Chapter II: Part 2

As the truth becomes known there are however some compensations for the disillusionment. If the moral pretensions of the heroes were bogus, the iniquity of the villains was not as malicious as it once appeared. The Kaiser was evidently a boob who was puerile enough to permit the German navalists to force him into policies which he did not understand. Von Tirpitz and his crowd may have been the real villains but they probably did not want the war so much as they wanted to glorify the navy and themselves through it. If Poincaré was the villain, it was the limitations of a narrow and bigoted nationalism rather than the malice of an evil heart which prompted his policies. The poor little Czar was the victim of a neurotic wife, and she in turn the tool of religious fanatics and fear-tormented bureaucrats.

There doesn’t seem to be very much malice in the world. There is simply not enough intelligence to conduct the intricate affairs of a complex civilization. All the chief actors in the war appear now in the light of children who played with dangerous toys. If they were criminal it was in the sense that the weal of millions was involved in their dangerous games and they didn’t let that fact dissuade them from their play. All human sin seems so much worse in its consequences than in its intentions.

But that is not a fact which justifies moral nihilism. The consequences are obvious and inevitable enough to deter a sensitive soul from the course which leads to destruction. Not merely ignorance but callousness to human welfare is an ingredient in the compound of social and personal evil.

In one sense modern civilization substitutes unconscious sins of more destructive consequences for conscious sins of less destructive consequences. Men try consciously to eliminate the atrocities of society, but meanwhile they unheedingly build a civilization which is more destructive of moral and personal values than anything intended in a more primitive society.

_1923_

I met a wonderful parson in the little village of ----. I went there to speak at a high school commencement. His church seemed to be an ordinary village church, but he was undeniably the real leader of the community. Broad sympathies had made it possible for him to transcend the usual denominational divisions which reduce most ministers to impotence in small communities, at least as far as wider community leadership is concerned. There were a few other churches in town, but he had developed so many types of cooperation between them that they were almost a unit in their enterprise.

He had built a small church house which was a hive of activity throughout the week. He conducted his own weekday school of religion, spending three afternoons at the job. His influence upon the young people was evidently a fruit of this close contact with them. He was so happy in his work that he did not look upon big city churches as the natural goal of his ambition. His wife and he and two little kiddies live very modestly in a little parsonage, and the mistress of the manse seems to find time to mother the neighborhood as well as her children.

Perhaps I am inclined to romanticize about village life. Sometimes it is very petty and mean, I know. But the absence of great class distinctions makes for a higher type of fellowship in church and community than is achieved in the metropolis, and the preacher is not tempted to placate the powerful. The modest stipend which the small church can afford makes for simple living and the absence of social pride. If more young fellows would be willing to go into churches like that and not suffer from inferiority complexes because they had not landed one of the “big pulpits,” we might put new power into the church.

Fortunately, this young fellow has an astute intelligence without being an orator. If he were a more gifted speaker he would probably have been “promoted”--and spoiled--long ago. I have often observed that privilege and power tend to corrupt the simple Christian heart. I am now convinced that to these two must be added the kind of obvious success which the world knows how to measure. The simplicity which is preserved because it does not meet the temptation of success is innocence rather than virtue; but if we can’t have virtue, innocence is preferable to moral failure.

There are successful men who have maintained a virtuous humility and sincerity in the day of success, but the achievement is very difficult.

_1923_

In Europe

I have been spending a few days with S---- and P---- in the Ruhr district. Flew back to London from Cologne by aeroplane. The Ruhr cities are the closest thing to hell I have ever seen. I never knew that you could see hatred with the naked eye, but in the Ruhr one is under the illusion that this is possible. The atmosphere is charged with it. The streets are filled with French soldiers in their grey-blue uniforms. Schools have been turned into barracks. Germans turn anxious and furtive glances upon every stranger. French officers race their automobiles wildly through the streets with sirens blowing shrilly. If you can gain the confidence of Germans so that they will talk they will tell you horrible tales of atrocities, deportations, sex crimes, etc. Imagination fired by fear and hatred undoubtedly tends to elaborate upon the sober facts. But the facts are bad enough.

When we arrived at Cologne after spending days in the French zone of occupation we felt as if we had come into a different world. The obvious reluctance of the British to make common cause with the French in the Ruhr adventure has accentuated the good will between the British troops and the native population. But a day in Cologne cannot erase the memory of Essen and Duesseldorf. It rests upon the mind like a horrible nightmare. One would like to send every sentimental spellbinder of war days into the Ruhr. This, then, is the glorious issue for which the war was fought! I didn’t know Europe in 1914, but I can’t imagine that the hatred between peoples could have been worse than it is now.

