jesus – The Lloyd C Douglas Page

Such a Busy World!

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

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

He has just finished saying that people seem to value being (or at least appearing to be) busy, but he expects to see the pendulum swing back to a desire for contentment.

“Assuming, then, that contentment of mind is, after all, a virtue — a laudable pursuit of normal life — how better may one seek it than in attempting to transfigure as many of the common drudgeries of life as possible into desirable avocations.

“The merchant’s inventory may be a great trial, or it may be good fun, I suppose, depending altogether on the merchant and the state of mind with which he approaches his task. The professor’s bushel of blue books [examination booklets that must be graded, in other words], collected at no little effort on the part of a good many people [students, that is], can make his soul sick, or afford much entertainment and satisfaction, according as he regards them.

“Once I heard a woman say of the daily labor of her house: ‘I hate greasy pots and skillets; and I thank goodness I do.’

“Of course, it would be rather unfortunate to arrive at the point of preferring dirty things to clean ones, and I daresay there is comparatively little danger of that, in the average case; but surely, if clean things are so greatly to be desired above dirty things, there ought to be some joy to be had in the business of making dirty things clean.

“So much of our time is spent in preparing to be happy, and anticipating contentment, which happiness and contentment we hope to experience after this particularly hateful business that we happen to be at, is done. By a subtle process of investing the hateful task with some such mental attitude as that of the dishwashing bookseller [in Christopher Morley’s book, The Haunted Bookshop, which Douglas mentioned earlier in the sermon], we need not make so much of our life merely a stretch of arid desert to be crossed that we may reach the promised land.

“In very many respects, we are becoming a much better disciplined people than were our forefathers. In the matter of being purged of the worst of our fears, for example, we are much indebted to the light thrown upon our pathway by science. Not a great while ago, people were afraid of the dark. Hobgoblins inhabited the unknown. Ghosts were common. Nobody could be found who had seen one, but almost anybody knew somebody who, if he had not seen a ghost himself, was acquainted with another who had.

“It hasn’t been so very long since the great forces of Nature were thought to be humanity’s enemies. Altars of propitiation to unknown terrors made life hideous with bloody sacrifices, not so very long ago, even among people who were reputed for wisdom. The earthly life was crammed, from birth to death, with terrors; and almost everybody was mortally afraid of the life that was to follow, as if The Ruler of the Universe was endowed with all the malevolence one could possibly imagine of a super-fiend. All that is changed now. There are very few dark corners where ogres lurk to reach out and clutch at passersby. The old fears have been banished.

Again, we are undeniably a better generation physically than any previous. We have discovered that a great many diseases, formerly charged up to the mysterious ways of Providence, are to be accounted for on grounds much less divine — such as bad sewerage, polluted water supply, and plain dirt.

“We have reduced the heavy manual labor of life to a fraction of its former burden and have thereby given mankind a better chance to live, while it lives, with fewer aches and pains. Modern surgery has achieved wonders in refashioning the bodies of hundreds of thousands who, otherwise, would have gone out of this life much sooner than necessary.

“Again, we have achieved better processes for conserving our time than ever were known before. Time means a great deal to people who really wish to accomplish many things and are aware that only a few years are given them in which to do their work. Instantaneous communication and modern means of transportation have added years to the working life of the average man. Indeed, we are rather better fixed to live than were any of our predecessors, in this earthly existence.

“But when one takes stock of the manner in which we spend our lives — rushing from here to there, and there to yonder, and from yonder to thence and back again, panting — one doubts whether, with all our modern improvements, we are getting as much out of life as our forebears who, while they lacked our conveniences, apparently contrived to enjoy the few things they had much more fully than we have the capacity for enjoying the many. In the simplicity of their lives, they did not fret much about drudgeries. I suppose they had so many of them that if they had begun to hate their drudgeries, they would have come very nearly hating life as a whole.

“We, for whom life has become so complex, will do well to dignify and transfigure the few irksome duties that are left, and which must be performed, persuading ourselves that these activities aren’t so bad after all.”

