Albert C. Outler - "So What Have You Done for Me Lately?" (December 10, 1967)

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-	The maxim that comes from the mouth of Jesus.	0:03
	See obviously took it seriously.	0:05
	This notion that a mans life	0:08
	may be measured by his response to his opportunities.	0:11
	It sounds dreadfully moralistic,	0:16
	but who will deny that Jesus understood it as integral to an	0:18
	authentic style of life?	0:23
	And who will deny that it was one of	0:27
	the ordering principles of those forebears	0:29
	whom we rejoice to honor here today?	0:31
	And yet it strikes a discord in our modern years.	0:36
	And this is itself a clue to the climate of our generation.	0:40
	These are the days of the now generation.	0:45
	There is a soft drink that makes a pitch about it's	0:47
	now taste	0:50
	and there's a new university further up east	0:51
	that advertises itself as the now university.	0:55
	The past goes unremembered	1:00
	and the future is dreaded.	1:02
	Change is the only constant in the relentless flux of	1:05
	continuing social revolution.	1:09
	Mutations come so fast that we cannot assimilate them.	1:13
	And so slow that the discontented go unsatisfied.	1:17
	Ours is an age that mingles idealism and outrage.	1:23
	When disintegrating value systems pose dangers	1:28
	as dire as the specter of disintegrating atoms.	1:32
	No, this has been given trenchant commentary by Eric Hoffer,	1:37
	our wonderful modern Montaigne.	1:41
	It's his thesis in the tempo of our times that the presence	1:45
	of a global population of juveniles,	1:49
	is irreverent term for young folks,	1:53
	spells trouble for everybody.	1:57
	No country is a good country to its juveniles.	2:00
	Even in normal times,	2:04
	every society is in the grip of a crisis when a new	2:05
	generation passes from boyhood to manhood,	2:09
	but ours are not normal times.	2:13
	Our social chemistry has gone awry,	2:15
	no matter what ingredients are placed in the retort,	2:19
	the end product is more often than not explosive.	2:22
	The chief trait,	2:26
	which characterizes the temper of odd times is impatience.	2:27
	Tomorrow has now become a dirty word.	2:32
	The future is now and hope has turned into desire.	2:36
	The adolescent cannot see why he should wait to become a man	2:40
	before he has a say in the ordering of domestic and foreign	2:43
	affairs.	2:46
	He is panting to act as a pathfinder in the van of mankind.	2:47
	Rudeness has become a substitute for power,	2:53
	for fate and for achievement.	2:57
	Now one of the obvious side effects of such a mood	3:00
	is that in it	3:02
	the past is readily dismissed by common consent as more of	3:04
	an incubus than a blessing.	3:09
	The past is prologue.	3:12
	So runs the motto on the portal of the national archives,	3:14
	with a bow to Shakespeare's Tempest.	3:18
	But most of my young friends feel strongly that their	3:21
	prologue was a flawed affair,	3:24
	which they would rather shed than celebrate.	3:29
	God knows, they say the world we have had	3:32
	forced it on us, is a plus perfect mess,	3:34
	or stronger words to the same effect.	3:38
	It is so grimly unsatisfactory that many are trying	3:41
	to opt out of it.	3:44
	Others turn to destructive protest, fiercely self-righteous.	3:47
	There are those who really do believe that	3:52
	they can grasp the sorry scheme of things entire,	3:54
	shatter it to bits and then remold it nearer to their	3:58
	hearts desire.	4:01
	And so they turn away from the past in conscientious,	4:04
	ingratitude.	4:08
	They know that they are as of a legacy once called great,	4:10
	but they scorn to be beholden to it.	4:14
	They liked the wheeler dealer in the old ways	4:18
	who came in to foreclose on an old family friend.	4:20
	The victims plea for mercy was the recital of what he had	4:25
	done for his tormentor in times past.	4:29
	Given him his first job, introduced him to his wife,	4:32
	bailed him out of bankruptcy, et cetera, et cetera.	4:36
	And at the end of this recital,	4:40
	the entrepreneur brushed it all aside	4:42
	with the scornful question	4:44
	"so what have you done for me lately?"	4:46
	But then can Founders Day mean in such a climate when it is	4:52
	also true that our founders did -	4:57
	that what our founders did for us	4:59
	is so plainly insufficient that we have to keep on	5:01
	building and rebuilding and developing and redeveloping.	5:06
	When the financial goal of your fifth decade program is	5:11
	nearly thrice the sum of your original endowment.	5:14
	What word it is that from, from this particular past,	5:18
	that remains worthy of hearing in the present for the	5:22
	future?	5:25
	Well, this much at least,	5:27
	that we are as responsible for the making the	5:30
	utmost of our unmerited gifts,	5:33
	as our founders did with theirs.	5:36
	This may sound trite,	5:39
	but to accept it,	5:42
	to affirm it then to express it in effective living would be	5:43
	the purest honor in our power to offer to their memory	5:48
	today or any day.	5:51
