jesus – Page 3 – The Lloyd C Douglas Page

Personality II: Fatherhood and Brotherhood

Title page of the sermon, “Personality (Second Phase),” preached by Lloyd C Douglas at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor on 1/25/1920. In Sermons [5], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.

It is Week 2 of a three-week series on “Personality” by Lloyd C Douglas at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor. It is January 25, 1920. (This is from Sermons [5], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.)

“Here is a man,” says Douglas, “anxious to make a place for himself in the estimation of society; eager to find that one task which he may perform better than any other task; hopeful of leaving an impress of his influence upon his generation — what is it, in his case, but a simple matter of salesmanship?

“And the article for sale? Himself. That is really all he has to market: himself. And before he goes out to create a demand for himself, he must first sell himself to himself. It will be extremely difficult for him to make anyone else believe that he is worthy of regard unless he himself thinks so. It will be next to impossible for him to express his personality in his contacts with other people until he has become conscious of the value and importance of his personality.

“Now, last Sunday (as you may recall) we spent most of our time investigating the reasons one may properly hold for believing in the worth of oneself. We began our thinking by predicating of ourselves divine sonship. I do not intend to review that argument at this time but only to add a few sentences to it. Whoever is conscious of the fact that he is, in a very real sense, a spiritual reproduction of the Infinite and directly accountable to the Infinite for the use he makes of his personality has that in his life which guarantees him power in the exact proportion to his faith in this fact. If he is but dimly, vaguely, fleetingly conscious of this fact (as, for example, in such moments as the present one, when the idea is forced upon his attention), then he receives a dim, vague, fleeting stimulus to realize this personal power which accrues through an occasional recognition of his supreme inheritance.

“If, however, every morning of his life, upon waking, it is a settled habit of his to fix his first conscious thought upon the hope that he may, through the day, walk worthily of the vocation whereunto he is called, by right of high birth, keenly sensible of his trusteeship of a personality for which he is to be held strictly to account; if, at night, his last conscious thought before he sleeps (the thought which he stows away in his subconsciousness to dominate its operations during the hours when active consciousness retires from the field in favor of the deeper, permanent self), if that thought is a mental recognition of the bond between his spirit and the Divine Giver and Keeper of his spirit, then this fact of his supreme importance as a child of God gradually becomes automatic in its effect and controls his life without his willing it so to do.

“In his case, the power of this spiritual contact is no longer a mere sporadic life, such as the heart may sense in a moment of high inspiration, when temporarily exposed to the dazzlingly bright possibilities of a God-led personality, but constitutes a steady pull, good for all weathers and in all climates, and guaranteed to keep him poised in the midst of all tests, discouragements, and temporary losses.

“It was an easy and logical step, in our argument, to pass from the fact of our divine sonship to the correlated fact of our human brotherhood. The universal brotherhood of all men, everywhere. Now, ‘universal’ is a very large word, but when we use it here, we must take it as it stands: all-inclusive. If all men are not my brothers, then God is not the Father of any of us. If God is your Father and mine, ehtn He is also the Father of everybody — our fellows and our foes, our countrymen and foreigners — everybody, white, red, yellow, brown and black, clean or dirty, cultured or crude, educated or benighted.

“Of course, we talk glibly about our belief in the brotherhood of man, but when we consider it in its practical outworkings, it is an idea entirely too big for any man to absorb or accept in a moment. It requires patient cultivation if one is to build it into one’s thinking so that the effect of it will be manifest in one’s personality. It implies that no matter how unattractive another person may be to me, he has, within him, that which sets him apart from all other men: a personality which I am bound to respect if I respect my own.

“This, I insist, is a hard saying. It means that when I see a dense crowd of men, untrained of mind and uncouth of manner, pouring out through the open gates of a great factory at noon, leaden of eye and dull of feature, I must recognize in them my spiritual brothers, each one of whom, though perhaps only very dimly conscious of the fact, possesses a personality like unto which there is not, in all the world, another. There isn’t a square inch of skin on his body that has a duplicate in the universe. He, too, was made for a distinctive purpose. If conditions make it difficult for him to realize that end, that fact has nothing to do with my appreciation of the dignity of his personality.