This is as good a time as any to make up my mind that I am done with the war business. Of course, I wasn’t really in the last war. Would that I had been! Every soldier, fighting for his country in simplicity of heart without asking many questions, was superior to those of us who served no better purpose than to increase or perpetuate the moral obfuscation of nations. Of course, we really couldn’t know everything we know now. But now we know. The times of man’s ignorance God may wink at, but now he calls us all to repent. I am done with this business. I hope I can make that resolution stick.

Talking about the possibility of the church renouncing war, as we came over on the boat, one of the cynics suggested that the present temper of the church against war was prompted by nausea rather than idealism. He insisted that the church would not be able to prove for some time that it is really sincere in this matter. I suppose he is right; though I do not know that one ought to be contemptuous of any experience which leads to the truth. A pain in the stomach may sometimes serve an ultimate purpose quite as well as an idea in the head. Yet it is probably true that nausea finally wears off and the question will then be whether there is a more fundamental force which will maintain a conviction in defiance of popular hysteria.

For my own part I am not going to let my decision in regard to war stand alone. I am going to try to be a disciple of Christ, rather than a mere Christian, in all human relations and experiment with the potency of trust and love much more than I have in the past.

_1923_

This has been a wonderful Christmas season. The people have been splendid. It is fun to go into the homes and see the laughter and joy of the children. It is rewarding to see how the people respond to our call for Christmas giving among the poor. The church was piled high yesterday with groceries and toys of every description. There is so much that is good in human nature.

Of course the cynics will say that it is easier to be charitable than to be just, and the astute social observers will note that what we give for the needy is but a small fraction of what we spend on ourselves. After all, the spirit of love is still pretty well isolated in the family life. If I had a family maybe that thought would never occur to me. The old Methodist preacher who told me some time ago that I was so cantankerous in my spirit of criticism about modern society because I am not married may be right. If I had about four children to love I might not care so much about insisting that the spirit of love shall dominate all human affairs. And there might be more value in loving the four children than in paying lip service to the spirit of love as I do.

_1924_

A revival meeting seems never to get under my skin. Perhaps I am too fish-blooded to enjoy them. But I object not so much to the emotionalism as to the lack of intellectual honesty of the average revival preacher. I do not mean to imply that the evangelists are necessarily consciously dishonest. They just don’t know enough about life and history to present the problem of the Christian life in its full meaning. They are always assuming that nothing but an emotional commitment to Christ is needed to save the soul from its sin and chaos. They seem never to realize how many of the miseries of mankind are due not to malice but to misdirected zeal and unbalanced virtue. They never help the people who corrupt family love by making the family a selfish unit in society or those who brutalize industry by excessive devotion to the prudential virtues.

Of course that is all inevitable enough. If you don’t simplify issues you can’t arouse emotional crises. It’s the melodrama that captivates the crowd. Sober history is seldom melodramatic. God and the devil may be in conflict on the scene of life and history, but a victory follows every defeat and some kind of defeat every victory. The representatives of God are seldom divine and the minions of Satan are never quite diabolical.

I wonder whether there is any way of being potent oratorically without over-simplifying truth. Or must power always be bought at the expense of truth? Perhaps some simplification of life is justified. Every artist does, after all, obscure some details in order to present others in bolder relief. The religious rhetorician has a right to count himself among, and take his standards from, the artists rather than the scientists. The trouble is that he is usually no better than a cartoonist.

_1924_

After preaching tonight at a union service in ---- the pastor loci took me about to show me his “plant” (industrialism has invaded even ecclesiastical terminology) and with obvious pride told me of all the progress that the church had made since his advent. One of the most disillusioning experiences which I have had with ministers is their invariable tendency to belittle or to be unappreciative of the work of their predecessors. If one were to take the implications of their remarks about their churches without a grain of salt one would imagine that every church was in an obvious state of spiritual and organic decay before the present generation of prophets took hold of the desperate situation. There are, of course, marked exceptions to this rule. But there is too much of this petty jealousy of former laborers in the vineyard of the Lord. Some of the men are probably victims of fawning parishioners and others are just naturally petty.

_1924_

I am not surprised that most prophets are itinerants. Critics of the church think we preachers are afraid to tell the truth because we are economically dependent upon the people of our church. There is something in that, but it does not quite get to the root of the matter. I certainly could easily enough get more money than I am securing now, and yet I catch myself weighing my words and gauging their possible effect upon this and that person. I think the real clue to the tameness of a preacher is the difficulty one finds in telling unpleasant truths to people whom one has learned to love.

To speak the truth in love is a difficult, and sometimes an almost impossible, achievement. If you speak the truth unqualifiedly, that is usually because your ire has been aroused or because you have no personal attachment to the object of your strictures. Once personal contact is established you are very prone to temper your wind to the shorn sheep. It is certainly difficult to be human and honest at the same time. I’m not surprised that most budding prophets are tamed in time to become harmless parish priests.

