Chapter I: Part 1

_Leaves
from the Notebook of a
Tamed Cynic_

REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Willett, Clark & Colby
Chicago: 440 South Dearborn Street
New York: 200 Fifth Avenue
1929

Copyright 1929 by
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Manufactured in The U. S. A. by The Plimpton Press
Norwood, Mass.--LaPorte, Ind.

_To
my friends
and former coworkers
in
Bethel Evangelical Church
Detroit, Michigan_

_Publishers’ Note_

The author’s reluctance to have this book published is all the more reason for the publishers’ desire to have it see the light of day. The author felt that the book would be regarded as presumptuous criticism. It is natural that he would feel that way, for he is one of those rare men who see more error in themselves than they see around them.

But what is presumptuous criticism? In “Human Nature and Its Remaking,” W. E. Hocking writes:

“Is it not true that the entire interpretation of instinct as
will to power and of the will to power as a will to save souls,
or to recreate, or reform, or educate mankind, has in it more
than a trace of presumption? What it amounts to seems to be this,
that if the complete salvation of an individual will requires the
transformation of all its instincts into the will to save others,
we must be saved by saving; and it is very doubtful whether in our
unsaved condition we have any right to suppose ourselves competent
to save.... Historically speaking, the crux of Christianity is its
element of presumption.”

This book is both an illustration of and an effort to escape the note of presumption of which Professor Hocking speaks. Perhaps the book can be better understood in the light of Dr. Lynn Harold Hough’s dedication of his book “Imperishable Dreams.” The dedication is: “To my friend Reinhold Niebuhr, in whose words and writings the younger generation has achieved an almost disconcerting sincerity and a penetrating power of analysis which searches the conscience and refuses the comfort of even the most delicate and gracious spiritual self-deception.”

This is sufficient comment to lead into the book itself. Supremely human and simple in form, this is a book which _touches life as it is_. A questioning and open-minded young minister reports what he sees--what he hears--what he thinks. The reader watches. Page by page the cynic--the same cynic that is in us all--is tamed--not broken, not forced into compromises, but tamed by the release of impulses of sympathy, of maturer observation, of sincere analysis.

There is fine poise of judgment and delicate balancing of values throughout these _Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic_. This book is not abstract religious and secular philosophy. It is a report upon life and experience--upon America in the making. It is a book without pretense. Authority and dogma are absent. The book reveals an honest, unhampered and penetrating mind actually at work upon the vital problems of American civilization in their Christian import.

Willett, Clark & Colby

_Preface and Apology_

Most of the reflections recorded in these pages were prompted by experiences of a local Christian pastorate. Some are derived from wider contacts with the churches and colleges of the country. For the sake of giving a better clue to the meaning of a few of them, it may be necessary to say that they have as their background a pastorate in an industrial community in which the natural growth of the city made the expansion of a small church into a congregation of considerable size, in a period of thirteen years, inevitable. By the time these lines reach the reader the author will have exchanged his pastoral activities for academic pursuits.

It must be confessed in all candor that some of the notes, particularly the later ones, were written after it seemed fairly certain that they would reach the eye of the public in some form or other. It was therefore psychologically difficult to maintain the type of honesty which characterizes the self-revelations of a private diary. The reader must consequently be warned (though such a warning may be superfluous) to discount the unconscious insincerities which no amount of self-discipline can eliminate from words which are meant for the public.

The notes which have been chosen for publication have been picked to illustrate the typical problems of a modern minister in an industrial and urban community and what seem to be more or less typical reactions of a young minister to such problems. Nothing new or startling was attempted in the pastorate out of which these reflections grew. If there is any justification for their publication, it must lie in the light they may throw upon the problems of the modern church and ministry rather than upon any possible solutions of these problems.

The book is published with an uneasy conscience, the author half hoping that the publishers would make short shrift of his indiscretions by throttling the book. Some of the notes are really too inane to deserve inclusion in any published work, and they can be justified only as a background for those notes which deal critically with the problems of the modern ministry. The latter are unfortunately, in many instances, too impertinent to be in good taste, and I lacked the grace to rob them of their impertinence without destroying whatever critical value they might possess. I can only emphasize in extenuation of the spirit which prompted them, what is confessed in some of the criticisms, namely, that the author is not unconscious of what the critical reader will himself divine, a tendency to be most critical of that in other men to which he is most tempted himself.

The modern ministry is in no easy position; for it is committed to the espousal of ideals (professionally, at that) which are in direct conflict with the dominant interests and prejudices of contemporary civilization. This conflict is nowhere more apparent than in America, where neither ancient sanctities nor new social insights tend to qualify, as they do in Europe, the heedless economic forces of an industrial era.

