Beginning of Universalism in America

c. 1950-55 (undated)
Gloucester, MA (assumed)

Beginning of Universalism in America (Ed. - the sermon was actually untitled)

In 1770 Gloucester, Massachusetts was a seaport In touch with all the world. Before the advent of railways, seaports were always centers of liberal thought, the first places to receive the new ideas. In 1769 a man named Gregory, whether officer, sailor, or passenger on one of the Gloucester merchant ships (no one knows), had brought to the town a book written by Rev. James Relly of London, entitled, "Union, or a Treatise on the Consanguinity Between Christ and His Church." The arrival of this book in Gloucester was the beginning of Universalism in America. The printed page preceded the spoken word. This book had been read, and made converts at least three years before Murray came to the city. Murray's Preaching for the first three years was itinerant. Welcomed at first as a popular preacher, it was before long discovered that he was a heretic. In Boston the Rev. Andrew Croswell denounced him in the papers as a disciple of Relly. This was true. After some years of friendship with John Wesley and Whitefield, he had some months before coming to America come under the influence of Rev. James Relly and had been converted to his ideas. The Gloucester converts to Relly read Croswell's accusation in the paper and were very much interested. They asked the most influential member of the group, Mr. Winthrop Sargent, to go to Boston and invite Murray to Gloucester. Mr. Sargent was undoubtedly at this time the leading citizen in the city. In response to Mr. Sargent's invitation, Mr. Murray came to the city and preached nine times on nine successive days. For the first time in his three years in America he here found a group of influential people already in sympathy with his ideas.

From this time on for twenty years, with the exception of eight months, when he was a chaplain in the Army of the Revolution, and part of one year when persecution drove him to England, and when away on missionary journeys, Gloucester was his home. Here he found the support made his career possible.

At first he was given the use of First Parish Church. Shortly after coming here the second time this privilege was denied him and thereafter services were held in the homes of his converts, on Sundays, usually in the spacious parlors of Winthrop Sargent's hospitable mansion.

Congregations grew, converts increased, and opposition became more bitter and determined....

Shortly after he (John Murray) resumed preaching, after his return from the army, his followers ceased to attend the services in the First Parish Church. Then the storm broke – a mob assembled before the house of Winthrop Sargent, where Murray was living, determined to ride him out of town, and on being dissuaded from their purpose, warned him to leave on the threat of violence if he remained. An effort was also made to have him expelled from town as a vagrant, anyone not a land-owner having no legal status in any place at that time. This danger was avoided by one of his supporters making him a gift of some land, this constituting him a free holder....

He was summoned before the committee of safety and ordered to leave town within five days (read p. 107 – Universalism in Gloucester). The town at its annual meeting, by a vote of 54 for and 8 against, approved the action of the committee of safety. Curses followed him and stones were thrown at him as he walked the streets. Through it all Murray and his company of brave supporters (Gen. Greene – Eddy I – p. 150) stood firm and unwavering. In spite of all this, perhaps because of this, the number of Murray's followers increased, and little by little threats and dangers of physical violence ceased. The difficulty of his followers, however, in establishing their right to a faith and form of worship as they desired was only beginning.

On February 1 [ed. - or 11?], 1777 fifteen people (read p. 112), five of them members of the Sargent family, absented themselves from worship in First Parish Church. In these people we find the beginnings of what is now the Independent Christian Church (Universalist) in Gloucester and the Universalist Church of America.

There was, however, no legal organization. They simply agreed to meet together for religious worship and to "appoint Mr. Murray their religious teacher so long as he preaches the gospel as we now understand it." Shortly after they drew up what are known as the "Articles of Association" in which they call themselves the Independent Christian Church in Gloucester, declaring it to be their purpose "in so far as possible to live peaceably with all men." The Articles were signed by thirty-one men and thirty women, or if, Murray's name be omitted, by thirty men and thirty women.

A year later the society built a meeting house in one corner of Winthrop Sargent's garden, near where the Bradford Block now stands on Main St. Gloucester. It was 32½ x 48 feet with 30 box pews and was the first church building erected by Universalists in the United States, or, for that matter, in the world.

The members of the First Parish held that by law members of the Independent Christian Church were still obligated to pay taxes for the support of the established order. The Universalists refused to pay, basing their refusal on the Bill of Rights, which they held guaranteed to each person liberty to choose his own religious teacher. The First Parish claimed the Independent Church "was not a religious organization, or if so, was not incorporated, and that Murray was not a religious teacher, or if so, was not ordained."

The easiest thing would have been for the members of the Independent Church to apply to the Legislature for an Act of Incorporation. They felt, however, that they were being denied rights secured them by the Constitution and that in fighting for their rights they were fighting for the rights of all others.

For this public-spirited reason they refused to pay and they refused to incorporate. The First Parish in 1782 in an attempt to enforce its demands seized and sold at auction the goods of three prominent members of the Independent Church. It was found that in order to establish their rights, Murray as their religious teacher must bring action against the First Parish for the recovery of money which had been wrongfully diverted from his use. This Murray refused to do for some time as he had never taken any salary for preaching. In time, however, he came to see that by refusing be was doing an injustice to friends who had loyally stood by him, and so suit was brought.

Both in the importance of the issues and the eminence of the legal lights engaged in the case, this was one of the great legal battles of America. Murray's counsel was Hon. Rufus King, who, however, removed to New York before the case came to trial, and Judge James Sullivan, nearly, if not quite his equal in legal lore, took his place; while the First Parish of Gloucester was represented by Theophilus Parsons. The judges instructed the Jury to bring in a verdict adverse to those bringing suit. This the Jury refused to do. This meant a second trial. This took place a year later, and this time the judges reversed their earlier opinion, in part perhaps influenced by public opinion, in part, perhaps convinced by a very able pamphlet written by Mr. Epes Sargent (p. 133) entitled, "An appeal to the impartial public by the Society of Christian Independents, congregating in Gloucester". Any way, this time the verdict was in favor of the Independent Church, judges and jury concurring. This long trial, in which the ablest lawyers in the United States were employed, must have been very expensive for the little group who realized well that they were fighting not only for themselves alone, but for the right of all to freedom of worship. Before this decision, Episcopalians, Baptists, Presbyterians, Quakers, Unitarians, nor other heretics had any right to a church of their own faith.

While the suit in court was pending, a number of Universalist congregations which had been gathered together in different parts of the state planned to meet in Oxford, Mass., for encouragement, counsel and instruction. In anticipation of this event the Universalists in Gloucester adopted a Charter of Compact to provide for carrying on of religious societies by voluntary subscriptions.

This Charter of Compact is notable for its absence of any theological or doctrinal creed, statement, or requirement. It is still more challenging by virtue of several articles:

Second Article: "That funds shall be provided, by voluntary subscription for the purposes of supporting a teacher or teachers, of piety, religion and morality; the repairing of the public edifice, and the relief of poor and distressed brethren."

Ninth Article: Whereas the privilege of choosing and professing one's own religion is inestimable: And in order to maintain that privilege unimpaired, in case any person associating with is should suffer persecution from the undue exercise of power, we do agree and resolve to afford him all legal means of extricating him from difficulty, and of enjoying that freedom which is held forth by the Constitution."

Concluding sentence "AND BE IT KNOWN UNIVERSALLY, That we who have signed our names to this CHARTER OF COMPACT for the purposes heretofore cited, compose and do belong to the Independent Christian Society, Gloucester, Sept. 6, 1785.

One of the signers was Gloster Dalton, a Negro. Upon the occasion of his death and church funeral, April 11, 1813, the then minister, "Father" Jones, made this notation: "April 11, 1813, Gloster Dalton, an African. In this country from a youth. Supposed to be 90 years old. They said Gloster Dalton was an honest, industrious man. He had been Infirm about two or three years ... belonged to the Independent Christian Society for many years. He was a native of Africa, and brought away as a slave (so-called). For there are no slaves! All men are born free! T. Jones."

A Unique Prayer

c. 1951
Gloucester

A UNIQUE PRAYER

[Editor’s Note: This is another undated and unsigned paper found in Rev. Westman’s files.]

The prayer that Dr. Levi M. Powers gave at the city inauguration exercises more than 30 years ago in Gloucester was so unusual that it created a sensation throughout the country. These are some excerpts:

"WE PRAY for the retiring mayor. He might have done better and he knows it and now we are sending him to the state house. Help him to be the representative he may be and ought to be.

WE PRAY for those who must guide our city in the coming year. There is Alderman Daniel Marshall. You know what a good fellow he is and how everybody likes him - the most popular man in town, though there are some who say he needs a stiffer backbone. If that is so, Lord, give him what he needs, and if it is a lie, help him to refute it.

THEN THERE IS Alderman Johnson who needs thy help, Lord. This is a new job for him. But everybody speaks well of him, and many who did not know him voted for him because those who know him best said he was all right. May he end this year with this good opinion confirmed and increased.

MOST OF ALL we pray for him honored in being chosen mayor. But we have given him a hard job, Lord. You know very well that the laws of this city have not been well-enforced. May he accept this responsibility and not only do his duty, but insist that all those responsible to him do their duty as well.

NOT ALONE for those we have chosen do we pray, Lord; we pray for ourselves. We confess, Lord, that we are a logy, grouchy set of citizens, most of us. We no sooner elect men to office than we find fault with them. Help us to see that good citizenship is an all-the-year job that cannot be delegated to others,

WE PRAY for the voters of this city; there are some too lazy to vote but not too lazy to grumble. Bless them. We pray for the citizens who want good streets, good schools, good fire and police protection and good health officers but who wish other people to pay their cost.

WE PRAY for the business men whose votes are always determined by the expectancy of special favors for themselves. Bless them, if you can. We pray for those who believe that all laws should be enforced except the laws which they do not like or which, if enforced, would trouble them.

WE PRAY for the comfortable who do not care for anything so long as they are left at ease.

