James T. Cleland - "An Analogical Doctrine of Man" (October 30, 1960)

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-	Let us pray.	0:22
	Let the words of my mouth	0:25
	and the meditations of our hearts	0:28
	be acceptable in thy sight, oh Lord,	0:30
	our strength and our redeemer, amen.	0:35
	There are some of you in the congregation this morning	0:48
	who are here because this is homecoming Sunday.	0:53
	In the name of God, whose chapel this is,	1:01
	we bid you welcome.	1:06
	But this homecoming is a very different one from the last.	1:10
	Your university has seen and felt	1:17
	an administrative upheaval, a volcanic eruption	1:20
	whose reverberations still echo,	1:27
	and whose tremors still affect the academic seismograph.	1:31
	I was overseas when the explosion occurred.	1:40
	The event did not surprise me.	1:45
	Its dimensions caught me unawares.	1:49
	Letters, cables,	1:54
	and even trans-Atlantic phone calls from Durham	1:56
	all stressed one fact.	2:00
	You are lucky to be away from Duke at this time.	2:03
	I could not entirely agree.	2:10
	Some words of Shakespeare kept sliding into my reflections	2:13
	on the struggle being waged on the Methodist flats.	2:18
	Some words spoken by King Henry V to his officers	2:23
	before the Battle of Agincourt.	2:28
	"And gentleman in England now a bit abed	2:33
	shall think themselves accursed they were not here	2:37
	and hold their manhoods cheap while any speaks	2:43
	that fought with us upon St. Crispin's Day."	2:47
	Well, I wasn't in England abed.	2:54
	I was in Scotland abed.	2:56
	And now that I have returned,	2:59
	I am looked upon by my peers as a non-competent.	3:01
	And yet, the combat with its blood, sweat and tears	3:09
	was ever with me.	3:14
	Alumni in Europe asked me about it.	3:17
	Friends of Duke, like Sir Hector Hetherington,	3:22
	the principal of Glasgow University,	3:26
	and Canon Raven, lately vice chancellor	3:30
	of Cambridge University,	3:33
	and Kenneth Wheare, rector of Exeter College at Oxford.	3:37
	They sat baffled at the reports	3:43
	of civil war from this campus.	3:46
	Their attitude reminded me of an Irishman's testimony	3:51
	after a railroad crash, where two trains	3:54
	at full speed had met head on, on the same track.	3:58
	The judge asked him, as an eyewitness,	4:03
	what he thought of the collision.	4:05
	He said, your honor, I says to myself, says I,	4:08
	that's a terrible way to run a railroad.	4:14
	The one plus for me was that my preaching dates at Duke	4:21
	for the academic year, 1960-61	4:25
	did not require my presence in the pulpit at homecoming.	4:29
	That is where I was wrong.	4:35
	The chaplain, with the connivance of my secretary,	4:39
	had changed my November date to October 30.	4:44
	What does one talk about at such a time as this?	4:51
	I thought of preaching on a revision	4:57
	of the parable of the prodigal son.	5:00
	(congregation laughs)	5:04
	How the prodigal, that is you, the alumni,	5:07
	came home in fine shape and found the home in a mess.	5:12
	(congregation laughs)	5:16
	There are two objections to that interpretation.	5:21
	The first is that it is unscriptural.	5:24
	The second is that it's untrue.	5:28
	Duke has its problems, but it's not in a mess.	5:32
	So the prodigal son in reverse was out as a sermon subject.	5:39
	Then I recalled an incident which occurred	5:44
	in my office some years ago.	5:46
	My assistant and I were puzzling over the academic	5:50
	and personal behavior of some of our students.	5:54
	And suddenly, he looked at me over his spectacles and said,	5:59
	"Dr. Cleland, I wish I had your view of man."	6:05
	Puzzled, I asked him what my view of man was.	6:11
	He answered, "You think he's an ass."	6:17
	He was somewhat right.	6:25
	You think he's an ass.	6:30
	That is the analogy which kept popping into the stream	6:34
	of my consciousness last spring as reports and rumors	6:39
	flowed across the Atlantic from Duke.	6:43
	And man, as an ass, is what this sermon is about.	6:48
	While the idea is not, in detail, biblical,	6:57