Inevitably a compromise must be made, or is made, between the rigor of the ideal and the necessities of the day. That has always been the case, but the resulting compromises are more obvious to an astute observer in our own day than in other generations. We are a world-conscious generation, and we have the means at our disposal to see and to analyze the brutalities which characterize men’s larger social relationships and to note the dehumanizing effects of a civilization which unites men mechanically and isolates them spiritually.

Our knowledge may ultimately be the means of our redemption, but for the moment it seems to rob us of self-respect and respect for one another. Every conscientious minister is easily tempted to a sense of futility because we live our lives microscopically while we are able to view the scene in which we labor telescopically. But the higher perspective has its advantages as well as its dangers. It saves us from too much self-deception. Men who are engaged in the espousal of ideals easily fall into sentimentality. From the outside and the disinterested perspective this sentimentality may seem like hypocrisy. If it is only sentimentality and self-deception, viewed at closer range, it may degenerate into real hypocrisy if no determined effort is made to reduce it to a minimum.

It is no easy task to deal realistically with the moral confusion of our day, either in the pulpit or the pew, and avoid the appearance, and possibly the actual peril, of cynicism. An age which obscures the essentially unethical nature of its dominant interests by an undue preoccupation with the application of Christian principles in limited areas, may, as a matter of fact, deserve and profit by ruthless satire. Yet the pedagogical merits of satire are dubious, and in any event its weapons will be foresworn by an inside critic for both selfish and social reasons. For reasons of self-defense he will be very gentle in dealing with limitations which his own life illustrates.

But he will be generous in judgment for another reason. His intimate view of the facts will help him to see that what an outside critic may call hypocrisy may really be honest, because unconscious, sentimentality and self-deception. When virtues are used to hide moral limitations the critic ought not to be too sure that the virtues are bogus. Sometimes they are. But sometimes they merely represent the effort of honest but short-sighted men to preserve the excellencies of another day long after these have ceased to have relevancy for the problems of our own day; or sometimes they spring from efforts to apply the Christian ideal to limited and immediate areas of conduct where application is fairly easy. In such cases no one can be absolutely sure whether it is want of perspective or want of courage which hinders the Christian idealist from applying his ideals and principles to the more remote and the more difficult relationships.

That the ministry is particularly tempted to the self-deceptions which afflict the moral life of Christians today is obvious. If it is dangerous to entertain great moral ideals without attempting to realize them in life, it is even more perilous to proclaim them in abstract terms without bringing them into juxtaposition with the specific social and moral issues of the day. The minister’s premature satisfaction in the presentation of moral ideals is accentuated by the fact that he is a leader in a community in which appreciative attitudes are on the whole more prevalent than critical ones. The minister is therefore easily fooled by extravagant conceptions of his own moral stature, held by admiring parishioners. If he could realize how much of this appreciation represents transferred religious emotion he could be more realistic in analyzing himself. And if he could persuade himself to speak of moral ideals in terms of specific issues and contemporary situations, he would probably prompt currents of critical thought which would destroy the aura which invests his person with premature sanctity.

If a minister wants to be a man among men he need only to stop creating devotion to abstract ideals which every one accepts in theory and denies in practice, and to agonize about their validity and practicability in the social issues which he and others face in our present civilization. That immediately gives his ministry a touch of reality and potency and robs it of an artificial prestige which it can afford to dispense with, and is bound to be stripped of, the kind of prestige which is the prerogative of priests and professional holy men.

The number of ministers who are perfectly realistic about their tasks and who are sincerely anxious to help the modern generation find itself, not only in the intricate problems of the personal life but in the moral and social complexities of an industrial society, is much larger than the critics outside of the church are able to know and willing to concede. If I have any regrets, it is that these pages, preoccupied with criticism, deal inadequately with such men and fail to discharge my debt of gratitude to them. It is comparatively easy for professors, secretaries and even bishops to criticise the man in a local situation from the perspective and the safety (relative, of course,) which an irresponsible itinerancy supplies.

No amount of pressure from an itinerant “prophet” can change the fact that a minister is bound to be a statesman as much as a prophet, dealing with situations as well as principles. In specific situations, actions must be judged not only in terms of absolute standards but in consideration of available resources in the lives of those whom the minister leads.

It may be well for the statesman to know that statesmanship easily degenerates into opportunism and that opportunism cannot be sharply distinguished from dishonesty. But the prophet ought to realize that his higher perspective and the uncompromising nature of his judgments always has a note of irresponsibility in it. Francis of Assisi may have been a better Christian than Pope Innocent III. But it may be questioned whether his moral superiority over the latter was as absolute as it seemed. Nor is there any reason to believe that Abraham Lincoln, the statesman and opportunist, was morally inferior to William Lloyd Garrison, the prophet. The moral achievement of statesmen must be judged in terms which take account of the limitations of human society which the statesman must, and the prophet need not, consider.

