jesus – Page 5 – The Lloyd C Douglas Page

That Remarkable 18th Chapter

(In recent posts, I’ve been telling you about the novel that would become known as Magnificent Obsession. When Lloyd Douglas was writing it in 1928, however, the working title was Salvage. In a future post, I’ll talk about the name change.)

The eighteenth chapter of Douglas’s book, Salvage, was remarkable for at least three reasons.

For one thing, he was poking fun at himself. The spotlight in this chapter is on the Reverend Doctor Bruce McLaren, a feisty minister of Scottish descent, who is modeled after fellow Scotsman Lloyd C. Douglas, D.D. This is remarkable because McLaren, although he is said to be “a good sport,” is also a somewhat comical figure. He is so well-educated, he preaches over the heads of his parishioners (as Douglas himself was doing at his church in Los Angeles, or so his critics claimed). McLaren is a modernist all the way.

“The whole business of institutionalized religion,” he says, “demands reappraisal! It appalls me to contemplate what must be the future of the Church when all the people who are now fifty and up are in their graves! This oncoming generation, now in its adolescence, is not in the least way concerned about organized religion. Religious enough, instinctively, I dare say; but out of sorts with the sects; weary of their bad-mannered yammering at one another over matters in which one man’s guess is as good as another’s, and no outcome promised either in faith or conduct, no matter whose guess is right!”

A little later, McLaren says, “A Christ who can help us to a clearer perception of God needs to be a personality confronted with problems similar to our ours, and solving them with knowledge and power to which we also have access – else he offers us no example at all. But here we have a majority of the churches trying to elicit interest in him because he was supernaturally born, which I wasn’t; because he turned water into wine, which I can’t; because he paid his taxes with money found in a fish’s mouth, which – for all my Scotch ingenuity – I can’t do; because he silenced the storm with a word and a gesture, whereas I must bail the boat; because he called back from the grave his friend who had been dead four days, while I must content myself with planting a rosebush and calling it a closed incident! What we want is a Christ whose service to us, in leading us toward God, is not predicated upon our dissimilarities, but upon our likenesses!”

Now… these are the very same things Douglas had been saying for a long time, almost word-for-word, in sermons, speeches, and articles. But when McLaren says them, we’re supposed to grin. For he’s right, up to a point; but he’s also missing the most important thing – the thesis of the whole book – and we know that Bobby Merrick is about to set him straight.

This reflects an important change in Douglas’s thinking, either just before or during his writing of the non-fiction book, Exploring Your Soul.

“I wonder if we modernists,” McLaren says later, “are not somewhat in the predicament of Moses, who had enough audacity to lead the slaves out of their bondage, but lacked the ingenuity to take them on into a country that would support them. We’ve emancipated them; but – they’re still wandering about in the jungle, dissatisfied, hungry, making occasional excursions into paganism and experimenting with all manner of eccentric cults, longing for the spiritual equivalent of their repudiated superstitions – sometimes wishing they were back in the old harness!”

“It’s worthwhile to have fetched them out of that,” says Bobby. “It ought to be equally interesting to lead them on. They mustn’t go back! But they will – if they’re not pointed to something more attractive than the jungle you say they’re in.”

How, exactly, can McLaren lead his people forward? By practicing what Bobby Merrick has just taught him: a message that goes beyond modernism.

In May of that same year (1928), Douglas published an article in the Christian Century entitled, “The Seeming Impotence of Christianity.” In it he asked:

May not the chief difficulty of the churches lie in the fact that we have all been interpreting Christianity in terms of metaphysics to a generation that does its thinking in terms of kinetic energies? Even modernism, for all its twentieth-centuryness, has made no more of a contribution at this point…. The modernist refutes the metaphysics of the fundamentalist by proposing another metaphysics. Both schools are equally absorbed in speculative thought, one hoping to show the public that the other is an infidel, the other hoping to show the public that the one is an ignoramus, but neither of them interested in showing the public that Christianity is a dynamic energy….