WE PRAY for political managers who swap votes and sell out their friends and let their bad candidates go unopposed.

WE PRAY for the ministers who say what it is pleasant to hear rather than what is true. We pray for all connected with the newspapers who openly advocate civic righteousness and secretly promote crooked policies,

WE PRAY for the lawyers who use their knowledge to help those who wish to evade the law and so enable themselves and others to get something for nothing.

WE WISH, O God, that these people might be blessed, but perhaps we are asking too much. It may be that the only thing you can do is to let them go to hell.

INCREASE our love and devotion to our city. May we be zealous of its good name and prosperity. May wealth, happiness, intelligence and character so increase that the proudest boast we can make shall be that we are men and women of this city." Amen

LATER COMMENTS of Dr Powers in answering the critics of his prayer: “I have been criticized for asking the Lord if he could help some people out of hell. I did not send anyone to hell or ask the Lord to send anyone there, I questioned whether God could keep some people out and I hope I shall shock no one when I say that I do not believe that God can keep out of hell those who prefer to be there. God has established laws that are just and changeless and all who disobey them punish themselves. To most people the most shocking things of life are not the things themselves, but the words that remind us of the things. Sometimes it is God's work to shock people out of their complacency and self-satisfaction.”

The Beginning of Universalism in America

c. 1951
Gloucester

The Beginning of Universalism in America

[Editor’s Note: This undated, unsigned sermon was found in Rev. Westman’s files. Based on the quality of type, or lack thereof, and the subject matter, it appears to belong to the 1950-54 period in Gloucester. The style of writing is generally characteristic of Rev. Westman’s writings, with a few exceptions, which are easily explained since the sermon was given early in his ministerial career. Few readers will miss that the portion dealing with the constitutional question of taxation for churches is said to have occurred before 1787, the year the United States Constitution was adopted. The particular constitution in question, however, appears to have been the Massachusetts state constitution, which explains the discrepancy. An 1892 article from the New York Times echoes many of the themes in this sermon, and offers interesting additional details on some. See:
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9401E2D71331E033A25751C2A96E9C94639ED7CF or click here for the PDF of the article.]

In 1770 Gloucester, Massachusetts was a seaport in touch with all the world. Before the advent of railways, seaports were always centers of liberal thought, the first places to receive the new ideas. In 1769 a man named Gregory, whether officer, sailor, or passenger on one of the Gloucester merchant ships no one knows, had brought to the town a book written by Rev. James Relly of London, entitled, “Union, or a Treatise on the Consanguinity Between Christ and His Church.” The arrival of this book in Gloucester was the beginning of Universalism in America. The printed page preceded the spoken word. This book had been read, and made converts at least three years before Murray came to the city. Murray’s preaching for the first three years was itinerant. Welcomed at first as a popular preacher, it was before long discovered that he was a heretic. In Boston the Rev. Andrew Croswell denounced him in the papers as a disciple of Relly. This was true. After some years of friendship with John Wesley and Whitefield, he had some months before coming to America come under the influence of Rev. James Relly and had been converted to his ideas. The Gloucester converts to Relly read Croswell’s accusation in the paper and were very much interested. They asked the most influential member of the group, Mr. Winthrop Sargent, to go to Boston and invite Murray to Gloucester. Mr. Sargent was undoubtedly at this time the leading citizen in the city. In response to Mr. Sargent’s invitation, Mr. Murray came to the city and preached nine times on nine successive days. For the first time in his three years in American he here found a group of influential people already in sympathy with his ideas.

From this time on for twenty years, with the exception of eight months, when he was a chaplain in the Army of the Revolution, and the part of one year when persecution drove him to England, and when away on missionary journeys, Gloucester was his home. Here he found the support which made his career possible.

At first he was given the use of First Parish Church. Shortly after coming here the second time this privilege was denied him and thereafter services were held in the homes of his converts, on Sundays, usually in the spacious parlors of Winthrop Sargent’s hospitable mansion.

Congregations grew, converts increased, and opposition became more bitter and determined....

Shortly after he (John Murray) resumed preaching, after his return from the Army, his followers ceased to attend the services in the First Parish Church. Then the storm broke – a mob assembled before the house of Winthrop Sargent, where Murray was living, determined to ride him out of town, and on being dissuaded from their purpose, warned him to leave on the threat of violence if he remained. An effort was also made to have him expelled from town as a vagrant, anyone not a land-owner having no legal status in any place at that time. This danger was avoided by one of his supporters making him a gift of some land, thus constituting him a free holder....

He was summoned before the committee of safety and ordered to leave town within five days. The town at its annual meeting, by a vote of 54 for and 3 against, approved the action of the committee of safety. Curses followed him and stones were thrown at him as he walked the streets. Through it all Murray and his company of brave supporters stood firm and unwavering. In spite of all this, perhaps because of this, the number of Murray’s followers increased, and little by little threats and dangers of physical violence ceased. The difficulty of his followers, however, in establishing their right to a faith and form of worship as they desired was only beginning.

On February 11, 1777, fifteen people, five of them members of the Sargent family, absented themselves from worship at First Parish Church. In these people we find the beginnings of what is now the Independent Christian Church (Universalist) in Gloucester and the Universalist Church of America. There was, however, no legal organization. They simply agreed to meet together for religious worship and to “appoint Mr. Murray their religious teacher so long as he preaches the gospel as we now understand it....” Shortly after they drew up what are now known as the “Articles of Association” in which they call themselves the Independent Christian Church in Gloucester, declaring it to be their purpose “in so far as possible to live peaceably with all men.” The articles were signed by thirty-one men and thirty women, or if Murray’s name be omitted, by thirty men and thirty women.

A year later the society built a meeting house in one corner of Winthrop Sargent’s garden, near where the Bradford Block now stands on Main St. Gloucester. It was 32 x 48 feet with 30 box pews and was the first church building erected by Universalists in the United States, or for that matter, in the world....

The members of the First Parish held that by law members of the Independent Christian Church were still obligated to pay taxes for the support of the established order. The Universalists refused to pay, basing their refusal on the Bill of Rights, which they held guaranteed to each person liberty to choose his own religious teacher. The First Parish claimed the Independent Church “was not a religious organization, or if so, was not incorporated, and that Murray was not a religious teacher, or if so, was not ordained.”

The easiest thing would have been for the members of the Independent Church to apply to the Legislature for an Act of Incorporation. They felt, however, that they were being denied rights secured them by the Constitution and that in fighting for their rights they were fighting for the rights of others.

For this public-spirited reason they refused to pay and they refused to incorporate. The First Parish in 1782 in an attempt to enforce its demands seized and sold at auction the goods of three prominent members of the Independent Church.... It was found that in order to establish their rights Murray as their religious teacher must bring action against the First Parish for the recovery of money which had been wrongly diverted from his use. This Murray refused to do for some time as he never had taken any salary for preaching. In time, however, the came to see that by refusing he was doing an injustice to friends who had loyally stood by him, and so suit was brought.

Both in the importance of the issues and the eminence of the legal lights engaged in the case, this was one of the great legal battles of America. Murray’s counsel was Hon. Rufus King, who, however, removed to New York before the case came to trial, and Judge James Sullivan, nearly, f not quite his equal in legal lore, took his place; while the First Parish of Gloucester was represented by Theophilus Parsons. The judge instructed the jury to bring in a verdict adverse to those bringing suit. This the jury refused to do. This meant a second trial. This took place a year later, and this time the judges reversed their earlier opinion, in part perhaps influenced by public opinion, in part perhaps convinced by a very able pamphlet written by Mr. Epes Sargent entitled, “An appeal to the impartial public by the Society of Christian Independents, congregating in Gloucester.” Any way this time the verdict was in favor of the Independent Church, judges and jury concurring. This long trial, in which the ablest lawyers in the United States were employed, must have been very expensive for the little group who realized well they were fighting not only for themselves alone, but for the right of all freedom of worship. Before this decision Episcopalians, Baptists, Presbyterians, Quakers, Universalists, nor other heretics had any right to a church of their own faith.

While the suit in court was pending a number of Universalists congregations which had been gathered together in different parts of the state planned to meet in Oxford, Massachusetts for encouragement, counsel and instruction. In anticipation of this event the Universalists in Gloucester adopted a charter of Compact to provide for carrying on of religious societies by voluntary subscriptions. This Charter of Compact is notable for its absence of any theological or doctrinal creed, statement, or requirement. It is still more challenging by virtue of several articles:

Second Article: “That funds shall be provided by voluntary subscription for the purposes of supporting a teacher or teachers, of piety, religion and morality; the repairing of the public edifice, and the relief on poor and distressed brethren.”

Ninth Article: “Whereas the privilege of choosing and professing one’s own religion is inestimable: And in order to maintain that privilege unimpaired, in case any person associating with us should suffer persecution from the undue exercise of power, we do agree and resolve to afford him all legal means of extricating himself from difficulty, and of enjoying that freedom which is held forth by the Constitution.”

Concluding sentence “AND BE IT KNOWN UNIVERSALLY, That we who have signed our names to this CHARTER OF COMPACT for the purposes heretofore cited, compose and do belong to the Independent Christian Society, Gloucester, Sept. 6, 1785.”

One of the signers was Gloster Dalton, a Negro. Upon the occasion of his death and church funeral, April 11, 1813, the then minister “Father” Jones made this notation: “April 11, 1813, Gloster Dalton, an African. In this country from a youth. Supposed to be 90 years old. The said Gloster Dalton was an honest, industrious man. He had been infirm about two or three years ... belonged to the Independent Christian Society for many years. He was a native of Africa, and brought away as a slave (so-called). For there were no slaves! All men are born free! T. Jones.”

The Everlasting Light

December 23, 1951
Gloucester

The earth has grown old with its burden of care

But at Christmas it always is young,

The heart of the jewel burns lustrous and fair,

And its soul full of music breaks forth on the air,

When the song of the Angels is sung.