Having both entered and left the parish ministry against my inclinations, I pay my tribute to the calling, firm in the conviction that it offers greater opportunities for both moral adventure and social usefulness than any other calling if it is entered with open eyes and a consciousness of the hazards to virtue which lurk in it. I make no apology for being critical of what I love. No one wants a love which is based upon illusions, and there is no reason why we should not love a profession and yet be critical of it.

Reinhold Niebuhr

_Leaves
from the Notebook of a
Tamed Cynic_

_1915_

There is something ludicrous about a callow young fool like myself standing up to preach a sermon to these good folks. I talk wisely about life and know little about life’s problems. I tell them of the need of sacrifice, although most of them could tell me something about what that really means. I preached a sermon the other day on “The Involuntary Cross,” using the text of Simon the Cyrene bearing the cross of Jesus. A good woman, a little bolder than the rest, asked me in going out whether I had borne many crosses. I think I know a little more about that than I would be willing to confess to her or to the congregation, but her question was justified.

Many of the people insist that they can’t understand how a man so young as I could possibly be a preacher. Since I am twenty-three their reaction to my youth simply means that they find something incompatible even between the ripe age of twenty-three and the kind of seasoned wisdom which they expect from the pulpit. “Let no one despise thy youth,” said Paul to Timothy; but I doubt whether that advice stopped any of the old saints from wagging their heads. I found it hard the first few months to wear a pulpit gown. Now I am getting accustomed to it. At first I felt too much like a priest in it, and I abhor priestliness. I have become reconciled to it partly as a simple matter of habit, but I imagine that I am also beginning to like the gown as a kind of symbol of authority. It gives me the feeling that I am speaking not altogether in my own name and out of my own experience but by the authority of the experience of many Christian centuries.

Difficult as the pulpit job is, it is easier than the work in the organizations of the congregation. Where did anyone ever learn in a seminary how to conduct or help with a Ladies Aid meeting? I am glad that mother has come to live with me and will take care of that part of the job. It is easier to speak sagely from the pulpit than to act wisely in the detailed tasks of the parish. A young preacher would do well to be heard more than he is seen.

_1915_

I am glad there are only eighteen families in this church. I have been visiting the members for six weeks and haven’t seen all of them yet. Usually I walk past a house two or three times before I summon the courage to go in. I am always very courteously received, so I don’t know exactly why I should not be able to overcome this curious timidity. I don’t know that very much comes of my visits except that I really get acquainted with the people.

Usually after I have made a call I find some good excuse to quit for the afternoon. I used to do that in the days gone by when I was a book agent. But there was reason for it then. I needed the afternoon to regain my self-respect. Now it seems to be pure laziness and fear. The people are a little discouraged. Some of them seem to doubt whether the church will survive. But there are a few who are the salt of the earth, and if I make a go of this they will be more responsible than they will ever know.

_1915_

Now that I have preached about a dozen sermons I find I am repeating myself. A different text simply means a different pretext for saying the same thing over again. The few ideas that I had worked into sermons at the seminary have all been used, and now what? I suppose that as the years go by life and experience will prompt some new ideas and I will find some in the Bible that I have missed so far. They say a young preacher must catch his second wind before he can really preach. I’d better catch it pretty soon or the weekly sermon will become a terrible chore.

You are supposed to stand before a congregation, brimming over with a great message. Here I am trying to find a new little message each Sunday. If I really had great convictions I suppose they would struggle for birth each week. As the matter stands, I struggle to find an idea worth presenting and I almost dread the approach of a new sabbath. I don’t know whether I can ever accustom myself to the task of bringing light and inspiration in regular weekly installments.

How in the world can you reconcile the inevitability of Sunday and its task with the moods and caprices of the soul? The prophet speaks only when he is inspired. The parish preacher must speak whether he is inspired or not. I wonder whether it is possible to live on a high enough plane to do that without sinning against the Holy Spirit.

_1916_

Visited old Mrs. G. today and gave her communion. This was my first experience with communion at the sick bed. I think there is a good deal of superstition connected with the rite. It isn’t very much different in some of its aspects from the Catholic rite of extreme unction. Yet I will not be too critical. If the rite suggests and expresses the emotion of honest contrition it is more than superstition. But that is the difficulty of acting as priest. It is not in your power to determine the use of a symbol. Whether it is a blessing or a bit of superstition rests altogether with the recipient.

I must admit that I am losing some of the aversion to the sacraments cultivated in my seminary days. There is something very beautiful about parents bringing their child to the altar with a prayer of thanksgiving and as an act of dedication. The trouble is that the old ritual in the book of forms does not express this idea clearly. I have to put the whole meaning of the sacrament as I see it into the prayer. Perhaps I can use my own form later on, if I get the confidence of the people.