In the field of physical energies, it is common knowledge with our boys and girls that an ampere is the current produced by one volt acting through the resistance of one ohm; that a horsepower equals 746 volts-ampere; that a calorie is the heat required to raise a gram of water one degree centigrade. But what the soul can do, under given conditions, by reliance upon and utilization of divine power in fortifying against disappointments, encountering grief, and resisting the demands of appetite, is not only unknown but undiscussed. What manner of vital connection an aspiring soul may practically establish with its Source; under what circumstances spiritual power may be definitely guaranteed; whether prayer may be made a workable pursuit, and, if so, for whom, how, where, and when—these matters are spoken of with vagueness, albeit sung about with pious fervor. This generation has not been trained to think of power as something that should be set to music but set to work.

This is not to mean, however, that the present public is utterly without a spiritual aspiration. An increasing number of yearning people are possessed of the belief that there are certain spiritual energies in existence which, if practically utilized, could extend the reach of a man’s soul exactly as physical dynamics have multiplied the capacities of his eye, ear, and hand. That there is an unseen power, accessible to mankind, is not considered a mere chimera…

Lloyd C Douglas, “The Seeming Impotence of Christianity,” Christian Century, 5/24/1928, pp. 664-667.

This is the second thing that’s remarkable about the eighteenth chapter of Douglas’s novel: in it, Bobby Merrick claims that God can be approached in a manner that mimics applied science.

“Isn’t the modern school just substituting a new metaphysic for the old one?” Merrick asks McLaren. “Our generation is doing all its thinking in terms of power, energy, dynamics – the kind you read about, not in a book, but on a meter! Why not concede the reality of supernormal assistance, to be had under fixed conditions, and encourage people to go after it?”

Douglas’s emphasis here is on the “fixed conditions” – on doing what Jesus taught. To state the matter in religious terms, Merrick shares his testimony with the McLarens. But it’s not the typical tale of sorrowing over one’s sins and asking forgiveness; it’s a story about how he did what Jesus said… and received the promised results.

After the book’s publication, some conservative Christians would balk at the “pseudo-scientific” overtones of the story, but Douglas was really just putting his faith in Christ on the line. He was saying (although not in these exact words), “Do you believe in Jesus’ promises? If so, why be upset if someone follows his teachings and gets the promised results? Why be angry just because they didn’t come to him by following your four-step process? If they come to Jesus by doing what he himself said, how can that be wrong?”

The third thing that’s remarkable about the eighteenth chapter is that Douglas addresses an issue that every college freshman faces in Philosophy 101: the so-called “proofs for the existence of God.”

I’m a philosophy professor. I teach the “proofs.” And I see firsthand how irrelevant they are to people’s day-to-day lives. Students don’t resolve their doubts about the existence of God by having the matter “proven” or “disproven.” In fact, most people in this world never find intellectual resolution, one way or the other. They either believe, or they don’t. “We’ll find out when we die,” they say.

In the eighteenth chapter of the novel Salvage, however, Douglas claimed that resolution was possible.

When McLaren says that God is only “an hypothesis,” Merrick says, rather shyly, “I’m afraid I don’t accept that.”

“Oh – Doctor Merrick!” says Mrs. McLaren. “You don’t mean to say that you do not believe in God at all!”

“I mean that I do not think of God as an hypothesis.”

“But – my dear fellow,” says McLaren, “we really have no hard and fast proofs, you know!”

“Haven’t you?” asks Bobby. “I have.”

The text says: “The two forks in use by the McLaren family were simultaneously put down upon their plates. ‘Er – how do you mean – proofs?’ queried his guest.”

Of the three, this is perhaps the most remarkable feature of this chapter: that Lloyd Douglas claims we can go beyond just believing in God, then finding out if we were right only after we die. Douglas claims that, if we do what Jesus says, we’ll find out now. The things he promises will happen. We’ll come into daily contact with the Living God… and we’ll know.

I can’t speak for anybody else, but I can tell you about my own case: when I read this chapter just before starting my junior year of college, I was thunderstruck – not because I wanted to have that experience for myself, but because I already had; I just didn’t realize that it was intellectually permissible to say so. For me, the reading of this chapter was life-changing.

Exploring Your Soul – The Sermon Series

by Ronald R Johnson

From the Lloyd C Douglas Papers, Box 4, “Miscellanea [1],” Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. (There is a typographical error. The series took place in 1928 and the announcement was made in December 1927. The typo must have occurred when this information was retyped in 1951 from a December 1927 church bulletin.)