It is coming, old earth, it is coming tonight,

On the snowflakes with cover thy sod,

The feet of the Christ child fall gently and white,

And the voice of the Christ child tells you with delight

That mankind are the children of God.

On the sad and the lonely, the wretched and poor,

That voice of the Christ child shall fall;

And to every blind wanderer opens the door

Of a hope which he dared not to dream of before,

With a sunshine of welcome for all.

The feet of the humblest may walk in the field

Where the feet of the holiest have trod,

This, this is the marvel of mortals revealed,

When the silvery trumpets of Christmas have pealed

That mankind are the children of God.

The purpose of our service today is not to broadcast knowledge about Christmas, but rather to acknowledge that Christmas is essentially something we feel in the deepest well of our emotions. It has been said that Christmas is the time of year when we get rid of the feelings of guilt which have been created throughout the year by our dominant attitude or selfishness. It has been said, also with some truth, that Christmas is but the continuing pagan festival of Winter Solstice and that the religious elements associated with the birth of Jesus of Nazareth are but superficial touches added to a very primitive structure. It has been said also, with more poetry than literal truth that Christmas is the day when “God broke into history”. Countless other little theories have been conceived and broadcast. Yet none of these theories ever speaks clearly enough or profoundly enough to explain why it is we are so deeply moved to joy, hope, and a spirit of neighborliness and charity to others at this time of year we call Christmas.

Our Christmas would not have the same content of feeling if it had not been for our religious forefathers, the Hebrews and their belief that someday mankind would be redeemed by the hand of God in the form of a Savior who would vanquish the forces of evil. The early Hebrew scriptures are laced with prophecies of such a hope. The prophet Isaiah, who lived many centuries before the birth of Jesus, expressed for all time the hope that man's destiny is not one to be dominated forever by selfish desires, low ambitions, thoughtless as well as deliberate acts of cruelty and inhumanity to others.

XL/3: “The voice of one that crieth, Prepare ye in the wilderness the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”

XL/5 The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. For the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.

LX 1,3,5: Arise, shine! For thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee; and nations shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising. They shall bring gold and frankincense and shall proclaim the praises of the Lord.”

LII;7 “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace, that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation, that saith unto Zion, Thy God Reigneth.”

The legendary history of the birth stories of Jesus were tailored to fit these ancient hopes. Yet no such legends could have been creatd, we could not feel the glow within us which reminds us of Christmas that “mankind are the children of God,” if there had not been a person such as Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus of Nazareth not only grew in wisdom and stature, but he lived in consecration to a way of life which he believed in above all else. He saw, as perhaps none of us see, that unless the spirit of love and brotherhood dominates the earth, all our science and all our industry will be but fuses which will sooner or later be set off at some zero hour and destroy man's dreams for milleniums to come. He believed enough in a way of life that declared “love is the answer” to die for it, even as he had lived.

The light of Christmas shines into our clouded hearts to remind us that this feeling of love is unconquerable even by death. The everlasting light of Christmas stirs us with the inward knowledge that ways of hate, retaliation and disregard for even the least of these our brethren will surely bring us to a pit of degradation in which it will be unclean to live and stupid to hope. We hope that there will come a time when “Peace on earth, good will toward men” will not only be the song of angels but will be the song and practice of mankind everywhere.

The hope of Israel and the life of Jesus are not the only contributions that have made our Christmas. Each century has contributed in its own language of poetry, devotion, and music in the attempt to express the depth of feeling which stirs us so joyfully and yet so tragically each year when Christmas comes into our view.

Our Christmas message this year is one that will be expressed in song and poem. Our responsive reading was that incredibly beautiful poem that appears in the early part of the gospel according to Luke. This was a contribution of the latter part of the first or the early part of the second century after the birth of Jesus. From the ages of faith, the 13th to 15th centuries has some of the music that is to be sung. From our own century, the 20th, has come the theme for our worship. We cannot understand our theme without feeling something of the majesty of the man who inspired our theme.

Phillips Brooks was a world-famous preacher and Episcopal Bishop. He loved the Episcopal church and it would be unthinkable to disassociate him in any way from his beloved faith. Yet, Phillips Brooks was a Universalist too. No one who could write the lines of the poem which I read at the beginning could feel other than someday, somehow, men were going to recognize their basic unity as children of one great God, brothers in an illimitable universe:

“The feet of the humble may walk in the field

Where the feet of the holiest have trod,

This, this is the marvel of mortals revealed,

When the silvery trumpets of Christmas have pealed,

That mankind are the children of God.”

It has been well said that there are three memorials to the memory of Phillips Brooks: Many of us have known these memorials. First there is Trinity Church standing in splendor in Copley Square in Boston. Erected during the time when Phillips Brooks was rector, it is an ever-present symbol of the broad character of his ministry and his contribution to the life of Boston. (P) Standing beside the Church is the second memorial to this giant among American religious leaders. It is the heroic statue of the Bishop molded in the preacher's stance. Beside the statue of Brooks there is another statue, an image of Jesus, symbol of the way that the life of Jesus dominated the life of Brooks.

Probably each of you has recalled knowingly or unknowingly the third memorial to Phillips Brooks many times during the past days.

When Phillips Brooks was thirty years old he spent a year traveling in Europe and the Near East. During Christmas week in 1865 in a letter home (LYRIC RELIGION Smith P. 298) Brooks wrote “after an early dinner, we took our horses and rode to Bethlehem. It was only about two hours when we came to the town, situated on the Eastern ridge of a range of hills, surrounded by its terraced gardens. Before dark, we rode out of town to the field where they say the shepherds saw the star. It is a fenced piece of ground with a cave in it, in which, strangely enough, they put the shepherds. The story is absurd, but somewhere in those fields we rode through the shepherds must have been. As we passed, the shepherds were still 'keeping their watch over their flocks,' or 'leading them home to fold.'”

Phillips Brooks must have been deeply moved as the thought about the birth of Jesus when he toured the hills of Bethlehem that Christmas night in 1865. Perhaps the emotion he felt was one of the main influences in fixing within him the determination to live for others in the spirit of Jesus. Perhaps that night helped fix his purpose so that years later in a service memorializing his death, Rabbi Gustav Gottlieb could say, “He was not bishop of his church only, but he was my bishop also by divine calling and consecration.” And Lyman Abbott, himself a famous religious leader could say: “We have been wondering, Is there any God? And we have been reaching out in nature to find evidence of him. And suddenly there appears before us the divine shining in one great illuminated nature, one that is full of God; and while we were looking in his eyes and he was looking into ours, then did God come again; then did we realize that God is; then did we feel that God speaks to the heart of man through the heart of man.”

There were many other influences on the life of Phillips Brooks in addition to those hours in Bethlehem. But we do know that two years after his journey to the country of Jesus' birth, Phillips Brooks wrote the carol that is now the beloved possession of men everywhere: “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”

Inspired by this carol of our time, which demonstrates that even after more than 1900 years of the Christian Era men can still respond from their inward being by the memory of the birth of a baby, we preach you a sermon in song:

The Birth of Jesus

(from a sermon by John Wycliff, 14th century)

Joseph went with Mary, that was his wife, into “Bedlehem”. They broughten an oxe and an asse with them, as men say, for this reason – Mary was great with child. Therefore she rode upon an asse; the oxe they brought for to sell, for Jews haten begging.

And Bedlehem was filled of men before they camen to the town; and so they hadden no harbor, but dwelten in a common stable, and these two beesties with them, till time came to use them.

And it fell while they were there, our lady bore her child, the which was her firste child, for him she bor and no other. And she wrapt Christe with clothis and putte him in the cratike, for she had no better place to put him in all the house.

And so, as men singen and trowen, Christ lai before an oxe and an asse. And the breath of these two beesties kept him hoot in this cold tyme.

And so men say that Christ was born at the myddil of this night, for the myddil person in the trinite loved myddil in many things.

Directional Signals and the Christmas Spirit

December 16, 1951
Gloucester

For two or three weeks motorists have been under the pressure of law to signal for turns and stops. This requirement to indicate directional signals is not particularly new, but now there are teeth in the law. Accessory dealers have been busy installing mechanical equipment so that some drivers do not have to lower the window, signal, and then close the window again. Meanwhile he must not forget to make the turn in the direction that he has indicated.

If the hand signals are made accurately and sincerely, other drivers and pedestrians will know where the driver is going and adjust their own conduct accordingly. But people do not always behave according to either law or our expectations. Someone was telling me that on TV this week there was a scene wherein a lady was in an accident. The driver of the other car protested that she had given an improper hand signal. When asked what signal she made, she raised her hand straight up (like this) and gestured thus. She indignantly said immediately that she wasn't signaling, she was merely shaking her bracelets farther down her wrist. Morey Amsterdam (quoted in The Boston Globe) says that when a woman driver sticks out her arms, you can be sure of one thing: her window is open.

Confused and awkward drivers are men as well as women. The day before yesterday when riding with a friend, a car coming in the opposite direction started to make a left turn across the path of the car in which we were riding. My companion, who was driving, immediately slowed down in ample time to avoid any crash. However, a person in the front seat of the other car (not the driver) stuck his arm straight up in the air as high as the roof of the car as he could reach and gestured thus. It could have been interpreted to mean that we were to fly over the top of the other car. While it was a funeral coach in which we were riding, most certainly the machine was not equipped with wings.

What have directional signals to do with the Christmas spirit? If properly performed, directional signals in the motoring world are signs that help avoid trouble, assist people in going their separate ways without violently crashing into another whose way may be different, but it's his way and he can take it if he likes and obeys the rules.

The Christmas spirit sounds forth in rather hollow and unconvincing tones, at times, when we consider that the world is in turmoil, at war in some sections and a vast fog of suspicion enveloping nearly every land. The reason is that some people are going right, some people are going left, and others are taking roads a certain distance to the right or part-way left, and they are crashing into each other with an impact that threatens to wipe out entire nations – even civilization itself.

