Hugh Anderson - "Wonderful Revival" (January 24, 1960)

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-	In the name of God the Father, God the Son	0:09
	and God the Holy Spirit.	0:13
	Amen.	0:16
	Each one of us who has turned into this chapel this morning	0:23
	is different in many radical	0:28
	and basic ways from everybody else.	0:31
	In some of the most fundamental things of life,	0:36
	no two offers are alike.	0:40
	Each of us here this morning has his own her own	0:44
	particular background in life.	0:48
	We have all our own individual hopes and fears	0:52
	and ambitions and sorrows and joy.	0:58
	We have each of us, all our own problems and anxieties.	1:03
	These anxieties more numerous,	1:10
	that some seasons of life than others.	1:12
	But we are all in so many ways	1:16
	different one from another.	1:19
	If this is true of life in general,	1:24
	it seems to me to be particularly true	1:27
	about the religious life.	1:31
	As we look back to this morning	1:34
	at the deepest moments of insight,	1:37
	each one of us has had into the mysteries of the universe,	1:40
	the mysteries of God and the mysteries of man's existence,	1:46
	we know that our pilgrimage has been essentially	1:51
	a lonely one.	1:55
	We have seen things in our own way.	1:57
	We have felt things in our own way	2:00
	and in the religious life at its deepest level,	2:03
	no two of us can come to God by the same road.	2:06
	It is significant that in the seers great vision	2:12
	of the New Jerusalem in the New Testament,	2:16
	there are 12 gates leading to the Holy City.	2:19
	And if there are 12 gates,	2:23
	there are obviously dozens of different roads.	2:25
	And one of the most shameful things in religious life	2:30
	of any people or any country is when one particular group	2:34
	imagines and believes that everybody should conform	2:39
	to their specific path on of the religious life.	2:44
	This is so fundamentally wrong because in this, most of all,	2:49
	we are all different.	2:54
	I have begun this morning by emphasizing our differences	2:58
	in life in general, and particularly in the religious life.	3:04
	I have done this precisely because I want to go on	3:09
	to emphasize that in spite of all our differences,	3:14
	there must nevertheless be certain elemental qualities	3:20
	of life that we should share in common	3:25
	if our life is to be rich and full and abundant.	3:29
	And I think one of the most essential qualities	3:37
	that all of us must possess to have the full life,	3:40
	the good life, the great life is the instinct of wonder,	3:43
	the ability to be amazed that life's mysteries.	3:51
	If a man or a woman has ceased to possess that	3:56
	they've lost one of life's greatest blessings	4:00
	without which life cannot be rich or abundant	4:04
	or full.	4:08
	For centuries, the greatest minds of the ages	4:11
	have wrestled with the problem of trying to formulate,	4:15
	to describe and to define the meaning of religion.	4:21
	Kant tended to describe religion in terms	4:28
	of the moral conscience of man.	4:33
	Hego tended to define religion in terms	4:37
	of the human reason.	4:42
	Schleiermacher tended to define religion in terms of	4:44
	human feeling and emotion.	4:48
	But I believe with all my heart	4:52
	that no description or definition of religion	4:55
	has ever been adequate,	4:58
	which has not left room for the instinct of wonder	5:01
	for the sense of awe and reverence in man's heart	5:06
	as in the presence of in calculable mysteries	5:11
	and indescribable wonders.	5:16
	I think to the truly dynamic religious life,	5:20
	to any full kind of life,	5:25
	the instinct of wonder is absolutely vital on the central.	5:27
	Certainly biblical religion is full of wonder,	5:35
	full of amazement, full of that tremulous sense of awe	5:39
	which man possesses in the presence of inscrutable mystery.	5:45
	If you turn to the Old Testament,	5:51
	you find this everywhere.	5:53
	Even nature itself is convulsed with wonder	5:55
	in the presence of the creator, God.	5:59
	The mountains skip light little rhymes	6:02
	with astonishment in the morning sunshine,	6:05
	before the glory of the great God,	6:08
	the creator of the universe.	6:11
	The God of the Old Testament is the God who stretched out	6:14
