Below is the 1936 New Year's Day sermon "The Cynic's New Year" from Methodist preacher Reverend Clovis G. Chappell
that appears in his book: Chappell, Clovis G. Chappell's Special Day Sermons. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1983. Print.
I included short editorial comments, such as giving chapter and verse of the Bible verses cited in Chappell's sermon, between square brackets [] I enclosed longer discursive comments, such as hymn hymn titles of lyrics Chappell quoted, between scissor snips ✂️---------------------------------------
The Cynic's New Year
(New Year's Day)
"There is no new thing under the sun"
Ecclesiastes 1:9
Here is a man for whom life has obviously grown stale. He has suffered heavy and tragic losses. Among these, surely one of the most pathetic is the loss of his new year's day. Of course January 1 came to him every twelve months, even as it did to others. But it had for him no thrill of expectancy. It never meant a resurrection of hope. It never brought a revival of courageous effort to attain the heights. No longer did he allow himself to be betrayed by it into making rash resolutions for the achieving of the impossible. In fact this day had ceased altogether to be for him the beginning of a new year. It was only the beginning of another year of boredom and yawns, of disgust and despair, of wearily trudging through a monotonous waste of desert sand.
Now, the trouble with this man is that he has allowed himself to become a cynic. His cynicism is bold and pronounced. He calls himself the preacher. Being a preacher, he follows the time-honored custom of taking a text. Of course a good text is the first step toward producing a good sermon. But this preacher is not at all happy in his selection of a text. He does not select a passage that is warm with a sense of the love and fatherhood of God. He does not select one that is radiant with the expectation of the coming of a better day. No more is his text buoyant with the bracing assurance that the life that has lost its tang may recover its freshness and buoyancy. On the contrary, his text is about as sunny as a sob. It is about as hopeful as a wail of despair. Listen to the bitterness of it: "Vanity of vanities; all is vanity." [ Ecclesiastes 1:2 ] No wonder that for him there is no new thing under the sun.
I
How has he come by his cynicism? I don not think that it is born merely of ignorance and inexperience. He is no youthful student just in from college, eager to impress his elders with his superiority. I do not take it that he is trying to shock us with his bold and daring wickedness. We are never greatly startled by hearing some young chap swaggering boast of his unbelief. We are not greatly frightened when he utters wisecracks as to the worthlessness of life in general. We realize that often he is only a little puffed up over his superficial knowledge; that he is perhaps wiser now, at least in his own estimation, than he will ever be again. Often, too, he is only parading in the borrowed garments of cynicism. But such is not the case with this man. His is far more than a mere pose.
No more is this man a cynic because he is passing through a temporary fit of the blues. The best and strongest men sometimes lose heart. Elijah was a man of tremendous courage, but he ran for his life one day, to fling himself down under a juniper tree and request for himself that he might die. John the Baptist was a man of colossal strength, but after days spent in a dungeon he began to wonder seriously if his while ministry as the forerunner of the Messiah had been no more than a tragic mistake. But these men were not at their best. Often we utter sentiments in our hours of depression of which we are heartily ashamed when we come to our more normal days of sunshine and hope. But the cynicism of this preacher is far more than a passing fit of depression.
There are also those who become cynical through great disappointment. Dean Swift was such a man. He dreamed a big dream of power, but the prize that he sought to grasp somehow escaped him. He did not take his defeat cheerfully. He became exceedingly bitter. Disappointed by the world of men, he sought to get back at them through the sharpest and most cutting sarcasm. "His laughter jars upon us," says[ William Makepeace ] Thackeray, "after seven score years . . . . . He was always alone, alone and gnashing, except when Stella's sweet smile came and shone upon him. When that went, darkness and utter night closed over him."
✂️---------------------------------------
Quote from Thackeray, William Makepeace., and Anne Thackeray Ritchie. Works of William Makepeace Thackeray, Vol. 11, Nabu Press, 2012. and link to google books online edition
✂️---------------------------------------
He was embittered by a great disappointment. But this was not the case with the preacher. So far as we know he had realized all ambitions to the full.
