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Palm Sunday 1920, Part 2: Not Political

[This is a continuation of Lloyd Douglas’s Palm Sunday sermon at the University of Michigan (the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor), preached on March 28, 1920, entitled, “Art Thou a King, Then?” (It can be found in “Sermons [5],” Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.)]

A passage from “Art Thou a King, Then?” a sermon preached by Lloyd C. Douglas at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor on March 28, 1920. (In Sermons [5], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.)

“‘Wanted: a Messiah,’ then! That was the cry of Israel on the sunny Sunday morning which we commemorate as the Day of Palms.

“Now, having looked at the demand, let us examine the supply.

“Jesus of Nazareth was not a man to whom the Jewish public would instinctively turn for Messianic leadership. And very few had ever thought of him in this connection. His hold upon the masses was irresistible and they followed him about from place to place as sheep follow a shepherd.

“But he had never made any attempt to organize them or influence them to a mass movement. He had strong words for the priests, whom he called ‘blind leaders of the blind,’ and he dealt unsparingly with the whole system of religious profiteering in vogue at the temple, but he had never tried to equip any of the machinery of overthrow, even for these unscrupulous custodians of the nation’s religion.

“Many times they sounded his political views, without satisfactory results. Fully understanding the motives with which they asked such questions, Jesus practiced canny evasions of the subject by employing the case in hand as an illustration to point a moral in spiritual life.

“They said: ‘Is it just that we should be required to pay a per capita tax to the Roman government?’

“He rejoined: ‘How much is it?’

“They replied: ‘One denarius.’

“‘Let me see one,’ he demanded.

“Somebody in the crowd passed him a coin, and while all stood waiting, breathlessly, for a sensation, he turned the piece of money over and over in his palm and inquired: ‘It bears the image of a face. Whose face is it?’

“‘Caesar’s,’ they answered in concert and in a tone that encouraged him to express himself concerning that person.

“‘And on the other side is a signature. Whose is that?’

“‘Caesar’s,’ they shouted, now making no attempt to temper their indignation.

“‘It belongs to Caesar, then?’

“Nobody was able to deny the ownership if a piece of property that had a man’s picture on one side and his signature on the other. If it is Caesar’s…

“‘Give it back to Caesar!’ said Jesus. ‘And give back to God that which is His.’

“If one studies this episode critically, one is forced to admit that Jesus decision in regard to the justness of the tax was quite beside the point.

“Strictly speaking, the denarius did not belong to the man whose face and hand were stamped upon it, but to the possessor — and its value was not intrinsic but legally ascribed to it. But it was an easy and harmless way out of a trying situation in which almost any serious answer would have been misconstrued.

“Again, when the priests were anxious to convict him of the usurpation of power, they asked him, upon the conclusion of an address, ‘Who gave you the authority to utter these words?’

“And he promised to tell them, provided they would first answer him a question. They consented readily, for the priests were prepared to meet any and all queries.

“‘The baptismal ceremony administered by John, the Nazarite — was it of heaven, or of men?’

“It just happened that there were scores of people standing about, listening, who had accepted the baptismal rite at the hands of John and believed it to be a divine conferment of grace.

“And the priests reasoned thus with themselves: ‘If we shall say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say, ‘Why, then, did ye not believe in him?’ And if we say ‘Of men,’ — well, there are the people.’

“So they said: ‘We will not answer.’

“And Jesus replied: ‘Neither will I.’

“Now, our Lord did not go about hedging and evading problems of real concern to the establishment of life’s realities in men’s hearts. His teaching was wholly constructive and unequivocal.

“‘If you would live, you must love.’

“‘If you would be great, you must serve.’

“‘If you would be pardoned for your mistakes, you must forgive others their mistakes.’

“‘Do not parade your charity or your piety before men, but exert it in secret.’

“‘Avoid the trumpet and street-corner method of doing and being good.’

“‘It is only the life of the soul that really matters. Keep your soul alive. The dead carry nothing out of this world except such things as they have given away.’

“‘Blessed are the poor, the mourners, the persecuted, the friendless — for theirs is the kingdom of God, and they are called to be the children of God.’