During the first four Sundays of 1928, Lloyd Douglas preached a series of sermons based on the book he had been writing entitled, Exploring Your Soul. The series followed the topical outline indicated in the announcement imaged above. The first two sermons in the series can be found in The Living Faith: From His Selected Sermons. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1955), pp. 230-257.

On Sunday, January 6, 1928, he spoke on the subject, “Your Soul: What It Is and How It Operates.” His treatment of the theme was neither systematic nor definitive. Although he avoided giving a definition of the soul, he said, “a man may arise in the morning and wash his face for the same reason that a cat washes hers; and eat his breakfast for the same reason that a dog eats his; and work all day to earn his victuals for the same reason that the horse works all day to earn his…. But when he sits down, quietly, to contemplate the everlastingness of himself, and comfort his mind with his firm belief that he is of eternal stuff; that he proposes to outlive all the material things he sees about him because his essential self was existent long before any of these material things came to be, he immediately puts himself in quite another category than that of the animals. It is his soul that he is dealing with now” (p. 233).

Douglas identified a few different types of souls and invited his listeners to think about what type of soul they might be. There are others, no doubt, and the ones he listed are not mutually exclusive – we might recognize ourselves in more than one category. He said:

One man had the soul of a mystic. As a mere child, the consciousness of God’s living presence in his life was at times quite overpowering. He could sit quietly, in rapt contemplation, and sense a kind of inner illumination, a warmth that was other than thermal, an awareness of the Divine affection. It was a very fine, high-grade potential soul – and needed expert handling. His parents were zealous about his physical welfare and saw to it that he knew his hygiene; were careful that he should have balanced rations and his full quota of sleep and the right amount of exercise and recreation. Equally mindful for the training of his intellect, which was quick and precocious, they were inquisitive about his school, his teachers, his outside reading. But it never occurred to them that his soul demanded direction. He learned about souls at the Sunday School.

There was no discipline in that Sunday School, for the reason that not only was the instruction voluntarily offered but as voluntarily accepted, and a good deal of the teacher’s efforts and ingenuity were spent in the sheer task of keeping her wriggling charges quiet enough to avoid disturbing the class adjacent.

To capture their attention and command interest, [the Sunday School teacher emphasized the fantastic stories of sensational events from the Old Testament]. Religion was something that used to be. It used to perform queer tricks. And certain men used to hear celestial voices; but apparently it had gone out of such business long since, for the teacher made no effort to connect this antique lore with present possibilities.

Obviously, what this lad needed, to develop the type of soul he owned, was the direction and influence of some mature person who, like himself, was of sensitive, mystical quality. As he grew up and went to the services of the church, he learned that the main business of the institution was to raise its annual budget (which is not often accomplished, probably for that reason) and around the family table he heard discussions of the main issues which commanded the attention of his parents’ church, and no one of them even remotely impinged upon the problem of his own soul hunger.

In later adolescence, he became absorbed in the affairs of his physical world – his vocational problems, college, love, the new home, his business – and forgot he had a soul. Now and again it throbbed and stretched and sighed, but he ignored it and it went to sleep again. He had the makings of an important spiritual leader but lost his chance to be that through mishandling – mishandling largely charged to the church, and the church’s misguidance (pp. 241-242).

“Another man,” Douglas said,

had a definitely aesthetic soul, but was so unfortunate as to be taught what passed for spiritual culture at the hands of people to whom the love of natural and moral beauty, for its own sake, had never been evoked. Religion was a sheer matter of conduct – their conduct. They had their own little table of mores, and the business of religion was to make everybody behave just like that. As for the loveliness of life, the livableness of life, the profoundly stirring majesty and wonder of the divinely coordinated beauty of life, they couldn’t teach it because they had never suspected it.

Religion was a gospel of don’t. It began and ended with Thou Shalt Not. It had no sunrises and sunsets; it knew nothing of great music, great literature, great drama. In short, it had nothing to offer to an aesthetic soul, and this particular aesthetic soul hungered awhile and dropped off, through sheer undernourishment and anemia, into a rather fitful slumber – occasionally haunted by longings and dreams, but colorless.

Then there are the inquisitive souls – eager to learn as much as they may of God’s will as apparently deducible from Nature, scientific discovery, and the ripest thinking of other inquisitive souls – people who, falling into the hands of confirmed Traditionalists, have been warned that inquiry is infidelity.