	I am as willing as Anthony was	5:55
	to bury the past and not to praise it,	5:57
	but not without a word of testimony to its achievements	6:00
	and that present import.	6:03
	As a merited member of	6:06
	more successive now generations than I care to remember,	6:09
	I claimed the right to call attention to those convictions	6:13
	and passions that fueled and guided our forefathers,	6:17
	not merely in their praise,	6:22
	but in solemn testimony that their best convictions and	6:23
	passions are still urgently relevant for us	6:28
	here and now.	6:32
	The founders I knew or knew about didn't spend a lot	6:34
	of time looking back either,	6:38
	only enough to gain and keep perspective.	6:41
	And what they would ask of us is that we review the past for	6:44
	its insights and that we plot the future with hopeful plans	6:47
	for real action.	6:52
	In such a testimony my first point is	6:55
	that history has a striking way of confounding	6:57
	contemporary judgments, as to who the real swingers and	7:00
	the real squares really are.	7:05
	When Frederick Martin has spoken of	7:08
	the current nouveau avant.	7:10
	The group of frenzied people	7:14
	failing in their struggle to keep up with	7:17
	modernity, to stay in,	7:20
	to make pace with what's happening.	7:22
	Naturally and up,	7:27
	this is more than flesh and blood can manage.	7:28
	Hence the desperate recourse to drugs and hurt behavior	7:30
	in lieu of self-reliance.	7:34
	And then there was the pathetic story in The Times,	7:38
	two weeks ago of how ex-professor Timothy Leery has now	7:40
	become the ex-guru of the league for spiritual discovery.	7:44
	I have no qualms with the leagues message, that you are free	7:50
	to do your own thing,	7:55
	but it is always fair to ask if a given thing is a real	7:58
	doing or a disastrous self deception.	8:01
	And it comes to mind that the now bedraggled motto tune in,	8:06
	turn on, drop out, is a close paraphrase of the alibi of the	8:10
	unprofitable servant in our parable.	8:15
	I took your money, I wrapped it in a sock	8:18
	and I left it while I went about my tripping.	8:20
	See, here it is.	8:24
	Now for all their faults and shortcomings,	8:27
	our founders saw life with clearer eyes than this.	8:29
	They were for the most part compulsive types	8:33
	who were enchanted by goals and dreams	8:36
	that seemed unreal to most of their contemporaries.	8:39
	They sometimes drove themselves and others to tasks that we	8:42
	might wish had been conceived in different terms.	8:46
	Now they weren't non-conformists but have a different style	8:49
	than nowadays when nonconformity has to run in packs	8:53
	and wear uniforms in order to sustain itself.	8:57
	It is not that they were heroes or saints,	9:02
	nor that they ever saw the fullness	9:05
	of their dreams come true.	9:07
	The men who led the light from the Union Institute to	9:09
	Trinity College to Duke University were constantly engaged	9:13
	in an unequal struggle between need and resources.	9:18
	With inadequate support	9:22
	in a climate where the correlation of eruditio	9:25
	and religio	9:29
	was suspect by the Pius.	9:31
	As indeed it still is.	9:34
	Though now for the quite opposite reason by the non Pius.	9:35
	But I came to Duke in 1938,	9:41
	it could still be said that the buildings were more imposing	9:44
	than the academic community that dwelt therein.	9:48
	And yet it was that first century, and most	9:52
	especially its last two decades,	9:55
	that created the exciting and demanding future	9:57
	that lies before you now.	10:01
	You are as not only to a great tradition of great	10:03
	philanthropy, but of a lifestyle,	10:07
	a gospel of opportunity and duty,	10:10
	that is still more relevant	10:14
	and valid than most of its alternatives.	10:15
	It's jist was this.	10:19
	That the enduring significance	10:22
	of a mans life	10:25
	lies in what he does with his abundance,	10:27
	whatever that abundance may be.	10:31
	It is I take it a truism that human culture in all its	10:34
	higher reaches is the product of the use or abuse	10:38
	of surplus accumulations	10:43
	in any given population and a surplus of food.	10:45
	Well, the invention of creative intelligence, et cetera,	10:49
	et cetera.	10:53
	When the bulk of human energy is absorbed	10:55
	in the prime necessities of self-maintenance	10:59
	and there's only a meager margin left	11:03
	for being really and fully human.	11:05
	On the other hand,	11:09
	when there is ample food and shelter and fun and games,	11:10
	but no passion to surpass,	11:16
	society stagnates, all calcifies.	11:19
	It is with surpluses.	11:24
	And the concern for their creative use	11:26
	that the agony of culture begins,	11:29
	and it is an agony.	11:33
	For with the same surplus	11:36
	the haves can oppress the have-nots or the wise	11:37
	and the good can create those values	11:41
	that mark civilization all from savagery.	11:44
	What a man does with what he does not really need	11:48
	for mere survival	11:52
	defines his true humanity and writes his real epitaph.	11:55
