James T. Cleland - "What's Past Is Prologue" (May 20, 1962)

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	(gentle upbeat music)	0:03
Man	Let us pray.	0:29
	"Let the words of my mouth	0:32
	and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable	0:35
	in thy sight.	0:39
	Oh Lord our strength and our redeemer.	0:41
	Amen."	0:46
	At such an academic time as this	0:57
	on the day before final exams	1:03
	on the Eve of Waterloo,	1:07
	when no one wants to hear anything new	1:13
	or even anything at all,	1:17
	what does one speak about?	1:21
	Let me think out loud with you,	1:28
	particularly with you who are graduating	1:31
	about some of the things behind you and some of the things	1:38
	ahead of you.	1:43
	Now it's most unlikely that any of you	1:45
	is going to Washington DC	1:48
	as a graduation present.	1:51
	Paris,	1:55
	Honolulu,	1:57
	Timbuktu	1:59
	are more likely ports of call	2:01
	in this era of unbelievable transportation.	2:04
	It's so easy to be anywhere	2:10
	at any time	2:12
	nowadays,	2:14
	even before the second world war	2:17
	Amherst College had to pass a rule	2:20
	that the reading period could not be taken in Bermuda.	2:24
	But come with me a figure from another generation	2:32
	to Washington,	2:36
	we shall look at only one building	2:39
	and we won't even go inside.	2:43
	If we were to enter,	2:47
	we would see the declaration of independence,	2:50
	the constitution,	2:54
	the bill of rights,	2:56
	Washington's letter announcing the victory at Yorktown,	2:59
	his inaugural address of 1789,	3:05
	the original that is.	3:10
	For the building is the national archives,	3:13
	but we won't cross its threshold,	3:16
	we shall just stand for a moment to two on the sidewalk	3:20
	outside the Pennsylvania Avenue doorway,	3:26
	and look at two massive	3:31
	seated figures,	3:34
	which flank the Portico.	3:37
	One is named the past,	3:40
	the other	3:43
	is named the future.	3:45
	That's all I want you to look at.	3:47
	Now having looked,	3:51
	let us ruminate about them.	3:54
	The statue on the left as we look toward the building	3:58
	is of a female figure,	4:02
	young	4:05
	and fair of countenance.	4:07
	She is lifting her eyes from the pages of an open book	4:11
	and gazing almost with intensity	4:16
	into the future.	4:20
	She represents	4:23
	the future.	4:26
	Now this is the statue	4:29
	for some of us,	4:32
	the past	4:35
	we've had it.	4:37
	It isn't merely graduation that we look forward to,	4:40
	the completion of a course of training	4:44
	with some degree of efficiency.	4:47
	What we yearn for is commencement.	4:50
	A chance to start in on something on our own,	4:54
	in which words like independence	4:59
	and emancipation	5:03
	and enlargement	5:06
	give some inkling of what we expect.	5:09
	We're glad we live in an age and in a country	5:14
	which is always on the go,	5:18
	which works wonders and passes miracles	5:22
	as part of the routine of life,	5:25
	space and rocketry	5:29
	and moonshots	5:32
	and open heart surgery	5:33
	and electron microscopes.	5:36
	No wonder that lady statue	5:39
	gazes with profound contemplation into the future,	5:42
	oh, there are some disadvantages and frustration.	5:47
	It is true that we can have breakfast in London	5:53
	and dinner in San Francisco	5:56
	and our luggage will be in Buenos Aires.	5:59
	But it's much worse than breakfast in Boston	6:04
	and dinner in Washington with our luggage in Hoboken.	6:08
	So some of us are glad to escape from school,	6:15
	when we say goodbye,	6:20
	it's not with the original denotation of the word,	6:22
	God be with you.	6:26
	Goodbye is going to mean good riddance.	6:29
	I once asked a boy in prep school	6:34
	if he would send his son to that prep school,	6:37
	he furrowed his brow for a few moments	6:43
	and then said in a hesitating way,	6:47
	"Yes,	6:51
	if I hated him enough."	6:53
	And so we move out	6:58
	glad to depart	7:00
	without a backward look,	7:03
	we even have our scripture text ready to quote,	7:06
	"Let the dead bury the dead."	7:10
	It was Jesus who said that.	7:15
	He's our man	7:18
	on occasion,	7:21
	especially in sayings out of context,	7:23
	like it has been said,	7:26
	but I say	7:28