I'm told that the terms “right” and “left” when used to indicate a persons economic and political beliefs originated in Paris where at one time those who advocated revolution lived on the left bank of the Seine, while those who were opposed to change, who thought the old way best, lived on the right bank of the Seine.

Since that time in theology, literature – all areas of knowledge actually – but most common in national and international politics and economics, the “right” has come to mean those people, whether individuals, groups, or both, who usually have a reverence for the past amounting almost to worship, who will not approve any radical breaks with existing customs or the existing order, who are opposed to revolution – and who have an aversion to any change in the accustomed way of doing things.

Conversely the “left” is not only willing that changes be made but is eager that thing be done differently than in the past, does not approve a custom or law merely because it is old, sometimes willing to permit violence if that violence will result in some change that the left wing groups think will bring about a certain desirable result. Both right and left have innumerable shadings along the spectrum – and they squabble among themselves as well as with their opposites.

The difficulty that is bound to arise when we are able to escape from our particular bias for the left or right as, the case may be, is that great ideas and movements elude any permanent classification of “right” or “left” or “conservative” or “radical”.

For example, 178 years ago today, on December 16, 1773, one of the incidents that precipitated the revolt of the American Colonies against the British Empire occurred in our ancient, honored and conservative neighboring city of Boston.

The King of England had proclaimed a new tax on the colonies for all glass, paper, paints, and tea. This import tax was exerted for three general purposes: in the first place, to support the soldiers who had been placed in the American colonies to see that the King's will and the king's laws were enforced; next, to pay the governors of the colonies, the judges and other officers – thus making them dependent not on the people but on the king's tax; and the third reason was to give large sums of money to certain influential citizens to persuade them to give public support to the King.

The colonies, particularly Massachusetts Bay which was a steaming cauldron of radical movements, immediately raised such an uproar that the sound and fury reached the ears of those in power in the Mother Country. Merchants banded together and pledged mutually not to import any paper, glass, paint or tea. Samuel Adams, sometimes called “The Father of the American Revolution,” proclaimed that he and others would “eat nothing, drink nothing, wear nothing” that was imported from England until all the duties on goods should be removed.

Parliament then conceded that a mistake had been made and removed all taxes except one of a few cents on a pound of tea to insure the maintenance of the right of the British Government to tax the colonies. The price of tea was pegged at so low a price that Americans could purchase tea from English ships, tax and all, cheaper than they could smuggle it from other countries. But the American colonists said they would not take it as a gift if there was a tax on it. In Boston citizens refused to unload a cargo of tea. Under port rules, at the end of 20 days if the cargo was not unloaded, custom house officials, who were British civil servants, would unload the tea.

On the 19th day the rebellious colonists held a mass meeting in Old South Church. The debate raged all day long and into the evening. Then Sam Adams spoke up, “This meeting can do nothing more than to save the country.” That was a signal for action, and colonists disguised as Indians gave a loud war-whoop, rushed to T-wharf, went on board the vessels and dumped $100,000 worth of tea into the harbor.

So 178 years ago today, less than 40 miles from here, one of the most important of the chain of events occurred that led to Lexington, Concord, Independence Hall, Yorktown, and the Constitution.

In view of what has happened, would you, if you had the power, change that incident – or prevent it from happening? These energetic citizens certainly were not the conservatives of their day. They were far left – that is, they were revolutionists. They overthrew the government by “force and violence.” Yet these men are honored by us. We praise their deeds and thank God for the liberty they won and which we prize – or so we say.

Perhaps you suspect, as I do, that there is something basically wrong, or at least inaccurate, about these arbitrary classifications of “right” and “left” or “tory” and “liberal”.

Another illustration: F.D.R. Is now and will continue to be one of the most controversial figures of our century. He described himself as “being a little left of center.” To the conservative he was considerably more than a little left of center. To the radical, Roosevelt seemed to be a middle-of-the roader at best, and at worse, one who saved all that was old and all that was bad by a few concessions to a desperate citizenry which prevented revolution.

The soldiers of the right and the soldiers of the left are still shooting at each other in Korea and other parts of Asia. In the rest of the world, Acheson scolds Vishinsky; Vishinsky laughs his (now notorious) guffaw at the right – The Western world accuses the Soviet world of innumerable crimes against human rights and human decency and the claims are valid. I believe the slave labor camps do exist, that many Communist governments stay in power because of the strength + coercion of the Red Army, that many, although probably not all of the charges made against Stalin and Soviets are very brutal realities in our 20th century world.

The Soviet world accuses the United States of depriving racial minorities of rights, of abusing them and refusing them the right to vote and compete equally for jobs and education. They say that prejudice as it exists in the United States is a vital cause in creating undemocratic racial tensions and crimes against persons and groups. Those things are true aren't they? We are accused of many more things.

The right accuses the left; the left accuses the right; unlike our automobile drivers, even though they have indicated at least vaguely in which direction they are going, they clash nevertheless.

In a most ghastly parable, fenders are smashed, bumpers are hocked together and blood is running in the streets.

Suspicion and hate are rising to an almost incredible pitch on both sides. We are at the point where even a relatively small and insignificant incident can spread the war that is raging in Korea around the world.

Did you see two stories which were placed together in a recent issue of the NY Times under the caption “Reasons Why”. Even though ludicrous, they are strangely pertinent to the way fear and suspicion may overturn the world: “A railroad worker in Superior, Wisconsin, explained in court that he had attacked three bunkmates with an iron poker because he suspected they were plotting an attack on him by snoring in Morse code.” “Charged with knocking down a policeman, a Detroit man pleaded: “I saw a big bee land on his neck above the collar. I didn't want him to get stung, so I hit the bee as hard as I could.”

If we on the “right”, and I hope in the right, have a valid claim to be the representatives of the ideal of freedom offering to help a world largely in chains, then we must recognize and accept that our freedom does not mean freedom from responsibility. If we make the mistake of thinking that “free enterprise” means freedom for a few and control for a great many, then we may find ourselves left, literally and in quotes as well.

There is no attraction into falling into what I think is the deadening fatalism of that part of the left wing which implicitly accepts Marxism and Stalinism. Capitalism will probably not endure forever as the predominant economic system – but there is no certainty that Marxism or any form of it is assuredly going to replace it. Incidentally, I, for one, hope that the cooperative movement will receive a closer examination from those who are concerned with personal, national, and international finance.

I have said something about directional signals, about “right” and “left”, but not much about the Christmas spirit, have I.

To a certain extent, I believe that the tensions that exist between the right and left react on each other to solve the problems of history. The German philosopher Hegel used the famous analogy of the skater to make this point clear. The skater swings his left leg to the left, then quickly strides with his right to the right as a result of these alternative left and right movements the skater progresses down the centre of the ice. The disagreements, the pendulum-like swings and changes of public opinion and political leadership do bring forward progress. Were it not for the right and left movements, the skater would soon glide to a stop by staying on dead center.

But it is not enough to go right and left. For example, one cannot describe or understand the vast oceans merely in terms of square miles of surface area or the topography of shore lines. One must know something about depths, channels, shoals, and tides in order to have any appreciation of, or ability to survive the “sea around us.”

Right and left are not enough – there must be another dimension. That is why the Christmas Spirit is related to life's directional signals and movements. We must concern ourselves not only with right and left but also with right and wrong. When we repeat, “Peace on earth, good will to men,” we can not single out conservatives, or radicals. All are included.

It may well be that the critical problem of our day is the Machiavellian methods by which Soviet Government and its satellites are trying to bring about the domination of the world. Furthermore that this menace and threat must be dealt with skillfully, diplomatically, economically, and militarily. But also communism is a disease caused by misery. Over the long run it is not alone the power of democratic argument that will be tested – but the power of democratic ideals and ideas of government to produce conditions of freedom, health, warmth, and knowledge. Didn't Lincoln say once, “no nation can survive half-slave and half-free”? -- neither can a world.

The Christmas spirit is one of kindness – feebly glimmering in an unkind world. Albert Schweitzer, from deep within his place of service in Africa, challenges us with these words, “all the kindness which a man puts out into the world works on the heart and thoughts of mankind, but we are so foolishly indifferent that we are never in earnest in the matter of kindness. We want to topple a great load over, and yet will not avail ourselves of a lever which would multiply our power a hundredfold.”

The Christmas Spirit is one of revolution too – the inner revolution of good-will and understanding – no matter how greatly we may have been injured – no matter how easily our hurt could be the spark for a conflagration of retaliation.

In 1936 when Hitler's re-armament program was moving into high gear, when Goering had pledged the German people to give up butter for guns, when the Nazi overlords had seduced the entire German people with the foul myth of Aryan and Germanic racial superiority, the late and famous author Franz Werfel, author of 40 Days of Musa Dagh and the Song of Bernadette, was booed off a platform in East Prussia when he pleaded with a group of inflamed students that their choice was not left or right – but above or below.

He wasn't trying to lure them with a promise of some far-off heaven. He was pointing out that there is a moral choice involved in either a right or left wing decision. He was saying that there are values that must be recognized in any system. These values concern freedom in all the areas we dream of, concern human dignity and decency and the right of a people to judge the truth – the additional dimensions.

The story of Jesus and the woman of Samaria is one of those rare jewels of religious insight that we occasionally come upon in the gospel of John. The gospel of John is one that is largely theological rather than biographical or ethical. Its announced purpose is to promote an idea of Jesus as the pre-existent God. But here in the fourth chapter there are some profound implications for universal religion.

The Jews and the Samaritans hated each other – distrusted each other – even as nations do today. The Jews, from the time they campaigned against the pagan gods of the Canaanites, had insisted that God could be worshipped only in the temple at Jerusalem. The woman refers to this when she says, “our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say (referring to the Hebrew doctrine) that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.”