	the ends of the earth.	6:17
	The God who created the heavens,	6:19
	the august one before who men fall in homage	6:22
	and reverence feeling the mystery of the universe,	6:26
	the mystery of God and the mystery of man's tremendous	6:29
	existence under God.	6:34
	What is true of the Old Testament is certainly true	6:37
	also of the New Testament.	6:41
	Jesus of Nazareth is followed everywhere by men's wonder	6:44
	and astonishment.	6:51
	You remember what they said of him?	6:53
	"Never a man spoke like this man.	6:56
	This man speaks with authority." they said.	7:00
	And the people marveled in his presence.	7:04
	They were some times almost terrified in his presence,	7:09
	terrified in the presence of a fascinating	7:16
	and tremendous mystery of the Christ.	7:21
	This is certainly true also of many of Christ's disciples	7:28
	in the New Testament.	7:32
	Some of them went out to heal.	7:34
	And when they healed in Christ's name	7:37
	as Peter and John did the lame man	7:39
	at the gate of the temple called Beautiful,	7:42
	men were astonished and marveled	7:45
	at the power which Christ had given them.	7:48
	Everywhere in the New Testament too	7:51
	it's wonder, wonder, wonder, and mystery all the way.	7:54
	I think the Negro Spiritual has it right when it says,	7:59
	were you there when they crucified my Lord?	8:06
	Some times it causes me to tremble,	8:11
	tremble, tremble.	8:17
	There is a tremulous awe	8:20
	in any real and dynamic and vital religion.	8:22
	Saint Brendan, one of the great saints	8:28
	of the early church was once asked	8:30
	what it was about his Christian religion,	8:34
	which so captivated his heart.	8:36
	And his immediate reply was why?	8:39
	It's the wonder off it.	8:44
	It's the wonder off it.	8:47
	Wonder of wonder and every wonder through the wonder of it.	8:48
	I believe that one of the greatest tragedies of our day	8:58
	and generation is the decline of wonder in men's heart.	9:03
	We have been losing the instinct of wonder.	9:09
	We have been losing the sense of mystery	9:13
	in the presence of life since crucible death.	9:17
	There are more tragedies in human life today	9:22
	than the tragedy of the Cold War	9:25
	and the tragedy of man's divisiveness within society.	9:27
	There is this tragedy also, which happens to all of us,	9:31
	caught up as we are demonically in the trends of the times,	9:35
	this loss of the instinct of wonder and when wonder goes,	9:40
	the spirit of man is squinched	9:45
	and when the spirit of man is squinched	9:47
	life loses its fullness and its richness.	9:51
	I want this morning to look together with you	9:55
	at some of the greatest enemies of wonder in modern times,	10:00
	some of the things that stifle and choke	10:05
	the instinct of wonder and mystery in us	10:08
	in the hope that by looking at least together,	10:12
	we might see that we have a struggle on our hands	10:16
	if we could keep the instinct of wonder alive in us.	10:20
	It is my belief that one of the greatest enemies of wonder	10:26
	in our time is the prevailing scientific outlook.	10:31
	You know, as well as I,	10:40
	that the scientific method is to analyze things.	10:42
	Science proceeds analytically.	10:48
	It breaks down things into their constituent parts.	10:51
	It formulates general laws,	10:56
	which are operated in the universe	10:59
	by observing material cause and effect.	11:02
	Now, of course, science is great	11:08
	and science has a right to imply its own methodology,	11:12
	but it is a sad day when modern science gives the impression	11:19
	that when it has broken down things	11:25
	into their constituent parts,	11:28
	when it has formulated in the light of its observations,	11:31
	the laws that are operative in the physical universe,	11:35
	it is a sad day when the scientist believes	11:39
	that after he's done these things,	11:42
	he said everything possible	11:45
	that can be said about the nature of human being	11:48
	and human existence and human life.	11:51
	The truth is that after the scientist	11:55
	has had his say,	11:59
	there still is a large margin of mystery left.	12:01
	Still many things unspoken about,	12:05
	science does not describe the nature of being itself.	12:09