“Now, I am reiterating all this with as much insistence as I can because the development of personality hangs upon it, and because there is little use going into details until we have mastered this rudiment. I cannot properly express my own personality until I am ready to concede that every other man also possesses a personality which is as much entitled to respect as my own.

“Once that fact is firmly fixed in your mind, your contacts with all other people are so satisfactory to them, so flattering to them (if you will permit that phrase) that you instantly win their confidence and respect. Whoever he may be, he knows, by the manner in which I take his hand and meet his eyes with mine, he knows exactly what his status is, in my estimation. And there is no practiced trick of manner, no artificial energy of hand-clasp, no pumped-up enthusiasm of salutary smile, that will deceive him as to my thought of him.”

All of this was really just a recapitulation of what Douglas had said the previous week. In my next post, I’ll tell you where he took the subject from here.

Personality I: A Firm Handshake is No Substitute for This

by Ronald R Johnson

A page from the sermon, “Personality (First Phase),” preached by Lloyd C Douglas at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor on 1/18/1920. In Sermons [5], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.

“I think it can be shown that the discovery of personality is just a matter of realizing one’s proper relationships.”

[This is from the first of a three-part series on “Personality,” by Lloyd C. Douglas at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor, on January 18, 1920. (In Sermons [5], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.)]

“Who and what am I? An animal that has been trained by ages of culture and restraint to observe certain social usages imposed upon me by contemporaneous society? An animal that has learned to eat with a fork and sit on a chair — and refrain from snatching food out of others’ hands?

“Well, if I am that, I had better buy the book on ‘personality’ [see the previous post] and learn a few more tricks of pose, gesture, stride, and the proper way to ask for a raise. But once I become convinced that I am considerably more than a trained animal — nothing else or less than a child of God, stamped with an image divine — then a new field of conquest and opportunity opens which has no barriers or limits except such as I raise myself.”

Paraphrasing I John 3:2, Douglas continues: “Sons of God — and while it doth not yet appear what we shall be, we know that when He shall have become clearly manifest to us, we shall be like Him. Now, a man who believes that, with all his heart, simply cannot think of himself in terms of deprecation.

“I am conscious that you are saying, ‘Oh yes, theoretically that is all very well; but isn’t it a practical fact that some of the most attractive and effective ‘personalities’ in the world are possessed by persons who give but very little attention to their divine sonship?’ I freely admit this, if one is obliged to judge by outward seeming. Some very potent and pleasing ‘personalities’ are in the custody of certain men who, from all appearances, have no religious interests, tagged and labeled as such. But, if you will take the trouble to investigate, you will find, deeply imbedded in the early training of such characters, that which exalted the importance of a man to himself.

“Moreover, he judges of this matter superficially who refuses to predicate God-consciousness of a man merely because that man boasts no oral creed and has never subscribed to theological postulates. The point I am trying to make is: that no man can discover and develop his personality until he has first become convinced of the value and importance of his personality. He only sets out in search of it after he has determined that it is worth the quest.

“Therefore, I believe that this simple faith in God’s Divine Paternity of the human soul is the most stimulating thought that can be relied upon to motivate and energize the life of the individual.

“Now, the second step in the discovery and development of ‘personality’ is similar to the first, in that it, also, is a matter of relationships. This second step, indeed, is corollary to the first.

“So soon as a man decides that God is his Father, his relations with other men are automatically established on a basis of brotherhood. All men are his brothers. They are dissimilar as to minor points but possessed of a host of common interests and mutual ties.

“Just for example: one of the most coveted graces of character, in which ‘personality’ may be said to speak for itself strikingly, is an easy affability toward a stranger. Who does not envy the man who, in the first instant of meeting, is able to present himself with such cordiality that he at once inspires respect, confidence, and admiration?

“What is the secret of this? Well, your man greets the stranger as a brother, not with his guard up, bristling with suspicion and a ‘show-me’ air, but as if they two had a very great deal in common. And the stranger may remark to himself, ‘What a delightful personality that man possesses!’

“Why, to be sure he has. He didn’t have to consult a book on personality, either, under the chapter, ‘How to Greet a Stranger.’ For, having accepted the principle of universal brotherhood, he needed only to follow the natural inclinations of his heart in order to present himself attractively and with a cordiality that inspired respect and confidence.

