jesus – The Lloyd C Douglas Page

What About Lent? Part 5

A page from Lloyd C. Douglas, “What About Lent?” in The Christian Century, 2/3/1921.

“It will be well for us to consider how we may make something profitable and helpful of Lent for our people who have not been trained to observe the season – not even to the extent of going through the motions of celebrating it. Perhaps the caution should be extended to the zealous young minister who feels the importance of doing this thing to the limit and has it in mind to hold daily services all the way from Ash Wednesday to Easter, that forty days are a very great many! He may begin his campaign with much enthusiasm, but before he has arrived at the end of the season, he will feel that instead of commemorating the forty-day fast of the Master in Jeshimon, he has been emulating the period spent by Moses in the Wilderness of Paran. In offering this suggestion, we speak that which we do know.

“This isn’t something that a church may hurl itself into, in one season, with utter abandon. If you have never observed Lent at all in your church, do not plan a lot of extra meetings, but keep the Lenten idea to the fore in all the meetings that you would customarily hold. A series of three sermons, on the first three Sundays of Lent, dealing with the temptations of Jesus, will serve to establish the idea that we are in a season of the year when such meditation is timely.

“Practically inexhaustible are the spiritual resources in this story. The preacher can afford to sit down over it for a whole day and study it in the light of present-day problems. It makes a delightful setting for a series of three sermons because it falls apart naturally into as many distinct propositions. The Wilderness Temptation comes first – temptation on low levels, a frank appeal to appetite. The City Temptation follows -temptation to get into the hurly-burly of the crowd, to take the short-cut to success, to win one’s way at a leap, to gamble with Providence. No less alluring and dangerous is the Mountain-Top Temptation – temptation to dream of glory and honor achieved by other processes than the simple, friendly, hand-to-hand contact with men as brethren.”

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

What About Lent? Part 4

by Ronald R Johnson

The following is from an article by Lloyd C. Douglas in the February 3, 1921, issue of The Christian Century. The title of the article is, “What About Lent?” Douglas has been saying that the seasons themselves put people in the appropriate mood for each part of the church calendar, but the local pastor is often harried by outside forces to preach about something entirely unrelated to the season the church is celebrating (Great Literature Day, Camp Sunday, etc.). Douglas writes:

“Days and days and days! If it may not be too impudent, I should like to assume the role of soothsayer long enough to predict that we have now passed the crest of these ‘days,’ and that our good friends with the causes and movements and drives and campaigns – good, bad, and indifferent – are presently to discover that they have overdone it. The good old preacher-pitcher has been carried once too often to the campaign-well. He is ‘gone broke.’ And that is a fact.

“Lent begins next week. What are we going to do about it? Most of us who plan the programs for our non-liturgical churches organize classes during this season for the instruction of young people in the fundamentals of Christianity as interpreted by our own denominations. This is as it ought to be. Many of us make special evangelistic efforts. More and more, our churches are coming to think of the pre-Easter weeks as a season of recruiting. But it is to be doubted if many of us are making proper use of this period for the deepening of the springs of spiritual life in the hearts of mature and confessed Christians.

“The preacher who fails to see and utilize the possibilities of Lent is standing in his own light. He may be reluctant to observe the season lest he infringe upon the exclusive privilege of the liturgical churches, but no denomination enjoys a monopoly of Lent. He may fear the indictment that he is ‘headed toward Rome’ – an ancient bugaboo that has cost us heavily who have sacrificed so much of the beauty of holiness in our awkward efforts to avoid doing anything that was ever practiced by historic Christianity previous to 1517. Again, he remembers the ungodly travesty of Lenten observance in the upper ether of ‘high sassiety’ where the self-abnegation of this penitential season seems to enjoin no more rigorous discipline than the refusal to have lemon in one’s tea at the bridge party; and where fasting means laying up, for a few days, in some sanitarium, to take medicinal baths wherewith to recuperate from the winter’s over-gorging and loss of sleep. But good things will be counterfeited; and the better they are, the more likely to be imitated.”

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

What About Lent? Part 3

by Ronald R Johnson

“In the fall, when [the pastor] knows he should be driving deeply into the ‘thanatopsis’ mood and making the most of it in his sermons, the secretary of his denomination’s board of education sends him a whole wastebasket full of literature providing plans and specifications for the sermon he is to preach on the importance of supporting the little church colleges. He knows this is a worthy cause. He wishes, however, that he might be permitted to speak about it some other time. Just now he has himself all set to do a constructive task bearing upon the spiritual life of his congregation. To spend one Sunday morning parading the poverty of our wretched little – our own little – our all-but-dead little Peewee College at Hinkum’s Crossing – will upset the continuity of his proposed series of sermons; but if he doesn’t come through with the Peewee business, he will be put down as ‘a brother hard to work with.’