	It's more of description is limited.	12:15
	And I want you to see this today.	12:19
	We have not said the last word about life	12:22
	in all its mystery.	12:26
	When we have reduced it to scientific proportions	12:28
	and try to describe it in material terms.	12:31
	Montaigne, the cynical Frenchman once came home	12:36
	from a journey to find his wife in tears.	12:41
	He was a hard hearted scientific kind of fellow.	12:46
	And you know what his reaction to that situation was?	12:50
	He said to his wife,	12:54
	"What's in a tear woman,	12:56
	a little mucus and some salt water."	12:58
	This reduction off the giant agony of the world,	13:06
	the tears and sorrows of the human heart	13:11
	to a little mucus and some salt water.	13:15
	How cruel can the scientific description	13:19
	of the physical universe become?	13:22
	It is the same when the modern anthropologist says	13:25
	that human love is simply the result	13:31
	of certain glandular secretions in the human animal.	13:34
	Dr. Paul Schilder recently,	13:41
	interestingly subjected Lewis Carroll's	13:44
	beautiful fantasy "Alice in Wonderland"	13:49
	to scientific cycle analysis.	13:53
	His conclusion was that nonsense literature	14:00
	is the expression of particularly strong	14:05
	destructive tendencies of a very primitive character.	14:08
	Apparently Lewis Carroll was the member of a large family	14:14
	of brothers and sisters	14:18
	and he had written Alice precisely because	14:20
	he had missed the full love of his parents.	14:23
	The animals in Alice and Wonderland	14:27
	are always threatening Alice.	14:30
	And apparently the animals are the brothers and sisters	14:32
	of Lewis Carroll,	14:36
	who are always threatening him with destruction	14:37
	by making him profoundly jealous.	14:40
	What Luna say,	14:44
	what Luna say is this	14:46
	that he's perpetrated today	14:48
	in the august name on the great name of science.	14:50
	It's like the wit it's like the halfwit who once said,	14:56
	when he was asked, he was asked, what is violin music?	15:01
	You know what he said?	15:05
	"Violin music is the scraping of the outside of a horse	15:07
	on the inside of a cat."	15:12
	(congregation laughs)	15:15
	I ask you,	15:20
	can you reduce the ineffable beauty	15:22
	of her Beethoven violin Sonata	15:26
	to horsehair and cat dot?	15:29
	(congregation laughs)	15:32
	But you know really the scientific method describes things	15:36
	in analytical material fashion.	15:41
	It tends to destroy wonder by reducing all life	15:44
	to material and physical proportion, but in the last resort,	15:47
	it's the immature scientist who has this outlook.	15:53
	It's the second year university student	15:59
	who tends to be cynical and skeptical and materialistic.	16:02
	The sophomore scientists, because the truth is,	16:06
	and gentlemen I once passed through this stage myself,	16:10
	the stage of materialistic cynicism and skepticism,	16:13
	we all do it sometime in our university pilgrimage.	16:18
	We like to do it because we feel it makes us stand aside	16:22
	from orthodoxy and gives us an aura of difference	16:25
	and we are rather proud of it.	16:29
	But it's a mark of immaturity	16:32
	and thank God most of us get past that stage	16:35
	because the truth is,	16:39
	the truth is that in all history,	16:41
	the greatest scientists themselves	16:43
	have been ready to admit	16:47
	the amazing wonders of the universe.	16:49
	They've been ready to admit	16:53
	that life has in the last resort,	16:55
	a tremendous margin of mystery and wonder	16:58
	on things that science leaves unexplained.	17:03
	Remember how Sir Isaac Newton,	17:07
	after a great lifetime of discovery	17:11
	said at the end of his days,	17:14
	that he felt that all the way through,	17:17
	he had just been like a little child gathering pebbles	17:21
	on the seashore of an infinite universe.	17:26
	And again the truth is that modern science	17:32
	when you begin to look at it with close scrutiny,	17:36
	it's not a closed book.	17:40
	It leaves the universe open for mystery and wonder.	17:43
	There is the indeterminism of modern quantum mechanics.	17:47
	There is also Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.	17:53
	There is the indeterminism too	17:57