Douglas went on to give many practical applications, which I’ll share in my next post.

Are You Too Busy?

by Ronald R Johnson

The front cover of Christopher Morley, Two Classic Novels in One Volume: Parnassus on Wheels and The Haunted Bookshop (Dover Publications, 2018). (From amazon.com)

In a sermon on January 4, 1920, at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor, Lloyd Douglas shared with his congregation a passage from Christopher Morley’s 1919 book, The Haunted Bookshop. (In Sermons [5], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.)

As I mentioned in a previous post, Douglas had trouble coming up with a title for this sermon because the passage he quoted was about washing dishes. In the book, Morley’s character Mifflin talks about how he used to hate washing dishes until he realized that it slowed him down and gave him a chance to relax from his daily labors. As Mifflin says,

“Do not laugh when I tell you that I have evolved a whole kitchen philosophy of my own. I find the kitchen the shrine of our civilization, the focus of all that is comely in life. The ruddy shine of the stove is as beautiful as any sunset. A well-polished jug or spoon is as fair, as complete and beautiful, as any sonnet. The dishmop, properly rinsed and wrung and hung outside the back door to dry, is a whole sermon in itself. The stars never look so bright as they do from the kitchen door after the icebox pan is emptied, and the whole place is ‘redd up,’ as the Scotch say.”

Douglas comments on this passage:

“Now, all of this has set me thinking on the subject of our drudgeries, and to wondering if the search for contentment in life is not, after all, mostly a transfiguration of these petty drudgeries into desirable employments. I am fully aware that my original premise is not extremely popular. That one should seek contentment nowadays is almost equivalent to a confession of selfishness and moral lassitude. The way to behave, modernly, is to strive.

“Be busy. Be doing things. Be perpetually going through a multitude of motions. Don’t sit down. People might think you lazy. Don’t slow down. People might think you were losing your punch. It is best to lope about, watch in hand, with an expression of fatigue and anxiety on your face; then people will recognize you as a person of consequence. You really can’t be a man of affairs unless you are out of breath.

“It is also wise to talk a great deal about the pressure that is put on you from every direction. This is the easiest part of the performance, of course; and once you get going, it will come quite natural to you to speak of your congested program — almost to the exclusion of any other topic.

“This is the way we have been living in recent years, until the quest of contentment has come to be considered a very unworthy ambition.

“Now, I cannot believe that this sort of panicky living makes for permanent gains in the development of modern civilization. I don’t see how work that is done under such obvious pressure, and necessarily in such a great hurry, can contribute much to the lasting values of our time. There’s too much DO and not nearly enough BE in it.

“We have been chattering volubly about dynamics (one of the words that ought to collect double wages of this generation, for overtime). This, we say, is a dynamic age; and we are living in a dynamic country; and we are a dynamic people. If you want to say something pleasant about some active man, don’t forget to mention that he is dynamic.

“Now, strictly speaking, a dynamic is like the lights on a popular, democratic motorcar. So long as the car is in motion, the lights are on. When the car stops, the lights go out. A dynamic is under obligation to some other agency for its energy; and when that other agency takes a day off, so does the dynamic.

“I think it were about time we began speaking of the desirability of a static power — owing its energy to sources external to itself, to be sure; but not quite so slavishly dependent upon them. They can shut down for repairs if they wish, but the reservoir in which the static power has been stored is good for such period as it has provided for in the hours of its receipt of energy.

“To the storing of this static power in our lives, we need to give considerably more attention than we have been giving it, to a fine, well-balanced spiritual content.

“Whenever I get to the point, in high dynamics, that I must confess I have hardly time to eat my meals; am a stranger to my own household; haven’t read a book, other than that appertaining to my craft, for weeks, months, maybe; I may also seriously ask myself whether, in my abnormal life, lived under conditions artificial, unhealthy, and distinctly antisocial, my contribution to my age is likely to have very much in it of permanent value to mankind.