	unto you.	7:30
	So off we go looking toward the exciting future	7:32
	full of enthusiasm and forgetfulness.	7:36
	And it's hard to blame us.	7:40
	If we are going to worship a graven image	7:42
	that female at the archives building	7:46
	seems to have as good a claim on us as their name.	7:48
	It's exciting to ride on the crest of the wave	7:53
	of the future,	7:58
	but there is the other statue on the right.	8:01
	It is an aged male figure	8:06
	with the closed book of history on his knees.	8:08
	He gazes down the corridors of time, retrospectively.	8:13
	He represents	8:19
	the past.	8:21
	Now this is the statue for others of us,	8:25
	the past	8:29
	we like it.	8:31
	We just as leaf stay with it.	8:33
	Our theme song comes from a musical comedy of the 20s,	8:37
	after commencement what are we gonna commence?	8:42
	The past we know the past is secure,	8:49
	therefore the past we love	8:51
	and would continue.	8:55
	One can see that in so many areas,	8:58
	Amherst College has just brought out a report.	9:01
	The question	9:06
	of size.	9:08
	The question is how big should Amherst be?	9:10
	The almost unanimous answer from the alumni	9:16
	given with vehemence was,	9:19
	keep Amherst small.	9:22
	I understand the reaction,	9:27
	I taught there when there were 600 students	9:30
	and 75 faculty members.	9:35
	I liked it.	9:39
	But 30 years later	9:43
	with population explosions	9:46
	and pressures for more people in college.	9:48
	The second question to the alumni is,	9:51
	how big	9:55
	is small?	9:56
	How big is small?	9:59
	Do you know the official Amherst answer,	10:02
	small in 1962	10:06
	is twice as big as it was in 1932.	10:10
	This is academic inflation	10:17
	and the old alumni grown.	10:21
	No one hears this question and answer	10:26
	with a different slant at Duke,	10:28
	keep Duke and North Carolina School	10:31
	are a provincial college, except in athletics.	10:35
	Now something like that is also true in other walks of life.	10:43
	A daughter of the American revolution has been cruelly,	10:49
	but not untruthfully described	10:54
	as a whack who fought in the revolution	10:57
	probably on the wrong side.	11:00
	The past has it devotees.	11:06
	Have we never long to escape to the protection of childhood?	11:09
	I remember the house where I was born,	11:14
	the little window where the sun came peeping in at morn,	11:19
	yet I wonder if it is remembered with understanding,	11:27
	perhaps it is by an Englishman,	11:31
	but an American	11:35
	centrally heated,	11:38
	air conditioned,	11:39
	concertedly lighted,	11:41
	couldn't stand that 18 century cottage of Thomas Hood,	11:44
	now probably his own needful loved cabin	11:49
	in Brooklyn or Richmond or Durham.	11:53
	And yet there are those of us	11:56
	who think that only the past is immortal.	11:58
	They are often the darlings of the alumni office,	12:03
	though the despair of the precedent.	12:07
	Now this group too has its biblical text.	12:11
	I am the God of Abraham,	12:14
	Isaac	12:17
	and Jacob,	12:19
	and probably of Mr. Washington,	12:20
	no hardly of Mr Lincoln, but maybe of Mr. Eisenhower.	12:23
	And so some of you leave us walking backwards	12:29
	because you would rather see where you had been	12:34
	than where you may have to go.	12:37
	You know I wonder why the sculptor	12:41
	made the statue of the past	12:45
	a male figure.	12:48
	There's something to ponder.	12:51
	We look with me once more at these two statues	12:55
	comprehending both at a single glance	12:59
	and noting, particularly the motto under each.	13:01
	Under the male figure	13:07
	with his ex post facto look	13:08
	are three words,	13:12
	study the past.	13:14
	Now the imperative is not that we accept the past	13:18
	or immortalize it or worship it.	13:24
	It commands us to continue that good work,	13:29
	which any reputable school or college	13:35
	should have begun in us.	13:38
	It is the essence of wisdom	13:42
	to know the past.	13:46
	It was Santayana who pointed out that,	13:49
	he who does not know the past	13:52
	is condemned to repeat it.	13:56
	And John Buchan, Lord Tweedsmuir	14:01
	has in his autobiography,	14:04
	a sentence worth thinking of along with that of Santayana,	14:06
