, and the sick nations.

“Certain other passengers with special reservations are such incapacitated types as the great-grandson of old Timothy Waggles, who sat on the wharf swinging his feet and shouting, ‘Fool!’ at Robert Fulton when the latter was trying to make his steamboat go; and the son of Caleb Scroggins, who hee-hawed at Langley’s attempt at an aeroplane; and Willum the Last, himself, who turned all the resources of his empire into gunpowder and then pulled the trigger.

“All these will have to be hauled up the grade; plus one more passenger. Him I heard say, not long ago, ‘What’s all this talk about ‘missions’ and ‘increased missionary effort’ and ‘a larger missionary program’? Personally, I have never seen any good in missions, and I don’t see any good in them now! I consider all this chatter to be mere piffle!’

“So, we have to haul him too, along with Waggles and Scroggins and Willum. He will probably expect an assignment to the most luxurious coach on the train. We can’t ask him to ride forward in one of the rattan tourist cars, along with the ordinary supermen and the Hunkies and the Turks and the rest of that gang who went out to spread ‘kultur’ among their benighted brethren. No; we’ll have the porter make up the drawing-room compartment for this man, and ask the steward of the diner to send him all his meals.

“I think I can see him chatting with the senile Waggles and the infirm Scroggins and the other old fellow, on the way up, saying, ‘Mighty fine bit of country through which we are passing, gentlemen! Growing more and more beautiful with every mile. Notice how pure the air smells up here! And, just to think, we’re coasting up! Remarkable, isn’t it?’

“Now, if we could find some way of coaxing this man to stroll through the train and see what all we have on board, I believe he would want to join the crew; for he is not a bad sort. He is just getting a bit elderly in his habits of thought. All his life he has been ransacking the depths of his inexperience for wise words of caution for all who ‘waste their money and strength on missions.’ His mind has been lighted up, slightly, by the general illumination that has been observed by most people not utterly blind; but his voice still quavers the old tune. His mind and his mouth seem to have become disconnected in some manner.

“Anybody with a plan to suggest for persuading this man to put on his hat and walk through the train will confer a great favor on the crew who need his assistance. If we could get him into that car where the passengers are down on all fours around a wooden thing with six legs, ten horns, two tails, and a stinger, beseeching it to give them health and harvests, I know he would say, ‘What this bunch of drooling idiots want is a God with some sense; and a corps of doctors, and some tractors, and a threshing-machine, and a million dollars’ worth of soap! Why, I didn’t know we had anything like this aboard! What kind of a train is this? Let me get out and look!’

“And if he did get out, and saw what a tremendous amount of energy it was going to require to haul this miscellaneous outfit up the grade, I know that fellow well enough to believe that he would take off his coat and help. For he’s not a fool, even if he is old and fat.”

Washington’s Prayer

by Ronald R Johnson

A page from “The Father of Our Country,” a sermon preached by Lloyd C. Douglas at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor on February 22, 1920. (In Sermons [5], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.)

It is the weekend of President’s Day, 1920, and Lloyd C Douglas is preaching a sermon on the subject, “The Father of Our Country,” at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor. The date is February 22, 1920. (In Sermons [5], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.)

In this sermon, Douglas talked about the unique characteristics that he admired about President George Washington: his poise, his simplicity, his attitude of service to others. And now, at the conclusion of his address, Douglas says,

“Among the many written prayers with which his [Washington’s] personal memoirs abound is this petition, composed during his presidency of the United States, and evidently at a time of considerable strain.” Douglas closes with this prayer by Washington:

Most Gracious Lord: from whom proceedeth every good and perfect gift, take care, I pray Thee, of my affairs, and more and more direct me to Thy truth.

Suffer me not to be enticed from Thee by the blandishments of this world.

Work in me Thy good will; discharge my mind from all things that are displeasing to Thee, of ill will and discontent, wrath and bitterness, pride and vain conceit, of myself, and render me charitable, pure and patient.

Make me willing and fit to die when Thou shalt call me hence.

Bless the whole race of mankind, and let the world be filled with the knowledge of Thyself and Thy Son, the Christ.

Bless Thou my friends, and grant me grace to forgive my enemies as heartily as I desire forgiveness of Thee for my transgressions.

Defend me from all evil, and do more for me than I can think or ask, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

Washington’s Simplicity

by Ronald R Johnson

[This is from a sermon entitled, “The Father of Our Country,” preached by Lloyd C. Douglas at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor on February 22, 1920. (In Sermons [5], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.)]

“Now, if a man proposes to be a servant of his time, it means that his chief errand in life is to give rather than to get. There is something peculiarly apt about Paul’s admonition to them that have something to give.

“Says the Tarsan: ‘Let him that gives, do it with simplicity.’

“No big show of it; no large spread of it; no self-conscious parade of it; for many a seemly virtue has been made extremely obvious for having been too broadly advertised by its possessor.