“‘It is readily to be seen that the Isrealitish quest of a Messiah who would restore the lost prestige of the Davidic throne failed to comprehend this Nazarene idealist as a possible candidate.

“Nor is it entirely clear that Jesus considered himself a fulfillment of this national dream which had accumulated so many features of no interest to him. He had in mind an ideal spiritual commonwealth — and, as its founder, he could, by accommodation, admit that he was a king of this new state; but the fact was ever more apparent to him that his conception of the ideal commonwealth of souls was so remote from their ideal, both as to motive and method, that by no stretch of the imagination could he persuade himself that this nation would accept his leadership.

“That we may be doubly assured of this feeling on the part of the Master, we have but to review his attitude toward the Galilean public when, early in his ministry, they tried to force him to be their king. He doubtless would have been willing to accept the leadership they offered him that day, but for the fact that in their minds it carried with it some semblance of political authority. The men who offered him the crown hoped to receive some recognition.

“If there had been the slightest suspicion of a yearning for political power or popularity in the mind of Jesus, he would have made good use of his opportunity to organize the Galileans at the time when they urged kingship upon him.

“Less than a week thereafter, he is saying things to them which were so difficult to understand — things which concerned the ultimate values of the life of the soul — that they left him; and when they were all gone, he turned to the little group of disciples who stood there wondering at his careless disregard of popular approval and said, ‘Will ye also go away?’

“It was an honest question. He did not know, certainly, that they wouldn’t go.”

[To be continued in my next post…]

Palm Sunday 1920, Part 1: The Coming Messiah

by Ronald R Johnson

The title page of “Art Thou a King, Then?” a sermon preached by Lloyd C. Douglas at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor on March 28, 1920. (In Sermons [5], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.)

Last September I began a series of posts featuring the sermons that Lloyd C. Douglas preached at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor during the 1919-1920 school year. A student had collected the transcripts and donated them to the Lloyd Douglas Archive years later.

Here is the last sermon in that collection: Douglas’s Palm Sunday sermon, preached on March 28, 1920, entitled, “Art Thou a King, Then?” It can be found in “Sermons [5],” Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. (© University of Michigan.)

He begins:

“Not infrequently, special messages are issued from the Executive Mansion in Washington, urging the people of the United States to put aside their work and commemorate the deeds of some national hero. Occasionally, they are asked to assemble themselves in their customary places of worship to pray for a grave cause which seems in jeopardy; or to give thanks for abundant harvests or the blessing of peace.

“One could wish that in view of the present social, economic, and political ill-health of this country, a call had gone forth requesting all loyal and patriotic Americans to gather in their churches on this Palm Sunday of 1920 to consider what manner of leadership they desire. For the problem of ‘National Leadership’ was at issue on the Day of Palms.

“I do not mean that it would be the part of wisdom for Americans to assemble in their churches today to discuss the relative merits of the various candidates for the Presidency — but to reflect upon the type of leadership in demand now at this hour of rather serious emergency.

“It might be pertinent to inquire of ourselves whether, if a man of the Jesus type of mind were to appear, we would welcome him or repudiate him.

“As a nation, what are we out after? What is our highest ambition?

“If we can discover just what that is, then we will know what manner of leadership we desire.

“So; the lesson of Palm Sunday is decidedly important at the hour. And that we may be in a position to learn something from the blunders of the people who staged that impressive pageant so long ago, it is necessary that we should know the conditions of their country.

“The Jewish people longed for an ideal leader. It was an ancient hope which had first become articulate with the great seers and prophets of the eighth century.

“Previous to that approximate date, a vague longing stirred Israelitish leaders to found a civil-and-religious state under the direction of some heroic figure cast in the Mosaic mold — an aspiration which lacked definite expression. It remained for the clear-thinking and far-visioned writers of the Apocalyptic literature to translate this yearning for a king into the language of the people and predict his coming in tones of sturdy conviction, somewhat after the manner in which we have been promising ourselves that the fine idealism of a freeborn and liberty-loving democracy must, in time, produce a certain moral supremacy, at once a pattern and ambition for the other nations of the world.