	the analogy of man in terms of an animal	7:06
	is not unknown in the scriptures.	7:09
	In our morning lesson, Genesis 49, where Jacob,	7:13
	on his death bed, foretold the future of his sons,	7:17
	he compared Judah to a lion's whelp,	7:22
	Dan to a serpent, Benjamin to a wolf,	7:27
	even in those days.	7:32
	(congregation laughs)	7:35
	And Issachar, now listen to this, Issachar to a sturdy ass.	7:37
	Our Lord was not averse to zoological analogies.	7:44
	His followers were sheep, not a high compliment,	7:49
	and Herod, the local political boss, was that fox.	7:55
	There's some precedence for an analogical doctrine of man.	8:03
	Now, I shall not exhaustively define the qualities	8:10
	and the characteristics of a donkey.	8:14
	You know them.	8:16
	Obstinacy, stupidity, it's a dumb animal.	8:19
	An unwillingness to move expeditiously.	8:26
	I would develop with you now the three points about man	8:31
	as an ass, which I made to my assistant so many months ago,	8:34
	and which the Duke fracas has stirred up	8:39
	in my blessed remembrance.	8:43
	There have been many unkinder designations of man	8:46
	than our analogy.	8:50
	Mark Twain remarked that the damned human race	8:52
	is a race of cowards,	8:56
	and the British prime minister encouraged	9:00
	a young member of Parliament	9:02
	about to deliver his maiden speech in the House of Commons	9:05
	with these words.	9:08
	The prime minister said,	9:10
	"When I rise to make a major address on a serious issue,	9:10
	I first look round at the members and say to myself,	9:16
	what a lot of fools.	9:20
	Then, I feel much better."	9:23
	Now, our analogy is not as cruel as either of these.	9:26
	Moreover, the first point to be remembered,	9:32
	utterly basic for this sermon,	9:35
	is that when I look upon any of my fellows as a donkey,	9:38
	I keep in mind that he is brother ass.	9:44
	I am one, too.	9:51
	Now, this goes beyond the dictum of St. Francis of Assisi,	9:54
	who referred to his body as brother ass	9:58
	while he literally scourged and flayed it	10:02
	with a monastic asceticism.	10:06
	It's not just my body which is an ass.	10:09
	It's I, all of me, James T Cleland in total, that is an ass.	10:11
	It's all of you, too.	10:21
	(congregation laughs)	10:24
	All of all of you.	10:25
	I'm not now thinking of a man's mental prowess	10:29
	or technical skill, but of his lack of horse sense	10:32
	in the area of living together with other people.	10:39
	So many of us detach ourselves from our fellows	10:43
	in the cooperative venture of living together.	10:48
	We look at other people scientifically, objectively,	10:51
	as objects, forgetting that we are bound together	10:55
	for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer	11:01
	in the same bundle of life.	11:06
	Oh, we can see this evidenced	11:09
	in editorial writers, columnists.	11:11
	Just read "The Chronicle."	11:15
	Faculty members, trustees, and especially in preachers	11:17
	who keep saying you, you, you, instead of we and us	11:26
	and you and I.	11:34
	There is such a thing as seceding	11:37
	from the human race intellectually,	11:40
	while failing to realize	11:43
	that one cannot secede existentially.	11:44
	Are we as objective about ourselves as we are of others?	11:49
	Some years ago, when I was teaching at Amherst College,	11:57
	that good college in Massachusetts.	12:01
	Must be a Williams man here.	12:06
	When I was teaching at Amherst College,	12:09
	the dogs of the village made a habit of coming	12:11
	to daily chapel.	12:14
	Their church going was encouraged by the student body.	12:17
	On one occasion, a dirty looking fox terrier	12:23
	mounted the rostrum, sat down and gazed at the president,	12:26
	who was speaking.	12:31
	After a few minutes, the animal shook its head,	12:33
	as if in disgust, trotted down the steps,	12:37
	and sauntered down the aisle out of the door.	12:41
	The president, in white hot indignation,	12:46
	made this statement.	12:49
	"If the student who owns this dog	12:51
	will report to my office after chapel,	12:54
	I shall be glad to give him a discharge from the college."	12:57