	of higher energy physics today.	17:59
	The best scientists of the modern age are aware	18:03
	that there is mystery, the inexplicable, the wonderful.	18:08
	The universe is not a closed shaw.	18:13
	There is the possibility of the wonderful and the marvelous	18:16
	and the miraculous taking place in it.	18:21
	And I plead with you this morning,	18:24
	not to let the sole popular scientific outlook,	18:27
	which has prevailed with so many modern men,	18:31
	not to let that kill the edge of wonder in you today	18:34
	for it's so important to keep the instinct of wonder alive	18:38
	in us.	18:43
	Another great enemy of wonder in our time	18:44
	is what I would call the urbanization	18:48
	and the mechanization of life in our time.	18:53
	Isn't it true that 90% of our life today,	18:58
	at least 90% is the life of the great indoors.	19:02
	We nearly always seem to have a roof over our head.	19:08
	If it's not the roof of a dormitory,	19:12
	it's the roof of a reading room.	19:14
	If it's not the roof of a reading room,	19:16
	it's the roof of our home.	19:18
	And if it's not our home,	19:20
	it's our automobile.	19:22
	Our forefathers, you know,	19:25
	used to go out into the wind and the rain and the sun.	19:28
	And they used to let the good earth,	19:33
	run through their fingers.	19:35
	And they looked up and marveled that God had given them	19:36
	a life, which was at once so hard	19:40
	and that one so challenging and that one so wonderful.	19:43
	But today we live the life of the great indoors	19:46
	by the urbanization of modern existence	19:50
	and by its mechanization.	19:52
	Lord Kinross great British statesman and traveler	19:55
	recently visited the United States.	19:58
	A week or two ago	20:01
	he published a fascinating book about his travels	20:02
	called "The Innocents at Home".	20:06
	I commend it to you.	20:10
	It's very interesting.	20:12
	But he tells, I think I hope jesting,	20:13
	that in Los Angeles,	20:18
	he was arrested by the police	20:20
	for that outdated obsolete 19th century,	20:23
	quite un-American activity of merely walking.	20:28
	There is a measure of truth in this,	20:36
	that living the life of the great indoors	20:39
	we cease to be amazed at the unfathomable horizons	20:43
	of the universe, at the mysteries of God.	20:48
	We read about it in the newspapers.	20:51
	This is the space age,	20:53
	but we don't become involved in it ourselves	20:55
	because it's so seldom we look up and see the stars.	20:58
	I think it would be good for us to remember	21:05
	what George Borrow, Romani gypsy once said,	21:08
	and he was blind.	21:12
	He said, there's night and day, brother,	21:14
	both sweet things.	21:18
	There are sun moon and stars brother, all sweet things.	21:21
	There's likewise a wind on the heat	21:27
	all the wonders of life	21:32
	if only our eyes were open to them.	21:35
	Let me pass on another step.	21:39
	Will you come with me?	21:42
	I think a third great enemy of wonder in our day and age	21:43
	is what I would be pleased to call this morning	21:49
	the reduction of God.	21:53
	You know, there is a persistent tendency	21:58
	in much modern religion to reduce God	22:00
	until he saw Lilliputian in stature	22:05
	has to be no God at all.	22:08
	There is the persistent tendency in many areas	22:11
	of American religion, particularly to act	22:13
	and speak as though God were the glorified patron	22:16
	of a psychiatric clinic.	22:20
	The good old kind benevolent gentleman	22:23
	who can deal with all manner of psychiatric	22:26
	and psychological problems.	22:29
	The one to whom we say,	22:31
	let's have a little pet, help us please.	22:32
	Give us some energy for life.	22:37
	Help us along.	22:40
	Give us a little air.	22:41
	God reduced to the status of the benevolent patron	22:43
	of a lets pet it up boys clinic.	22:47
	This is unworthy.	22:51
	When God's status is thus reduced,	22:53
	he is so small that we cannot wonder before him,	22:56
	but there are other even more sinisters ways	23:00
	in which God is reduced in our societies today.	23:03
	You know, there are some denominations of the church	23:07
	which give the impression that God is the patron.	23:09
	Also, if they have denomination,	23:12
