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_