	There was a gentle gasp through the congregation.	13:03
	Everyone except the president knew	13:08
	that the fox terrier was owned by a professor of English	13:11
	who was right there in the chapel at the moment.	13:18
	The president was due to speak again in chapel next morning.	13:23
	The place was packed.	13:28
	After a hymn and a prayer, he rose and said,	13:37
	"Gentlemen, yesterday I broke	13:39
	the most important commandment of all.	13:43
	Thou shall not take thyself too seriously.	13:48
	I confess my sin, and I apologize."	13:54
	He had recovered his fumble and scored a touchdown.	14:00
	There was a storm of applause	14:03
	right in the middle of the service.	14:05
	Thou shall not take thyself too seriously.	14:08
	We shall take God seriously.	14:13
	And our job seriously, up to a point, but not ourselves.	14:16
	If we do consider others as asses, and they are,	14:24
	let us remember that we are bone of their bone	14:30
	and flesh of their flesh.	14:34
	There's at least this to be said about the kindred statement	14:38
	that we're all miserable sinners.	14:41
	It's at least democratic.	14:43
	Brother ass, as you are, so I am.	14:48
	It makes for modesty, and blessed are the meek.	14:54
	St. Augustine was asked,	14:59
	what is the first thing in religion,	15:00
	and he answered the first, second and third thing therein	15:02
	is humility, and with humility comes gentleness.	15:09
	Archbishop Tait,	15:15
	the great Archbishop of the Episcopal Church in England,	15:16
	often gave this instruction	15:19
	to his secretary about answering a letter.	15:21
	Tell the man he's a consummate ass, but do it very kindly.	15:25
	One will do it very kindly when he realizes	15:33
	that he's writing to brother ass.	15:37
	Now, let's look at the second facet of this analogy.	15:41
	There's an interesting and most unusual story	15:45
	in the book of Numbers.	15:48
	It tells of a donkey with second sight,	15:49
	which second sight was not shared by its owner,	15:54
	though the owner was a prophet.	15:57
	The story is commonly known as Balaam's ass.	16:00
	Now, this dumb beast saw an angel standing in the road	16:04
	and wisely swerved.	16:08
	Balaam struck it.	16:11
	The donkey laid down,	16:14
	and Balaam walloped it again and yet again,	16:15
	whereupon the donkey remarked,	16:18
	"What have I done to you	16:21
	that you have struck me three times?"	16:24
	Balaam's comment was that if he'd had a sword	16:29
	instead of a stick, he'd run the donkey through.	16:31
	The Eternal then opened Balaam's eyes, and he saw the angel.	16:36
	Whereas the donkey had just lain down,	16:44
	Balaam fell flat upon his face.	16:47
	Now, another facet of this analogical doctrine of man	16:51
	I would suggest is	16:58
	that a donkey may be an agent of revelation.	16:59
	God can make Himself known through an ass.	17:05
	This is the biblical miracle repeated Sunday by Sunday	17:12
	in pulpits all over the world,	17:16
	even in the Duke chapel at least once a month.	17:20
	Now, I don't want you to take my word for that.	17:26
	Listen to a real authority, Martin Luther.	17:28
	"God once spake by an ass.	17:32
	Therefore no man should be despised,	17:35
	no matter how insignificant he may be."	17:39
	He remarked on another occasion when discussing preaching,	17:42
	"This is hearing God Himself,	17:47
	and though an ass were to do the speaking,	17:50
	as in the case of Balaam,	17:52
	it would be nonetheless God's word."	17:54
	Now, brethren, don't take this Balaam story literally	17:57
	and ruin it.	18:01
	One brash student irritatingly asked a former professor	18:03
	of Old Testament at Duke what language the donkey spoke in,	18:08
	and he received the crushing reply, Assyrian.	18:14
	(congregation laughs)	18:19
	The Hebrew believed that the donkey,	18:27
	like other sub rational creatures,	18:29
	was gifted with clairvoyance.	18:32
	And who are we at Duke,	18:35
	with our reputation for extra sensory perception,	18:37
	to doubt or to deny it?	18:40
	Some of you don't like the idea of a donkey	18:44
