Arthur Jeffery - Sermon Untitled (March 18, 1956)

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-	It's in the 1st verse of that 14th Chapter	0:12
	of Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians.	0:16
	The 14th chapter of the 1st Letter to the Corinthians,	0:20
	and the first verse,	0:24
	"Desire spiritual gifts.	0:26
	Desire spiritual gifts."	0:32
	In writing to a Christian congregation	0:37
	in so wealthy and important,	0:39
	the commercial city is currency,	0:41
	the apostle could assume that they would be eager	0:45
	for the material gifts of life.	0:47
	But just because they were in such a wealthy,	0:51
	important commercial city, there was grave danger,	0:54
	that they might be neglectful of spiritual gifts.	0:59
	And so, we in our economy of abundance,	1:05
	need no urging, to seek the material gifts of life.	1:10
	But there is grave danger	1:16
	that we also may be neglectful of spiritual gifts,	1:18
	the things in which religion is concerned.	1:24
	Maybe it is partly on that account,	1:30
	that in certain of the great old world universities	1:32
	for some years,	1:36
	there have been meeting, winter semester	1:38
	after winter semester,	1:40
	seminars for the study of religion.	1:43
	Not any one particular religion,	1:46
	but problems of religion in general.	1:48
	And that has taken in the new world.	1:53
	And in this country also,	1:56
	there are some great universities where year after year,	1:58
	a seminar is studying problems of religion.	2:02
	It was while leafing through	2:10
	one of the religious journals one afternoon,	2:11
	that my eye caught the announcement	2:15
	of one of these seminars in this country,	2:17
	the saying that for their next group of studies,	2:21
	they would be investigating	2:26
	the function of religion in the modern world.	2:28
	Now, that was very curious,	2:35
	because in the ancient world,	2:38
	with which most of my academic concerns have to do,	2:39
	such a question could never have been asked.	2:43
	In the ancient world,	2:48
	everybody knew what the function of religion was.	2:49
	There was no need to ask the question.	2:53
	In the ancient world,	2:57
	medicine was the function of religion.	3:00
	All the ancient religions had their gods	3:05
	and goddesses of healing,	3:07
	serviced by great temples, and priests, and priestesses.	3:10
	The earliest treaties on medicine we possess,	3:16
	was written by a priest in an Egyptian temple.	3:19
	The earliest trace that we have	3:24
	of anything you could call a hospital,	3:26
	was at the temple court.	3:28
	The earliest group of men who devoted themselves	3:32
	to the care and attention of the sick was a priestly order.	3:36
	Now, the ancient world did have this household remedies,	3:42
	its domestic medicine, its old wives medicine.	3:46
	But medicine in the strict sense	3:52
	was the concern of religion.	3:54
	In the ancient world, law was the function of religion.	3:58
	True kings and nobles did exercise some justice	4:05
	and decide cases in their courts.	4:10
	And in homes, there was a certain administration of justice,	4:12
	but law, was the function of religion.	4:16
	Judges sat and heard, and decided cases in temple courts.	4:20
	All the great codes of law in the ancient world,	4:27
	were religious code.	4:30
	On the great code of Hammurabi,	4:33
	you can see the God Shamash	4:35
	handing down the divine laws for men.	4:37
	In ancient India, the "Code of Manu" was a religious code.	4:42
	Diodorus Siculus tells us	4:48
	that the greater Egyptian legislator,	4:50
	Minos of Crete, Lycurgus of Sparta,	4:52
	Zymogesic of Gati, all received their law	4:56
	by divine revelation.	5:01
	And they even all King Alfred in England	5:04
	writing down his code,	5:06
	began with the 10 Commandments,	5:08
	"Domboc Law" right under the ages of religion.	5:11
	For law in the ancient world, was the function of religion.	5:15
	And education was the function of religion.	5:22
	In the ancient world,	5:26
	schools were in temple court,	5:27
	and the teachers were priests.	5:30
	It was a priest who invented writing.	5:35
	The earliest textbooks we possess, were priestly written.	5:39
	It is true that craftsman	5:44
	taught their apprentices in the craftsmen's shop,	5:47
	and scribes taught young scribes in their houses.	5:51
	But in the wider sense,	5:55
	education was a matter of religion.	5:56
	And right down through the middle ages,	6:01
	the great schools and universities,	6:03
	both east and west, were religious institution.	6:06
	And the curriculum moved upwards to theology.	6:11
	Both theology was the queen of science.	6:15
	And literature, was the function of religion.	6:22
	In ancient India,	6:28
	the Vedas were hymns to the God.	6:31
	In ancient Persia, the Gathas and the Yasht	6:36
	were hymns to the God.	6:39
	In ancient Mesopotamia,	6:42
	the Sumerian hymns and the epics.	6:44
	In Egypt, the pyramid texts were religious texts.	6:47
	Even in Greece, Harshad and Hormah	6:52
	came to be the Bible of the Greek.	6:54
	Under that early Roman Poet (indistinct) Quintilian	6:59
	tells us that he is to be referenced,	7:03
	not so much for the beauty of his verses	7:06
	as for the religious, all that he inspires,	7:10