“Not too serious about it, either, as if to say, ‘Here, I have skimped and saved and done without — for you, you no-account; I have slaved till my fingers bled, in order to hand you this inestimably valuable whatever-it-is; and now that it is yours, don’t let me ever catch you forgetting what an awful time I had getting it for you.’

“Why, you and I know people who, when they give anything, raise such a hullabaloo about it and make such a profound and painful fuss over their magnanimity that they who benefit by the generosity would as leave do without the good thing as to witness the scene in the shambles before the altar of sacrifice has been reached.

“George Washington had much to give, and he gave it with simplicity. He apparently never thought of himself as a great man who must of necessity weigh his every word so that when history laid hold of him it should find him guiltless of a split infinitive or caught with some idea slightly less than cosmic in its application. I don’t believe he was thinking much about the future or attempting to prescribe for universal maladies of the social order. He was doing his honest best to serve his own people, of his own generation, and minister to the needs of the hour.

“One mark of his simplicity was his modesty, a not altogether unbecoming grace in a man elected by his countrymen to execute their wishes. When, for example, he was appointed commander-in-chief of the United States armies, he declared himself utterly unfit for the position and begged to be permitted to serve his country, at war, in some subordinate capacity. And when finally he accepted this trust, he took the office without salary, stoutly maintaining that only the feeling that he might be shirking his duty if he declined reconciled him to the idea of serving in this conspicuous position.

“Moreover, it is stated of him that Washington was always a determined skeptic as to his fitness to fill the positions to which he was successively elected, plainly shrinking from promotions involving larger responsibilities. When Washington gave of himself, he gave with simplicity.

“Examination of his state papers reveals them as of immediate concern with the problems of the exact day and hour of their composition. Therefore they are of great interest to succeeding generations. Had he been writing under the delusion that he was a prophet or a seer, it would not have been so. Neither would his utterances have amounted to much in his own time, or to anything later.

“He was just a simple-hearted American citizen — of deep patriotism and genuine concern for his neighbors, trying to do and say that which might best meet the needs of his country at the hour. And, having acted in that attitude, his words have become invested with much wisdom for his posterity…. No prophet; no sage; no seer; no political mystic, conscious of the powers of divination; but only a simple-hearted, great-souled, fine-fibered Christian gentleman — the welfare and contentment of his countrymen his most urgent thought.”

[I will share the last part of Douglas’s sermon in my next post.]

Douglas’s Thoughts on George Washington

by Ronald R Johnson

“The sign and token of this day is a device featuring a hatchet and the ragged stump of a young cherry tree. Many people know that George Washington once cut down a cherry tree and truthfully confessed his sin, who probably remember little else about this man except, possibly, that he was the first president of the United States.

“Now, instead of merely taking it for granted, as a peculiar and interesting fact that so great a man as Washington must be made concrete for us by the sign of a hatchet with which, as a lad, he was said to have hewn down a cherry tree, it is worth our while to attempt to fathom the reason for this. Surely there must be a reason.

“It may be hastily concluded that this hatchet symbol means that Washington’s outstanding attribute was his unswerving adherence to the absolute truth. In the interest of that same kind of truth, it must be admitted that this story about Washington probably hasn’t a leg to stand on. It pains me to reflect that this yarn about the hatchet and the cherry tree was said to have been invented by a man of my own profession — one Reverence Mason Weems.

“This good man wrote a biography of Washington in 1800 which caught the popular fancy and had a circulation quite out of proportion to its actual merits. When, six years later, he came to the point of preparing a second edition of it — flushed with pride over his success — he introduced many anecdotes of Washington’s youth which that worthy, then silent in his tomb at Mt. Vernon, was unable to deny. Among these delightful reminiscences of the great man which the Reverend Mr. Weems evolved from his exceedingly versatile imagination, occurred the story of the cherry tree. And she is a very unprofitable schoolteacher who fails to point the salutary moral for her disciples that Washington was so infatuated with the truth that it began to show up in him when he was a little boy; therefore, go and do likewise.

“A slightly deeper inquiry into the peculiar processes of the public mind, however, in catching at this fanciful story of the hatchet and the cherry tree reveals a fact that must not be overlooked in our estimate of Washington. That he was a truth-lover and a lie-hater is undoubtedly correct. But the real reason that the hatchet-story has become symbolic of this man is probably due to his simplicity of heart.

“There are a few equestrian statues of Washington, but they are not notable statues, and not many people know exactly where they are, who carved them, or the occasions of their establishment. When you try to visualize Washington, you do not think of him on a horse, though that is the way he spent most of his time out of doors. Neither do you conjure a picture of him brandishing a sword and shouting to a tattered and disorganized army to get into the game and try to put some pep into it before it is too late.

“You would have John Paul Jones that way, and Phil Sheridan, and the redoubtable [Teddy] Roosevelt (all of whom were truly great men, if I have any notion of the meaning of that adjective), but Washington seems always to be placid, poised, unexcited.