Incidentally Mrs. G. gave me a shock this afternoon. After the service was completed she fished around under her pillow and brought forth a five dollar bill. That was to pay me for my trouble. I never knew this fee business still existed in such a form in Protestantism. I knew they were still paying for baptism in some denominations, ours included. But this is a new one. The old lady was a little hurt, I think, by my refusal. I think she imagined that pity prompted my diffidence. She insisted that she was quite able to pay. I’d better get started on this whole fee question and make an announcement that I won’t accept any fees for anything. I think I’ll except weddings however. Every one takes fees for them. It will just make a scene when the groom or best man slyly crosses your palm with a bill and you make a righteous refusal. They never will understand. Marriage is not a sacrament anyway. Then, too, it’s fun getting a little extra money once in a while. But isn’t marriage a sacrament?

_1916_

Doesn’t this denominational business wear on one’s nerves? If I were a doctor people would consult me according to the skill I had and the reputation I could acquire. But being a minister I can appeal only to people who are labeled as I am. Yesterday that professor I met asked me what denomination I belonged to. Being told, he promptly pigeonholed me into my proper place and with a superior air assumed that my mind was as definitely set by my denominational background as is that of an African Hottentot by his peculiar environment.

Perhaps if I belonged to a larger denomination this wouldn’t irk me so much. I suffer from an inferiority complex because of the very numerical weakness of my denomination. If I belonged to a large one I might strut about and claim its glory for myself. If I give myself to religion as a profession I must find some interdenominational outlet for my activities. But what? Secretaries and Y.M.C.A. workers are too inarticulate. They deal too much with machinery and too little with ideas. I don’t want to be a chauffeur. Does that mean that I am a minister merely because I am a fairly glib talker? Who knows?

But let us not be too cynical and too morbidly introspective. I may find something worth saying in time and escape the fate of being a mere talker. At any rate I swear that I will never aspire to be a preacher of pretty sermons. I’ll keep them rough just to escape the temptation of degenerating into an elocutionist. Maybe I had better stop quoting so much poetry. But that is hardly the point. Plenty of sermons lack both beauty and meaning.

_1916_

The young fellows I am trying to teach in Sunday school don’t listen to me attentively. I don’t think I am getting very close to where they live. Or perhaps I just haven’t learned how to put my message across. I am constantly interrupted in my talk by the necessity of calling someone to order. It is a good thing that I have a class like that. I’ll venture that my sermons aren’t getting any nearer to the people, but the little group of adults I am speaking to in the morning service are naturally more patient or at least more polite than these honest youngsters, and so I have less chance to find out from them how futile I am. But that doesn’t solve the problem of how to reach those fellows.

_1916_

I had a letter from Professor L---- today suggesting that I return to college and prepare myself for the teaching profession. A year ago I was certain that I would do that. Now I am not so sure. Nevertheless the academic life has its allurements. It is really simpler than the ministry. As a teacher your only task is to discover the truth. As a preacher you must conserve other interests besides the truth. It is your business to deal circumspectly with the whole religious inheritance lest the virtues which are involved in the older traditions perish through your iconoclasm. That is a formidable task and a harassing one; for one can never be quite sure where pedagogical caution ends and dishonesty begins.

What is particularly disquieting to a young man in the ministry is the fact that some of his fine old colleagues make such a virtue of their ignorance. They are sure that there is no Second Isaiah and have never heard that Deuteronomy represents a later development in the law. I can’t blame them for not having all the bright new knowledge of a recent seminarian (not quite as new as the seminarian imagines); but the ministry is the only profession in which you can make a virtue of ignorance. If you have read nothing but commentaries for twenty years, that is supposed to invest you with an aura of sanctity and piety. Every profession has its traditions and its traditionalists. But the traditionalists in the pulpit are much more certain than the others that the Lord is on their side.

_1917_

Next week we are going to hold our first every member canvass. They expect me to preach a sermon which will prepare the good people to give generously. I don’t mind that. Most people give little enough for the church or for anything else not connected with their own pleasures. But I don’t see how you can preach a sermon adequate to the needs of the moment without identifying the church with the kingdom of God too unqualifiedly. And meanwhile you are drawing your salary from the church and remembering that if the canvass is a success there may be an increase in salary next year. It isn’t easy to mix the business of preaching with the business of making a living and maintain your honesty and self-respect.

Of course every laborer is worthy of his hire. But you notice that Paul, who insisted on that point, nevertheless prided himself on his independence. He wanted “not yours but you.” But let us not be too squeamish. There is old J.Q. It would do his soul good if he loosened up a bit. One might say to him, “I want yours so that I can get you.”

_1918_

(After a trip through the war training camps.)

I hardly know how to bring order out of confusion in my mind in regard to this war. I think that if Wilson’s aims are realized the war will serve a good purpose. When I talk to the boys I make much of the Wilsonian program as against the kind of diplomacy which brought on the war. But it is easier to talk about the aims of the war than to justify its methods.