Then there are those whose lives are darkened by great suffering. Job stood up bravely under blow after blow. At last pain laid hold of him and tortured him with unspeakable anguish. It was then that he lost his grip. It was then that he cursed the day that he was born. It was then that he looked eagerly toward death and to a resting place in the grave where the wicked cease to trouble and the weary are at rest. But his wail of despair was tortured out of him by the cruel fingers of desperate pain. Many a man on the rack has confessed to that of which he was not guilty. But this cynic, so far as we know, was in perfect health, and had never been the victim of any physical suffering.
Why, then, I repeat, is this man a cynic? He would have us believe that his is a deliberate and reasoned cynicism. And in a sense this is true. He is the type of cynic that has least excuse for existing, for life seems to have dealt kindly and bountifully with him. He has not been scourged into his cynicism by bitter suffering and heartache. He rather tells us that having tested the things that men think most worth-while, he has found them to be vanity; that having done much experimenting in the laboratory of life, he finds no other position than that of cynic possible. But in reality his cynicism is not so much a child of the head as of the heart. His real trouble is that he has no faith in God. Being without God, he is naturally also without hope.
II
What are some of the things that he has found to be vanity?
1. This physical universe. Other men have looked about them in this marvelous world and have been made to wonder and worship. The psalmist, as he looked into the heavens, heard them "declaring the glory of God." Addison, looking into the same heavens and watching the stars in their courses, sang:
"What though in solemn silence all
Move round that bright celestial ball;
.......................
In reason's ear they all rejoice,
And utter forth a glorious voice,
Forever singing as they shine
'The hand that made us is divine.'"
✂️---------------------------------------
Addison's text was adapted to hymn "The Spacious Firmament on High"
✂️---------------------------------------
And Mrs. [ Elizabeth Barrett ] Browning found earth literally "crammed with Heaven and every common bush aflame with God." [From the poem "Aurora Leigh"] But when this preacher looked he saw nothing to give him a thrill. He saw nothing beautiful or exciting. He could not look at earth or sky without stifling a yawn.
"O world as God has made it! All is beauty!" sings [ Robert ] Browning [from the poem "The Guardian Angel"] "No such thing," answers this cynic. "I see no beauty at all. Why look, the winds move in circles. The breeze that fans your face today will come back tomorrow. It never gets anywhere. The rivers flow into the sea, but the sea is never full because the water is carried back into the hills and poured out into the rivers again. Therefore the waters are moving in circles. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west with monotonous regularity. The petty race of men are toiling heatedly at the same tasks at which their dead fathers have toiled. The whole business is a wretched treadmill, about as purposeful and exciting as a squirrel chasing itself in a cage." [this seems to be a paraphrase of Ecclesiastes 1:5-7 ]
2. Pleasure. This cynic gave himself to the task of having a good time. His resources were abundant. He flung himself into the enterprise with abandon. There was no pleasure from which he held his hand. Every road that gave promise of a thrill he traveled. But he comes back from all his quests spitting the ashes of his burnt-out hopes from his lips saying, "Vanity of vanities. There is no new thing under the sun." [ Ecclesiastes 1:2 ] And it is a pity that every votary of pleasure in this amusement-mad day would not read and take to heart at least this much of his confession.
3. Achievement. This man set himself to the task of doing things that the world counts most worth doing. He became a builder. He constructed palaces. He beautified cities. He changed landscapes into gardens. The wilderness and the solitary place became glad at his touch, and the desert rejoiced and blossomed as a rose. In addition he amassed a vast fortune. He heaped up silver and gold. He possessed himself of a great retinue of slaves. But when he had completed all the enterprises to which he turned his hand, again he muttered in disgust, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!"