	as a medium of revelation	18:47
	anymore than Dr. Johnson did that of a woman preaching.	18:48
	Do you recall what he said?	18:52
	"Sir, a woman preaching is like a dog's walking	18:54
	on his hind legs.	19:00
	It's not done well.	19:03
	You're just surprised to find it done at all."	19:05
	Johnson was not quick to look upon himself as brother ass.	19:09
	Don't despise God's use of unlikely people.	19:15
	Saint Paul, writing to the Corinthians, remarked,	19:19
	"Consider your call, brethren.	19:22
	Not many of you were wise,	19:25
	according to the world's standards.	19:27
	Not many of you were of noble birth,	19:30
	but God chose what is foolish in the world	19:34
	to shame the wise.	19:38
	God chose what's weak in the world to shame the strong."	19:41
	And commenting on these verses, one person writes,	19:48
	"God, says Saint Paul, chooses the weak things	19:51
	to confound the strong."	19:56
	God's choices indeed are enough to confound anybody.	20:00
	He seems to work on no rule, save unsuitability.	20:04
	The strange thing is that it works.	20:13
	The fishermen and tax gatherers of Galilee	20:17
	left as great a dent on history as the Roman emperors.	20:20
	Behooves us to walk wearily and expectantly.	20:27
	We never know where God will reveal Himself,	20:32
	in a rainbow, or in a burning bush,	20:36
	in a sheepherder from Tekoa by the name of Amos,	20:41
	or in distraught husband like Hosea,	20:46
	whose wife had proved unfaithful,	20:50
	in a lay preacher who stutters and stammers,	20:53
	or in a servant girl who laid the groundwork	20:57
	for Lord Shaftesbury's reforms,	21:00
	in some donkey who has seen an angel.	21:03
	It behooves us to be ready for what brother ass	21:09
	may have to say to us.	21:12
	He may have had a glimpse of God.	21:14
	As Luther pointed out, he may speak God's words.	21:17
	God is no respecter of persons.	21:21
	He doesn't play, necessarily, according to our rules,	21:23
	for His thoughts are not our thoughts.	21:28
	His ways are not our ways.	21:31
	This annoys many of us. Hmm.	21:33
	It's worse than asinine to be annoyed by God.	21:38
	And the third and last facet	21:45
	of this analogical doctrine of man remains to be touched on.	21:46
	For that, we turn to a New Testament passage,	21:51
	the Palm Sunday story	21:56
	of our Lord entering Jerusalem, mounted upon an ass.	21:58
	"Tell ye the daughter of Zion,	22:03
	behold, thy king cometh unto thee,	22:05
	meek and riding upon an ass,	22:08
	upon a colt the foal of an ass."	22:10
	This is the entrance of a king, a most unusual king,	22:14
	and the animal Jesus deliberately chose	22:20
	was one which would recall to the devout	22:25
	the foretelling of the entry of the Messiah,	22:28
	way back in the Old Testament.	22:32
	It's a donkey which carried the Christ.	22:37
	There's a Christmas legend of the reaction of the animals	22:42
	in the stable to the birth of Jesus.	22:46
	The contemptuous camel said, "Quite an ordinary child."	22:50
	The proud war horse said, "A common little kid."	22:56
	The great ox said, "A weak, miserable little thing."	23:01
	The donkey, which had carried the mother to Bethlehem,	23:07
	at first said nothing.	23:11
	It felt too insignificant to join in the conversation	23:14
	of his betters, but at last he summed up enough courage	23:17
	to say, "It is rumored that a king is born this day."	23:22
	And the camel commented,	23:30
	"Then he will need me to cross the trackless desert,	23:33
	visiting the world in his wisdom and magnificence."	23:38
	And the horse answered,	23:42
	"Then he will need me to ride in triumph through the cities	23:44
	which he conquers."	23:48
	And the ox countered with,	23:51
	"No, he will need me to carry his gold and silver."	23:53
	And so they quarreled among themselves	24:00
	as to which of them the newborn king would use.	24:02
	And the donkey said nothing.	24:07
	He thought he was too trivial to be used at all.	24:10
	He merely gazed in rapture at the mother and the child.	24:16
	But after all, it was on a donkey	24:21