“I confidently expect to see, long before I die, a decided swing of sentiment away from this popular stampede toward a program of life embracing a little of dignified leisure for thought and a renewal of the well-nigh lost art of contentment.”

The rest of his sermon was about practical ways to find contentment. I’ll tell more about that in my next post.

Pioneering the Air Waves: New Years 1920

by Ronald R Johnson

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

In my last post I told you about the University of Michigan’s participation in a nationwide experiment with wireless technology on the night of December 31, 1919. The school’s radio station would send out two messages: the first, at 8:30 PM, would be “telegraphic,” and the second, at 8:45, would be “telephonic.” The technology was so new that they still hadn’t settled on the lingo with which we would later become familiar. What they meant was that the first message would be in a coded signal (probably Morse code) and the second would be conveyed via human voice. Both messages would be written by Lloyd Douglas, and it was his voice that would be heard in the “telephonic” segment.

His “telegraphic” message was 60 words long:

“Saluting twentieth year of twentieth century our world’s depleted batteries of happiness and hope must be recharged. The century’s newly discovered physical forces have been taught to do evil. They must henceforth be taught to serve, lift, help, heal, else we are better without them. High time to radiate happiness, goodwill, friendly service, human welfare. We wish you happy New Year.” Then it was signed by the national organization that sponsored the event: “COMMUNITY SERVICE.”

This rather austere message was written in the shadow of the Great War (which we now call World War One). When Douglas says the “newly discovered physical forces have been taught to do evil,” he’s referring to all the technological advances that had made the war so horrific. And since his message was being conveyed over an even newer technology — wireless radio — he hoped it would be put to good uses, not bad ones.

He elaborated on this theme in his “telephonic” message, which you and I would consider his actual “radio” speech. He said:

“It is a great pleasure and privilege to speak to you — my unseen friends — in this peculiar way. It is so strange, it is almost uncanny, to feel that my words are going out to you, through the darkness, by means of contact entirely invisible and mysterious.

“I am informed that, so long as I hear no objections from you, I am to conclude that you approve of my sentiments; and if any one of you cannot stay through my entire address, please retire very quietly so that the others in the audience may not be disturbed.” [He was joking. It’s interesting to see him trying to wrap his head around the idea that radio waves could send messages without wires.]

“It appears that the secrets of nature, like long-imprisoned birds, are being released one by one as mankind develops sufficient ingenuity to accept and utilize them.

“The fact that we are now in possession of this new process of communication only means that we are considered wise enough and good enough to be made custodians of this secret.” [He was assuming a bit much here, as he himself would later acknowledge.]

“We are about to enter upon a new year. May I express the wish that it may be a very happy one for you — and if it is to be happy for you, it must be full of activity, for you are not the kind of people who could be contented otherwise.” [He was talking about the people who were forward-looking and industrious enough to be amateur radio operators.]

“We are entering upon a year of great prosperity as a people; probably the greatest prosperity ever registered in the history of any nation in human history. Therefore, we will face many grave temptations; for it is in his prosperity rather than in his adversity that a human being faces his greatest dangers, undefended.

“Let us not boast ourselves overmuch because of our nation’s brave show of wealth and success in material things; for such evidences have always been on display by every nation riding for a fall, and never more gaudily exhibited as on the morning of the last day.

“If we are to make our nation great, it must be great of soul, revealing a magnitude of mind and sensitiveness of conscience that bespeak the possession of certain spiritual qualities which are as far above the natural as the capacity of the ether, through which I speak to you, is above the limitations of wires spanned on poles.

“And if this ennobling of our nation’s soul is to be achieved, it must come to pass in the hearts of the people who compose this republic.

“Many wise men are saying that our social order has come to an hour of great significance, and that our course today, whether it be toward finer and larger progress in the things that really matter or toward an increasing emphasis upon things that have no permanent value to society…” [This sentence cuts off abruptly, which leads me to think that we’re getting this transcript from the receiving end, not from Douglas himself. Maybe it was too long for listeners to write it all down?]