Out at Funston I watched a bayonet practice. It was enough to make me feel like a brazen hypocrite for being in this thing, even in a rather indirect way. Yet I cannot bring myself to associate with the pacifists. Perhaps if I were not of German blood I could. That may be cowardly, but I do think that a new nation has a right to be pretty sensitive about its unity.

Some of the good old Germans have a hard time hiding a sentiment which borders very closely on hatred for this nation. Anyone who dissociates himself from the cause of his nation in such a time as this ought to do it only on the basis of an unmistakably higher loyalty. If I dissociated myself only slightly I would inevitably be forced into the camp of those who romanticize about the Kaiser. And the Kaiser is certainly nothing to me. If we must have war I’ll certainly feel better on the side of Wilson than on the side of the Kaiser.

What makes me angry is the way I kowtow to the chaplains as I visit the various camps. Here are ministers of the gospel just as I am. Just as I they are also, for the moment, priests of the great god Mars. As ministers of the Christian religion I have no particular respect for them. Yet I am overcome by a terrible inferiority complex when I deal with them. Such is the power of a uniform. Like myself, they have mixed the worship of the God of love and the God of battles. But unlike myself, they have adequate symbols of this double devotion. The little cross on the shoulder is the symbol of their Christian faith. The uniform itself is the symbol of their devotion to the God of battles. It is the uniform and not the cross which impresses me and others. I am impressed even when I know that I ought not be.

What I dislike about most of the chaplains is that they assume a very officious and also a very masculine attitude. Ministers are not used to authority and revel in it when acquired. The rather too obvious masculinity which they try to suggest by word and action is meant to remove any possible taint which their Christian faith might be suspected to have left upon them in the minds of the he-men in the army. H---- is right. He tells me that he wants to go into the army as a private and not as a chaplain. He believes that the war is inevitable but he is not inclined to reconcile its necessities with the Christian ethic. He will merely forget about this difficulty during the war. That is much more honest than what I am doing.

_1918_

I can see one element in this strange fascination of war which men have not adequately noted. It reduces life to simple terms. The modern man lives in such a complex world that one wonders how his sanity is maintained as well as it is. Every moral venture, every social situation and every practical problem involves a whole series of conflicting loyalties, and a man may never be quite sure that he is right in giving himself to the one as against the other. Shall he be just and sacrifice love? Shall he strive for beauty and do it by gaining the social privileges which destroy his sense of fellowship with the underprivileged? Shall he serve his family and neglect the state? Or be patriotic to the detriment of the great family of mankind? Shall he be diligent at the expense of his health? Or keep healthy at the expense of the great cause in which he is interested? Shall he be truthful and therefore cruel? Or shall he be kind and therefore a little soft? Shall he strive for the amenities of life and make life less robust in the process? Or shall he make courage the ultimate virtue and brush aside the virtues which a stable and therefore soft society has cultivated?

Out of this mesh of conflicting claims, interests, loyalties, ideals, values and communities he is rescued by the psychology of war which gives the state at least a momentary priority over all other communities and which makes courage the supreme virtue. I talked to a young captain at camp last week who told me how happy he was in the army because he had “found himself” in military service. Our further conversation led me to suspect that it was this simplification of life which had really brought him happiness; that and his love of authority.

Unfortunately, all these momentary simplifications of the complexities of life cannot be finally satisfying, because they do violence to life. The imperiled community may for a moment claim a kind of unqualified loyalty which no community or cause has the right or ability to secure in normal times. But judgment returns to sobriety as events become less disjointed and the world is once more revealed in all its confusion of good in evil and evil in good. The imperiled community was threatened because of its vice as much as because of its virtue, and the diabolical foe reassumes the lineaments of our common humanity. Physical courage is proved unequal to the task of ennobling man without the aid of other virtues, and the same men who have been raised to great heights by the self-forgetfulness of war have been sunk into new depths of hatred. There is only momentary peace in an all-consuming passion, except it be a passion for what is indubitably the best. And what is the best?

_1919_

We had a great Easter service today. Mother made the little chapel look very pretty, working with a committee of young women. It takes real work to decorate such a little place, and make it really inviting. We received our largest class of new members into the church thus far, twenty-one in all. Most of them had no letters from other churches and yet had been reared in some church. We received them on reaffirmation of faith.

This matter of recruiting a membership for the church is a real problem. Even the churches which once believed a very definite conversion to be the sine qua non of entrance into the fellowship of the church are going in for “decision days” as they lose confidence in the traditional assumption that one can become a Christian only through a crisis experience. But if one does not insist on that kind of an experience it is not so easy to set up tests of membership. Most of these “personal evangelism” campaigns mean little more than an ordinary recruiting effort with church membership rather than the Christian life as the real objective. They do not differ greatly from efforts of various clubs as they seek to expand their membership.