At that, I do not know what business I have carping at the good people who are doing the world’s work and who are inevitably enmeshed to a greater or less degree in the iniquities of society. Conscience, Goethe has observed, belongs to the observer rather than the doer, and it would be well for every preacher to realize that he is morally sensitive partly because he is observing and not acting. What is satisfying about the ministry is to note how far you can go in unfolding the full meaning of the Christian gospel provided you don’t present it with the implication that you have attained and are now laying it as an obligation upon others.

If the Christian adventure is made a mutual search for truth in which the preacher is merely a leader among many searchers and is conscious of the same difficulties in his own experience which he notes in others, I do not see why he cannot be a prophet without being forced into itinerancy.

_1924_

In Europe

We began the day with a visit to the York minster and ended it with a dinner at the Rountree cocoa works. Some of the men thought there was more spirituality in the discussion of the ethical problems of modern industry in which we engaged at Rountree’s than in the communion service we heard so atrociously read in the minster. Of course the dinner discussion was richer in ethical content, but there are nevertheless religious values in the cathedral which one cannot find in a discussion of ethical problems however vital.

Religion is a reaction to life’s mysteries and a reverence before the infinitudes of the universe. Without ethical experience the infinite is never defined in ethical terms, but the soul which is reverent and morally vital at the same time learns how to apprehend the infinite in terms of holiness and worships a God who transcends both our knowledge and our conscience. The cathedral with its dim religious light, its vaulted ceiling, its altar screen, and its hushed whispers is symbolic of the element of mystery in religion.

Without an adequate sermon no clue is given to the moral purpose at the heart of the mystery, and reverence remains without ethical content. But a religion which never goes beyond a sense of awe is no less {“more” in 1929 reprint} complete (though perhaps less serviceable) than one which has reduced life’s ultimate and ineffable truth to a pat little formula which a proud little man expounds before a comfortable and complacent congregation. I am sorry that there is no more ethically vital preaching in the cathedral, though that wretched communion service this morning, which could help no one if he did not believe in magic, is hardly typical of everything which happens in a cathedral. But I am equally sorry that the sense of awe and reverence has departed from so many of our churches.

The very appearance of many of our churches betrays the loss of one necessary element in religion. Everything suggests the secular rather than the religious, from the red hat of the rather too sensuously pretty soprano soloist and the frock coat of the rather too self-conscious parson to the comfortable pew cushions and the splendiferous pew holders. The morning sun shines brightly into the “auditorium” and the sun of worldly wisdom illumines the discourse of the preacher.

Of course I know that the devotional attitude frequently destroys clear thinking, and we need clear thinking for ethical living in a complex civilization. But it ought not be impossible to preserve the poetic with the scientific attitude, the mystical with the analytical, to have both worship and instruction. I think that is what Heywood Broun was driving at some time ago when he expressed a preference for an “Episcopal church with an heretical sermon.” Unfortunately the heretical, i.e., the morally vital and contemporaneous religious instruction, does not seem to flourish in the liturgical church.

But there are men here in England who preach prophetic sermons in cathedrals. There might be more. In America they are certainly not numerous. But that is no reason why we should dismiss religious awe and reverence as morally dangerous. After all, the prophetic preaching which we hear in our “church auditoriums” is not so vigorous as to give us any certainty that a secularized church is superior in its moral potency.

_1924_

While visiting at the home of Mr. and Mrs. ---- today little Ralph felt it incumbent upon himself to entertain me by putting the family dog through his tricks. I have already forgotten the breed of the dog, but his shaggy locks covered his eyes so completely that he seemed to be without eyesight. Ralph told me with great eagerness that the dog would go blind if his locks were cut to improve his eyesight. Thus nature adjusts herself to her own inadequacies, and women of the future may run the peril of deafness if they uncover their ears.

Ralph’s dog gave me the clue to much of our irreligion. The eyes of so many people have been covered by superstitions and illusions that they are not strong enough to preserve their sight in the daylight of knowledge. Freed from their superstitions, they are blinded in the very moment that they are given an unhindered view. They could see beauty while they lived in twilight, but a brilliant light obscures life’s beauty and meaning.

Of course the eye may ultimately adjust itself to the brilliance of the light, and as men grow accustomed to the concrete and specific objects which distract them on first sight, they will learn again to view the whole scene and to regard all things in their relationships.

It is in relationships and in totalities that life’s meaning is revealed.

_1924_

Since spending the summer in Europe I have been devoting the entire fall to a development of our worship service. The various types of ritualistic services in non-conformist churches I heard over there appealed to me so much that I decided to imitate them. Of course the Anglican services have their own appeal, but the technique which makes them possible is beyond us. For some years I have been having a few prayer responses, but now I am developing a program with litanies, confessions, acts of praise and every other bit of liturgical beauty and meaning by which the service can be enriched.