	that the king rode into the city on Palm Sunday.	24:26
	Do you know the Palm Sunday donkey's name?	24:35
	Christopher, Christopher, Christ bearer.	24:40
	The one who carries Christ so that Christ may do his job.	24:47
	The ass is not only an agent of revelation.	24:54
	It is the continuing burden bearer of the King of kings	24:58
	as he journeys through the world.	25:03
	On him, our Lord depends for transportation	25:05
	from one place to another, from one era to another,	25:09
	from one person to another.	25:14
	And in that service, the donkey finds its dignity.	25:17
	At least, GK Chesteron thought it did.	25:25
	Listen to the words that GK Chesterton	25:28
	put into the donkey's mouth.	25:31
	"When fishes flew and forests walked	25:36
	and figs grew upon thorn,	25:41
	some moment when the moon was blood,	25:44
	then surely I was born	25:46
	with monstrous head and sickening cry	25:49
	and ears like errant wings, the devil's walking parody	25:52
	of all four footed things.	26:00
	The tattered outlaw of the earth	26:03
	of ancient crooked will.	26:05
	Starve, scourge, deride me.	26:08
	I am dumb.	26:13
	I keep my secret still full, for I also had my hour,	26:15
	one far fierce hour and sweet.	26:26
	There was a shout about my ears and palms before my feet."	26:31
	That's why the donkey keeps on keeping on,	26:41
	because he is Christopher, the carrier of the Christ,	26:45
	even into the daily round on the trivial tasks.	26:51
	And your name, my name, may be Christopher, too.	26:57
	A kind of spiritual Bottom the Weaver in	27:06
	a midsummer night's nightmare,	27:12
	which begins to make sense when each of us	27:16
	carries the Christ with him.	27:19
	Now, brethren, the content of	27:25
	the Christian doctrine of man is hardly exhausted	27:28
	by this analogical approach.	27:32
	But there is truth in the analogy, I believe,	27:37
	or I wouldn't have preached this.	27:39
	Take God seriously, yes.	27:44
	Take one's job seriously, yes, or maybe.	27:49
	But do not let us take ourselves seriously or too seriously	27:56
	as alumni, students, faculty, administration, trustees.	28:04
	Then, we shall behave without personal arrogance	28:17
	and disrespect for our opponent	28:23
	even when we differ in principle or in methods.	28:26
	Then, we shall repair and preserve and further	28:33
	this academic community as a community.	28:37
	A donkey has spoken, hopefully under God.	28:49
	Let him who has ears long enough to hear, hear.	28:55
	Amen, let us pray.	29:04
	Oh, God, who bestoweth good gifts on men,	29:13
	grant us one more,	29:20
	the sense of humor,	29:24
	which makes us laugh at ourselves	29:26
	so that seeing ourselves as we see others,	29:31
	we may live in unpretentious harmony,	29:36
	one with the other, through thine in dwelling spirit,	29:40
	and may the grace of the Lord, Jesus Christ	29:46
	be with you all evermore.	29:52
	(church choral music)	29:58

Item Info

Title:

James T. Cleland - "An Analogical Doctrine of Man" (October 30, 1960)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4ws8nn5w

Date:

October 30, 1960

Speaker:

Cleland, James T. (James Tough), 1903-1974

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0122
ref5445_qj1
uachapelsermaud
duke:628668
dcrau002142
ark:/87924/r4ws8nn5w
37c3ec2d-856f-4200-8b82-900df6bfe317

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Duke Chapel Recordings

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Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

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North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

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

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James T. Cleland - "An Analogical Doctrine of Man" (October 30, 1960)

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1. James T. Cleland - "An Analogical Doctrine of Man" (October 30, 1960)

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James T. Cleland - "An Analogical Doctrine of Man" (October 30, 1960)

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