“You and I can only determine that course for ourselves, and in our own hearts. We will have done our part if we decide that question wisely.

“Therefore, as we pass into the new year of 1920, let us go buoyantly, eagerly, expectantly, as travelers who rise to greet the dawn, resolved that, whatever others may do, we will try to make our own lives worthwhile and justify our right to live in this strategic age.”

Another clipping in Douglas’s scrapbook, which does not name the newspaper or give the date (but was probably only a day or two after the experiment), reports that amateur radio operators as far away as Cincinnati (a distance of roughly 250 miles) received one or the other of Douglas’s messages.

It wouldn’t be Douglas’s last experience with radio broadcasting. In the years to come, he would be quite comfortable speaking into a microphone to “unseen” audiences, “through the darkness.” But he was also among the first to do it, well before the average American citizen owned a radio.

Christmas in Ann Arbor, 1919

by Ronald R Johnson

Title page of the sermon, “What Do You Want for Christmas?” which Lloyd C. Douglas preached at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor on 12/14/1919. In Sermons [4], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.

“What do you want for Christmas?” Lloyd Douglas asked his congregation at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor on December 14, 1919:

How would a wish like this strike you? To wish for some added grace of character that would make people love you, not for anything you had on, or for the house you happened to live in, or the material possessions you were known to command, but just because you are you.

So that, if the clothes go out of style, or the moth eats them up, or the house burns down, or panic upsets business, and rust corrodes your machinery – you will still be possessed of a grace of character that will make people respect you, and have confidence in you, and be glad when you come into the room where they are, and sorry when you leave.

The ability to wake up every morning with a smile and go to sleep every night with peace of mind and satisfaction of heart.

How would you like a gift that would ensure your happiness, in all kinds of weather; that would hold you independent of the inroads of little disappointments – a sort of perpetual guarantee against despair and dissatisfaction?

Somehow, I believe that if we might today choose, for a Christmas gift, absolutely anything we really wanted, to last us for life, this gift that I have been talking about would meet the demand.

Well, you may have it! Take it, and welcome.
Lloyd C Douglas, “What Do You Want for Christmas?” in Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Sermons [4], Box 3, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

What do you want for Christmas?

The Grounds of Our Gratitude: Gratitude Itself

by Ronald R Johnson

Asylum Lake, Kalamazoo, Michigan. Taken by the author.

This is from a sermon entitled “The Grounds of Our Gratitude,” that Lloyd C. Douglas preached at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, November 23, 1919. (It can be found in Sermons [4], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.)

He gives four reasons for being grateful. I talked about the first three in my last three posts: that he and his people were alive during such an interesting era, that they lived in the comparative freedom and safety of America, and that they (especially the students present) were able to get a college education.

His concluding reason is short but interesting:

“In the last place, but by no means last in importance, one good ground of gratitude today — if I am grateful — is just the plain, simple fact that I am grateful. All the joy that is to be had, of this one life which we have to live, is ours for the mere price of recognizing it when it comes. It is entirely up to me whether I face the morning with a scowl or a smile. Whether my books are a drudgery or a delight. Whether my business downtown is a bore and a burden, or a source of happiness. Whether my home duties are irksome or pleasant. Whether my thoughts bring me satisfaction or pain.

“My mind, to me, a kingdom is. And as a man thinketh in his heart, so he is.

“And the kingdom of God is within us. All happiness and contentment is generated inside ourselves. Therefore, it is a great thing just to be thankful — just to be conscious of the largeness and richness of our lives. And, if we are thankful, it goes without saying that we shall want to help our fellow-pilgrims to the same happy and contented state of mind. For this habit of thankful, grateful contentment with life makes for steadiness of character, strength of purpose, inner peace, and the poise which all men covet.

“Thus endowed, we master many a grief and overcome many a disappointment that would crush us, but for this spiritual power.”