It’s a shame we have permitted our services to become so barren. My only regret is that I did not wake up in time to build our church properly for liturgical purposes. There could be much pleasure in conducting a richly elaborated liturgical service without the restraint of the rubrics to which the Anglicans must submit. I do not know whether the people like the added beauty in the service as much as I do, but many have expressed appreciation. It seems to me to make a great deal of difference in the spiritual value of a service to have some unison prayer with an authentic religious emotion expressed in a well turned phrase, to have choir responses for the prayers and moments of silence for quiet prayer.

The idea that a formless service is more spontaneous and therefore more religious than a formal one is disproved in my own experience. Only a very few men have ever really put me in a mood of prayer by their “pastoral prayers.” On the other hand, a really beautiful worship service actually gives me a mystic sense of the divine.

_1924_

Arrived in ---- today and spoke this noon to a group of liberal people. The meeting was arranged by the secretary of the Y.W.C.A. I poked fun at them a little for enjoying their theological liberalism so much in this part of the country, while they were afraid of even the mildest economic and political heresy. Of course that didn’t quite apply to the people at the table, but it does apply to this whole section. There is no one quite so ridiculous as a preacher who prides himself upon his theological radicalism in a city where the theological battle was won a generation ago, while he meanwhile speaks his convictions on matters of economics only in anxious whispers.

I was asked to visit ---- (leading preacher) and see whether I could not interest him in our organization. He was an interesting study. He told me of his important connections in the city, of his tremendous church program, of the way he had increased the budget of his church, of his building plans, of the necessity “of fighting on one front at a time,” of his theological battles; and he ended by declining to join the liberal group which sought his aid.

He thought it would not be advisable, considering his heavy responsibilities, to imperil the many great “causes” to which he was devoting his life by identifying himself with a radical movement. I didn’t mind his cowardice so much, though he tried to hide it, as his vanity, which he took no pains to hide. I could just see him cavorting weekly before his crowd of doting admirers.

Obviously one of his chief difficulties is that he is good looking. A minister has enough temptations to vanity without bearing the moral hazard of a handsome face. If this young fellow had only been half as homely as old Dr. Gordon he might have a chance of acquiring a portion of his grace. But I don’t want to drive that generalization too far. I know one or two saintly preachers who could pose for a collar ad.

_1924_

Had a letter today informing me that the First ---- church in ---- has called a new pastor. After trying futilely to find the right man, who was to have as much scholarship as his predecessor and more “punch,” they decided to raise the salary to $15,000. I don’t know whether that was the factor which finally solved their problem, but at any rate they have the man they want. I suppose it is not easy to get a combination of Aristotle and Demosthenes, and on the current market, that ought to be worth $15,000. Nevertheless there must be some limit to this matter of oversized salaries.

There ought to be some questioning, too, about the growing tendency of churches to build their congregations around pulpit eloquence. What kind of fundamental ethical question can a man be eloquent about when he draws that much cash, particularly since a Croesus or two usually has to supply an undue proportion of it? I don’t know anything about the prophet of the Lord who accepted this call, but I venture to prophesy that no sinner in that pagan city will quake in his boots in anticipation of his coming.

The idea of a professional good man is difficult enough for all of us who are professionally engaged as teachers of the moral ideal. Of course, “a man must live,” and it is promised that if we seek first the kingdom and its righteousness “all these things shall be added unto us.” But I doubt whether Jesus had a $15,000 salary in mind. If the things that are added become too numerous they distract your attention terribly. To try to keep your eye on the main purpose may only result in making you squint-eyed. I hope the new prophet won’t begin his pastorate with a sermon on the text, “I count all things but loss.”

_1924_

I was a little ashamed of what I wrote recently about ministers’ salaries, but today I was strangely justified in my criticism. Walking into a store to buy a hat I met an old friend who told me about his new preacher. His church had tried for a long while to secure the right man, and then by dint of a special campaign they raised the salary from $6,000 to $10,000. That is obviously more than most of the people in the congregation make. He said to me with considerable pride, “You ought to hear our new preacher. My, but he is a great talker!” Then he came close and whispered to me out of hearing of the other customers: “He ought to be. We are paying him ten thousand dollars.” The cynicism was quite unconscious.

_1924_

I begin to realize how little religious faith depends upon dialectical support. When called upon to bury some one whose life revealed spiritual charm and moral force I can preach the hope of immortality with conviction and power. But funerals of religious and moral nondescripts leave me enervated. I think I could bury a brazen sinner with more satisfaction. There is always a note of real tragedy in the life of an obvious reprobate that gives point to a sermon. But these Tomlinsons are a trial.

Of course, there is a good deal of pride in such an attitude, and it is partly due to ignorance. As soon as I know the person whose death is mourned I can enter into the occasion sympathetically. There is hardly a soul so poor and flaccid but does not reveal some glimpse of the eternal in its life. If I happen to lack contact with the deceased I might well remind myself that his death is sincerely mourned by those who are near. It is after all a glorious tribute to the qualities of human nature that those who know us best love us most. Perhaps their love is occasionally no more than a natural attachment which men conceive for familiar objects.