“In the same mail, he gets orders from someplace – he is not quite sure whence – that the next Sunday thereafter is the first day of ‘Good Literature Week.’ Unless he proposes to classify himself among the unread and unwashed who are indifferent to this wonderful movement, he had better load himself with good literature propaganda and be prepared to fire it off on the appointed day. It will be easy to do this, for the National Council for the Spread of Good Literature has not only prepared him a sermon outline, but has selected his text, his hymns, his Scripture lesson, his homiletic illustrations; so that though he may be a wayfarer, he need not err therein. (Incidentally, the impertinence of some of these people who persist in preparing sermons for us wherewith to present their various movements seems equaled only by the stupidity of the stuff they send us. One Sunday when the war was on, and we were getting sermons from Washington, the writer, thinking his people needed a moment of relaxation and a chance to have a hearty laugh, read a few paragraphs of a regulation government sermon. It was good.)”

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

What About Lent? Part 2

by Ronald R Johnson

The following is from an article by Lloyd C. Douglas in the February 3, 1921, issue of The Christian Century. The title of the article is, “What About Lent?” Douglas writes:

“If you will take the ‘periscope’ in one hand and a modern textbook on psychology in the other, and observe their close teamwork, you may be amazed at the excellence of their wisdom who devised the schedule of events commonly known as the ‘church year.’ There was nothing ‘hit-or-miss’ about the makeup of this calendar. These canny church fathers did not sit in council to determine whether it would be more convenient to observe a more ‘penitential season’ in June than in December. No; that matter was out of their jurisdiction. It was something that had been settled by Nature, and they simply obeyed her voice. It is a known fact that the budding spring inevitably lures men to introspection. At that season they search their hearts, take invoice of their spiritual capacities, and seek whatever art forms are more familiar to them in an endeavor to make articulate the vague longings of their souls. Of old, they fasted at this season, and took counsel of holy men in cloisters. Of late, some write spring poetry, hungrily seek the art galleries, and patronize orchestral concerts. It is a season when everybody grows restless, dissatisfied with the apparent futility of his business, rebellious against the narrow boundaries of his experience, eager to escape the tyranny of material things to make adventure with the more ambitious quest of what, for him, serves as the Ultima Thule, Summum Bonum, Utopia – or whatever you like that stands for the High Spot.

“So, we may conclude that the season of self-search is fixed by Nature. Christianity is not unique in respect to the time of its penitential period. All the other great religions understand this psychology quite as well, and some of them have followed the suggestion much more effectively. Christianity, so inextricably tangled with the best of progressive civilization that men debate whether it is Christianity blazes the way for science, commerce, and the arts, or vice versa, should have a care that it does not develop into an urbane, artificial, indoor kind of religion. It began out in the open, under the guidance of one who frequently had no pillow but the turf; and we do well who would give all the fresh air and sunshine to its health. When Nature suggests a mental and spiritual mood – and historic Christianity stamps its O.K. upon the suggestion – we are wise who follow the hint.

“It is quite difficult for the present-day minister in America to obey his natural impulses and suggestions of the ‘church year’ in making a program of sermons and services to suit the season. In his desire to be a good citizen, he feels obliged to comply with every request of local, state, and national reform and philanthropic societies when they solicit his backing of their movements to the extent of observing their ‘days.’ No sooner has he planned his schedule for a vigorous evangelistic appeal through January than along comes ‘National Thrift Week’ – backed by the local Chamber of Commerce. Will he not be so good as to preach, on the Sunday preceding the ‘drive,’ emphasizing the importance of saving pennies that they may grow up into dollars. He dislikes to decline. Perhaps he really can contribute something to this cause – especially on the subject of frugality, a matter with which he has had much experience. He can talk ably of pennies. In the course of his business he sees such a lot of them.”

What About Lent? Part 1

by Ronald R Johnson

The title page of Lloyd C. Douglas, “What About Lent?” in The Christian Century, 2/3/1921.

The following is from an article by Lloyd C. Douglas in the February 3, 1921, issue of The Christian Century. The title of the article is, “What About Lent?” Douglas writes:

“One of the pet quotations with which we frequently embellish our remarks about human existence maintains that we do not live ‘in figures on a dial.’ It is an intriguing phrase, but fallacious. For precisely in this way to do we live – in figures on a dial. Solomon was entirely right when he said that men’s lives were ordered by seasons. There was a time to laugh, a time to weep, a time to jump into things impetuously, a time to reflect, a time to sow, a time to reap, a time to fight and a time to run. One gathers that this wise man felt the unsuccessful life was made so through failure to observe its appointed seasons.