“Most people like that picture of him in the open boat, crossing the Delaware — by no means posed as a big dictator, frowning upon the slaves of his galley, impatient to be done with them and on his way — but rather as a member, in good and regular standing, of a party of patriots, all equally concerned with a common cause — he not moving any faster than they, all of them in the same boat, he conscious of the value and importance of their oar-strokes to the successful course of this little transport.

“One of the marks of Washington’s greatness was his democratic simplicity. Of old, our Master said to his disciples, apropos of human greatness: ‘You are aware that among the gentiles, their leaders exercise lordship and their greatest men lord it over them; it must not be so among you. Whoever would be greatest must be servant of all.’

“Now, we do not stray far afield when we make this the first test of a genuinely great man. Of course, it is to be admitted that there are many notable historic characters of whom but little could be predicated, were one to judge them by this Galilean standard of greatness. But such conspicuous characters were mostly of the type that shot up, like a red rocket, to flare, dazzlingly, for an hour, in some crucial exigency when, but for their audacity and courage, a great cause might have been lost. And we are quite willing that these meteors should have as much praise as the fixed stars — even if their highest service was rendered at the moment of their extinction.

“But as one turns the pages which certify to the long careers of eminent leaders, one discovers that the great names — the really and truly great, who were so great that little children must be taught to speak pieces about them and the banks close on their birthdays, seven scores of years after their deaths — such great were invariably of the servant type in their attitude toward the state as an institution, and their countrymen as fellow pilgrims.”

[Douglas went on to talk about this attitude of service. I’ll tell you more about that in my next post.]

How Will You Use Your Powers?

by Ronald R Johnson

A page from the sermon “The Wilderness,” preached by Lloyd C Douglas at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor on 2/15/1920. In Sermons [5], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.

Have you ever been part of a group icebreaker exercise where you were asked, “What superpower do you wish you had?” There’s something like that in this text I’m quoting from Lloyd Douglas, except he isn’t asking what powers you wish you had; he’s asking how high you would rate the powers you have been given.

Douglas is talking about Christ’s temptations in the wilderness — in this case, the temptation to turn stones into bread. This is from a sermon entitled, “The Wilderness,” preached by Lloyd C. Douglas at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor on February 15, 1920. (In Sermons [5], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.)

“If the cause is large enough,” says Douglas, “and a man is aware of its importance, he can be depended upon to esteem that cause first. His life, his convenience, his appetite, these are negligible considerations.

“So, with Jesus, the solution of his problem all traced back to his estimate of the importance of his power. If it was Heaven-lent, it was not to be used in any such manner as was involved in this temptation.

“If a student fails of preparing himself for his life-work because, while he was in college, sport was more important than study, because he had gone through his period of training saying, ‘A man must live. A man must have a bit of fun. A man can’t work himself to death,’ this only means that his temporary pleasure was of more concern to him than his permanent power. He is an opportunist.

“If the merchant or manufacturer fails to keep his product up to grade because of unscrupulous competition, saying, ‘A man must live,’ he merely means that temporary success is more important than a permanent sense of inviolable integrity.

“This is the problem Jesus handles in his statement, ‘Lay not up for yourselves treasures where moth and rust corrupt and where thieves break through and steal, for where your treasures are, there will your heart be also.’

“If bread is the supreme fact of your life, why then, it is to be supposed that you should go after bread — but it will be with the distinct understanding that there are many other things, probably better, which will be forever denied you. If ‘getting on prosperously, by any hook or crook’ is the best thing in life and affords you chief satisfaction, why, it were foolish to have any other aspiration.

“But if the great things of life are larger than pleasure, more significant than prosperity, better than bread, then one must sacrifice to have them, just as one must sacrifice the great things to have less. One rarely appreciates a virtue until one has purchased the right to its possession at a heavy price.

“I suppose most of our mistakes are made because we do not invoice our personal power at a figure sufficiently high to represent its value. We cheat, only because we do not understand the moral satisfaction of being honest. We lie, because we have not recognized the moral pleasure of being truthful. We are selfish, only because we have not experienced the joy of sacrifice.

“The tempter says, ‘Jesus, you are hungry. You have the power to provide bread. Why not do so?’

“And Jesus replies, ‘Why not, indeed? I am hungry and I have the power to provide bread. But if I… debase my power for this purpose, what will that do to my power? Will not that act reduce my power — just by placing a low figure on it?’

“So may I today test out the value of my brain, to me — my eyes, my ears, my hands, my heart. What are they all worth? Just what I think they are worth. If I use them for the attainment of little, selfish ends, then they are worth just as much as littleness and selfishness are worth. If they are quite too important to be put to unworthy uses, they are important enough to be put to worthy uses. Which is only another way of saying that as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.

“If he thinks himself a rascal, he is — all of that. If he thinks his life is worthless and his mind is poor and his power is cheap, he is correct in his assumptions.

“And if he thinks himself a child of God, entrusted with power too precious to be squandered — he is a child of God, and his power is precious. It does not belong on Mammon’s counter, but upon the altar of his God.”

This raises the question: What powers have you been given?