Highly socialized souls, who believe only in a gospel of work, should get themselves into some connection where there will be lots of committees to attend and speeches to make and hats to pass and cards to sign and resolutions to enact – a perpetual procession of things accomplished. For them to find themselves in a mystical atmosphere of quiet contemplation might not benefit their souls at all (pp. 242-243).

“One might suppose, from a survey of the churches of the day,” he said, “that there is abundant room for them to do some constructive work on this subject, in assisting men and women to a discovery of the paths to their own souls.

Too many of our churches are so busy regulating or – to speak more accurately – too busy attempting and failing to regulate the public conduct that they have about left off dealing with spiritual matters. All that Religion is about is souls, and their culture. Most of our modern religion concerns itself with practically everything else but souls and soul culture.

Spiritually hungry people come on Sundays to our churches, wishing they might learn something that would improve their celestial contacts and help them find out their peculiar soul-powers; and they go away pretty sure that they’ll have to muddle along without help…. Let organized religion begin talking about these things, and see what will happen to the churches. And to the people who compose the churches (pp. 243-244).

The following Sunday, January 13, 1928, Douglas addressed the topic, “Your Soul: What It Lives On.”

What does the soul live on? What manner of nourishment makes it conscious of its strength and eager to quest adventure with its powers?

First of all, it must be definitely assured of its own importance!

Out! on all these pale and sickly ballads that timidly chirp of ‘You in Your Little Corner and I in Mine’ and ‘Oh to Be Nothing’ and ‘For Such a Worm as I.’

Quite off pitch is the timbre of a feeble voice like that, when it tries to attune itself to the Galilean: ‘Ask What Ye Will, and It Shall Be Done! Seek, and Ye Shall Find! Knock, and It Shall Be Opened!’ (p. 252).

The first thing that nourishes the soul is its awareness that “I am a child of God.” The second thing is to realize that “all men everywhere are children of God. For if all other men are not the spiritual children of God, there is no sense or significance to my claim that I am” (p. 253). The third thing is “to help other men to… an awareness of their Divine Sonship” (p. 254). But the best way to do this, Douglas said, was not by talking about it; it was to demonstrate it (pp. 254-255). He was a little unclear on how to do this through actions rather than words, but in his next sermon he would take this one step further. And it was a very important step.

Exploring Your Soul – The Book

by Ronald R Johnson

From “Sermons [6],” Box 3, Lloyd C Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. The University of Michigan holds copyright to this material.

Sometime in 1927 (probably in the fall), Lloyd Douglas began writing a non-fiction book called Exploring Your Soul. Chapter One bore the title, “In Defense of Unconcern.” His files contain seven drafts of the first page. Here is the text of one of those versions (note how it differs significantly from the draft in the image above):

It is neither a jest nor a slander to say of the average thoughtful man today that he knows next to nothing about his soul. Or perhaps it would be more precise to say that he thinks this is the case, though that comes approximately to the same thing. Our typical modern of inquiring mind is not embarrassed when confronted with the charge that he is not only uninformed but unconcerned about souls—The Soul as an institution, or his soul in particular. He rises to meet the accusation with a ready smile indicating that his confession of complete ignorance in this matter identifies him as a discriminating person who has learned to distinguish at a glance between problems which invite further acquaintance and mysteries which no man in his right mind can hope to fathom.

Indeed, one gathers from his attitude that all persons who imagine they know anything of certainty or significance about the soul are entertaining delusions from which he is happily free. Toward no other of all the interests which constitute his life does he exhibit such finality of indifference. As for the physical forces at work within himself and throughout as much of the world as obtrudes upon his five senses, his inquisitiveness is unlimited.

–“Exploring Your Soul,” loose pages of manuscript stored with “Sermons [6],” Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

The seven alternative openings in his files differ mostly in phrasing; his main purpose is to acknowledge that his target audience (educated professionals) may initially be turned off by the subject of their “soul.” As he says in one version, “Detailed information is available to [the reader] concerning all the other organs and interests which constitute his life…. The inquisitive man of our time not only knows why he breathes but is on intimate terms with all his bodily equipment. His knowledge of his stomach is precise. He knows just what to expect of it under given conditions. It is no news to him that one man’s meat is another man’s poison.”

