[The following is from the fourth installment in Lloyd Douglas’s series, “Wanted—A Congregation!” in the summer and fall of 1920. This installment, dated 9/2/1920, is titled, “Fourth Phase—The Service of Worship.” The series is about the Reverend D. Preston Blue, who is on a campaign to enlarge his congregation. This episode takes place after he has begun to succeed in building his audience. He and his wife are on vacation and he is taking stock of the recent improvements.]
“These self-searching queries had been giving our friend some painful hours tonight. He had become shamefully stricken with remorse – the kind that sends a dull ache into the throat and a stinging pain into the eyes. As Blue reviewed the so-called ‘service of worship’ customarily rendered in Broad Street Church, it galled him to reflect upon those cold, gray ashes that stood for an altar fire. It humiliated him to remember how lifeless, how perfunctory the thing really was – so exceedingly dull that even he himself thought of it, when and if he thought of it, as a mere something-necessarily-to-be-gone-through preliminary to the main event of the hour – his sermon! Why, some of his members had frankly accounted for their habitual tardiness at the Sunday morning service with the bland explanation, ‘Oh, all that we care for is the sermon anyway!’ – and Blue had been so short of sight as to feel complimented!
“Torn now with remorse, the preacher resolved to analyze that profitless, cold, and all but sacrilegious ‘order of worship’ – a piece of mummery that had become so trite and feeble that even he was heartily glad when the last wearisome yawn of it had been dutifully recited, and the book chucked back in the rack. Blue was under contract with his own soul to mend matters at that point, without further delay! This was the burden of his thoughts tonight. It was a very, very serious problem. It was not much wonder he didn’t hear the turtles, or see the moon, or chat with Mrs. Blue! He was under conviction of a blunder that was considerably more serious than a mere misdemeanor. He had failed at a vital point! So – he took up that ‘order of worship’ item by item and looked at it.
“In the first place, it was a service absolutely devoid of thrills! (I daresay such use of the word ‘thrills’ will entitle the writer to some more piously-phrased, albeit unsigned, communications from his brethren, warning him to flee the wrath to come.) Well – anyhow – whate’er the future may have in store for him who boswells* for D. Preston Blue, it was a service devoid of thrills! There wasn’t a single feature of it calculated to quicken a man’s respiration or grip his throat or stir his pulse. What little of solemn ritual there was in it possessed no current – just lazily ambled along on a level like the sleepy Yangtse-kiang for five hundred miles without a ripple. It reached no high spots; led up to no climaxes; pointed to no definite goal; and, having no destination in mind, it failed to arrive anywhere.”
(*”boswells” is a verb referring to Douglas’s role as narrator of Blue’s story, just as James Boswell famously narrated the story of Samuel Johnson.)
[Douglas’s article will continue in my next post…]
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