	for literature, was the function of religion.	7:13
	And music, and art,	7:20
	and architecture had long development	7:24
	as belonging to the religion.	7:29
	It is true that very early man,	7:32
	must have burst into spontaneous song	7:35
	to express the joy of his heart.	7:38
	And very early, he played on pipes	7:41
	and beat rhythmically on drums.	7:43
	And for his own delight,	7:47
	he drew pictures and made images	7:48
	of things that were around him.	7:51
	Man, he built his shelters for his protection	7:52
	and for his comfort.	7:55
	But God's house, was much more important than man's house.	7:58
	And it was with temple music and temple choirs,	8:05
	with the building of the houses of the gods,	8:09
	that music, and art, and architecture in the ancient world,	8:13
	had most of their inspiration to develop.	8:19
	And the ancient world amusement	8:25
	was the function of religion.	8:27
	In that world, almost all the holidays were holy day.	8:31
	The festivals of the gods,	8:37
	the great annual feasts,	8:40
	and it was the priest who worked out the sacred drama,	8:43
	the sacred dance,	8:47
	the mystery plays,	8:50
	the 101 things to gave joy	8:52
	to the people on their holidays.	8:55
	And then, the ancient world man turned normally	8:58
	and naturally, to his shrines, to his temple	9:01
	for his amusement.	9:05
	Right down to late times in Greece,	9:08
	the drama, both tragedy and comedy belonged to Dionysus.	9:10
	And the plays were performed in his temple,	9:15
	under the eye of his priest, and the very actors	9:17
	had religious title.	9:21
	And in the ancient world, the rights of man,	9:25
	where the function of religion.	9:29
	I know you can make a case,	9:34
	for times when religion seem to have held men in bondage,	9:37
	times when religion seemed to be man's oppressor,	9:43
	but there's another side to that picture.	9:45
	And there's a wonderful story	9:49
	of how religion was the one thing in life,	9:51
	which stood up for the rights of man.	9:55
	It was priests who dared to stand up before kings	9:58
	and tyrants, and robber barons,	10:03
	and fight till the last ditch	10:06
	for the rights of the common man,	10:09
	and the privileges of the underprivileged.	10:12
	But that was the ancient world.	10:17
	In the modern world, myths, law, education,	10:20
	are the functions of highly trained	10:28
	and highly specialized profession.	10:31
	And art, and music, and literature	10:35
	have long since broken any binding ties to religion.	10:40
	And for his rights,	10:46
	a man would sell them to enter his church.	10:49
	As a defense, he turns to his civic authorities	10:52
	to his social group, to his union.	10:55
	And thus for the amusement,	11:00
	well, perhaps the best, the less have the better.	11:03
	Well, what is the less?	11:08
	What is the function of religion in the modern world?	11:12
	May we suggest three things?	11:18
	First, the preacher social gospel,	11:22
	on the surface that also sounds like a superfluity.	11:28
	Because this age of ours, is of all ages in history,	11:33
	the great social age.	11:38
	In ancient Babylonia and in ancient Egypt,	11:43
	you can find evidence of social concern.	11:45
	From ancient Greece, there is a great body of evidence	11:51
	showing real social concern.	11:54
	But on the whole, it is true that our generation,	11:57
	is of all the generations known to history,	12:02
	the social generation.	12:05
	And so, we have developed our social planning	12:10
	and our social security, our socialized medicine.	12:12
	And we discussed social psychology and social ethics,	12:18
	and we have political parties called socialist parties.	12:24
	And in seminaries, we speak about social salvation.	12:28
	We've developed a pseudoscience called sociology,	12:32
	and printed the great encyclopedia of the social sciences.	12:37
	And then our colleges and universities,	12:43
	it has been a matter of pride	12:47
	to notice how the current of student interest	12:50
	has strongly turn toward social studies,	12:53
	and that is good,	12:58
	for we are the age of social concern.	13:00
	And yet, is there any age in all the recorded history,	13:06
	which has made such a called a colossal	13:12
	and such a ghastly failure	13:15
	just in the social area?	13:19
	From childhood, we were taught	13:24
	that the three great enemies of the social order	13:27
	where war, nationalism, and greed	13:30
	War, which goes lunging across our social order,	13:36
	leaving death and ruin in its trails.	13:42
	War which cuts off the flower of youth,	13:46
	just when they should be maturing	13:50
	to make their contribution to the social order.	13:53
	War, which in a few hours,	13:57
	leaves in devastation and ruin	14:00
	the things which it has taken generations	14:03
	of social cooperation to construct.	14:06
	War, which year after year, spends millions and millions,	14:10
	upon armaments and trappings of battle.	14:16
	Money that should have been spent	14:21
	on the amelioration of social conditions,	14:24
	and the bettering of the life of man.	14:27
	Nationalism, which sets up artificial barriers	14:32
	between people and people,	14:37
	group, and group,	14:39
	and labors to make the barriers stronger and higher.	14:40