But Jesus goes beyond the right and left of worship practices of that part of the Near East. He didn't defend Jerusalem or attack the Samaritan custom, he said, “the hour cometh and is now when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for such doth the Father seek to be his worshippers. God is a spirit: and they that worship him in spirit and in truth.”

So if we are to make, someday, a reality out of the daring dream of “peace on earth and goodwill to men”, we must go beyond a mistaken compulsion making a choice between Jerusalem and Samaria or staking all on the “right” or the “left.” We must believe profoundly enough in the reality of the Christmas Spirit that wherever the directional signals of right or left may take us, we will achieve, maintain, and preserve as individuals, and as parliaments of man, the basic dignities which must become the property of all peoples or we most surely will all crash together: freedom from fear through goodwill and cooperation, freedom of religion, freedom of the press and of speech and the freedom to introduce our children to all that is best and noble in human history so that through wise and understanding moral ideals they may survive the conflict of ideologies of “right” and “left” which is now brutalizing our world.

Creative Leadership

March 27, 1952
Gloucester
to A.U.W. Meeting, worship service

I want to add my greetings and to welcome you to this important gathering of Universalists. I’m quite sure that judging from the high quality of the program and the fine spirit that has been in evidence that this is an occasion of significance for every one of us.

The task of a leader in worship is to single out some phase of life’s experience and to attempt to so stimulate your minds and touch your emotions that a wholesome tension will be created.

I have enormous respect for the power that is represented by the women of the world. In our country, surveys have revealed that the purse strings are almost completely controlled by the women. Some sociologists as they reckon with this phenomenon, as they see women directing the activities of the parent-teacher groups, as they see the power of such women’s organizations as the League of Women Voters, and as they are presented with the unmistakable evidence of the growing interest of women’s groups in almost every cultural influence, predict that America will soon be, if not actually now is, a matriarchy with the men occupying a decidedly inferior position in terms of actual power and actually leadership. Now that may or may not be over-gilding the lily. But one cannot be long associated with the church work and not recognize that without the active support of the women of the church he will soon be floundering in very choppy waters.

For that reason I venture to set before you three qualities of leadership which will guarantee not only that your leadership will be fruitful in terms of the strengthening of Universalism in all ways, but also will guarantee that morally you will be on your way to being a real person.

First of all, there is no higher tribute to your leadership than your ability to find a successor who will do the job better. Enthusiasm for a worthy goal, long and tedious hours in acquiring certain “know-how” to lead a certain committee to continuing success pays big dividends for the church and for the achievement of desirable progress.

Yet even in our desire to serve we may consciously or unconsciously tend to rebuff those who would like to work with us, who would like to know more so that they might serve better. Many hundreds of miles from here I know of a woman who was most skillful in promoting an annual dinner which had acquired some amount of local fame. But when she became too old to continue her active leadership, she jealously guarded her knowledge of recipes, quantities needed and other important data. Those who followed her in the job were unable to share her experience because she was afraid that someone else would be recognized as her superior or even her equal. Such an attitude prevents progress. Progress in a church or in a nation is constructed on the basis of constant refining of past methods. If every generation had to start from scratch we would still be in the Stone Age.

Jimmie Durango (sometimes we can learn as much from a clown as from a Hamlet or a Lear) not so long ago made a recording, singing a duet with opera star Helen Traubel. After Miss Traubel observed that “It was truly a pleasure to record with an artist whose voice sounds just the same with a bad needle as a good one,” Jimmie rejoined width, “the reason why my voice is as bad today as it was 25 years ago, is that I take care of it.” (from Sunday Supplement THIS WEEK).

There are ways of taking care of things so that they will be as bad today as they were 25 years ago. Failure to look for and encourage new leadership is one. Ego has its place in all of our lives – we do need to have it fed. Those who have read biographies of early President John Adams will recall that he had a healthy ego and was no shrinking violet. Yet some think his talent which did the most for the country was his ability to pick good leaders for important jobs. Through the Second Continental Congress he was instrumental in the choice of a Commander-in-Chief of the Revolutionary Army, George Washington. When Adams was President he appointed John Marshall Chief Justice.

In terms of the ongoing procession of achievement, if you would make your leadership of lasting importance, find the best person you can and without undue fanfare share with him your joys and sorrows, your successes and failures as a leader. If you win him to your job, it’s the highest tribute to your ability.

Secondly, “There is no limit to the good you can do if you don’t care who gets the credit.” that’s a quotation but I cannot remember the source. Adoration of one’s own name in print is an occupational hazard common to most endeavors involving leadership. Did not the late George M. Cohan say, “I don’t care what you say about me, but spell my name correctly?” The matter is more profound than simply a superficial desire to acquire personal publicity. ( this is not to say if there that there may not be good reasons for publicity.) Basically the issue involves one’s moral approach to life. I rather think that is something of what Jesus had in mind when he spoke about “he who loses his life will find it.”

In that interesting letter in the New Testament called the Third Letter of John, we find the same question of personal standing vexing one of the early Christian Colonies. John of Ephesus (if he was the author) writing to his friend Gaius says that he has tried to get some problems straightened out by mail. But Diotrephes, who likes to be the leader, will not accept the suggestions of John of Ephesus. If the letters account is correct, Diotrephes wanted to be the #1 person regardless of the merit of the questions in controversy.

It’s possible the cause for an overemphasis to self-centeredness may be found in the reason for our being willing to serve. Is our motive the need that exists in this situation, whether that situation be one of assistance to our Japanese or Nigerian children, information for those that need enlightenment or pledges for the church budget? Or is our motivation for serving based on our need for recognition or love? When it is the latter, when the supremely important factor in our personal need for compliment, affection or applause, we are apt to fade away when confronted with a tough or ugly situation. “There’s no limit to the good you can do if you don’t care who gets the credit.”

One more thing, there’s no limit to the good you can do if you don’t mind being different. We’re living in an age where the pressure on us to conform to things as they are is greater than for a long time. There are those numbered among the Universalists who feel that it is of no importance if we fail to protect against the superficial refurbishing and renovation of all the old supernatural, inhumane, pessimistic theological doctrines. There are those good people in the ranks of the Universalists who respond with resentment when a Universalist keeps to the main line of Universalism - heresy, criticism, and a confidence that is constantly renewed that man is worthy of redemption and has the potential capacity to be the agent for that redemption. Prime Minister Ben Gurion of Israel, one of the more eminent statesman on the world scene today recently reminded the world that “the test of democracy is the freedom of criticism.”

The early Universalists who founded this church, whose names you may see on the Charter of Compact in the Ladies Parlor were not afraid to be different. For them the penalty was stoning, seizure of their goods and jail sentences. Yet because they and other early Universalists were different – were heretics – is why we are gathered here today – glad that we are Universalists.

We’re questing for the Universals in religion. We’re seeking the truths that all men can come to through exalted and sacrificial experience and every-day living. We will continue to be a minority. That is not particularly vital. What is vital is, will we be a CREATIVE minority? There are Universalists all over the world yearning for fellowship with those were different enough to recognize man’s common humanity and man’s deep need for the moral values discoverable in all ethically noble religions. Carlton Fisher stirred us deeply this morning when he told us the dramatic stories of Universalism in Japan and Nigeria. I think I can surprise him with a letter addressed to this church which was received the day before yesterday.

Let me read:

Universalist Church,

Gloucester, Massachusetts

United States America

Gentlemen:

“ Not only a long time now that I heard this Universalist church founded by honorable Reverend John Murray in your 1770, at Gloucester Massachusetts, and I am very happy when I know this church.

“In another way, I request a general information pertaining your Universalism, your Supreme Minister, address of your headquartered denomination, and etc. for I have something for it later- on.

“I’m proud to recommend that I myself is a former minister of the Universal Church of Christ in the town of San Carlos, and Canla-on province of Negros Occidental and Oriental, and I want to introduce this Universal Church of Christ to your Universalist Church happily.

“As soon as you can receive my letter, I hope that you will take good care my inquiry.

Respectfully yours,

Reverend Toribio S. Quimada,

Nataban, San Carlos,

Negroes Occidental,

Philippines.”

Because John Murray was interested in searching for more truth and didn’t mind being different, more than 182 years later a Universalist and the other side of the world seeks to know more about the possibilities of fellowship. There is no limit to the good you can do if you don’t mind being different.

The Star You Have Never Seen

December 9, 1951
Gloucester

Oliver Wendell Holmes in a memorable paragraph said, “no man has the right to intellectual ambition until he has learned to lay his course by a star which he has never seen.” The learned Bostonian was talking about faith. He was saying the same thing that the author of the letter to the Hebrews said when he referred to face the as “the substance of things hope for, the evidence of things not seen.” (11/1)

The Advent season is particularly appropriate to the serious consideration of faith. We live in a world that seems like a speeded-up newsreel. We seem to have little opportunity and only slight desire to reflect on and speculate about this word faith – which seems to hold so much meaning –but also engenders so many doubts and so many confusions.

Twentieth-century America is not particularly noted as a country of deep and abiding religious faith. Such a description always seems to apply to far-away lands or far-removed ages. Yet someone has said facetiously that nowhere it is there such a faith as exists in modern America. The reason is that “among those enterprises which depend for success on implicit faith are love, democracy and hash.”

What is faith? If this were the summer season (and yesterday I thought it was) I might quote that definition which says that “faith is the quality that enables you to eat blackberry jam on a picnic without looking to see whether the seeds move.”

There has been some excitement in the religious press about the alleged miracle of faith which occurred in fact Fatima, Portugal, in 1917. So ‘tis said the sun danced in the heavens and a vision of the Virgin Mary appeared with the message that the Russian threat could be ended with a prayer. I do not doubt for a moment that the hot sun of Portugal may cause visions and the bright glare might be brilliant enough to so daze optic nerves that the sun may appear to be dancing and moving in a most natural or supernatural manner. But is this faith?