“So long as he is subconsciously defending his own interests, mentally distrustful of the other, he cannot express ‘personality’ at all. And the book will not aid him while he persists in a self-centered state of mind.

“Let me cite a few cases in point. Much has been said about the hand-clasp and how it expresses ‘personality’ — and it does. A man extends you a limp, clammy, flabby, flaccid hand, and you shake it as much or as little as you think the case justifies, and put it down, saying to yourself, ‘He has no personality.’

“But suppose he really wants to achieve personality. How is he to be advised? Shall he be taught how to shake hands? Will that solve his problem? Let him be taught, then. Suppose the next time he meets you, he grips your fingers and pumps away like a congressman home on furlough. Do you say to yourself, ‘Ah, he has personality’? Not at all. Indeed, you are rather shocked at the incongruous. He is nobody in every respect except that he is able to give a fair imitation of a man of ‘personality’ when he shakes hands. He has been treated, by somebody, for a symptom. His disease rages on, unabated.

“What, after all, is his trouble? Well, he is living a centripetal life; other men are not his brothers; he is a thing apart, unrelated and unobligated. He has walled himself in, possibly not by a fixed resolution to do so, but he is walled in! He meets you. He puts out his hand for you to shake. He thinks he is conferring a favor upon you by letting you shake it. He isn’t especially interested. He knows that when you have shaken it all you care to, you will quit and then he can have it back. He notes your smile of salutation and observes that you are glad to meet him. He, too, is glad — not glad to meet you but glad that your meeting him has given you such obvious pleasure.

“Every conscious thought and subconscious inclination of his revolves around himself, describing a very little orbit because he is a very little man. Now, you can teach him how to shake hands, if you care to spend the time — just as you can teach a dog to shake hands — but you haven’t corrected his real difficulty. He has no ‘personality’; that is to say, he expresses no ‘personality’ until he discovers the relation he sustains to other people, by virtue of their all having a Father in common; or, lacking belief in a common Father, nevertheless resolves that he is closely related to all the rest of humankind.

“Take another case. Here is a man who is concerned only with his own line of work; makes wheelbarrows, we will say. Talks of nothing else. Doesn’t know anything else. Mention some other matter of human interest and the only effect it has on his imagination is to remind him of something connected with the production of wheelbarrows. Get him out of his wheelbarrow and he is helpless.

“What is to be advised in his case? Think you that it will solve this man’s problem to go to him in a spirit of undoubted candor and command him, in the name of society, to let up about his wheelbarrows? Oh, no; that will only deprive him of the power of speech.

“He is just spinning around himself, that is all. He can’t be anybody until he quits that; and the only thing that will stop his ingrowing ego is a brand-new appraisal of his fraternal relations to other men. He must become a brother or remain a clod. For him there is no middle ground.”

Personality I: Gimmicks

by Ronald R Johnson

“Even the average man pricks up his ears when you hint that you can hand him some patent for improving his personality. He thinks it may make him a better salesman; a more successful politician; a more adept and resourceful pleader of whatever causes are uppermost in his mind.”

This is from the first of a three-part series on “Personality,” by Lloyd C. Douglas at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor, on January 18, 1920. (In Sermons [5], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.)

“The word [personality] is in very common use. It ricochets from lip to lip, and almost any child of twelve will attempt to define it for you. Full-page advertisements in the magazines are frequently tooled around the finger of a determined man, pointing his finger directly in your face and shouting, ‘I will teach you how to have personality!’

“And, desirous of a personality, you may send for his book, which can be had for a dollar and a half, and the book tells you how to begin, as follows, to wit:

“‘Stand up straight! Don’t sprawl like a jellyfish!

“‘Look ’em in the eye!

“‘Brace your neck firmly against the back of your collar — and be sure that your collar is clean. Take your hands out of your pockets!

“‘Now then, if you are ready, say: I can! I will!

“‘Say it a little louder this time: I WILL. I WILL. I WILL!'”