	if the past	14:12
	to a man is nothing but a dead hand,	14:14
	then in common honesty,	14:20
	he up to be an advocate of revolution.	14:22
	But our statue says nothing about	14:29
	either keeping or discarding the past.	14:31
	It suggests that	14:35
	we study it,	14:39
	that we continue to study it,	14:41
	for it is good for us to know the rock	14:46
	whence we have been hewn	14:50
	and the pit from which we have been digged.	14:53
	Under the female figure with her in anticipation look,	15:00
	are five words.	15:04
	What is past	15:08
	is prologue,	15:10
	plucked from act two,	15:13
	scene one	15:15
	of the Tempest	15:17
	where most texts render it,	15:19
	what's past	15:21
	is prologue.	15:23
	What's past is preface.	15:25
	What's past is introduction.	15:28
	What's past is the over cure.	15:32
	What's past is the valued	15:35
	at the turn of the century.	15:38
	H. G. Wells couched the idea in hunting words,	15:41
	"The past	15:47
	is but the beginning	15:49
	of a beginning	15:53
	and all that is	15:56
	and has been,	15:58
	but the twilight	16:01
	of the dawn."	16:03
	Now there's an interesting juxtaposition of words,	16:05
	the twilight	16:08
	of the dawn.	16:11
	You see what I'm getting at?	16:14
	Stand far enough back	16:16
	on the sidewalk of Pennsylvania Avenue	16:19
	so that you may see both statues at once.	16:23
	Either alone is no guide for youth.	16:28
	He who looks merely to the past may become the (indistinct)	16:34
	is really defined as	16:40
	one who practices the blunders of his predecessors.	16:42
	She who concentrates on the future	16:49
	may discover to use a fishermen, similarly from John Buchan.	16:52
	If your back cast	16:57
	is poor,	17:00
	your forward cast	17:02
	will be a mess.	17:05
	Those of you who fish know that.	17:08
	If your back cast is poor,	17:11
	your forward cast	17:13
	will be a mess.	17:16
	The wise man is like Janus,	17:18
	the two headed god who looked both ways at once.	17:21
	His present embraces the backward and the forward look.	17:25
	Now Jesus the Christ had something wise	17:31
	to say about all this	17:33
	in the Sermon on the Mount.	17:35
	If there was one document which signified to the Jew,	17:39
	the honorable glory of his inheritance,	17:44
	it was the law,	17:50
	the Torah,	17:53
	the covenant between Yahweh and his people.	17:55
	There was a second document of almost equal value.	17:59
	The prophets, in fact sometimes the Hebrew word Torah	18:02
	covers both the law and the prophets.	18:07
	Now notice what Jesus said about the Torah.	18:11
	Think not	18:16
	that I am come to destroy	18:18
	the law or the prophets.	18:21
	I am not come to destroy,	18:26
	but to fulfill,	18:31
	I know is what he said and what he did not say.	18:34
	He was not come to a know the Torah.	18:39
	He was not one to cut loose	18:45
	from his past.	18:48
	He studied	18:51
	the past.	18:53
	Yet on the other hand,	18:56
	he did not say that he had come to keep the law.	18:58
	He did not keep the law.	19:05
	The Romans may have put him to death for treason,	19:09
	but the rulers of the Jews	19:14
	considered the cause to be blasphemy.	19:16
	Acting contrary to the requirements of God	19:21
	and claiming the sanction of God for his behavior.	19:26
	Jesus chose a third position regarding the law.	19:31
	He came to	19:36
	fulfill it.	19:39
	Now fulfill	19:41
	is a tricky word.	19:44
	It cannot mean to implement	19:49
	the intent of	19:52
	each and every	19:54
	given law in Torah,	19:57
	because sometimes he did a know the law.	19:59
	How is resist not evil,	20:05
	the fulfillment of an eye for an eye	20:09
	and a tooth for a tooth,	20:13
	it's contrary to an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.	20:16
	Jesus is moving along the line of development in the law,	20:23
	that's true,	20:27
	but he is making a tremendous jump	20:29
	when he enunciates his own teaching,	20:33
	he uses the traditional past as a springboard	20:36
	into the future.	20:41
	As he leaps from external obedience	20:44
	to our written code,	20:49
	to internal understanding	20:52
	of the will of God	20:55
	who is like a father	20:58
	in all relations with one's fellows.	21:01