The Grounds of Our Gratitude: Having a Chance to Go to College

by Ronald R Johnson

The University of Michigan from https://static7.depositphotos.com/1141099/788/i/450/depositphotos_7888786-stock-photo-university-of-michigan.jpg

He gives four reasons for being grateful. I talked about the first two in my last two posts: that he and his people were alive during such an interesting era, and that they lived in the comparative freedom and safety of America.

His third reason is directed at his audience, which is made up of students, professors, and administrators from the University of Michigan. But he is especially talking to the students. He says “it is surely a ground for gratitude that so many of us are able to train our minds to think clearly and to gather up the accumulated wisdom of the ages and make it ours, at this seat of learning.

“When I think of the thousands who envy us and wish they had our chance at life’s larger privileges, and then am forced to reflect that, every day, I pass so many of these advantages by, thoughtlessly — it gives me cause for shame.

“For how many cramped lives are yearning for just a modicum of the chance we have at life — men and women who would be entirely satisfied with the crumbs that fall from the table where we sit, sometimes half-bored, jaded, and dyspeptic!

“We have even been known to rebel against the ardent endeavors of our counselors to put us into contact with the mental and spiritual energies that drive the world, and have plotted and schemed to avoid the privilege of developing the only life we have.

“Millions exist in a weary treadmill, standing all day at the mouths of white-hot furnaces, groping in the depths of dangerous mines, tending nerve-racking machinery in the shops, or eking out a wretched living in some monotonous work which they hate.

“For you and me (and just why is it for you and me, and not for them?) the ways of life have been made smooth; achievement easy; honor and high attainment not only possible but the natural order of events. Surely we have cause for thankfulness in this — a thankfulness that ought to beautify our characters and shine in our eyes, and lend us courage for whatever little labors and perplexities are incident to the rich and free and full life handed to us as a gift which we have done nothing to merit — but for whose uses we shall be held strictly accountable by the Spirit who issues and controls our destinies.”

To be continued…

The Grounds of Our Gratitude: Living in These Times

by Ronald R Johnson

From the title page of “The Grounds of Our Gratitude.” In Sermons [4], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.

He gives four reasons for being grateful.

The first, he says, “is that we are alive in this remarkably interesting period of the world’s life…. [W]e seem to have but one brief visit to this world in which we now live. And it is not for any of us to choose the time for that single visit. This is of considerably more importance than would appear on first thought. Even the distant friend, visiting our own little Ann Arbor for just once in his life, would deem himself fortunate to have arrived yesterday at the annual homecoming — everything a riot of color and a wealth of welcome. He would have formed quite another impression, had he visited us about the first of September, when the place had all the marks of a deserted city.

“The same thing is true of our visit to this old planet — earth. It is of great consequence that one’s single, brief stay here should occur when there is something really doing, something important afoot….

“Of certain generations in the Christian era, very little is preserved. Indeed, there are certain cloudy strips of time, about midway of civilization’s journey from Golgotha to Verdun, so innocent of any real achievement that we really know nothing about men’s thoughts, deeds, or aspirations for periods of three or four generations laid end to end.

“Now, if I am to have only one life in this world, I am glad that I didn’t have to take my turn then.

“Until very recently, a considerable portion of the earth-dweller’s time and energy was occupied with the business of keeping alive and dealing with bodily discomforts. I am not an extremely old gentleman; yet, in the course of my life I have seen common life made more enjoyable. I remember very distinctly when the streets of Ft. Wayne, Indiana (which was the nearest large town) were lighted for the first time by electricity, and what an object of curiosity it was! In the town in which I lived then — a place of 2,000 population — a man drove around in a cart every evening and lighted a few oil-burning lamps. Most of the sidewalks were wooden, and the long planks had a trick of warping and becoming disconnected at one end, to the occasional undoing of pedestrians groping their way along the dimly lighted streets — streets that would mire a wagon almost any time in spring, and from which blinding clouds of dust arose all summer.

“I was ten when I saw a telephone for the first time, and several years older before I had occasion to use one. Such surgery as we had was very crude, and employed only as a last resort — and, if my memory serves me correctly, it generally proved to be, indeed, the last resort of the patient.