“As the ages passed and the successive generations of prophets copied, in colors, the rough drawings which their predecessors had made of the nation’s Deliverer, it is only natural that this picture should become embellished with much intricacy of detail.

“On an appointed day, the New King would ride into the city, to be instantly recognized by the populace. The pageantry of the old Davidic days was to be quite outdone by this ovation in which the discordant elements of the kingdom would forget their divisive principles to shout: ‘Hosanna to the Son of David. Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.’

“Now; all Israel had nourished this darling hope which had increasingly deepened into faith until the Nation that had lived so much upon the glory of the past found its highest pride in the promised richness of the future.

“Every Jewish girl prayed that she might be found worthy to give her nation a king. And the burden of the temple prayers, and the theme of the antiphonal chants, and the orotund canticles of the priests were one and the same: ‘Say to the Daughter of Zion, Behold, thy king cometh — the King of Glory. Who is the King of Glory? The Lord, strong and mighty. He is the King of Glory.’

“One does not like to cloud this ideal portrait of a nation’s dreams with a rehearsal of the fact that, occasionally, some young man was presented to the public as the consummation of the sublime forecast. But since one must be faithful not only to the poetry but the history, as well, of this interesting tale, it must be admitted that Messiahs had come and gone with considerable frequency and regularity for some time previous to the period in Jewish life which holds, for us, the largest significance.

“No one of these numerous Messiahs had been able to exert an influence over any large number of people, or for more than a brief day, but reported Messianic advents, from time to time, differing only in minor details, distinctly alike in the disappointment they produced, had made Israel sluggish on the point of investigating Messianic claims.

“Now that Palestine had become tributary to the Roman Empire, however, and the impositions of the Caesars more severely tried their endurance, the Jews renewed their interest in the Messianic prophecies and cast about desperately for some leader whose capacities might measure to the ancient requirements of an ideal king. This ambition reached flood-tide on the occasion of the annual Passover feast, when Jews from all nations sought sanctuary, for a few days, in the Holy City of their fathers.

“Pontius Pilate, the then Roman governor of Judea, was by nature far from being a diplomat; and his want of tact in handling his Hebrew constituency never was displayed more conspicuously than during these great festival events. Pilate never was able to understand why the Jews did not love and honor Rome. It was doubtless due to some racial eccentricity which he could overcome by familiarizing the people with the sights and sounds of things Romanesque.

“So he built huge amphitheaters in the prevailing Roman style and established games and sports of the current Roman vogue. He rebuilt old Jewish cities and gave them new Roman names.

“And when the Israelites met to celebrate their national feast, he filled the streets with gaily-uniformed Roman soldiers in the fond belief that his provincial subjects would take pride in seeing these flashy exponents of Caesar’s civilization honoring the occasion with their presence. Which produced exactly the opposite effect and infuriated the Hebrew public to a state of near-revolution.

“And had Pilate built his praetorium on the crater’s edge of a volcano, his situation would have been no more precarious.

“Any daring young Israelite of magnetic personality who enjoyed the people’s confidence would have needed only to apply the torch of revolution to this general sentiment and Caesar’s local establishment could have been swept off its feet in an hour. What might happen later was, of course, problematical. That, again, would depend upon the ability of the revolutionary leader. Almost anybody could start a revolution; no one but Messiah could see it through.

“‘Wanted: a Messiah,’ then! That was the cry of Israel on the sunny Sunday morning which we commemorate as the Day of Palms.”

[To be continued in my next post…]

Douglas’s Anonymous Limericks (Part 4)

by Ronald R Johnson

From the Michigan Daily, sometime in Fall 1919.

This is the last of this short series on limericks that Lloyd Douglas published anonymously in the Michigan Daily in the Fall of 1919. An upperclassman gives advice to freshmen. There are two limericks today: “Concerning Raiment,” and “Concerning Discipline.”

CONCERNING RAIMENT

The Newcomer Says:

Last week Bill Jones spent 60 bones
On personal adornment:
Bill rooms with me, so you can see
How that would cause forlornment.

For I must save what chink I have
To spend on food and shelter;
While Bill can throw his father’s dough
Around quite helter-skelter.