	Nationalism, which teaches the children pride and arrogance,	14:46
	and the despise and hate those of other groups.	14:52
	Nationalism, which nurtures and fosters	14:57
	the very things which keep us apart	15:02
	instead of the things which draw us together	15:06
	in our common humanity.	15:09
	And greed,	15:12
	which desires to get, rather than to give.	15:15
	Which desires to exploit,	15:20
	that it may arise higher,	15:23
	even the rising higher means trampling	15:25
	other bodies in the dust.	15:28
	And we have seen the folly in the tragedy of war.	15:33
	And so, we've had peace society,	15:37
	and our peace congresses,	15:39
	and our peace conferences, and our foundations	15:41
	for the securing of a just and lasting peace,	15:45
	and a fellowship for the outlawing of war,	15:48
	and even our women's peace army.	15:53
	In 1908, at a student conference,	15:58
	I heard a member of this fellowship of peace,	16:04
	speaking to the students, a very enthusiastic speaker.	16:08
	And he said, "We students have repented of our father's sin.	16:13
	And we have outlawed war.	16:18
	in a decade,	16:22
	war and it's horror will be as extinct	16:23
	as the horror of the saber-toothed tiger."	16:28
	But in 1914 came the 1st World War,	16:32
	and presently came the 2nd World War.	16:38
	And now, to the many of my colleagues are worried	16:42
	about the possible consequences of a 3rd World War,	16:45
	and we've done nothing effective.	16:50
	We've seen the folly and the tragedy of nationalism,	16:55
	and so, we've taught internationalism.	16:58
	We've set up international courts.	17:02
	We've had international congresses.	17:05
	We've arranged for international law.	17:07
	We've spoken off international exchange of personnel.	17:11
	We've set up journals	17:15
	for the international exchange of ideas.	17:17
	We have international houses in our capitals.	17:20
	And believe me, in our classrooms where you have striven	17:25
	and we have striven mightily	17:29
	to teach students that the only true view of things	17:33
	is the world view.	17:37
	And yet our generation,	17:41
	instead of seeing lessening nationalism	17:43
	as seen the growth of our far more viscous nationalism,	17:47
	than our fathers ever knew.	17:52
	We have even seen the Jews,	17:55
	of all the centuries of being the great internationalist,	17:58
	become nationalists,	18:03
	wanting their own home and develop their own language,	18:05
	and all the rest of it.	18:08
	And we have seen the folly and tragedy of greed.	18:12
	And we have taught, and we have striven mightily,	18:16
	with our students to preach altruism instead of egoism.	18:21
	To teach them that the rule of life,	18:27
	is not to get from life all you can,	18:30
	but to give to life all you can.	18:32
	Yet only a few days ago, in Union Seminary Chapel,	18:37
	a very famous speaker told us,	18:42
	that the great sin of our generation is greed to get on.	18:45
	Who cares two hoops for society?	18:53
	And what's the answer?	18:58
	Sociology doesn't know.	19:01
	In all that great encyclopedia, there's no answer.	19:05
	But religion knows the answer.	19:10
	The answer is a gospel preached by Jesus, love.	19:13
	You don't fight those you love.	19:20
	You don't hate and despise,	19:24
	and raise barriers against those you love.	19:26
	You don't try to exploit those you love.	19:30
	You don't want to get from,	19:33
	you want to give to those you love.	19:34
	Oh, you're say, "But that's too easy a solution.	19:39
	A little love here, a little love there,	19:41
	and everything will be okay."	19:42
	No, it isn't easy,	19:44
	it's the hardest thing in the world.	19:47
	Jesus said, "If he loved them that love you,	19:50
	what His reward is there in that?"	19:53
	It's loving one's enemies.	19:57
	It's blessing those who curse us.	19:59
	It's praying for those who despitefully use us,	20:02
	and that's not easy.	20:05
	Do you think it's easy for the Arab to love the Jews?	20:08
	Do you think it's easy for the Algerians to love the French?	20:13
	Do you think it's easy for the Turks in Cyprus	20:17
	to love the Greeks?	20:20
	Glubb Pasha still lovers the Jordanians?	20:24
	But Glubb Pasha is a kindly Christian man.	20:26
	He came up and read the lesson on the Sunday night	20:30
	I preached in a little English church in Amman,	20:33
	but it's not easy, it's hard.	20:36
	And there's function enough	20:40
	for religion in the modern world.	20:42
	If it can preach and practice effectively,	20:45
	Christ gospel of love.	20:48
	Second, to provide a basis for a modal living.	20:53
	Everybody agrees that the good life	21:01
	is better than the evil life.	21:03
	That the truth is better than the lie.	21:06
	That the right is better than the wrong.	21:09
	Sometimes you do meet someone who says he does not believe	21:13
	that the good life is better than the evil,	21:16
	but he's an exception and one generally expects,	21:19
	that, that's just oppose.	21:24
	In any case, the normal thing is to believe	21:26
	that the good life is better than the evil.	21:30
	There are absconding bankers,	21:35
	but no one would ever put his money in a bank	21:37
	if he believed that bankers	21:41
	normally ran away with the funds.	21:42