Of course we make “acceptance of Jesus as your savior” the real door into the fellowship of the church. But the trouble is that this may mean everything or nothing. I see no way of making the Christian fellowship unique by any series of tests which precede admission. The only possibility lies in a winnowing process through the instrumentality of the preaching and teaching function of the church. Let them come in without great difficulty, but make it difficult for them to stay in. The trouble with this plan is that it is always easy to load up your membership with very immature Christians who will finally set the standard and make it impossible to preach and to teach the gospel in its full implications.

_1919_

What a picture that is of Wilson, Lloyd George and Clemenceau settling the fate of the world in Paris! Wilson is evidently losing his battle. He would have done better to stay at home and throw bolts from Olympus. If you have honest and important differences of opinion with others, it is better to write letters than to put your feet under the same table with them. Compromises are always more inevitable in personal contact than in long distance negotiation.

What seems to be happening at Paris is that they will let Wilson label the transaction if the others can determine its true import. Thus realities are exchanged for words. There will be “no indemnities” but of course there will be reparations; and, since the damage was great, the reparations may be made larger than any so-called indemnity of the past. There will be “no annexations” but there will be mandates.

Wilson is a typical son of the manse. He believes too much in words. The sly Clemenceau sneaks new meanings into these nice words, in which task he is probably ably helped by Mr. Lloyd George, who is an admirable go-between, being as worldly wise as M. Clemenceau and as evangelical as Mr. Wilson. Yet who knows? Time may yet give Mr. Wilson the victory. Words have certain meanings of which it is hard to rob them, and ideas may create reality in time. The league of nations may be, for the time being, merely a league of victors but it will be difficult to destroy the redemptive idea at the heart of it completely. Realities are always defeating ideals, but ideals have a way of taking vengeance upon the facts which momentarily imprison them.

On the other hand, it is always possible that diabolical facts will so discredit the idea which they ostensibly incarnate that they will necessitate the projection of a new idea before progress can be made.

_1919_

Visited Miss Z. at the hospital. I like to go now since she told me that it helps her to have me pray with her. I asked the doctor about her and he says her case is hopeless. Here faith seems really to be functioning in lifting the soul above physical circumstance. I have been so afraid of quackery that I have leaned over backwards trying to avoid the encouragement of false hopes. Sometimes when I compare myself with these efficient doctors and nurses hustling about I feel like an ancient medicine man dumped into the twentieth century. I think they have about the same feeling toward me that I have about myself.

It must be very satisfying to deal as an exact scientist with known data upon which to base your conclusions. I have to work in the twilight zone where superstition is inextricably mixed up with something that is--well, not superstition. I do believe that Jesus healed people. I can’t help but note, however, that a large proportion of his cures were among the demented. If people ask me, I tell them that religion has more therapeutic value in functional than in organic diseases. But I don’t know whether I am altogether honest about this at the bedside. I am still praying for health with Miss Z. But of course I don’t leave it at that. I am trying to prepare her for the inevitable and I think I have helped her a little in that respect.

_1919_

This sickness of Miss Z.’s is getting on my nerves. I can’t think of anything for the rest of the day after coming from that bed of pain. If I had more patients I suppose I would get a little more hardened. Talk about professionalism! I suppose men get professional to save their emotional resources. Here I make one visit in an afternoon and get all done up. Meanwhile the doctor is making a dozen. He is less sentimental, but probably does more good.

_1920_

I am really beginning to like the ministry. I think since I have stopped worrying so much about the intellectual problems of religion and have begun to explore some of its ethical problems there is more of a thrill in preaching. The real meaning of the gospel is in conflict with most of the customs and attitudes of our day at so many places that there is adventure in the Christian message, even if you only play around with its ideas in a conventional world. I can’t say that I have done anything in my life to dramatize the conflict between the gospel and the world. But I find it increasingly interesting to set the two in juxtaposition at least in my mind and in the minds of others. And of course ideas may finally lead to action.

A young woman came to me the other day in ---- and told me that my talk on forgiveness in the C---- Church of that town several months ago has brought about a reconciliation between her mother and sister after the two had been in a feud for five years. I accepted the news with more outward than inward composure. There is redemptive power in the message! I could go on the new courage that came out of that little victory for many a month.

I think I am beginning to like the ministry also because it gives you a splendid opportunity to have all kinds of contacts with people in relationships in which they are at their best. You do get tired of human pettiness at times. But there is nevertheless something quite glorious about folks. That is particularly true when you find them bearing sorrow with real patience. Think of Mrs. ---- putting up with that drunkard of a husband for the sake of her children--and having such nice children. One can learn more from her quiet courage than from many a book.