Sometimes I feel I’d rather steal
Than wear this store-bought clothing;
I look a fright – the very sight
Fills me with utter loathing.

Today Bill said, ‘What’s in your head?
Why mind a little lying?
My Dad I wired ‘More books required,’
And he came through a-flying.

‘Your folks will do the same for you,
Just pad your memorandum.
A little more won’t make ‘em sore,
When your account you hand ‘em.’

However much I hate to lie
And know it is unlawful,
My trousers feel like bags of meal,
Too wide, too long, too awful!

The Old Timer Replies:

Queer circumstance! A pair o’ pants
Costs this Newcomer’s reason;
I didn’t know that wool would go
As high as that this season.

Concoct your lie and get it by!
The breeches! Go, and win ‘em!
You’ll look so cute in your new suit –
And feel so happy in ‘em!

CONCERNING DISCIPLINE

The Newcomer Says:

Last night at nine some friends of mine,
Whom I have met quite lately,
Strolled in to call from ‘cross the hall.
I greeted them sedately.

They seemed inclined to let me find
A theme for conversation,
So I told all I could recall
Of High School recreation –

The medal that I captured at
Our contest in athletics;
The prize I won when we put on
The amateur dramatics –

I told them, too, what I’ve told you
Of her whose heart I’ve broken.
Said they, ‘Too bad – ‘tis very sad;
Such words should ne’er be spoken.’

I hope that they come back some day,
Their visit was delightful;
Though I could see they envied me
They were not one bit spiteful.

The Old Timer Replies:

My friend, this means you’ve spilled the beans:
I shudder at your story.
No doubt these men will come again,
But when they do, be sorry.

Hereafter when some genial men
Drop in for conversation
Be careful lest you prove a pest
Inviting castigation.

Last year a lad – he was not bad,
Just talkative and flighty –
Addressed a loud and merry crowd
On State Street in his nightie.

Douglas’s Anonymous Limericks (Part 3)

by Ronald R Johnson

I am continuing this short series of limericks that Lloyd Douglas published anonymously in the Michigan Daily during the Fall of 1919. They are aimed at freshmen at the University of Michigan, giving them advice on campus life. An upperclassman, called “The Old-Timer” advises the “Newcomer.” Today’s subject comes in two parts. It’s called “Concerning Romance.”

Concerning Romance (a)

The Newcomer Says:

‘Most every day I sneak away
Where not a soul can find me;
And there I write with all my might,
To the girl I left behind me.

She is a dear (would she were here!)
But she’ll not go to college;
In Junior High, she heaved a sigh,
And gave up seeking knowledge.

But I’ll say she looks good to me,
Whate’er her lack of learning;
I twang the lyre, for half a quire,
Some days when I am yearning.

If you were I, would you not buy
A ring for this fair Treasure?
I think I can (installment plan)
‘Twould bring us both much pleasure.

The Old Time Replies:

Unless I miss my guess in this,
You now have in the making,
A sad, sweet lay to chant some day,
When your two hearts are breaking.

Five years from now I wonder how
You’ll like her conversation;
When you have been crammed to the chin
With higher education.

Oh yes, my friend, I comprehend –
‘Absence – the heart grow fonder’ –
But later, when you meet again,
You will have passed beyond her.

Far better wait and contemplate
This course before you take it:
Why win her heart while you’re apart;
Then feel obliged to break it?

Concerning Romance (b)

The Newcomer Says:

Perhaps you are right, Old Wisdom Light –
I see your point quite clearly:
I might be led to some co-ed
Whom I could love as dearly.

In fact, today, there crossed my way
A most entrancing vision;
I would have smiled, had that sweet child
Not marched with such precision.

She seemed so wise, would you advise
That I should try to meet her?
For instance, when we pass again,
Should I attempt to greet her?

Or should I wait some turn of Fate
To furnish introduction?
Or boldly trace her rooming place;
Please – what is your deduction?

The Old Timer Replies:

Pathology – page sixty-three –
Explains your case verbatim:
At eighteen years, a germ appears –
(No doctor can get at ‘em).