“I shall not forget the tremendous excitement that was caused when the first automobile appeared in town. It had only one cylinder and was in appearance like an old-fashioned buggy. The more discerning businessmen of the place agreed that it was an interesting toy, but assured one another that it would never be made practical. My own pet ambition as a little boy was to own some day one of those bicycles with a front wheel about five feet in diameter, trailed by a very small wheel less than a foot high. Altogether, it was a deadly weapon, but quite the thing with all the young men of the period. Practically the whole business of automatic machinery has come into being in the course of my own lifetime. I am thankful, today, that I have lived to see so many drudgeries of life rendered unnecessary.

“It is good to be living in a time when one does not have to spend quite so much of one’s nervous energy in the business of just keeping alive, and trying to cope with discomforts….

“Moreover, there are certain great issues before men’s minds today which serve to make this age of peculiar interest. The whole social order — the world ’round — is in a state of change. We know not what the next little group of years will bring forth, but we know that they will produce some radical revisions of our recent processes of living.

“There have been whole centuries when men grew up from boyhood to take over their father’s farm or shop or office and live precisely the manner of life that had been lived by their predecessors. Until very recently, the average American, speaking of his foreign-born neighbor, said, ‘He came from the Old Country.’ Which old country didn’t matter. All old countries looked alike — somewhere across the sea, they were.

“Now we have achieved an international consciousness — not an international conscience, as yet, but a recognition of the existence of other peoples and a growing desire to see them rid themselves of their old-world burdens of ignorance, disease, drudgery, and despair.

“True: the new knowledge has but added to our responsibilities and increased our obligations, but it is a great thing just to be alive in this period that shall be known in history as an era of radical changes more significant than any changes which have befallen human experience since the dawn of Christendom, nearly twenty centuries ago.

“I am thankful that, having but one life to live, I am permitted to be in the world now.”

To be continued…

On the Need for Prophetic Voices Today

by Ronald R Johnson

“Today we are bewildered by racket and confusion of such variety and extent that we need — more than commonly — to seek counsel of those whose ears are trained to hear significant messages spoken by the small voice of the Spirit of God.”

This is from a sermon entitled “Understudies,” that Lloyd C. Douglas preached at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor on November 16, 1919. (It can be found in Sermons [4], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.)

“A year ago [at the end of the First World War], we adorned our rhetoric of gratitude with the quotation of that quieting couplet of Kipling’s: ‘The tumult and the shouting dies: the captains and the kings depart.’

“At the present hour, while we feel assured of the departure of the captains and the kings, it is not so apparent that the tumult and the shouting have died. Indeed, it seems again to rise… from a low rumble… breaking into the shrill crescendo of a turbulent, angry world bent on doing it-knows-not-what, by some drastic process, it knows not how.

“Again, as we look about for adequate leadership in the solution of this vast problem of disorder, we grow depressed. They who spoke of sacrifice in golden words a little while ago, when the cold steel of the invader was held menacingly at the throat of a peaceful and prosperous civilization, have little to say to us now.

“Party politics warp the vision of our statesmen, and ballots upon measures affecting the future destinies of the race are determined by the outworn political denomination of these supposedly great men. In an epoch like ours, the world stands at the crossroads of history. A few years will probably fix the course of the next few centuries. Great crises will come again, inevitably, but they will spring from, and may be determined by, the crisis of our day. It is extremely doubtful if any generation ever faced such possibilities of future weal or woe as does our own, as it witnesses nations being born, ancient civilizations scrapped, time-hallowed customs discarded for the new and untried, civilizations begging for guidance and counsel of other civilizations which stand awed in the presence of the strange demand — with so little of genuine confidence in their own plans and purposes.

“It may well be proved true that the present generation, now groping about for a solvent of our problems — our intricate mesh of troubles — shall be quite unable to find a medicine for the world’s ills. Perhaps the best contribution we can make today will be the discovery of a new type of leadership which will give promise of better things to come tomorrow.”