_1920_

Good old Gordon came to me today to advise me that so-and-so might join the church but that he had been told that I talked considerably on political issues and he did not like politics in church. I told my friend that I did not like political lectures in a worship service myself, but that every religious problem had ethical implications and every ethical problem had some political and economic aspect. We had quite a nice chat about it, though my explanation did not seem altogether satisfactory. Gordon suggested that I seemed unable to get as many “prominent” people into the church as I ought. I told him that we had some very nice people in our church, but that I had no particular desire or ability to cater to “prominent” people, especially since there are plenty of churches who seem to serve this class quite well.

This is as close as I have come to having the freedom of the pulpit challenged, except of course by the tacit challenge of an occasional defection from the ranks. The problem of the freedom of the pulpit is a real one. But I am convinced that the simplest way to get liberty is to take it. The liberty to speak on all vital questions of the day without qualifying the message in a half dozen ways adds sufficient interest to the otherwise stodgy sermon to attract two listeners for every one who is lost by having some pet prejudice disarranged. But that generalization is hardly justified by my meager experience.

_1920_

I had a great discussion in my young men’s class this morning. Gradually I am beginning to discover that my failure with the class was due to my talking too much. Now I let them talk and the thing is becoming interesting. Of course it isn’t so easy to keep the discussion steered on any track. Sometimes we talk in circles. But the fellows are at least getting at some of the vital problems of life and I am learning something from them. Disciplinary problems have disappeared. The only one left is the fellow who is always trying to say something foolish or smart in the discussion.

_1920_

I went to the funeral of Mrs. T. at St. Cecilia’s church. It must be a grateful task to deal as a priest with the definite symbols which the Catholic church uses and to dispense the absolute certainties with which she assures the faithful. Of course the requiem mass contains nothing that would be of obvious comfort to the sorrowing heart. But the implication of the whole transaction is that the soul is now taken up in another world in which the heartaches of this life are overcome.

I don’t think the mass is so satisfying as a well conducted Protestant funeral service in which some cognizance is taken of the peculiar circumstances of a great sorrow and of the unique characteristics of the deceased. But it is certainly immeasurably superior to the average Protestant service with its banalities and sentimentalities. Religion is poetry. The truth in the poetry is vivified by adequate poetic symbols and is therefore more convincing than the poor prose with which the average preacher must attempt to grasp the ineffable.

Yet one must not forget that the truth is not only vivified but also corrupted by the poetic symbol, for it is only one step from a vivid symbol to the touch of magic. The priest does, after all, deal with magic. When religion renounces magic it finds itself in the poor workaday world trying to discover the glimpses of the eternal in the common scene. That is not an easy task, but it is not an impossible one. Wherefore let us envy the priest, but pity him too, meanwhile. He has been betrayed by his magic. He has gained too easy a victory over life’s difficulties and he helps his people to find a premature peace. The rivers of life in Protestant religion are easily lost in the sand, but if they really run they carry more life than holy water.

_1921_

I spoke to the ---- club today and was introduced by the chairman as a pastor who had recently built a new church at “the impressive cost of $170,000.” While the figure was not quite correct it gave me somewhat of a start to find how much emphasis was placed upon what was regarded as a great business achievement. Here was a group of business men, and the chairman knew of no way to recommend me to them but by suggesting that I was myself a business man of no mean ability. That would have given the good men of my church council a laugh. Knowing how little I had to do with the raising of the money for the new church and how I have always failed to put on the kind of “pressure” they desired when we were raising money, they would certainly have smiled wryly at this eulogy.

But it is all natural enough. America worships success and so does the world in general. And the only kind of success the average man can understand is obvious success. There must be

“Things done that took the eye, that had the price;
O’er which from level stand,
The low world laid its hand,
Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice.”

After all the real work of a minister is not easily gauged and the world may not be entirely wrong in using external progress as an outward sign of an inward grace. Even those who value the real work of the ministry sometimes express their appreciation in rather superficial phrases. I remember when dear old ---- celebrated his twenty-fifth anniversary the good toastmaster pathetically described his pastor’s successful ministry by explaining that under his leadership the congregation had “doubled its membership, installed a new organ, built a parsonage, decorated the church and wiped out its debt.” Not a word about the words of comfort the good pastor had spoken or the inspiration he had given to thirsting souls.

Perhaps it is foolish to be too sensitive about these inevitable secularizations of religious values. Let us be thankful that there is no quarterly meeting in our denomination and no need of giving a district superintendent a bunch of statistics to prove that our ministry is successful.

_1921_

I visited Mrs. S. today. She is suffering from cancer and will not live long. Her young grandson E. came home from high school just as I was leaving. He had a question for me. The Jewish boys at school told him Jesus was a bastard and Joseph was not his father. He also reported that they accused him of having two Gods instead of one. That dissolution of the Trinity into a dualism by high school boys interested me. Even boys seem to sense that if orthodox trinitarianism makes for polytheism it really suggests two gods rather than three. I chided E. for remembering so poorly what he had learned in the preparatory class and for being so irregular in church school where these problems are discussed. I went over some of the ideas on the humanity and the uniqueness of Jesus which we had discussed in the class.