4. Wisdom. Next the preacher set himself to acquire wisdom. One province of wisdom is to know. By experimenting in this field he reached the conclusion that wisdom is better than folly, as light is better than darkness. But he discovered that because the wise man knows more than the fool, he also suffers more. Therefore, he concluded that it is better to be a happy fool than a wretched wise man. [Seems to be a paraphrase of Ecclesiastes 2:14-15] Naturally he flung away from wisdom as a vain and futile thing, for, of course, "where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise." [from Thomas Gray poem "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College"]
Then wisdom means not only the power to know, but to put knowledge into effect. It is power to be. To gain wisdom is to gain virtue. It is to win goodness. But he decided that this was also vain, since goodness met no reward. In proof of this it is striking that he appeals to the experience of another rather than to his own. Being good was not quite in his line. He tells, therefore, of a poor wise man who saved his city. "But," says he, "nobody appreciated him." And if he met no appreciation at the hands of men, neither did he meet any at the hands of God. Therefore, to be wise is absolutely useless. It brings no reward, either here or hereafter. "How dies the wise man?" he asks. "Even as the fool." And both of them die as the beast. The wise, the fool, and the beast all end in a common heap of mud. [Seems to be a paraphrase of Ecclesiastes 2:15-16]
5. Man. The preacher reached a desperate conclusion that man also is vanity. This is true for two reasons.
(1) Because mankind is almost universally bad. This cynic did not know any good folks. Being a man, and having some loyalty to his own sex, and deciding to spare himself, he said that there might be one good man in a thousand; but as for a good woman, such a thing did not exist. How lonely he must have been, being absolutely surrounded by vicious and wicked people, and being himself about the only decent man alive. [Seems a paraphrase of Ecclesiastes 7:28 ]
(2) Then, not only are men uniformly bad, but they are doomed to stay that way. "The crooked," he declares, "can never be made straight." [ Ecclesiastes 1:15 ] To my mind this is by far the most cynical, the most utterly hopeless thing that he says. The Bible teaches the fact of human sin, but it teaches with equal emphasis that man may be saved from sin. The Bible teaches that men are lost, but it teaches with equal certainty that they are capable of being saved. But this man lived in a drab world of despair where the sinner has no possible chance of ever becoming a saint; where the prodigal can never leave the swine pen and find his penitent way back to his Father's house. [An allusion to the Parable of the Prodigal Son Luke 15:11-32 ]
The truth of the matter is that the preacher's conception of man is not as a personality at all. He believes that man is a machine. The only God he knows is not a loving heavenly Father. He is a blind, grimy-handed fate. "There is a time for everything under the sun," [ Ecclesiastes 3:1] he declares, and by this he means that man, the machine, has no power of volition, that he responds to certain stimuli without any freedom of choice whatsoever. This cynic you see is a Behaviorist. He is a profound believer in "the New Psychology."
✂️---------------------------------------
A video on Behaviorism:
I don't know to what Chappell referred with the phrase "New Philosophy", but here is the song "My New Philosophy" from the musical "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown"
✂️---------------------------------------
Therefore, naturally he concludes that "all is vanity and vexation of spirit." For we are:
"But helpless Pieces of the Game He plays
Upon this chequer-board of Nights and Days;
Hither and thither moves, and checks and slays,
And one by one back into the Closet lays."
[from Edward Fitzgerald poem "Rubayait of Omar Khayyam" LXXIV]
III
Now was the practical effect of this lack of faith on the preacher's life? What did his cynicism do to him?
1. It killed all sense of obligation. He had scholarship and vast ability. But the idea that large capacity laid upon him heavy responsibilities to be of service to others was to his mind simply absurd. That poor wise man that saved his city only played the fool. In fact, to his thinking, all talk about duty and obligation was simply silly. He was vastly clever, but being without any sense of responsibility, he was, therefore, morally an infant. He was an intellectual giant, but he was also a spiritual dwarf. In secondary matters he was keen; in matters of supreme importance he was little better than an idiot.