	there are some who speak as though God	23:14
	were a glorious Baptist, the glorious Methodist,	23:15
	a glorious Presbyterian	23:19
	to say nothing of God's being a glorious Roman Catholic.	23:21
	This is to reduce God.	23:26
	But God of the wide world,	23:29
	the creator of all men,	23:31
	the creator of the ends of the earth,	23:34
	the God who sends his rain to fall	23:36
	upon the just and the unjust.	23:39
	We reduce God also,	23:41
	when we break down fellowship with our fellow men,	23:43
	when we think that God is the God, only of one race,	23:47
	one class, one color, one creed,	23:50
	we reduce his status and we make him small.	23:52
	He ceases to be the biblical God, the great God,	23:57
	the creator God	24:01
	and before the little God of too many men today,	24:02
	we cannot wonder anymore.	24:07
	Yet another enemy of wonder in our time	24:12
	is just, I think the familiarity	24:17
	that breeds contempt.	24:21
	Would you agree that one of the saddest spectacles in life	24:24
	is the spectacle of a marriage between a man and the woman	24:30
	in which the years have waged a war of oppression.	24:35
	So let know they simply take each other for granted.	24:39
	Unfamiliarity has bred a measure of contempt.	24:43
	You know, this is precisely how it is	24:48
	with the Christian religion and the Christian Church.	24:51
	We've grown, vaguely familiar with it.	24:54
	It's been there all the time.	24:57
	We've never known any other situation.	24:58
	The church has stood through the centuries.	25:01
	We have accepted with a big kind of neutrality	25:03
	as something familiar.	25:07
	That is what led here to God in Denmark in his day	25:10
	to plead with his fellow man for God's sake,	25:14
	Christianize your Christianity,	25:17
	wrestle with its problems,	25:20
	see it's wonders for yourself,	25:23
	don't half accept it	25:25
	because it's always been familiar to you.	25:27
	And there is great need for us today also to do this.	25:31
	We've grown half familiar with it.	25:36
	We accept it.	25:38
	It's there, but the wonder of Christianity	25:39
	doesn't come home to us until in our own minds	25:43
	we've wrestled with it ourselves,	25:47
	until on our own hearts we've agonized with it.	25:50
	It cannot become wonderful for us.	25:54
	The last enemy of religion,	26:00
	as I understand it in our day and age,	26:02
	as an enemy of wonder is the sense among so many multitudes	26:05
	of people that religion has lost its romance,	26:11
	it's glamor.	26:16
	Do you think religion has lost its romance and its glamor?	26:18
	Do you think that all the brave exploits and deeds of daring	26:23
	do for religion sake were done 2000 years ago	26:27
	and that no further wonders are taking place	26:31
	under the sun in God's name and through Christ?	26:34
	I ask you to think again,	26:38
	for those of us in the ministry of the Christian Church	26:42
	have seen with our own eyes, miracles of God,	26:46
	taking place in the mid 20th century,	26:49
	we know that religion hasn't lost its romance.	26:52
	We look to the far east and we see new churches being born	26:57
	and gathering strength.	27:01
	We come home to our own doorstep and some of us know	27:03
	with rapture in our hearts that men's lives are still being	27:06
	changed by the touch of the divine,	27:11
	that their paths are being made straight and the rock places	27:16
	playing through the glory of God in men's lives.	27:20
	Some of us have seen the light	27:24
	in a young man's eyes when he's confessed	27:26
	that his life was made new	27:30
	by the wonder of God in his heart.	27:33
	Religion hasn't lost its romance.	27:36
	The angels keep their ancient places	27:39
	calm but astone or start a wing, to he,	27:43
	to you estranged faces that miss the many splendor thing.	27:48
	These are some of the enemies of wonder in our day.	27:57
	We have a backlog on our hands to fight against them	28:01
	because I think we believe and recognize	28:05
	that the full life is only possible	28:09
	where the instinct of tremulous awe	28:12
	and reverence for life,	28:15
	the instinct of wonder and the instinct of mystery,	28:17
	where these things are kept alive only	28:21
	is the full and the abundant life possible.	28:24
	But really, you know, really in the last analysis,	28:28