[Douglas continues…]

“Now, all of this is very good exercise, and doubtless has the merit of correcting some slouchy habits, which fully justifies the price of the book; and it possibly stimulates circulation, though not nearly so much as dumbbells, of a cold winter morning, by an open window. But personality? No! You don’t invent a personality, or earn a personality by hard labor, or manufacture one over a pattern furnished by somebody else. You discover a Personality; and when you discover it, you discover that it is yours and that there is not another like it in the whole world! There may be better ones, but not another like it. And the process of achieving it, therefore, is not by a system of calisthenics or self-hypnosis, but by a quiet, serious, patient self-search.

“A man may howl, ‘I must! I can! I will!’ until he is hoarse and hysterical, but the only effect it produces is to put him through his usual motions with a little more than his usual impetuosity (an added quality not invariably valuable; it depends).

“‘Walk right into your employer’s office,’ says the book, on page 162. ‘Look him squarely in the eye and tell him you’re worth more money!’ Well, maybe you are, but not because you did that!

“No; all these patent tricks for developing ‘personality’ merely offer a temporary prescription for self-delusion. One can galvanize the leg of a dead frog and make him kick a few times in a manner exceedingly lifelike, but the frog will never develop into a swimmer. What he requires is power on the inside. The battery will not help him very much, or for very long.

“A man may decide: ‘Henceforward I propose to be successful — to possess a forceful personality — to surmount my difficulties and laugh at obstacles!’ But he soon finds that his little dose of strychnine loses its stimulating effect. He has begun at the wrong end of the proposition. He is just trying to act as he might act if he really had personality.

“What he needs to do is to go deeply into the problem of his own life and discover what tenable reasons he may hold for a belief that his is a distinctive character.”

I’ll continue this in my next post.

Personality I: Worms Need Not Apply

by Ronald R Johnson

Title page of the sermon, “Personality (First Phase),” preached by Lloyd C Douglas at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor on 1/18/1920. In Sermons [5], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.

“In its broadest connotation, Religion designates the feelings and acts of men who quest The Infinite to determine their mutual relationship.” [This is from a sermon by Lloyd C. Douglas, preached at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor on January 18, 1920. It was the first of a three-part series on the subject of “Personality.”]

“Whatever else Religion is must be considered casual, incidental, or accessory. Religion is the human search for God.

“Now, this very first premise, if it has any weight at all in man’s consciousness and experience, inevitably exalts human personality. I do not mean that it merely inflates the ego and magnifies the first personal pronoun by a few thousand diameters; for, if the God-seeker is honest, he is bound to be humble. And surely it is highly commendable, when one addresses oneself Godward, to approach Him in some such mood as that of the ancient desert sheik who, stretching his bronzed arms toward the gloriously star-strewn sky, exclaimed in wonderment: ‘When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou has ordained — what is man that Thou art mindful of him?’

“But, though his sense of awe and bewilderment never leaves him, the seeker either becomes personally exalted by his quest or he abandons it, baffled, and thereafter refers to God as ‘X.'”

“So the adventurer sets forth upon his tour of discovery, crying from the depths of his humility, ‘I am but clay, and Thou the omnipotent artist!’ But, erelong, he is demanding, with high faith and a confidence that has nothing of effrontery in it: ‘Mold me — from clay to statue — from statue to flesh — from flesh to manhood — to manhood triumphant — celestial — until I awake in Thy likeness!’

“Any system of religious inquiry that begins with the premise that man is but a crawling worm, unworthy the consideration of his Maker, is merely impudent when it talks of aspiring to a conscious bond of spiritual contact between the human and the Divine. But in that moment when a man begins to think of God as his Father and of himself as God’s child, he rises to the dignity of a new creature, from whom old things, like petty fears and vain imaginings, have passed away, and for whom all things are become new; a creature of vast capacities, whose exalted social station as a ‘child of God’ invites him — nay, compels him — to ‘leave his low-vaulted past’ and ‘build more stately mansions for his soul.’

“In other words, so long as a man maintains that he is ‘on his own,’ mumbling vague nothings about himself as a mere chemical compound, somehow produced by a series of fortuitous accidents in the laboratory of Mother Nature; washed up out of the primeval ooze to shed his fins and learn to walk on his hind feet; or, with no more logic (or less insolence), prattling of his self-containment in such orotund phrases as Henley’s ‘I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul,’ as if he were running around loose in the universe like an uncharted chunk of sizzling triolite, expatriate from some volcanic star — he cannot be expected to think very much of himself, and he would be a fool if he did. He and the soft-shell crab and the exiled meteorite are equally dignified, and all of the same order as to destiny. He admits it himself, and one has too much courtesy to dispute him.