Very recently a great stir and fuss was caused by a photograph published nation-wide which claimed to be one of the United Nations and Communist planes engaged in combat over Korea. The white clouds had parted against the darker space in such a manner that it seemed to portray vividly a vision of Christ, miles and miles in the area with every feature perfectly delineated.

Thousands of inquiries flooded the wire service which published the picture. Surely many thought this is a vision of Christ in a world that seems to have completely and finally rejected his teachings of love, good-will and willingness to go the second mile and not give blow for blow. But as usual it was demonstrated that faith does not so manifest itself. Closer investigation revealed that this was the usual fake photograph – a picture of planes in combat over Europe in World War II had been cleverly retouched to picture the head of a man, supposedly Christ.

The thought occurs – even if this had been the real stuff – an unvarnished, completely accurate and authentic miracle, what would it prove? Other than demonstrating that the Italian and Spanish artists had been completely correct in portraying Christ as possessing the Latin type of feature, rather than the facial characteristics of the Semite the Bible tells us he was, what would it have meant that he was approving or disapproving of war? Did he favor the North Korean or South Korean? Communist bloc or United Nations? How would one know?

Faith is not only an attitude toward such things as whether or not God exerts the power of the Universe through such things as miracles. Faith must also be an act. “Faith is dead without good deeds,” said the author of the letter called James. (Goodspeed, 2/26). Faith is an act of giving – not only one’s time and money, as with the duties of a churchman to keep the institution alive and functioning, but the giving of one’s self. To be completely bound up, “sold” on a certain philosophy of life, or way of life, that all one’s deeds are dictated by it and one’s life is completely transformed by that powerful influence – that is faith.

One of the most inspirational and symbolic stories in all the sacred scriptures of the world religions is the story of Abraham, found in the early chapters of Genesis. Abraham is the patriarch of the Hebrew people. Jesus and every other Hebrew prophet looked back to Abraham for a sign of God’s approval of the Children of Israel. The old folk-story tells how God singled Abraham out. But the literal truth does not disclose the meaning of a parable.

Terah was the father of Abraham and lived in the ancient Chaldean city of Ur. We are told that Terah took his son Abraham and other members of the family and emigrated to the land of Canaan. But they never reached there. They settled somewhere else along the way and gave up the dream – the star they had never seen – and settled for less than their goal.

But the son, Abraham – he may have been of a more determined mold – or was moved more strongly by the vision of the land of Canaan – by the star he had never seen. The ancient story, with its lovely symbolism, tells how he had a vision of the Lord and how the Lord told him to start again for that promised land and if faithful he would be blessed. Then in one of the most interesting single verses in scripture, “Abraham was seventy-five years old when he left Haran. Abraham took his wife Sarah, and his nephew Lot, with all the property they had accumulated, and the persons they had acquired in Haran and they started out for the land of Canaan; and to the land of Canaan they came.” (Genesis 12/5 – Goodspeed).

Faith was a vision – a star that was not seen – and an act of allegiance to that dream that transformed it into reality.

But we would be missing the point completely if we sought only the faith of Abraham, or the faith of Jesus. For to do so is an erroneous effort to move back into the past. Abraham’s faith was not that of his father. Terah was satisfied to go only part way. Abraham was determined to go to the land of Canaan “and to the land of Canaan he came.”

One of the mistakes that large segments of people in any age seem to make is to find themselves slavishly devoted to the past – because it is the past – and content to labor at the impossible task of understanding explicitly the dream of another age and time. If your religious duty consists only in guarding the sacred records of an ancient past, then you are being cheated out of one of life’s most adventurous and stirring quests. We must realize through our own eyes, not through the eyes of some ancient prophet, that there is a “star we have never seen” and that with devotion and genuine commitment to the ideal, we may glimpse it.

John Dewey once said that religion like poetry and art is a “precious thing.” It cannot be completed and fulfilled by staying in the past and hoping that the first century can be restored. One of the most overworked stories that I know of is the one where a man announces that he has just bought two million 1949 calendars for a few dollars. The straight man asks, “what in the world will you ever do with two million 1949 calendars.” “Nothing right now,” says the comedian, but if 1949 ever comes back, think what a fortune I’ll make.” The story is humorous because in most everything but religion everyone knows that the past will never come back again.

Science, industry, and the political movements of the centuries make it utterly impossible to recreate the world of Abraham, Jesus, Luther, John Murray or even the world of the warm-hearted Universalist evangelists of a half-century ago. John Dewey said further, “We are weak today in ideal matters because intelligence is divorced from aspiration.”

In the light of today’s knowledge we know that the scientific faiths and religious acts of at least he first seventeen centuries of the Christian Era were intolerant, unintelligent and many times created an unhealthy emotional slavery. No serious student of history of religion will question it. It could be claimed that religion, at least in its institutional form, has always been a child of its times like politics and science. What was high religion for two centuries ago, cannot be today. The world has moved – so faith must keep its struggle dignified and decent by stirring men with a star they have never seen.

Have I told you that little anecdote about the early New England Parish meeting, where the devout Calvinists passed three resolutions? Quite evidently Universalism had not permeated that particular community with its wholesome teaching of the power of God’s love to bring all mankind to salvation. Anyway, this Calvinist community passed three resolutions:

1. Resolved that God’s elect are foreordained for salvation & heaven.

2. Resolved that God’s elect are the saints.

3. Resolved that we are the saints.

Is that a faith for today?

Sophia Lyon Fahs, who prepares much of the church school material for the Unitarians and Universalists has a very instructive and important article in the latest issue of the “Standard” publication of the Ethical Culture Society. In it there is a story about trying to use an outdated faith in the world of today:

Margaret was a five year old whose mother had given her Christian instruction. Margaret had been told the stories of the Bible, of Jesus and God and had been taught to pray.

“One morning Margaret was swinging in the church school playground, pushing the swing higher and higher. So confident was she that she did not even hold on to the ropes as she was swinging. ‘Margaret!’ called the teacher in charge, ‘You had better hold on to the ropes or you will fall.’ But Margaret called back, ‘Oh no, I don’t need to hold on to the ropes, I am not afraid to go high, high, high! Jesus will not let me fall!’ In a few minutes the child did fall. Bewildered, she pulled herself up from the ground, rubbed her scratched arm, and ran over to the teacher. She held out her arm, asking mutely for a little sympathy. ‘Anyway, I didn’t cry,’ she muttered.”

An equally dangerous stumbling-block for a committed faith is the danger of replacing the worn-out creeds and ideas with nothing but scoffing and criticism. There is no particular advantage in freeing one’self of crude superstitions if in their place is installed nothing but a flat, bitter derision of any hope that we can earnestly and honestly set up a quest for the good, the true and the beautiful.

There is an old fable about a convention in Hell. Satan had gathered all the subordinate Lucifers and Old Nicks from the far-flung parts of the underworld kingdom to discuss an important matter. The chief devil had received word that a spiritual revival was in progress on the earth and if steps were not taken immediately the smoothing working gears of the operation of evil influences would be jammed and halted. So the devil offered a great prize for the best solution to the problem of halting this spiritual progress.

The winning entrant submitted a three part plan: 1. Convince man that there is no heaven. 2. Convince men there is no hell. 3. Convince them that there is no hurry. Symbolically this says that the attitude that proclaims that nothing matters and it doesn’t make any difference, and it’s foolish to get excited about things because there’s nothing can be done is the great repudiation of spiritual values, the supreme antithesis of faith, the casting out from our hearts the vision of a star we have never seen.

Commitment and a working faith will keep up spiritually alive for cynicism and unending despair are deathblows to spiritual values. In a recent National Geographic the thrilling story of another adventure of Capt. Donald B. MacMillan, the famous arctic explorer, was told in the usual fascinating manner. As the trip began Capt. MacMillan was beginning his forty-second year of explorations in the frozen North. As the famous vessel was made ready for departure, a familiar question was asked Capt. Mac: After forty years of hardship and adventure, why do you go? His answer is significant, “To learn something.” I don’t know how MacMillan thinks his theology, but in his actual life he is a man with a vital faith. Because a vital faith is always willing to learn – and such a readiness can overcome cynicism and despair.

MacMillan has a vision of his task and has spent his life trying to make reality out of the vision. Prophetic vision, the star we have never seen, is a very uninteresting even cumbersome thing if we fail to try to make a reality out of it. The point of the story of the three Wise Men may be that astrologers had been predicting that one day there would be a star for them to follow. Then came the day when it came into their vision – and they followed it to journey’s end.

Miracle, if a miracle be a happening that is completely supernatural, is not needed for our perplexities and confusions. Naturally we have powers to realize something of the visions of faith. A couple of months ago I was talking to an aeronautical engineer and I asked him what I guess was a familiar question. I had heard that the body of a bee is so weighty and cumbersome in relation to the gauzy thinness of its wings that by all the laws of aerodynamics it is impossible for a bee to fly.

Is it so? “Yes,” he said, “As an engine a bee is just impossible.” From the standpoint of what we know about aerodynamics, wing surfaces and other facts of engineering, a bee cannot fly. But it does. So, (the aircraft man went on) the problem is not one for the aeronautical engineer because the bee has a different kind of energy than the revolutions of a motor. That energy is tied up with the fact that the bee is a study not for the aeronautical engineer but for the biologist. Life makes the difference.

So with faith. A dead past even with its vital lessons cannot save us. A present that denies that there are stars we have never seen (“peace on earth, good will to men.” is one of the stars we have never seen) will make a mockery and a perversion of all that makes life really worth-while. Life, together with a faithful commitment to the highest ideals we hope for, even though still unrealized, will give us a natural energy powerful enough to overcome even the most imposing of obstacles.

When the Psalmist said As the hart panteth after the water brooks so panteth my soul after thee, O God” an affirmation was being made of the religious quest, the search for the star we have never seen. Behind the oriental imagery there is a hope of a supreme existence, the vision of a spiritual accomplishment not yet achieved.