2. His lack of faith paralyzed all effort to help heal the world's open sore.. What others suffered was none of his business in the first place. His motto was, "every fellow for himself and the devil take the hindmost." Then, how foolish to undertake to help folks when he is sure they are mere machines and cannot be helped. How stupid and futile to undertake to make the world better when he knows that what is wrong can never be made right and what is crooked can never be made straight.
3. His cynicism made him wretched. It took all the bloom and beauty out of life. It robbed him of all high expectation of the coming of a better tomorrow. It blotted out every star in his sky. It put him "on a rudderless raft in a shoreless sea." [I'm not certain who Chappell is quoting. Possibly Stuart, John. Sermons. Edinburgh: R. and R. Clark, 1889. Print. with online google book version]
The one man to be congratulated, he thought, was the one that was dead. But better off, even than he, was the one who had never been born. In spite of all his efforts at pleasure, he had to say of laughter, it is vain. Finding nothing new, his biggest thrill is summed up in the one ghastly sentence, "I hated life." His best suggestion to you and me is to eat and drink. "Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing," he seems to say. [ Shakespeare "MacBeth" Act V Scene V ] "Therefore the best thing to do is to get drunk and forget about it."
There is a story of a man who was once pursued by a fierce beast. At last he took refuge in an old well. When he was near the bottom of this well he discovered a horrible dragon with mouth gaped open, just waiting to receive him. Therefore he stopped his descent and clung to a little bush that grew out of the side of the well. With the beast above him and the dragon below him there was nothing to do but to wait developments. Meantime two mice came out of the side of the well and began to gnaw at the little bush. He saw that he would soon drop into the dragon's mouth, but during the thirty seconds that he still had to live he endeavored to sip a little bit of honeydew of the leaves of the bush to which he clung. This was somewhat the position of out preacher.
IV
But this cynic seems to have come to a discovery of God. Through this discovery his whole attitude toward life was changed. Through it all things became new.
1. Through the discovery of God he came to possess a new sense of duty. After this, he came to say "I ought" and "I owe." He closes his book with one of the most majestic sentences in the Bible. "Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man." [ Ecclesiastes 12:13 ] To discover God is ever to discover duty. The jailer did not notice the bleeding backs of Paul and Silas till he had found Christ. But having found him, he took water the same hour of the night and washed their stripes. [ Acts 16:33 ]
2. Through it he came to a new sense of his personal responsibility. Discovering that man is a creature of obligation, he discovered also that he is to be judged according to the way in which he discharges those obligations. He no longer believed that the wise man and the fool meet a common fate. He believed the opposite. Therefore he warns emphatically: "Rejoice, O young man, in they youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes: but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment." [ Ecclesiastes 11:9 ]
3. Finally, in the realization of all that he had suffered and all that he had missed, he shows us how to avoid a like tragic folly. How magnificently he puts it! "Remember now thy Creator in the days of they youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them." [ Ecclesiastes 12:1] Surely this onetime cynic is here speaking out of his own experience. He has lived through these pleasureless years against which he is now warning us. To him evil days have come, days that were dull and gray, drab and old. He has watched the sweet flower of life wither and rain its dusty petals upon the ground. "But it need not be so with you," he tells us. "Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, and your sun will ever hang in a morning sky, and life for you will keep its winsome newness from daylight until dark."
But if it so happens that we are no longer young, what then? Suppose we have already journeyed so far into the years that the call, "Remember now thy Creator in the days of they youth," only mocks us with the glory of what might have been and now can be no more; then what has the transformed cynic to say to us? He does not insult our intelligence by telling us that our wasted years do not matter. He knows that not even God can as much with the fraction of a life as he can with the whole of it. Yet he does not leave us hopeless. He gives us only so much of his command as we can bear. His call is this: "Remember now." However completely we may have squandered the year just passed, however listless we may be as we face the year just ahead, if we only dare to remember now, life for us will be remade. Instead of lamenting with the cynic that there is no new thing under the sun we shall shout with Saint Paul, "Old things are passed away; behold they are become new." [ 2 Corinthians 5:17]
Posts
No comments :
Post a Comment