	it shouldn't be too hard	28:32
	to struggle for those who call ourselves Christians	28:34
	to keep the sense of wonder alive in us	28:37
	for we have many wonderful things to contemplate.	28:42
	There is particularly the mystery of the cross of Christ.	28:47
	When you look at that, you may feel skeptical,	28:54
	cynical and hard of heart	28:57
	but the cross has a part to change that.	28:59
	Somehow, mysteriously and wonderfully	29:03
	the cross works some miracle with men,	29:06
	it stirs the sense of wonder as in the presence	29:09
	of the mysteries of life.	29:13
	I had a story once about the funeral of Abraham Lincoln.	29:16
	The great man was being carried to his last resting place.	29:20
	The crowds along the route	29:26
	where the cortège had to pass were very great	29:28
	and very multitudinous.	29:32
	At one part of the route,	29:34
	there was a tall Negro woman with a little child with her.	29:36
	And that us the cortège drew near	29:40
	the little child was whimpering,	29:42
	crying that she couldn't see.	29:44
	And the tall Negro woman took her bam	29:46
	and put her on her shoulders.	29:49
	And as the coffin with Lincoln's body passed	29:51
	she said, "Take a long look, honey.	29:55
	Take a long look, honey.	30:00
	He died for you."	30:03
	I say to you this morning, man and women, younger and older,	30:07
	take a long look at the cross of Christ.	30:14
	I don't say that it will answer all life's problems.	30:19
	It won't.	30:22
	But it will challenge us all to penetrate deeper	30:23
	into the heart of the mystery of life.	30:27
	It will challenge our intellect, our minds,	30:31
	and our spirits,	30:34
	and the sense of wonder will come more alive in us.	30:35
	I hope God will give us grace to recapture in our time	30:41
	the sense of wonder, wonder upon wonder,	30:45
	and every wonder through because life is beyond all hope	30:50
	of telling wonderful.	30:54
	I have called this sermon,	30:58
	"Wonderful Revival"	31:00
	simply because I believe with all my soul,	31:03
	that one of the most wonderful revivals we could ever have	31:06
	in our day,	31:10
	whether in the Jewish community here or in society at large	31:11
	would be a revival of wonder.	31:16
	God, give us grace to wonder.	31:20
	Amen.	31:24
	Let us pray.	31:25
	Almighty and ever blessed God,	31:30
	revive in us again the instinct for wonder and reverence	31:33
	for life in all its incalculable and inscrutable mystery.	31:37
	Kindle our hearts with an enthusiasm divine	31:43
	for we know that life is mysterious,	31:47
	that there are many things beyond our explanation.	31:50
	Give us then the grace to wonder	31:55
	and unto the Father, the Son and Holy Spirit	31:58
	be all honor and glory,	32:02
	dominion, majesty and praise	32:04
	World without end, amen.	32:08

Item Info

Title:

Hugh Anderson - "Wonderful Revival" (January 24, 1960)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4h993f28

Date:

January 24, 1960

Speaker:

Anderson, Hugh

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0091
ref5383_pcs
uachapelsermaud
duke:628301
dcrau002120
ark:/87924/r4h993f28
43cc3dd8-ee53-456e-a3f8-b95a3b7b7f29

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

Source Collection:

Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

Related Resources:

See below

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

Rights Note:

This material is made available for research, scholarship, and private study. Copyright in this material has not been transferred to Duke University. For reuses of this material beyond those permitted by fair use or otherwise allowed under the Copyright Act, please see our page on copyright and citations: https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/research/citations-and-permissions.

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Hugh Anderson - "Wonderful Revival" (January 24, 1960)

Transcript

Item Info

1. Hugh Anderson - "Wonderful Revival" (January 24, 1960)

Duke University Archives

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Hugh Anderson - "Wonderful Revival" (January 24, 1960)

Transcript

Item Info

Related Item

Duke University Archives

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