And, for a time, youth takes to rhyme –
Exuding sticky sonnets
Inspired by girls with radiant curls
Projecting from their bonnets.

This curious germ works for a term,
Producing pain and sorrow;
In love with May or Maude today –
In love with Madge tomorrow.

You’re stricken, now, with Abstract Love –
And while the bug is touring,
You’ll see a face, ‘most any place
Resistlessly alluring.

Summer Vacation Advice to Students

by Ronald R Johnson

From the May 1920 issue of The Intercollegian.

The following is an essay by Lloyd C. Douglas in the May 1920 issue of The Intercollegian (the YMCA magazine). It was entitled, “Vacation,” and it was Douglas’s advice to students on how to spend their summer months.

“WANTED — Student willing to earn $75 per week during summer vacation. Inquire Mr. Al. Luminum, Room 13, Coldstream Memorial Dormitory.

“WANTED — Thoroughly reliable students (upperclassmen preferred) for vacation employment. Easy work. Salary guaranteed. Three hundred dollars per month and railroads. Lykelle, Box 23, Local.

“Again, the man with the encyclopedia, and the man with the brushes, and the man with the book on ‘30,000 Thoughts for the Thriftless,’ have taken up temporary quarters in the Slocum Hotel, or in the dorm, and have sent out beguiling invitations for eager, peppy, and ambitious young collegians to call and assure themselves that next September will find them with money in all seventeen pockets. (Note: the antecedent of the last them is at the Slocum House. [In other words, it’s the salesman who’s going to end up with all the money, not the hapless students he talks into working for him.]

“Before signing anything, o youthful friend o’ mine, hie thee to the office of Brother Jones, ’04, who dispenses justice in his second-floor front across the way [the Dean of Students, in other words], and ask him to read your contract and tell you where the little joker is. It will be so much funnier if he points it out to you in May, than if you should discover it for yourself in September. Jones will do this for you free of charge. He still recalls how he went out one summer to sell, in four bindings, The Royal Pathway to Success, on a salary of $40 weekly, and how he owed the company $5.68 on the first day of October.

“Of course, you will want to do something profitable during your summer vacation. Even if you are not required to earn money, you will be greatly benefited by the experience of doing something useful. No matter how wealthy you are — even if you are the son of a plumber — go out and exchange a little perspiration for a few dollars.

“But — before you go, arrange to spend ten days, immediately at the close of the last semester, at the nearest Student Conference.

“The men who laid out these various conference grounds and planned the programs which are rendered there each year were students who knew the state of mind in which the average college man finds himself at the close of an academic year. The sites of these camps are notable for their natural beauty. An air of peace and tranquility pervades these places. They afford excellent opportunities for the man who really wants to think a few things through.

“Especially if you are to have any part in the leadership of your fellows in college next fall, you should spend this little group of days in association with the picked men of all the other educational institutions of your zone; get acquainted with them; play baseball and tennis with them; swim with them; take afternoon hikes with them into the mountains and along the lakeshore; sit with them, mornings and evenings, in an auditorium, to hear inspirational addresses by internationally-known student leaders. This is a part of your education. You cannot afford to miss it.

“The cost, in money, is insignificant. The benefits are incalculable. Forty years from now, it may not make very much difference whether you started out to sell pots and pans on June sixth or June sixteenth. But it will surely make a tremendous difference whether or not you exposed yourself to a ten-day period of inspiration!

“Some of you have been appointed to positions on Association cabinets for next year. You almost owe it to your job to learn, at the feet of men who understand the peculiar problems of student life, something of the possibilities of that job. Indeed, you cannot hope to put your best into your particular department next fall unless you shall have had this experience.

“Inquire for the detailed information about this Student Conference now, while the matter is fresh in your mind! Be a booster for a large delegation from your college! Perhaps the most valuable piece of work you will ever do in your whole life can be accomplished through your urging some strong comrade of yours to accompany you to the conference.”

This photograph was included at the bottom of the article, bearing the caption, “The Northwest Conference, 1919.”

Douglas’s Advice to Student Leaders

by Ronald R Johnson

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.]