No teacher can instruct us in such a faith. Even the best of guides can but point the way – the experience must be our own. That experience is the living, acting knowledge of faith.

Let me close with another story that Dr. Sophia Fahs tells out of her long experience with children. The story needs no moralizing to point up its vital clue to the nature of genuine religious faith.

Jimmie was an eight-year old who was disturbed inwardly because of his slowness in learning to read. He was so retarded in his reading in comparison with the other members of his class that he felt disgraced. (p. 61) “His teacher finally decided to give him special attention for a while. She worked with him alone on one specific bit of reading until he felt confident of himself. Then he was given an opportunity to read this small section in a public program given by the class. Jimmie did so well in this instance that the other children recognized his achievement and complimented him. “Why, you can read well!” “Who said you couldn’t read?” “You’re a good reader, Jimmie,” – the boy’s feeling of personal worth grew rapidly.

“That night before going to bed, he was saying his prayer as usual. Now I lay me down to sleep, Bless Papa and Mama and Auntie. He stopped, usually he went on to say, “and help Jimmie be a good boy.” His mother waited. ‘And – and ...’ she started to help him. Finally came the words from Jimmie himself, ‘help me’ – but then he stopped and lifted himself from his knees, ‘I guess I won’t say that tonight. Jimmie has done pretty good all by himself today.” FAITH

The Heavenly Vision

Gloucester December 21, 1952
Bridgeport Adapted December 25, 1955

We are constantly reminded during the Christmas season of the legend of the shepherds. Carol and cartoon, anthems and art tell us the shepherds saw a heavenly vision -- heard an angel assure them: "Fear not, there are tidings of great joy."

Then the vision enlarged and the shepherds saw "a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace, goodwill to men."

Most of us believe that those beautiful legends surrounding the birth of Jesus are not historical events. Rather the stories and poems are superb efforts to express the inexpressible -- to attempt the impossible -- which is to put into words the wonder, beauty, mystery and pain that the presence of new-born life brings to a world that overlooks habitually beauty, wonder, and mystery.

Christmas is a window that lets us look at a world that ....

For the years of the lives of most of us, the words "peace on earth, good-will to men" have a hollow sound. We have seen a world that has spoken most clearly in blitz, bloody battle, brutal Buchenwalds, and barbarism made fantastically precise by man's mind and man's tools. Rather our world has taken on in part the kind of personality of the convicted murderer of not long ago whose last words were, "I hate everybody and everybody hates me."

The fact seems to be that most people do not permit a motto, even one surrounded by sacredness like "peace on earth, good-will to men" make much of a dent on the surface of their practical living.

The National Geographic tells about a river in Cambodia in French Indo-China that reverses itself. During the dry season this river flows toward and into the great Mekong river. But when heavy rains swell the Toule-Sap to flood stage, the river reverses itself and flows into the great lake it ordinarily drains.

Christmas is something like that. On the flood tide of feeling, a general warmth and friendliness permeates our lives, but soon the current reverses itself and we are back to normal. Or as Franklin P. Adams once wrote,

"Christmas is over, uncork your ambition!

Back to the battle! Come on competition!

Down with all sentiment, on scrupulosity!

Commerce has nothing to gain by jocosity;

Money is all that is worth your labors;

greed from your competitors, nix on your neighbors!

Push 'em aside in a passionate hurry,

Argue and bustle and bargain and worry!

Frenzy yourself into sickness and dizziness

Christmas is over and business is business."

In the eleventh century there was an attempted practice called the Truce of God. It was part of a monastic movement and declared closed season on the wars between the feudal nobles from Wednesday evening until Friday morning in memory of the passion of Christ. As the historian remarked, "the purpose was excellent, the success only partial."

Night-club comedian and cynic, Joe E. Lewis, phrased the distorted sense of values that seems to prevail in many aspects of our lives when he wise-cracked, "what good is happiness, it won't buy money."

But for a brief time, the current reverses, the truce of God prevails, we think of other people's happiness. For a few exalted moments, among the more reverent hours of the Saturnalia we do sense the possibility, with almost an inner sob we cry inwardly, "what if we could really catch a vision of heaven with angels singing about a reality of peace on earth, good-will toward men?

Is it possible for us to acquire the new dimension of vision that suddenly transformed the world of these shepherds? Why was their thoughtful loneliness suddenly transformed into an image of heaven that not only related to praising God, but to peace among men of goodwill?

Out of the hopes and dreams of persons in all times there has grown a store of poems, songs, folk-stories, legends -- all of which consciously and unconsciously express a yearning for the Holy -- and awareness of the intensity of the relationship between our conscious selves and the mysterious, but wonderful, force which runs through the lives of all persons and all things.

You remember last week's Swedish folk story from the pen of Selma Lagerlaf, the Holy Night? When the surly shepherd discovered that live coals did not burn a man, nor fierce dogs bite him, he asked, "what kind of a night is this?" He was answered, "I cannot tell you if you do not see it yourself." When he followed to the grotto and gave the soft white sheepskin to keep the baby warm, his eyes were opened. So it is with eyes that recognize a baby's need, and hands that are willing to give what we hold dear that we catch sight of "God's Glory."

But babies grow up -- even as baby Jesus did. Then it is more difficult to get shepherd's vision when we encounter human life and human beings. The baby Jesus grew up to be an unpopular adult. He was blunt -- after telling the parable of the Good Samaritan, he said, "go thou and do likewise." His associations were not of the best. His company included the patrons of rough drinking places and prostitutes. He was fearless -- the only religious authority for him was the inner light which was to him God and father.

Could persons still catch a heavenly vision through association with this strange Galilean who had been the little baby? A few did; most people did not -- "Crucify him!" Let's consider another of the great folk stories of mankind.

Around the search for the Holy Grail, troubadours of long ages ago wove song and story. Malory, Wagner, and Tennyson all took the old threads and rewove them into epics. According to many an ancient legend, the Holy Grail was the chalice fashioned out of one great sapphire which was uses by Jesus at the Last Supper. 'Twas believed that Joseph of Arimathea brought it to England where it was preserved as a relic and adored by pilgrims. But a descendant of Joseph broke his vows of purity and the Holy Grail disappeared. Usually the legend has the pure and stainless Galahad re-discovering the Holy Grail.

James Russell Lowell in his poetic version has enlarged the moral meaning of the tale. Sir Launfal begins his quest on that gorgeous summer day so well described,

"What is so rare as a day in June,

Then if ever, come perfect days."

Then Lowell reminds us of the lesson that Launfal must learn, about heavenly visions:

"Not only around our infancy

Doth heaven with all its splendors lie;

Daily with souls that cringe and plot

We Sinai climb and know it not."

The young Launfal casually flings gold to the leprous beggar at the gate and begins his quest. The years pass and he finds no grail. As suffering registers its meaning with him, he begins to have the cross in his heart as well as on his surcoat. Launfal, now an old man, returns in failure to the castle. Launful is poor. He has one crust of bread left out of the wealth he took with him in his crusading youth. There at the gate is the loathsome leprous man, still with his begging bowl. The aged, weary, defeated Launfal dismounts and shares his last crust with the sick beggar. Then the poet tells us of another vision. The wooden bowl becomes the precious Holy Grail, the leprous beggar becomes the glorious Christ, and Launfal ascends with him to heaven.

Launful found the grail at his own palace-gate because it was there he shared not of his surplus, of his excess, but of his necessities.

"Not what we give, but

what we share

For the gift without the giver is bare."

The shepherds saw the heavenly vision while at their accustomed duties. If we all at one table, no one would be hungry. Peace on earth, good will to me -- it's a grand and beautiful dream -- but neither Palestinian shepherds of two millennia ago nor heroic figures of English legend can make the dream come true. Only ourselves.

I yearn that I and every one of you will not only accept and rejoice in the second-hand experience of shepherds and crusaders, but that through our acceptance of the wonder and mystery of life -- and through accepting our responsibility -- for each of us there will be a heavenly vision created by peace and good-will among men.

The Pursuit of Happiness

July 25, 1954

Bridgeport (GL ’52)

Carl J. Westman

When the American colonists declared their right to revolt against the then existing government, they affirmed that human beings were endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

We live in a time when human lives are valued little in most parts of the earth, when liberty has become compromised and destroyed under the guise of patriotism in those areas controlled by the Soviet giant. Even more alarming, liberty is becoming a virtue that is questioned by many in our land where the right to freedom should be most proudly and most fearlessly upheld.

The third unalienable or right which John Hancock and his co-signers claimed was the pursuit of happiness. I want to talk about that. If life is cheap and liberty threatened, most assuredly we can state also that happiness is a condition which affects so many of the world’s inhabitants that it is no exaggeration to say that when you encounter a person who seems to be happy, something rare has been discovered. Robert Louis Stevenson once said that “there is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.”

A manufacturer or retailer, whether he sells automobiles or laundry soap, never fails to portray the users of this product in the advertisements as happy people. The implication is that if one smokes a certain cigarette, drinks a certain brand of beer, wears a suit sold by a particular store, then he will be as happy as the model who joyfully displays the item.

Is not most everyone looking for happiness or more happiness? Does not everyone feel that he could be happier than he is now? The glittering neon, the stale air and the brassy hollow laughter of many places of “entertainment” are unmistakable signs that the pursuit of happiness is a very elusive quest.

The dictionary provides us with the definition of happiness. It is a “state of well being characterized by relative permanence, by dominantly agreeable emotion ranging in value from mere content to positive felicity and by a natural desire for its continuance.” The root of the word “happiness” indicates that are originally it was synonymous with luck, good fortune or unpredictable happening. Does one have to be lucky to be happy? Is it enough to be merely contented? Cows are supposed to be contented. But even if this doubtful condition were true, who wants to be a cow? Furthermore, if happiness is merely an unpredictable result of blind chance, how can we defend the founding fathers belief that the pursuit of happiness is an unalienable right?