After telling his congregation the story of Elijah putting his mantle on the shoulders of young Elisha, he drew this lesson:

“I see very little hope of any constructive leadership arising out of the ranks of our people who have been trained to think in terms of parochial and partisan interests. Our hope is in the future, and the clear-minded men and women that the future will produce. Our hope is in the youth who, with shining eyes, front an open door into the new age, with the old prejudices and presuppositions banished.

“If only we, who must admit ourselves baffled, can have the spiritual discernment to cast the mantle of our generation upon the shoulders of dynamic leaders, calling them out of their little labors into larger action, we shall have done our part. It may be that this is all that is now possible for us to do toward the solution of our present problems.

“Four years have ended the work of four centuries — and there is no going back. ‘Finis’ has been written at the end of a long episode, and there is no way by which we can knit together again the strands that are severed forever.

Raising his eyes toward the balcony, where the students liked to sit, he said, “Our hope is in you upon whom the mantle falls; and our obligation is to make you understand the nature of your trust.

“We do well who, in these turbulent days, listen for the small voice that stills our hearts — and leads us, once more, into the paths of righteousness.”

On Hearing the Voice of God

by Ronald R Johnson

From the title page of “Understudies.” In Sermons [4], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.

“Doubtless God has often spoken to men who, though they had the capacity for understanding the message, balked at the heavy cost of obedience. It is a matter of record that many men who, having announced their receipt of such a message and their purpose to execute its demands, have lacked the necessary spiritual energy or physical courage to see it through.”

This is from a sermon about Elijah hearing the still small voice of God after expecting to hear it in the earthquake, wind, and fire. The sermon is entitled “Understudies,” and it was preached by Lloyd C. Douglas at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor on November 16, 1919. (It can be found in Sermons [4], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.) You’ll have to overlook the exclusive use of the word “men” instead of “people” throughout this sermon. It was 1919, folks.

Douglas continues:

“Many men, like Terah of Ur-Casdim, have left all to seek a promised land and, again like Terah, have stopped at Haran to rest awhile — where the vision paled, and conviction weakened, and the adventure closed.

“Much more often, however, men of sterling worth, who might have become agencies for the transmission of Divine messages — men brilliantly endowed by Nature with rare gifts of acumen and courage — have never trained their hearing to receive supernal direction. Like the casual layman waiting in the telegraph office, hearing nothing but a bewildering sputter of clicking magnets, while the trained ear of the operator is learning, from this same confused blur of metallic sounds, astounding facts about the lives of men and movements of nations — thus do many worthy and capable men actually hear messages which they are totally unable to comprehend. Their minds have been habitually set upon other things. Their training has been experienced at the hands of other forces.

“Again, there are resourceful men who become aware of supernal messages when certain… spectacular events are going forward in the world. Let the nations go to war and almost inextricably tangle themselves into one squirming mass of hatred and cruelty, and almost any man who thinks at all begins to wonder what eternal significance resides in the event — and questions God for light on the problem.

“Through the earthquake, wind, and fire, the average man who permits himself to think at all, fancies he hears — or reflects that he really ought to hear — some tidings from the Central Energy. But it is only the few who, after the storm has cleared — the earthquake over, the fire quenched, the wind exhausted — have the spiritual capacity to hear the small voice that stills them into a serene and confident faith that God is speaking.

“Those few constitute the prophetic college of the era. Whatever light shines upon the path of men, shines through them. Whatever means are resolved upon to find a new and better way to walk in, are of their devising.”

Douglas is speaking to an audience of professors and administrators from the University of Michigan, with students filling the balcony. There are also prominent business leaders in the pews: a mix of town and gown. But the crux of his message is for the students — “the understudies.” I’ll tell you about that in my next post.

Greatness Isn’t Cheap

by Ronald R Johnson

From the title page of “Buried Treasure.” In Sermons [4], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.

“The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field which, when a man found, he concealeth; and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath and buyeth that field” (Matthew 13:44).”