Meanwhile I wished that I could talk to him alone without interference from grandma, who naïvely added her own theological mustard to the dish. It is no easy task to build up the faith of one generation and not destroy the supports of the religion of the other. But fortunately the old lady didn’t get what I was driving at and so didn’t interfere very seriously. She was thankful to me for straightening the young man out on his theology and seemed to think that I had settled all his difficulties by my few words. “Ich habe ihm gesagt, wart bis der Pastor kommt. Der wird dir alles erklaeren.” It isn’t a bad idea to find someone who has such confidence in you.

_1922_

When I sit in my study and meditate upon men and events I am critical and circumspect. Why is it that when I arise in the pulpit I try to be imaginative and am sometimes possessed by a kind of madness which makes my utterances extravagant and dogmatic? Perhaps this change of technique is due to my desire to move the audience. Audiences are not easily moved from their lethargy by cool and critical analyses. An appeal to the emotions is necessary and emotions are not aroused by a careful analysis of facts but by a presentation of ideal values. I do not mean that I disavow the critical method entirely in the pulpit. Indeed many of my friendly critics think I am too critical to be a good preacher. Nor am I ever very emotional. Nevertheless there is a distinct difference between my temper in the study and my spirit in the pulpit.

Perhaps this is as it should be. Let the study serve to reveal the relativity of all things so that pulpit utterances do not become too extravagant, and let the pulpit save the student from sinking in the sea of relativities. However qualified every truth may be there is nevertheless a portion in every truth and value which is essentially absolute and which is therefore worth proclaiming. “All oratory,” declares a Greek scholar, “is based on half truths.” That is why one ought naturally to distrust and to discount the orator. On the other hand, oratory may be the result of the kind of poetic gift which sees a truth dissociated, for a moment at least, from all relativities of time and circumstance and lifted into the light of the absolute.

I notice that the tendency of extravagance in the pulpit and on the platform increases with the size of the crowd. As my congregation increases in size I become more unguarded in my statements. Wherefore may the good Lord deliver me from ever being a popular preacher. “Why is it,” asked one of my elders the other day, “that your Sunday evening sermons are more pessimistic than your morning sermons?” I think what he really meant is that they were more critical in analyzing life’s problems. I told him that I tried to give inspiration in the morning and education in the evening.

But the fact is that circumstance probably affects the quality of the message as much as purpose. A full church gives me the sense of fighting with a victorious host in the battles of the Lord. A half empty church immediately symbolizes the fact that Christianity is very much of a minority movement in a pagan world and that it can be victorious only by snatching victory out of defeat.

_1922_

Just received a pitiful letter from a young pastor who is losing his church because he has been “too liberal.” I suppose there are churches which will crucify a leader who tries to lead them into the modern world of thought and life. Yet here I have been all these years in a conservative communion and have never had a squabble about theology. I suppose that is partly due to the fact that there were so few people here when I came that no one had to listen to me if he didn’t like my approach. Those who have come have associated themselves with us because they were in general agreement with “our gospel.” They have come, however, from conservative communions and churches. But of course they have been mostly young people.

If preachers get into trouble in pursuance of their task of reinterpreting religious affirmations in the light of modern knowledge I think it must be partly because they beat their drums too loudly when they make their retreats from untenable positions of ancient orthodoxy. The correct strategy is to advance at the center with beating drums and let your retreats at the wings follow as a matter of course and in the interest of the central strategy. You must be honest, of course, but you might just as well straighten and shorten your lines without mock heroics and a fanfare of trumpets.

The beauty of this strategy is that there is enough power at the center for a real advance and enough opposition for a real conflict. If you set the message of a gospel of love against a society enmeshed in hatreds and bigotries and engulfed in greed, you have a real but not necessarily a futile conflict on your hands. There is enough natural grace in the human heart to respond to the challenge of the real message in the gospel--and enough original sin in human nature to create opposition to it. The sorriest preachers are those who preach a conventional morality while they try to be intellectually and theologically radical.

Men will not make great intellectual readjustments for a gospel which does not greatly matter. If there is real adventure at the center of the line the reserves are drawn from the wings almost unconsciously.

_1923_

Gradually the whole horrible truth about the war is being revealed. Every new book destroys some further illusion. How can we ever again believe anything when we compare the solemn pretensions of statesmen with the cynically conceived secret treaties? Here was simply a tremendous contest for power between two great alliances of states in which the caprice of statesmen combined with basic economic conflicts to dictate the peculiar form of the alliances. Next time the cards will be shuffled in a different way and the “fellowship in arms” will consist of different fellows.