	There are evil teachers,	21:46
	but no parents would ever send their children to school	21:48
	if they believe that the normal thing,	21:51
	was for teachers to be evil and corrupt the youth.	21:53
	Our whole social system depends,	21:57
	upon the assumption,	22:01
	that the normal thing is the good lie,	22:02
	and we all agree.	22:07
	And yet, when it comes down to personal	22:10
	and particular cases,	22:14
	we fall down.	22:16
	and we cry with the apostle,	22:19
	the good that I would die, do not.	22:21
	And the evil that I would not, that I do.	22:25
	Why?	22:30
	And the answer, is sin.	22:33
	Not a popular word.	22:37
	Various other fancy names are given,	22:40
	but when you look at it, it's just the same old sin.	22:42
	And we cry again with the apostle,	22:46
	"Oh wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me?"	22:48
	And religion is the only one that knows the answer.	22:57
	Some years ago, there was a novel	23:02
	written by a lady novelist,	23:04
	apparently a very clever young lady.	23:07
	I haven't read the book, I read the review of it	23:11
	in the literary supplement of the "London Times."	23:13
	And it tells how very cleverly	23:18
	she worked out her characters on her situations.	23:20
	Until presently, she got them into a terrible modal mess.	23:24
	And then the reviewer said,	23:29
	the author seems to sit back and say,	23:30
	"Well, human nature being what it is.	23:34
	What else did you expect?"	23:37
	Now, religion knows that that's a lie.	23:40
	Human nature being what it is,	23:45
	it is not necessary to slink among the gutters	23:47
	and sewers of existence.	23:51
	Human nature being what it is,	23:53
	it is possible to live resplendent,	23:55
	triumphant, victorious lives.	23:58
	At the heart of religion, there's a cross.	24:04
	And in that cross of Christ, there is victory over sin.	24:07
	And there's function enough for religion	24:14
	in the modern world,	24:16
	if religion can teach us the secret of triumphant living.	24:19
	Thirdly,	24:26
	to keep alive in us,	24:28
	the sense about kinship to eternal things.	24:32
	The orthics knew that while we are children of earth,	24:39
	we are also children of the starry heavens.	24:44
	But we live in the machine age,	24:48
	and the machine age is fast making us forget	24:52
	the starry heavens.	24:56
	We're wakened up in the morning by a machine,	24:59
	and we go into the bathroom and we shave with a machine,	25:02
	and we come down to breakfast,	25:05
	and the toast and the coffee are made by machine.	25:06
	And we don't walk downstairs, we go down by a machine.	25:09
	And we get into a machine and go to where we have to work.	25:12
	And we don't go out to speak to our friends,	25:15
	we talk to them over to a machine,	25:17
	and we turn a button and the news comes in over the machine.	25:19
	And we don't write letters anymore, it's done by a machine.	25:22
	We don't even have to go to church on Sunday morning,	25:25
	we can stay at home in carpet slippers,	25:29
	and get the whole service from the opening sentences	25:31
	to the final benediction over the machine.	25:34
	And even the mentality of the children	25:38
	is being corrupted by the machine.	25:41
	Our former chaplain at Columbia, Chaplain Knox	25:45
	was a very eloquent preacher.	25:47
	And one day at an eloquent pause in his sermon,	25:50
	a little voice came up the side aisle,	25:53
	"Mommy, can we turn him off now?"	25:56
	Turn him on, turn him off.	26:01
	The wife of one of my colleagues was telling us	26:06
	that a scripture examination in school	26:09
	where they'd been studying the Parables of Jesus.	26:11
	One of the questions was, what lessons do we learn	26:15
	from the parable of the foolish Virgin?	26:19
	And one boy, not trying to be funny,	26:23
	just answering normally, said,	26:24
	"The parable of all of the foolish virgins	26:27
	teaches us how much better it is to have electricity."	26:29
	Minds molded by the machine earthy,	26:35
	forgetting all kinship with a starry heaven.	26:39
	Once music, and art, and poetry	26:44
	kept us reminded of heavenly things, but not modern music,	26:50
	modern art, modern poetry.	26:54
	There of the Earth, Earth.	26:57
	And what is the left say of religion?	27:01
	To teach us that the things which are seen,	27:05
	are that temporal.	27:09
	It's the things that are unseen, that are eternal.	27:11
	When Jesus sent out the 70 disciples, they returned,	27:17
	and they returned with joy,	27:23
	because in that little experience,	27:26
	they'd seen the eternal breakthrough	27:28
	into the world of our temporal.	27:33
	And Jesus said, "Blessed are the eyes,	27:36
	that see the things that you are eyes have seen.	27:41
	For many kings and prophets desired to see these things,	27:45
	but saw them not."	27:50
	Beloved, desire spiritual gifts.	27:54
	Let us pray.	28:02
	Now unto Him who is able to keep us from falling.	28:11
	And to present us perfect	28:16
	before the throne of His might.	28:19
	To Him be glory in the church,	28:22
	and in Christ Jesus,	28:26
	world without end, Amen.	28:29
	(church choir singing)	28:36
	♪ Amen ♪	28:38
	♪ Amen ♪	28:43
	♪ Amen ♪	28:49
	(bell dinging)	29:02
	(church choir singing)	29:12