Ecclesiastes, the gentle skeptic, devotes a number of chapters to this question of happiness and does not arrive at any hopeful conclusion. He discusses the number of the activities of men in an effort to discover if happiness can result.

He reasons that if work were the wish of God then surely a man’s labor should bring him happiness. But in his observation he sees many cases where work does not bring happiness. Therefore he concludes that it is vanity, that is, empty, useless.

This philosopher than argues that men have no control over the events of their lives, that everything has been for ordained by an arbitrary, uncaring power. Therefore any hope that a man can achieve happiness by his own efforts is quite useless. That too, is vanity.

He goes on describing in number of events in the human pageant which are obstacles to happiness: the difficulty of obtaining justice in the courts, the futility of trying to overcome oppression, the power of competition and jealousy to prevent happiness; the well known condition, true in his day and in ours, that riches will not buy happiness; and the difficulty of retaining wealth after one has achieved at – all these he classifies as vanity.

He comes to the mournful conclusion that man’s search for happiness is doomed to failure. Labor and toil, he concludes, are our lot, and a sorry lot at that, with no more substantial reality than shadows.

What can be said in answer to this wise skeptic, whose agnostic writings should be good evidence that the Bible is man’s word not God’s?

The second great source of unhappiness is illusion. The great illusion, or mistake, is that happiness is conceived to be something to be won, like first place in a race, or acquired an as one might acquire a Persian rug or an original by Rembrandt. Most of us will readily repeat the trite epigram, “money won’t buy happiness,” but then we feel driven to qualify the statement by adding something like this, “but it’ll buy the kind of misery that is easiest to endure,” or, quoting Sean O’Casey, “money doesn’t buy happiness, but it quiets the nerves.” Such significant remarks demonstrate that we have a haunting, vague feeling that there is something vitally amiss with the attitudes we find so common, whether expressed or unexpressed, “what do I get out of it?” “what’s in it for me?” Some time ago a well known weekly magazine described how the wives of young executives in the business and professional world must observe certain unwritten laws of behavior if the husband is to advance in his chosen job. The choice of Home, automobile, even one’s closest friends, is dictated by the demands of the particular business for which the husband works. The article, even if true only in small measure, is a savage indictment of what our modern civilization may do to the worthwhile things of humanity. To some, as to the particular group in the magazine on article, success is the key to happiness.

Success, like acquiring Persian rugs, or original paintings never seems to reach a sufficiency. Like eating peanuts, the more you consume, the more you seem to want, even though additional quantities are wholly unnecessary.

In our day, we’re very much a under the influence of what is sometimes called “gracious living.” Comfort, ease and luxury are the keynotes. There’s nothing wrong with being comfortable – unless we make the mistake of thinking that comfort is synonymous with real happiness. Dr. Ralph Sockman, whom many of you have heard, once reminded his congregation that the function of the church and its ministry was to “comfort the afflicted” and “afflict the comfortable.”

If it is part of the task of organized religion to transfer some of the burdens to the shoulders of those who are at ease in Zion, then we can rule out physical comfort as the equivalent of happiness.

Is then, poverty, sackcloth and ashes the answer? In the old storybooks there appeared the story of the king who was desperately unhappy man. He sent for his philosophers, wise men, and counselors and told them that he wanted to be happy and relied upon them to tell him how we might achieve that goal. All offered solutions which failed. Then one sage told the king that happiness could be his if he would wear the shirt of a happy man.

All the king’s soldiers and messengers were sent throughout the kingdom to find a happy man. Nowhere did they find one. All men were unhappy. Finally one was discovered – a tramp taking his ease in the shade of a tree. The king’s messenger then demanded that the tramp give his shirt to the king so that the king might be a happy man. The tramp laughed, opened his coat and showed the messenger that he had no shirt.

Perhaps because of the influence of that story, for a long time I was under the illusion that the knights of the dusty roads, the romantic characters who traveled in boxcars and cooked delicious Mulligan stew in tin cans were carefree in happy, glorying in the beauties of nature and the joys of irresponsible comradeship. Like the other youthful ideas, the glamour rubbed off of the “picturesque” hoboes when I discovered that these wanderers are among the most tragically unhappy people in our whole civilization. The reason they travel the roads is because they find a living in one place impossible for them to cope with. The incidence of crime, insanity, suicide is far greater among these so called “romantic” wanderers that among other people. To yield to unrestricted wanderlust is seldom a triumph for happiness. Most often it is an admission of misery.

If happiness is not necessarily tied in with acquiring comfort, goods, power or success; and if on the other hand happiness has no relationship to poverty and irresponsibility, then what is it? Is happiness even more of an illusion than these other experiences of life?

Happiness, it seems to me, is not one of the quantities of life. It is not a thing like an upholstered chair or a rare stamp. Rather, happiness is a quality of life. Most certainly it is not a quality of life confined to a particular social structure, whether high or low. Happiness is not the possession of any particular country or particular time. Happiness cannot be packaged – but it can be demonstrated.

Happiness can be demonstrated by an attitude toward the universe. The fears that corrode happiness can be overcome by a confidence in the WORTH of this vast and mysterious condition in which we find ourselves. The fear of death that gnaws at life’s joys need not be a burden if we accept the reality of death. If we realize, without apprehension, that the end of our bodily existence is as natural a fact as the creation of life within the mother’s body, we need not fear. We fear not the rays of tomorrow’s sun although their power will surely appear to us. The next hour may bring disaster and pain – but need we fear it now? We are limited in many ways – inability to overcome the death of the body whether through age, illness, or chance – that is one of the limitations we must recognize and accept.

In the 144th Psalm the Hebrew singer says as his closing line, “happy is the people whose God is the Lord,” In addition to the feeling of at-homeness in our universe, we need another ingredient to this mixture of life’s elements which will give us a chance for real happiness.

Happiness can be demonstrated by refusing to accept the illusion that happiness is something that can be found by searching for it, as though it were an acorn and we were squirrels. (Gumpert) in his book likens the search for happiness to an incident in World War II. During the war years there arose a report that the German Luftwaffe was treating the crews of that air force with injections of adrenal hormones which enabled them to fly without any physical interference at 40,000 feet.” The rumor was false, but when it reached Washington in 1941, the Army and Navy called on the accelerated research program for the investigation and production of adrenal cortical hormones. The end result of this stimulated interest, though not useful for the war effort, was the discovery of the powerful substance for the treatment of arthritis,” which promises so much relief for a most crippling illness. Happiness too, comes unsought. Happiness comes only when we are able to look for something else.

There used to be a song, “wishing will make it so.” But it won’t. Happiness comes only from a worthwhile loyalty to important things. If everyone tried to live the motto of the Boy Scouts, to do a good turn to someone every day, then happiness would result. The secret, if it is a secret, of happiness is what you give – not what you get. I hope I haven’t told you the story (at least not recently) about the preacher who agreed to fill a supply [sic] preaching assignment in a small church in an isolated area. The preacher took his young son with him for company. As he entered the little country church, he saw a collection box placed on a stand near the entrance to the church auditorium. Thinking it a collection box for world service or relief, the preacher, hoping to set a good example for his son, who was watching him intently, placed a fifty cent piece into the slot of the collection box and went on into the church. He conducted the service and after the concluding hymn greeted the small congregation that had come to the service. As he was leaving, one of the deacons came up to him and said, “we believe in a voluntary offering to pay for the preacher in this church,” Turning to the collection box, the deacon unlocked it, removed the cover and shook the contents into the preacher’s hand. One fifty cent piece rolled out. The preacher thanked the deacon politely, although a bit ironically. The preacher and his son went to the car and started the trip home. The boy said nothing for a time and then remarked, “you know day, if you had put more in you’d have gotten more out.” So with the quality of happiness.

I think probably the most important thing that Jesus ever said was that group of suggestions for noble living that we call the beatitudes. It may be that they represent a more detailed exposition of that most vital sentence of the master, “he who loses his life shall find it.”

The beatitudes, each of with begins with the word that is translated “blessed”, are a little clearer when we realize that in place of the word “blessed” we can substitute “happy” without any inaccuracy of translation. When we do we are confronted with the true insight that the pursuit of happiness cannot be the pursuit of happiness, but the pursuit of noble ideals and high conduct. The happiness must come unsought.

”Happy are those who feel their spiritual need.” Life is lived on more than one level. If we confine our efforts, our ideas, to the material, the appetites of the body, we might occasionally be satiated, but we won’t be happy. But when we feel the need to achieve spiritual and moral goals and purposes; when we live on higher levels by seeking to translate those moral goals into conduct, then says Jesus, “happy are we.”

“Happy are the mourners.” Was Jesus joking in poor taste? Can mourners be happy? I think he was saying with condensed wisdom that the fact of our mourning, if it is a sincere mourning and not the expression of guilt or hidden satisfaction, is proof that something very precious has been present. A relationship has been achieved which had introduced into life a quality of happiness that arose above the fundamental needs to breathe, eat, and sleep.

“Happy are the humble-minded, for they will possess the land.” If you are satisfied with today’s work well done, even though tomorrow you may want to achieve better, then you will not vainly pursue the foolish goals of more and more goods and more and more power, merely to attempt to satisfy a lust for wealth and power.

And so Jesus enumerated these qualities that make for happy of “blessed” living: those who are determined that justice and righteousness will prevail; the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers; the honest martyrs – all these says Jesus, are happy.

Jesus was not deceived by that seductive illusion that happiness is tied up with anything but achieving the qualities of life. And happiness can never be found if only itself is the object of the search.

Happiness is a by-product of high religion. Because if, as the psalmist told us, “happy is the people whose God is the Lord,” and if we affirm, our Universalism is concerned with moral insights and affirmations of the ethical qualities that are possible in the scheme of living, then perhaps we may devote ourselves to life and liberty. The pursuit of happiness can be forgotten, because if it comes not as a result of our dedication to the good life, and real liberty, then it can come not at all.

Amen.