Funerals are a terrible trial to me, but I must admit that the stolid courage and quiet grief of most mourners is a real source of inspiration. Only occasionally does one meet with hysterical grief and theatrical and insincere sorrow. How desperately people brush up their little faith in times of sorrow! It is quite easy to see that religious faith prospers because of, and not in spite of, the tribulations of this world. It is because this mortal life is felt as an irrelevancy to the main purpose in life that men achieve the courage to hope for immortality.

_1924_

We had a union Thanksgiving service today. It would have been a nice service but for the fact that the leader could not get over the fact that four denominations had been able to achieve unity to undertake such a service. This was supposed to be a great advance. As a matter of fact the people in the church were long since united in dozens of community enterprises. The men, whatever church they belonged to, attended the same Rotary and Kiwanis clubs and the women were members of the same literary and review clubs.

The church has lost the chance of becoming the unifying element in our American society. It is not anticipating any facts. It is merely catching up very slowly to the new social facts created by economic and other forces. The American melting pot is doing its work. The churches merely represent various European cultures, lost in the amalgam of American life and maintaining a separate existence only in religion.

What we accomplish in the way of church unity ought to be accepted with humility and not hailed with pride. We are not creating. We are merely catching up with creation.

_1924_

Going to St. Louis today a portly and garrulous gentleman sat back of me and became very much interested in two nuns who were reading their prayerbooks. The man, who seemed the perfect type of successful drummer, felt very superior to the nuns. How can anyone “fall for that stuff” in this day and age, he wanted to know in a loud whisper. “They remind me of ghosts,” he said.

I had to admit that there was something almost unearthly about these black figures with their white-rimmed hoods. But their faces were kindly and human, and the face of the drummer was sensuous and florid. Perhaps the difference between him and the nuns illustrates the quality of our “modernity,” though I don’t want to maintain that he is the perfect type of a modern man. But we do have a great many moderns who are emancipated from every kind of religious discipline without achieving any new loyalty which might qualify the brutal factors in human life.

It is better that life incarnate some ideal value, even if mixed with illusion, (though anything which has the spirit of love in it is not wholly illusion) than that it should express nothing but the will to live. My drummer thinks of himself as a modern in comparison with those nuns. I looked at him squatting there and glanced again at the homely but beautiful faces of the nuns and said to myself: What is modern and what is ancient? Were there not toads before there were ghosts and fairies?

_1924_

Bishop Williams is dead. I sit and stare at the floor while I say that to myself and try to believe it. How strangely a vital personality defies the facts of death. Nowhere have I seen a personality more luminous with the Christ spirit than in this bishop who was also a prophet. Here was a man who knew how to interpret the Christian religion so that it meant something in terms of an industrial civilization. His fearless protagonism of the cause of democracy in industry won him the respect and love of the workers of the city as no other churchman possessed it.

Yet I am afraid that it must be admitted that he didn’t change the prevailing attitude of Detroit industry by a hair’s breadth. He even had to offer his resignation in the face of increasing hostility to his social views. That letter of resignation was incidentally a gem of humble self-analysis and courageous insistence on the truth of his doctrine.

He did not change Detroit industry but he left many of us holding our heads more upright because of his intelligent and courageous analysis of contemporary civilization from the perspective of a Christian conscience. If a bishop with all his prestige could make no bigger dent upon the prevailing mood of the city, what chance is there for the rest of us? Perhaps the best that any of us can do is to say:

Charge once more then and be dumb,
Let the victors when they come,
When the forts of folly fall,
Find thy body by the wall.

Rejoice, said Jesus, not that the devils are subject unto you but that your names are written in heaven. One ought to strive for the reformation of society rather than one’s own perfection. But society resists every effort to bring its processes under ethical restraint so stubbornly that one must finally be satisfied with preserving one’s moral integrity in a necessary and yet futile struggle. Of course the struggle is never as futile as it seems from an immediate perspective. The bishop did not change Detroit industry, but if the church ever becomes a real agency of the kingdom of God in an industrial civilization, his voice, though he is dead, will be in its counsels.

_1925_

When I sit through a church conference I begin to see a little more clearly why religion is on the whole so impotent ethically, why the achievements of the church are so meager compared to its moral pretensions. Sermon after sermon, speech after speech is based upon the assumption that the people of the church are committed to the ethical ideals of Jesus and that they are the sole or at least chief agents of redemptive energy in society.

It is very difficult to persuade people who are committed to a general ideal to consider the meaning of that ideal in specific situations. It is even more difficult to prompt them to consider specific ends of social and individual conduct and to evaluate them in the light of experience.