	In one sense, Jesus enunciated no law.	21:05
	He described the relationship between God and man,	21:12
	in terms of the character of God,	21:17
	then he asked,	21:20
	what does that imply?	21:22
	For today,	21:25
	for tomorrow,	21:27
	for the day after.	21:30
	Fulfillment is his word for an understanding	21:33
	and appreciation of the evolution of the legal covenant	21:39
	in such a way that the interpretation	21:45
	and the consequent action	21:49
	were in line with the daily behavior of a God	21:52
	thought-of as a father,	21:57
	not as a judge,	22:00
	be it therefore perfect	22:04
	as your father which is in heaven	22:08
	is perfect.	22:12
	What's past is prologue.	22:15
	It is not contrary to the play,	22:19
	but it is not the play.	22:22
	Jesus was no revolutionist.	22:25
	He did not counsel the overthrow of the past.	22:29
	Jesus was a radical.	22:35
	He went to the root meaning of the covenant	22:39
	between God and man.	22:43
	Then he taught or first he lived	22:47
	and then he taught his interpretation of it.	22:50
	And a Christian seeks to do the same thing.	22:55
	Now there's no time for me to spell this out for you,	23:01
	with regard to the school or our country	23:05
	or your own attitude to religion,	23:10
	your school is rooted and grounded,	23:15
	but in what is it so established	23:20
	and should it be.	23:25
	John Buchan said of the United States.	23:31
	She starts from the right basis,	23:34
	for she combines a firm grip of the past	23:39
	with a quick sense of present needs	23:45
	and a bold outlook on the future.	23:49
	He wrote that in 1940,	23:54
	is it an accurate diagnosis?	24:01
	Is it still true?	24:05
	Jesus once made a promise to any who believed on him,	24:11
	greater works than these,	24:17
	shall he do?	24:22
	Do we believe it?	24:26
	Do we know what he did	24:30
	so that we may know where to begin?	24:33
	Have these two statues,	24:39
	something to say to us about education	24:40
	and patriotism	24:44
	and religion,	24:47
	would they have evoked an affirmative response	24:49
	from our Lord?	24:55
	Come back with me to Washington for one more look.	25:00
	A passenger in a taxi	25:07
	passing the national archives building,	25:09
	asked the driver what the words were	25:12
	beneath the female figure with the book.	25:15
	He was told	25:19
	the past	25:21
	is prologue.	25:23
	He asked the driver what the words meant	25:26
	and he received the shrewd reply,	25:30
	you ain't seen nothing yet.	25:33
	You ain't seen nothing yet.	25:39
	Now we may take that literally	25:44
	and be even more foolish than we think the driver is.	25:47
	Or we may grasp	25:52
	its intent and find here	25:55
	a secularized version of what Jesus called	25:59
	the good news	26:04
	of the kingdom of God,	26:06
	which kingdom may not be of this world,	26:11
	but which is seen in this world	26:17
	and which can be	26:23
	within each one	26:26
	of us.	26:29
	Amen.	26:34
	Let us pray.	26:35

Item Info

Title:

James T. Cleland - "What's Past Is Prologue" (May 20, 1962)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4z896g8j

Date:

May 20, 1962

Speaker:

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

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0184
ref5572_tgs
uachapelsermaud
duke:628602
dcrau002197
ark:/87924/r4z896g8j
e7f43fb3-e463-4581-9faf-610491b10007

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

Source Collection:

Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

Related Resources:

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Language:

English

Location:

United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

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Provenance:

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

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In Copyright

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James T. Cleland - "What's Past Is Prologue" (May 20, 1962)

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1. James T. Cleland - "What Past Is Prologue" (May 20, 1962)

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James T. Cleland - "What's Past Is Prologue" (May 20, 1962)

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