	In amassing and managing one of the great American fortunes,	12:01
	the dukes and their associates were conspicuous both for	12:05
	their energy and enterprise.	12:09
	And yet also for their humane concern	12:11
	and their effective generosity.	12:14
	There are not many comparable cases to match the results	12:18
	they achieve in American education	12:20
	and in their contributions to church and society.	12:23
	And they were children of their ages and their clay feet	12:27
	were boldly exposed,	12:31
	but they were creative men,	12:34
	visionaries, architects, builders.	12:36
	They were disciplined men desiring to be judged by results	12:41
	and not merely by good intentions.	12:46
	They were men of character and a code,	12:49
	self accepted, self-administered, self-assessed.	12:52
	Their kind has been truly analyzed by Leon Harris	12:59
	in his superb recent biography of a kindred soul	13:02
	in the same tribe, Godfrey Lowell Cabot.	13:06
	He, Godfrey Cabot, and this could be said	13:10
	of all the founders that I knew, was a hero,	13:12
	not in the Greek sense,	13:17
	but in the only sense in which we have heroes left.	13:19
	A man who performs over and above his duty	13:23
	by normal standards, who marches to his own drums	13:26
	and is willing to take risks in doing so.	13:31
	Who is dedicated in the literal sense of self placement	13:35
	without stint, not driven through a position,	13:39
	but self given and whose life is ordered by such presently	13:44
	on fashionable words, as duty, probity,	13:48
	integrity and character.	13:53
	But surplus money, even in quantity	13:57
	and without strings cannot build a university without yet	14:00
	another surplus fruitfully managed.	14:04
	Leisure time.	14:07
	Too many of us have forgotten or never knew that the Greek	14:10
	original for our word scholar, 'scholae',	14:14
	means leisure time	14:17
	or by extension	14:20
	a man with time to think and the disposition to do so.	14:21
	And your predecessors here,	14:27
	the faculty and students, had far less leisure	14:29
	than they needed or than would now be thought minimal	14:32
	for academic excellence.	14:35
	My first teaching load was now twice	14:36
	what would be normal usage.	14:39
	Moreover, our amassed capital from the leisure of other men,	14:42
	which being interpreted is the library,	14:46
	was still comparatively meager, even in my time.	14:50
	The status of eggheads in the environing	14:54
	society of this region was only barely respectable	14:57
	and their influence in practical affairs was negligible.	15:01
	And yet it was these men and women	15:04
	who rooted the scholarly tradition here,	15:06
	who cultivated the arts and sciences of critical inquiry and	15:09
	taught others to do so who blazed a trail that has not yet	15:13
	been followed to its end.	15:17
	And so the story goes of men who wrote well with their	15:21
	abundances and who have earned the right to ask us	15:26
	how well we are doing, or proposed to do	15:30
	without us.	15:34
	It is here that the salute to our founders	15:36
	becomes a challenge to ourselves to	15:38
	to self examination and self dedication.	15:40
	Well, there never was a generation	15:45
	so immersed in abundance as our own.	15:46
	There is indeed a sort of surf it off it on the abundance of	15:49
	abundance.	15:53
	As the flower children are trying to tell us	15:55
	in their garish ways.	15:57
	And as all the prophets prophesied,	15:59
	there will be more leisure and more gadgets	16:02
	and more affluence.	16:05
	There will be more people with more time	16:06
	and at least the technical means to manage larger surpluses	16:09
	more creatively than ever before, since Eden.	16:14
	And yet we already know,	16:20
	and the knowledge strikes panic in our hearts,	16:21
	that our equivalent of the achievements	16:24
	and contributions of our forebears	16:26
	will demand of us a discipline and dedication of	16:30
	heart and mind and will that we are loathed to impose upon	16:33
	ourselves and that cannot be imposed upon us by others.	16:37
	It is closed to us	16:42
	to replicate the feats	16:45
	and the failures of the founders.	16:46
	It is open to us to receive their legacy.	16:51
	Gratefully to renew it's imperative of noblesse oblige.	16:56
	In our time and our circumstances	17:02
	to stretch out our vision of now	17:06
	to include our duty to the future,	17:09
	to make the most of change	17:13
	and not merely to endure it's happening.	17:15
	There is the challenge of poverty in an affluent society.	17:19
	There is the challenge of human equality and harmony	17:22
	in a race conscious society.	17:26
	There is the challenge of license and violence	17:29
	in a free and ordered society.	17:31
	There is the anguished hope of peace in a war torn world	17:34
	haunted by the terrors of	17:38
	alternate incineration or irradiation.	17:40
	And most of all,	17:43
	there is the challenge of being truly human ourselves,	17:44
	of finding the wisdom and the will	17:49