The church conference begins and ends by attempting to arouse an emotion of the ideal, usually in terms of personal loyalty to the person of Jesus, but very little is done to attach the emotion to specific tasks and projects. Is the industrial life of our day unethical? Are nations imperialistic? Is the family disintegrating? Are young people losing their sense of values? If so, we are told over and over again that nothing will help but “a new baptism of the spirit,” a “new revival of religion,” a “great awakening of the religious consciousness.”

But why not be specific? Why doesn’t the church offer specific suggestions for the application of a Christian ethic to the difficulties of our day? If that suggestion is made, the answer is that such a policy would breed contention. It certainly would. No moral project can be presented and no adventure made without resistance from the traditionalist and debate among experimentalists. But besides being more effective, such a course would be more interesting than this constant bathing in sentimentalities. If the church could only achieve schisms on ethical issues! They would represent life and reality. Its present schisms are not immoral as such. They are immoral only in the sense that they perpetuate issues which have no relevancy in our day.

_1925_

The reactions of a group of ministers to an address on the relation of religion to modern life are always interesting. Invariably there is one group of men who are pathetically eager to “do something about it,” to save civilization from its perils. I think the church will compare favorably with the university in the number of men who are not blinded to the defects of modern life and who are not enervated by a sense of futility. The university has plenty of men whose eyes are open, but they despair much more easily of finding a way out than the preachers. The ministers have not lost some of that saving grace, “the foolishness of faith.”

Of course there is always a group of those who sit sullenly while you harangue them. I had my eye fixed on one portly and prosperous priest today who was obviously out of accord with what I was saying. Of course I have no right to judge him because he did not agree with me. But he seemed to me to be one of those satisfied and complacent chaplains who has fed so long at the flesh-pots of Egypt that he resents anything which disturbs his ease. A man like that reminds me of the eunuchs of old who were robbed of their virility that they might adorn without endangering their masters’ luxurious establishments.

The old gentleman was there too who wanted to know whether I believed in the deity of Jesus. He is in every town. He seemed to be a nice sort, but he wanted to know how I could speak for an hour on the Christian church without once mentioning the atonement. Nothing, said he, but the blood of Jesus would save America from its perils. He made quite an impassioned speech. At first I was going to answer him but it seemed too useless. I finally told him I believed in blood atonement too, but since I hadn’t shed any of the blood of sacrifice which it demanded I felt unworthy to enlarge upon the idea.

_1925_

We went through one of the big automobile factories today. So artificial is life that these factories are like a strange world to me though I have lived close to them for many years. The foundry interested me particularly. The heat was terrific. The men seemed weary. Here manual labor is a drudgery and toil is slavery. The men cannot possibly find any satisfaction in their work. They simply work to make a living. Their sweat and their dull pain are part of the price paid for the fine cars we all run. And most of us run the cars without knowing what price is being paid for them.

Looking at these men the words of Markham’s “The Man with the Hoe” came to me. A man with a hoe is a happy creature beside these suffering souls.

“The emptiness of ages in his face”
· · · · · · · · ·
“Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes,
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?”

We are all responsible. We all want the things which the factory produces and none of us is sensitive enough to care how much in human values the efficiency of the modern factory costs. Beside the brutal facts of modern industrial life, how futile are all our homiletical spoutings! The church is undoubtedly cultivating graces and preserving spiritual amenities in the more protected areas of society. But it isn’t changing the essential facts of modern industrial civilization by a hair’s breadth. It isn’t even thinking about them.

The morality of the church is anachronistic. Will it ever develop a moral insight and courage sufficient to cope with the real problems of modern society? If it does it will require generations of effort and not a few martyrdoms. We ministers maintain our pride and self-respect and our sense of importance only through a vast and inclusive ignorance. If we knew the world in which we live a little better we would perish in shame or be overcome by a sense of futility.

_1925_

The new parish organization seems to be working splendidly. The congregation is divided into nine sections, each with a man and woman as parish leaders. Each section meets twice a year in cottage meetings, and meanwhile the leaders and their assistants visit the various families, particularly the new members and those who are sick. Some splendid new leaders have already been developed by this plan. Since I must be absent from the city so much, the plan is all the more valuable.

Last Sunday we discussed in the class whether a church ought to develop fellowship for its own sake or whether fellowship ought to be the inevitable by-product of unifying convictions. I suppose a small church in a hostile environment would not have to worry about fellowship. If people fight shoulder to shoulder they will be brothers. But even the most heroic church is not so definitely in conflict with the society in which it lives that you can really count on that kind of fellowship. A local congregation is, after all, a social organism in which heroic idealism is expressed in an occasional adventure, if at all, rather than in a constant tension between its principles and the moral mediocrities of the world.

Meanwhile, it seems to me to be worth while to cultivate the graces of neighborliness merely for their own sake. This is particularly true in the large city where life is so impersonal and where the church has a fine opportunity to personalize it a little. What surprises me is the readiness with which people give themselves to various forms of mutual aid once they are prompted to engage in them.