	(beating on percussive instrument)	0:03
	(choir sings a cappella)	0:05
	♪ All for Jesus ♪
	♪ All for Jesus ♪	0:07
	♪ This our song shall ever be ♪	0:10
	♪ For we have no hope, nor Savior ♪	0:15
	♪ If we have no hope in Thee ♪	0:20
	♪ All for Jesus ♪	0:25
	♪ Thou hast loved us ♪	0:28
	♪ All for Jesus ♪	0:30
	♪ Thou hast died ♪	0:33
	♪ All for Jesus ♪	0:36
	♪ Thou art with us ♪	0:38
	♪ All for Jesus, crucified ♪	0:41
	♪ All for Jesus, all for Jesus ♪	0:48
	♪ This the church's song must be ♪	0:53
	♪ 'Til at last her sons have gathered ♪	0:58
	♪ One in love and one in thee ♪	1:03

Item Info

Title:

Arthur Jeffery - Sermon Untitled (March 18, 1956)

Description:

Jeffery preaches that in the face of an increasingly modern age, Christians should desire the unseen, spiritual things. (Abstract created by Duke Divinity School staff.)
Key quotation: Once, music and art and poetry kept us reminded of heavenly things. But not modern music, modern art, modern poetry, they are of the earth. Earthly things. What does the left say of religion. To teach us that things that are seen are the eternal. . It is the things that are unseen that are eternal though.

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4ns0r01g

Date:

March 18, 1956

Speaker:

Jeffery, Arthur

Liturgical Calendar:

Lent

Biblical Book:

1 Corinthians

Chapter and Verse:

1 Corinthians 14:1-12

Subject:

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0022
ref5265_4fz
uachapelsermaud
duke:628049
dcrau002074
ark:/87924/r4ns0r01g
bdb6dd8f-3909-4c7c-a8c2-8e2e24929d03

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

Source Collection:

Duke University Chapel recordings

Language:

English

Location:

United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

Format:

Provenance:

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

Rights:

No Re-Use

In Copyright

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