“We upon whom there has been laid the responsibility of spiritual leadership should be more fully conversant than we are with the peculiar mental states induced by the changing seasons of the year. It is our business to know the difference between the prevailing moods of May and August. It is part of our task to understand the wanderlust provoked by the vernal equinox and the vagaries of autumnal melancholy. To secure such valuable information, we may not seek a more reliable source than the calendar for the ‘church year.’ It is to be believed that many of us have been failing to make full use of the greater festivals of Christianity – either neglecting them outright or subjecting them to purposes for which they were never intended.”

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

The Demotion of Death, Part 4

by Ronald R Johnson

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

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

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

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

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

The Demotion of Death, Part 3

by Ronald R Johnson

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

The following is from Lloyd Douglas’s essay, “The Demotion of Death,” which appeared in the January 27, 1921 issue of The Christian Century. He is talking to an audience largely of ministers, reminiscing about how harrowing funerals used to be. He writes:

“Little by little that which is mortal has abated its erstwhile interest for him who has lost his dearest friend; and gradually the whole event is being invested with the spiritual and immortal.

“The home of bereavement is, more and more, emulating that high spiritual courage which Christianity teaches. No other person is so aware of this as the minister, to whom this fact is increasingly made manifest. Whatever may be the peculiar advantages of our profession, none is so fraught with great value as the opportunity we have to see how other people conduct themselves in time of trouble! Of course, the layman knows something about this. He stands by his best friend in an hour of trouble and sees, that day, a glimpse of the radiant glory of the human soul in one of its high moments – and the remembrance of it will outlast all the other observations of his life! This may happen to the layman once, twice – a few times, perhaps – in a lifetime. In our business, such revelations are so frequent that they come to be classed as ‘all in the day’s work.’ I do not mean that we ever get used to it, or that the frequency of such experiences dulls our consciousness of the absolute grandeur of the human soul when empowered by this high spiritual courage; but we see it so often that we understand it is not a rare gift bequeathed to an occasional rare spirit, but rather that it is a sort of built-in capacity of the normal soul!

“And – sometimes – when I see that men and women are able to go under fire; and accept the losses of the very dearest possessions of their lives; and how they face, with a sense of victory and mastery, bereavements that fairly tear up the intricately knotted affections of years – smiling through it all – I stand in a kind of reverential awe before this virtue that lifts men out of the category of terrestrials and shows them to be sons of God!”

[Douglas will conclude this essay in my next post.]

The Demotion of Death, Part 2

by Ronald R Johnson

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

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

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

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

The Demotion of Death, Part 1

by Ronald R Johnson

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lloyd Douglas on Church Music, Part 7

by Ronald R Johnson

From “The Music of the Church,” by Lloyd C. Douglas, in the 1/13/1921 issue of The Christian Century.

The following is from “The Music of the Church,” an article Lloyd Douglas published in The Christian Century on January 13, 1921. He has been saying that it is the pastor’s responsibility to make sure the church’s music is good. He continues:

“If the minister will give some attention to this matter in his study and in conference with good musicians, he will discover, perhaps to his surprise, that a great deal of the strictly high class music of Christianity is not difficult of execution. He should find out what these anthems and solos are, if his choir is composed of persons who lack the talent and training to adventure with more complicated scores. It may be with the best intent in the world that he proposes to the choir that it attempt the ‘Hallelujah Chorus,’ which is, as he says, a very wonderful thing. But unless his chorus is made up of trained vocalists, he has placed his friends in a position from which it will be quite difficult to escape with credit to themselves and the cause they would like to serve. He should know exactly what grade of music his choir can successfully negotiate, and see to it that the musical library of his church is supplied with the best there is of that grade. He should have a complete list of the titles of these numbers in his study. When he plans a service, he should inform the choir director what special music is demanded by his sermon theme.

“How little coordination there is in most of our churches, of the sermon and the music! Sometimes the choir director doesn’t have the faintest idea what the sermon is about, and preacher doesn’t know (or care) what the choir is going to sing. He picks his hymns at random, without regard to their fitness or tunefulness. Occasionally he does this at the last minute. The choir has no notion what hymns are to be sung. No rehearsal of them has been had. And then this fellow will get up and babble about a wicked world that will not come out to church! Why should it? What is he doing to make the church more attractive? Complains about the size of his salary. In what other business could he earn more, if he went at it in the same way that he prepares for Sunday?”

Douglas has more advice for pastors on this subject, and he’ll share it my next post.