Most people lack imagination much more than they lack good will. If someone points out what can be done and what ought to be done there is usually someone to do it.

_1925_

On a Western Trip

Out here on the Pacific coast, particularly in Los Angeles, one is forcibly impressed with the influence of environment upon religion. Every kind of cult seems to flourish in Los Angeles, and most of them are pantheistic. Every sorry oriental religious nostrum is borrowed in the vain effort to give meaning to pointless lives and to impart a thrill to vacuous existences. The pantheism is partly due, no doubt, to the salubrious nature of the southern California climate. Wherever nature is unusually benignant, men tend to identify God and the natural world and to lose all moral vigor in the process.

But that is hardly the whole explanation. There are too many retired people in Los Angeles. They left the communities where their personalities had some social significance in order to vegetate on these pleasant shores. In this sorry and monotonous existence they try to save their self-respect by grasping for some religious faith which will not disturb their ease by any too rigorous ethical demands. Of course Aimee Semple McPherson is more successful than the pantheistic cults. She fights the devil and gives the people a good show. She storms against the vices which flourish in this paradise without touching their roots. Furthermore she has the art of casting the glow of religious imagination over sensuality without changing its essential nature. In that art she seems to be typical rather than unique for this whole civilization. If she is unique it is only in her success.

They are always telling me that Detroit is the most typically American of our cities. Perhaps Detroit is typical of the America which works feverishly to get what it wants, while Los Angeles is typical of the America which has secured what it wants. On the whole I prefer the former to the latter. An honest enthusiasm even for inadequate ends is better than a vacuous existence from which even the charm of an imperfect ambition has departed. Of course the paganism of power is more dangerous than the paganism of pleasure, but from the perspective of a mere observer it is more interesting. Who would not prefer Napoleon to his imbecile brothers who merely luxuriated in the prosperity created by his ambition?

Only in the case of complete innocency, as that of a child’s, is life more beautiful in repose than in activity. Character is created by a balance of tensions, and is more lovely even when the balance is imperfect than in a state of complete relaxation.

Of course Los Angeles has more culture than our midwestern cities. Culture flourishes in leisure and sometimes redeems it. But it will be a long time before this kind of leisure will produce more than dilettantism.

_1925_

We had a communion service tonight (Good Friday) and I preached on the text “We preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Gentiles foolishness, but to them that are called the power of God and the wisdom of God.” I don’t think I ever felt greater joy in preaching a sermon. How experience and life change our perspectives! It was only a few years ago that I did not know what to make of the cross; at least I made no more of it than to recognize it as a historic fact which proved the necessity of paying a high price for our ideals. Now I see it as a symbol of ultimate reality.

It seems pathetic to me that liberalism has too little appreciation of the tragedy of life to understand the cross and orthodoxy insists too much upon the absolute uniqueness of the sacrifice of Christ to make the preaching of the cross effective. How can anything be uniquely potent if it is absolutely unique? It is because the cross of Christ symbolizes something in the very heart of reality, something in universal experience that it has its central place in history. Life is tragic and the most perfect type of moral beauty inevitably has at least a touch of the tragic in it. Why? That is not so easy to explain. But love pays such a high price for its objectives and sets its objectives so high that they can never be attained. There is therefore always a foolish and a futile aspect to love’s quest which give it the note of tragedy.

What makes this tragedy redemptive is that the foolishness of love is revealed as wisdom in the end and its futility becomes the occasion for new moral striving. About heroes, saints, and saviors it must always remain true “that they, without us should not be made perfect.”

_1925_

I wonder if the strong sense of frustration which comes over me so frequently on Sunday evening and to which many other parsons have confessed, is merely due to physical lassitude or whether it arises from the fact that every preacher is trying to do a bigger thing than he is equal to--and fails. I have an uneasy feeling that it may be native honesty of the soul asserting itself. Aren’t we preachers talking altogether too much about what can be proved and justified only in experience?

_1925_

Mr. ---- spoke at a luncheon meeting today. He made everyone writhe as he pictured the injustices and immoralities of our present industrial system. The tremendous effect of his powerful address was partially offset by the bitterness with which he spoke and by the ill-concealed assumption that his hearers would not care enough about what he said to change their attitudes. I suppose it is difficult to escape bitterness when you have the eyes to see and the heart to feel what others are too blind and too callous to notice. The mordant note in the discourse of the prophet may not only be inevitable but pedagogically effective.

Perhaps there is no other way to arouse a people who are so oblivious to the real issues of modern civilization. Yet I am compelled to doubt the pedagogical benefits of this approach. While I use it myself, sometimes I don’t like to have it used on me. It freezes my soul. And there is usually some injustice, some insupportable generalization, involved in this method which obsesses my mind and makes it difficult for me to see the general truth with which the speaker wants to impress me.