This is the text of a sermon entitled “Buried Treasure,” which Lloyd C. Douglas preached at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor on November 9, 1919. (It can be found in Sermons [4], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.)

In this sermon, Douglas emphasized the following point: in order to get the treasure, the buyer must also purchase the field. Douglas says:

“Have you not sometimes coveted an extraordinary gift in the character of a friend and wished it were yours — his poise, for example [there’s that word again], his absolutely perfect balance that keeps him strong and sound and fine and fair, regardless of his circumstances? You often think it would be, indeed, a great blessing to your turbulent and restless life to possess an anchorage like that; if you could have such perfect equilibrium, it would be like discovering a rich treasure.

“Well, doubtless you can have it; but there are a few conditions attached to the possession of such a grace of character — long, patient, unfailing diligence in dealing dispassionately and calmly with difficulties; practicing your science consistently through the petty irritations of daily routine, as earnestly as under the heavy strains that all but crush. One does not take this treasure without accepting also the field in which it lies.

“Sometimes young people have been known to envy an influential man his gift of leadership. Just to possess his exceptional ability to direct the thought and action of large numbers of people — that [ability], they think, would constitute the most desirable acquisition in life. Yet, one does not take that gift of leadership without accepting also the somewhat drastic conditions which invariably accompany it — the almost complete abrogation of most of the simple yet exceedingly precious joys of private life; the sheer loneliness of it; the criticisms that bark and snap at it; the ridicule, the reviling, the invective. He who takes this treasure must also contract to take the field in which he found it; and a jolly rough piece of land it is, too, if they are to be believed who hold deeds to such property.

“Says another of his friend whose happiness seems to overflow continually, and [who] appears to be going through life on the crest of a wave that never dips or breaks, ‘Oh, if I could have that man’s radiant personality! I should give anything to be like that!’ But it just happens that people who have extraordinary capacities for happiness and good humor, who never seem to take anything very seriously: ah, but how they can suffer with a suffering that nobody is able to understand but other people of the same temperament.

“Says one, ‘I would give ten years of my life to have been able to write that song.’ Ten years of your life! That would be getting off rather easily. Before he was able to write that song, this man had to have his heart broken, and everything humanly desirable swept out of his life.”

Regarding the scripture text, Douglas says, “There are many bridges to be burned as one makes toward the Kingdom. Jesus states the case very simply, but very clearly, in this parable. Here is the discoverer, in the very ‘ecstasy of eagerness’ over his find. Here is the treasure, a chest of potential happiness, which may possibly be his if the right processes are pursued. And here is the field, which he does not want at all, but must take if he is to claim the treasure. And if he does take the field, it will cost him everything.

“All that he has gathered up in his life until now must be sacrificed. His little home, doubtless fraught with many associations very dear — it must go.

“It is just at this point that many a finding man who has stumbled upon the Kingdom hidden in a field fails to meet the conditions governing its possession.

“Certain old friendships hold him back, friendships with men who by their cynicism and unfaiths make it impossible for the discoverer of the treasure to claim his find. And he knows that if he is to own this treasure, he must cut loose from the old ties, the old influence, the old environment.

“It means a very great deal for him to dispose of everything, just to be able to negotiate for this field that he doesn’t want.

“It is at this point, I say, that most people miss their chance of achieving the Kingdom of Heaven in their hearts.

“The Master recognized the difficulty in the way. Indeed, he sometimes called special attention to it when he feared some zealous convert was about to take a step too long for him. Jesus never tried to induce anybody to accept the Kingdom of Heaven on easy terms. He never proposed an excursion rate, or a short cut, or a remnant sale.

“Intuitive psychologist that he was, the Lord knew that anybody who achieved the Kingdom of Heaven in his heart without giving anything for it would never realize any happiness in its possession. And following the logic of this bargain to its finest conclusion, he argues that if the Kingdom is to produce the highest degree of happiness, the discoverer must be willing to surrender all that he has, and take not only the treasure but the field as well.”