Another draft says, “For considerably less than the asking, he can possess himself of knowledge which only a little while ago was held in the custody of a privileged few, and not too securely held even by them. Information concerning the energies which operate the natural world, until lately vague and incomprehensible, has now been translated into the vernacular, requiring so little of intellectual effort on the part of the ultimate consumer that it may be suspected of our modern vanity over our knowledge of physical facts that it is, of all our prides, the most shallow.”

In still another version he writes, “Practically all the other interests which constitute [the reader’s] life are being illumined by attractive and accurate information to be had without application. But as his knowledge grows concerning the structure, functions, and proper upkeep of his physical equipment, his opinions about his soul have become less satisfying, less secure.”

Where was Douglas going with all this? From this handful of loose pages alone, we aren’t given enough clues to know. Fortunately, he presented these ideas several months later in a sermon series at the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles (more on that in my next post), and from that series we can glean his basic outline. This book was going to talk about what the soul is, “How It Operates… What It Lives On… How to Develop Its Peculiar Capacities.” The answers to these questions were going to come not from creeds but from the teachings of Jesus.

At this initial stage (while he was writing his opening paragraphs), he seems to have had more ideas than he ended up using. On the back of one of the pages, he scribbled some notes in pencil. Under the heading, “Christian Credentials,” he wrote: “Matth 5:45 – ‘that ye may be the children of your Father.'” Below this he jotted a double underline as a kind of section divider, then asked, “What makes a Christian?” Beneath this he offered three possible answers, which he listed out of numerical order:

“3. Membership in a religious organization?
“1. Mutual acceptance of a system of beliefs?
“2. Emotional reaction to beauty, [handwriting unclear: either pity or piety], courage?”

After another section divider, he writes, “Christians must bring credentials – (credits),” and below this he lists the following (he gives the scripture text for the first one, and I have added the others in brackets):

“Parable of the forgiven debtor (Matth 18:23)
“Leave there thy gift before the altar. [Mt 5:23-24]
“Doctrine of the ‘Inasmuch’ [Mt 25:31-46]
“Breakdown of caste (If thou make a feast) [Lk 14:7-14]”

By themselves, these handwritten notes, although fascinating, do not tell us exactly where his thought was heading. In light of where he ended up, however, we can draw some inferences. He planned, initially, to offer his readers a number of ways that they could make their souls more immediately aware of God’s presence in their lives. “The Parable of the Forgiven Debtor” would suggest that one might lay hold of the power of God by forgiving other people’s trespasses. “Leave there thy gift before the altar,” although similar, would suggest that the reader drop what they are doing and make amends with others. The “Inasmuch” Declaration, which was important to Douglas throughout his ministry, would be an invitation to treat others as one would want to treat Jesus if he were here in the flesh now, with particular emphasis upon those who are in special need of assistance. And the note about “Breakdown of caste” would suggest that the reader should be on the lookout for opportunities to help others who will not be in a position to reciprocate.

Douglas didn’t end up mining these rich fields. Instead, he settled on a single passage of scripture that seemed to capture the spirit of them all:

Take heed that you do not your alms before men, to be seen of them; otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven. Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But when thou doest thine alms, let not they left hand know what thy right hand doeth: that thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.

And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into they closet, and when thou has shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

Matthew 6:1-6, King James Version

As Douglas said in interviews sometime later, once he had decided on explicating this text, he felt he had grabbed onto “a pretty hot wire.” It needed to be handled in an entirely different way from his recent non-fiction books. Instead of a monologue, he began to write it as “a three-cornered dialogue,” much in the style of his manuscript The Mendicant, which was published under the title Wanted: A Congregation. In that earlier book, the protagonist (a minister) had a series of conversations with an industrialist, a newspaper editor, and a physician about different aspects of his work as a pastor. For this new book, however, Douglas created three characters: one to present the thesis and two others to debate it with him. This was not a novel; it was a dialogue. But he wasn’t writing to an audience of other ministers this time: he was aiming at educated professionals who needed concrete guidance in their approach to God.

Douglas never finished writing the book, Exploring Your Soul. In January of the following year (1928), he presented his ideas in a series of sermons, and the congregation’s reaction led him in an unexpected direction.