“But, once one rises to greet the Spirit of God with the confident attitude of one who walks, unafraid, into his father’s presence, he must recognize the extent of his obligation to talk and act as becometh the high-born! No longer does he grovel, or whine, or fear. Life has no bounds for him; circumstance no chains; adversity no bars! Even Eternity loses its unnamed terrors; Death its sting; the grave its victory! He is built of that which is imperishable, and he knows it! He is a son of God.

“‘Dust thou art — to dust returnest’ was not spoken of his soul!”

But the objective, Douglas says, isn’t for this questing soul to remain where he is in his development. The objective is to grow into a relation with God. That’s why it’s sad that so many “personality” experts rely on gimmicks. I’ll tell you about that in my next post.

Finding Contentment in a Busy World

by Ronald R Johnson

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.

Seeking contentment isn’t a private affair, according to Lloyd Douglas. “The influence of just one fault-finding, captious, crabbed soul in a household will sour the whole institution. The radiant personality of one well-poised apostle of contentment will pervade and inspire a whole social group.”

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

“Here is a family where life runs at sixes and sevens every day. The members of the household are very much on edge all the time. Everybody ragging and badgering everybody else. Not often does a remark of commendation get by for anybody, anywhere, without someone’s qualification. You can depend upon it that some one member of that institution is responsible or was responsible. Maybe it has gone so far nothing could stop it short of a miracle of grace. The children of the household go out, at length, to set up establishments of their own, where they are more than likely to conform to the traditions bequeathed to them; and so the bad work goes on.

“Here is another home where harmony and happiness are more to be desired than anything else. Slow to anger; plenteous in mercy; in honor, preferring one another; generous, even to a fault. You can depend on it — there is a soul in that establishment who has learned the secret of successful living, maybe in the old home, possibly through contact with a splendid friend, maybe through a consistent study of that Life that towers majestically above all other lives.

“It is no new philosophy that makes thought responsible for all action. It was not new when the Lord stated that thoughts and actions had so very much in common that an unlawful wish was equivalent to an unlawful act. It is a simple psychological law that any type of thought, if entertained for a sufficient length of time, will, by and by, reach the motor tracks of the brain and finally burst forth into action.

“Moreover, we build our philosophy of life — by which life becomes increasingly beautiful or ugly for ourselves and everybody related to us — by the attitude we take toward the more or less inconsequential events which belong in our everyday experience. For it is not in the great and heroic tests of life that we stand trial so much as in the attitude we take toward the minor events, where we develop the strength that may be drawn upon at a moment of sudden stress, or where we neglect to store the energy whose lack, in a critical moment, spells our disaster and defeat.

“Waiting patiently, graciously, smilingly, for the belated train means considerably more than just that. It means a very distinct gain to the permanent character, by which life is charged with a certain static energy which may be drawn upon in an hour when there is much more desperate waiting on hand than for a tardy train.”

[This next part refers to Douglas’s earlier reference to a scene from Christopher Morley’s Haunted Bookshop, in which a Mr. Mifflin talks about turning the drudgery of dishwashing into a moment of meditation.]

“And when the dishpan begins to take on what Mr. Mifflin calls ‘a philosophic halo’ and the warm, soapy water becomes a sovereign medicine to retract the hot blood from the head, there is decided gain in mental poise that means very much more than the transfiguring of an ignoble task. It means the storing of a peculiar kind of spiritual energy that may be taxed someday for larger uses than dishwashing.

“I fancy that if our generation needs any one remedy, more than another, for its ills, that remedy can be found in a patient, consistent effort to achieve contentment in the particular phases of life that have seemed most trying. A little less rush and a little more thought. A little less scramble and a little more simple-hearted enjoyment of and contentment in the homely, the commonplace acts and tasks which are as gall and wormwood until we transfigure them by our changed attitude toward them.”

Such a Busy World!

by Ronald R Johnson

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.”