	to distinguish license from liberty.	17:52
	Outrage from moral indignation,	17:55
	tantrums from significant witness and real results.	17:57
	It will not do to plead the enormity	18:03
	of the issues before us.	18:05
	By any fair comparison, our forebears underwent	18:08
	as much as ever we must face.	18:12
	And if they bequeathed us the world in agony	18:16
	let us be well, lest we ensure that the agony	18:19
	will never end or end in some	18:22
	final flash of meaningless destruction.	18:25
	They were men who hated to lose on their investments.	18:29
	We are their chief investments and they would happily	18:33
	forego all our eulogies of them	18:38
	in exchange for our catching	18:41
	and keeping their spirit and their faith.	18:43
	And thus, we come at last to the heart of the matter.	18:50
	The vision of the good society is fatally blurred	18:53
	by men who suppose that it is no more than a human task,	18:57
	a human achievement.	19:03
	The secular city is finally unfit for human habitation	19:06
	without the reconciling for forces of love	19:11
	and hope and faith.	19:13
	The parable of the talents makes sense	19:17
	only in the context of the kingdom of God.	19:19
	The righteous rule of God in the hearts and lives	19:23
	of men and women.	19:25
	Humanity will never experience the fruition of	19:28
	its hopes and expectations,	19:31
	apart from the acknowledged Lordship of Jesus Christ,	19:32
	the man who makes our manhood actual and real through God's	19:37
	sovereign love, incarnate in Him.	19:41
	It was no mere whim of Mr Dukes	19:47
	that placed this chapel in the center of the campus,	19:50
	and it has been no accident that its influence in this	19:53
	community, both symbolic and actual	19:56
	has made an enormous difference in	19:59
	the life of this university and of this region.	20:01
	Which can be measured merely by imagining	20:05
	how it would be here now,	20:08
	if there had been no such symbol of religio here,	20:09
	to match the omnipresent tokens of eruditio,	20:15
	here and elsewhere.	20:19
	And so Founders Day is a day for remembrance,	20:22
	for reverence, for gratitude,	20:27
	for renewed perspective.	20:31
	It is also a day of resolution and dedication.	20:34
	It is rather for us, the living, and all that.	20:37
	This then is no mere ritual episode,	20:42
	no mere routine ceremonial.	20:46
	For on our response to what is here remembered	20:50
	and portended	20:55
	hangs the sincerity of our faith	20:57
	and the verity of our confession,	21:00
	that we shall hear presently	21:03
	in the hallelujah chorus.	21:05
	That the Lord God omnipotent does indeed	21:07
	reign and shall reign	21:12
	forever and ever.	21:15
	Amen.	21:20
	Let us pray.	21:21
	Almighty God who has given us a goodly heritage beyond our	21:26
	deserving and has set us to tasks and	21:29
	goals beyond our powers of full achievement.	21:34
	Forgive us, our failures of nerve, hope and vision.	21:38
	Strengthen our hearts and wills to make the most of our	21:42
	futures in faith and love.	21:45
	And so enable us to honor the memory and the purposes of	21:49
	those we gratefully name,	21:53
	our founders in this place.	21:55
	May the best in the past inspire us	21:58
	and may the good in the present	22:02
	give us courage and may the future beckon us	22:04
	and to yet more useful life and work,	22:09
	through Jesus Christ, our Lord.	22:14
	Amen.	22:18
	(hymn playing)	22:26
	(choir singing)	22:34
	(hymn stops)	27:18
	The peace of God which passes all understanding,	27:18
	keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God	27:22
	and of His son, Jesus Christ, our Lord,	27:26
	and the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son,	27:29
	and the Holy Spirit be among you and remain with you always.	27:33
	Amen.	27:39
	(music playing)	27:40
	(choir singing)	27:43
	(music and choir stop)	28:12
	(bell rings)	28:18
	(music playing)	28:37

Item Info

Title:

Albert C. Outler - "So What Have You Done for Me Lately?" (December 10, 1967)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4mp50p69

Date:

December 10, 1967

Speaker:

Outler, Albert C.

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0409
ref6021_o9y
uachapelsermaud
duke:628434
dcrau002401
ark:/87924/r4mp50p69
302b6d43-669d-444e-b074-28fba25bfcf2

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Duke Chapel Recordings

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Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

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The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

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Albert C. Outler - "So What Have You Done for Me Lately?" (December 10, 1967)

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1. Albert C. Outler - "And So What Have You Done for Me Lately?" (December 10, 1967)

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Albert C. Outler - "So What Have You Done for Me Lately?" (December 10, 1967)

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