If I had to choose between this bitterness and the blandness of many pulpiteers I would, of course, choose the former. Better a warrior’s grimness than the childish sentimentalities of people who are too ignorant or too selfish to bear the burdens of the world. There are too many men in the pulpit who look and act for all the world like cute little altar boys who have no idea that the mass in which they are participating is a dramatization of tragedy.

Yet there seems to be no reason why a warrior ought not maintain his effectiveness and yet overcome his bitterness, particularly if he is a warrior who is fighting “not against flesh and blood but against spiritual wickedness in high places.” The one certain cure for a bitter spirit seems to me a realization that the critic is himself involved in the sins which he castigates. Man is imperialistic and even parasitic in his nature. He lives his life at the expense of other lives. By both outer compulsion and inner restraint, his expansive desires are brought under sufficient discipline to make social life possible.

But there is no social life, not even in the family, which does not illustrate this native imperialism in life. Look at all these professional people, preachers, professors and doctors! Even in the moment in which they declare their superiority over the commercial world, where life is more frankly selfish and more obviously brutal, they illustrate the common human frailty by some petty jockeying for position, or some jealous depreciation of the success of others, or some childish ego-assertion.

The pessimist might draw the conclusion from this fact that we can make progress only by a reorganization of society and never by a reformation of human nature. But that conclusion does not seem to me to follow from the facts. We do need a constant reorganization of social processes and systems, so that society will not aggravate but mitigate the native imperialistic impulses of man. The greed of modern civilization is partly an expression of a universal human tendency and partly a vice peculiar to a civilization with our kind of productive process.

But meanwhile we can not afford to leave the capacities of man out of the picture. There seems to me no reason why we can not cure people of greed by making them conscious of both the nature and the consequences of their expansive tendencies. Only we ought to realize, while we are doing it, that our own life reveals some refined form of the sin which we abhor. That will make it possible to undertake the task of world regeneration with a spirit of patience and humility.

The modern pulpit does not face this problem because it is not really preaching repentance. Its estimate of human nature is too romantic to give people any appreciation of the brutalities of life which are frequently most real where they are most covert--in the lives of the respectable classes. But whenever a prophet is born, either inside or outside of the church, he does face the problem of preaching repentance without bitterness and of criticising without spiritual pride.

It is a real problem. Mr. ---- is effective, after a fashion, because he is an itinerant. We only have to hear him once in so many years. But think of sitting Sunday after Sunday under some professional holy man who is constantly asserting his egotism by criticising yours. I would rebel if I were a layman. A spiritual leader who has too many illusions is useless. One who has lost his illusions about mankind and retains his illusions about himself is insufferable. Let the process of disillusionment continue until the self is included. At that point, of course, only religion can save from the enervation of despair. But it is at that point that true religion is born.

_1926_

Preachers who are in danger of degenerating into common scolds might learn a great deal from H----’s preaching style. I am not thinking now of the wealth of scholarship which enriches his utterances but of his technique in uniting religious emotion with aspiration rather than with duty. If he wants to convict Detroit of her sins he preaches a sermon on “the City of God,” and lets all the limitations of this get-rich-quick metropolis emerge by implication. If he wants to flay the denominationalism of the churches he speaks on some topic which gives him the chance to delineate the ideal and inclusive church.

On the whole, people do not achieve great moral heights out of a sense of duty. You may be able to compel them to maintain certain minimum standards by stressing duty, but the highest moral and spiritual achievements depend not upon a push but upon a pull. People must be charmed into righteousness. The language of aspiration rather than that of criticism and command is the proper pulpit language. Of course it has its limitations. In every congregation there are a few perverse sinners who can go into emotional ecstasies about the “City of God” and yet not see how they are helping to make their city a hell-hole.

It is not a good thing to convict sin only by implication. Sometimes the cruel word of censure must be uttered. “Woe unto you Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites” was spoken by one who incarnated tenderness. The language of aspiration is always in danger of becoming soft; but it is possible to avoid that pitfall and yet not sink into a habit of cheap scolding. I like the way H---- does it.

_1926_

Cynics sometimes insinuate that you can love people only if you don’t know them too well; that a too intimate contact with the foibles and idiosyncrasies of men will tempt one to be a misanthrope. I have not found it so. I save myself from cynicism by knowing individuals, and knowing them intimately. If I viewed humanity only from some distant and high perspective I could not save myself from misanthropy. I think the reason is simply that people are not as decent in their larger relationship as in their more intimate contacts.

Look at the industrial enterprise anywhere and you find criminal indifference on the part of the strong to the fate of the weak. The lust for power and the greed for gain are the dominant note in business. An industrial overlord will not share his power with his workers until he is forced to do so by tremendous pressure. The middle classes, with the exception of a small minority of intelligentsia, do not aid the worker in exerting this pressure. He must fight alone.