James T. Cleland - "The Seven Deadly Virtues" (March 17, 1968)

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-	Take our own, oh God,	0:03
	the prayer, which thy son, Jesus Christ	0:05
	has taught us to pray saying,	0:08
	our Father which art in heaven,	0:11
	hallowed be thy name,	0:13
	thy kingdom come,	0:15
	thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.	0:17
	Give us this day, our daily bread	0:21
	and forgive us our trespasses	0:24
	as we forgive those who trespass against us	0:27
	and lead us not into temptation	0:30
	but deliver us from evil.	0:33
	For thine is the kingdom	0:35
	and the power and the glory forever.	0:37
	Amen.	0:40
-	The grace of God be with you all.	1:00
	One of the facts which troubles people	1:07
	who are interested in religion	1:10
	is the spiritual illiteracy of so many of us	1:14
	who are Christians,	1:19
	clergy and laity	1:21
	even of the best of us.	1:24
	It is not only a matter of lack of information	1:27
	about the fundamental facts of our faith,	1:30
	it is the devoutly believed misinformation	1:35
	which is rampant.	1:40
	Now this misinformation about the things	1:43
	which pertain to God	1:45
	was the theme of an essay by Dorothy L. Sayers,	1:48
	the noted detective story writer	1:54
	who turned to theological mysteries in her later years.	1:58
	The essay is the fourth in a little book	2:04
	whose title is "Creed or Chaos".	2:07
	Confronted by the work knowledge	2:13
	of the church of England's dogma,	2:16
	which our young friends had imbibed,	2:18
	she wrote an examination paper for them	2:21
	on the Christian religion.	2:25
	She appends a composite set of answers.	2:27
	Now the whole merit study,	2:32
	but we have time for about one question and answer.	2:33
	Here it is.	2:38
	Question, what are the seven Christian virtues?	2:39
	Now, you know them, the four classical virtues	2:47
	and the three New Testament virtues,	2:49
	prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude,	2:52
	faith, love and hope.	2:56
	But you know the answer she got,	2:59
	what are the seven Christian virtues?	3:02
	Respectability,	3:05
	childishness,	3:08
	mental timidity,	3:11
	dullness,	3:14
	sentimentality,	3:16
	censoriousness,	3:19
	and depression of spirits.	3:21
	Now Dorothy Sayers in horror,	3:26
	renames them the seven deadly virtues.	3:30
	Now are these the spiritual excellences	3:35
	which distinguish a Christian	3:38
	in the thought of the contemporary world?	3:40
	Are these the conspicuous merits	3:44
	of Christian character to a semi secular observer?	3:47
	Are these the godly qualities	3:53
	which the nominal Christian believes	3:55
	to be really important	3:58
	in our life inspired by Jesus, the Christ?	4:01
	Do they mark us?	4:04
	Let's look at these seven deadly virtues one by one.	4:06
	The first is respectability.	4:12
	Now what do we mean by that?	4:14
	Oh, decency in behavior,	4:15
	our willingness to respect the proprieties,	4:19
	being conventionally correct in conduct,	4:23
	doing in Rome, what the better Romans do	4:28
	or even more important, doing in our hometown	4:33
	what the best hometowners and gowners do.	4:37
	It's keeping on the right side of Mrs. Grande.	4:42
	Being sure that one is not found out if one does err.	4:46
	Respectability is the average virtue	4:51
	of the average man and woman, in the average church,	4:54
	in the average community, under the average pastor.	4:58
	The second is childishness.	5:04
	It's the inability to grow up and mature.	5:06
	It's an incapacity to accept life as it is	5:10
	instead of continually whimpering to change it nearer	5:15
	to the self-centered heart's desire.	5:19
	It's the shrewd chuckle of satisfaction	5:23
	when one gets one's own way	5:26
	and the turbulent anger of a will that is crossed.	5:29
	Childishness is weakness without charm,	5:34
	simple-mindedness without integrity,	5:39
	undeveloped mentality without any inquiring enthusiasm.	5:44
	It's an adult form of peter-panism about the wrong things.	5:50
	The third is mental timidity	6:00
	which is the attitude of one who looks backward with longing	6:03
	and size for a status quo of the mind, which never changes.	6:07
	It always sees the golden age in the past	6:13
	when existence was steadier	6:17
	and thought conservative and the faith Orthodox.	6:20
	It is a mark of a mind which lacks courage,	6:27
	is easily frightened	6:32
	and hates what overrides it.	6:34
	It objects to any the examination of the faith	6:37
	once committed to the saints,	6:40
	be the saints, religious, political, or economic.	6:42
	It would rather not hear sermons on the virgin birth,	6:47
	black power and Christian pacifism.	6:51
	It prefers to let sleeping dogmas lie.	6:55
	It feels that one must not rock the boat	7:01
	even if the boat is stuck on a mudflat.	7:04
	It does not believe in swapping horses	7:09
	in the middle of the stream	7:11
	even if one horse is an arse.	7:13
	Mental timidity is the doubtful virtue	7:17
	of the right wing of any party in the Christian Church.	7:21
	The fourth deadly virtue is dullness.	7:27
	This is the quality of being slow and blunted	7:31
	in perception without knowing it.	7:35
	It's a doltishness that has been described in Scotland	7:39
	as being slow in the uptake.	7:42
	It's sluggishness of mind,	7:47
	obtuseness of perception and tediousness of heart.	7:50
	It's a lack of zest and an absence of vivacity	7:54
	about the things of God and his Christ.	7:58
	In fact, it's the fact of being spiritually dead	8:02
	without the advantage of being physically buried.	8:08
	It's the virtue par excellence of a bore.	8:12
	It's the kind of outlook that has led to the aphorism,	8:17
	as dull as a Christian.	8:22
	The fifth is sentimentality.	8:26
	This is the capacity for superficial emotionalism	8:30
	which enjoys overindulgence	8:34
	in the sensibilities for their own sake.	8:36
	It's an excessive sentiment	8:39
	coupled with a deficiency in common sense.	8:41
	It's rampant in some of the modeling hymns	8:44
	we sing like, well, I won't mention it.	8:46
	It symbolized in the instant of a man	8:51
	who was unable to pick up a drunken stranger	8:54
	from the gutter and so lay down beside him.	8:57
	Its affection without intelligence	9:03
	which results in a mockish affectation.	9:07
	Sentimentality is Christian Love	9:10
	which has gone to seed	9:13
	suckily, mushily and slushily.	9:15
	The sixth deadly virtue is censoriousness.	9:21
	This is the disposition to be over critical	9:25
	and condemnatory of him who acts contrary to our standards.	9:28
	It's an unnecessary severity in passing judgment on others.	9:33
	It's marked by an infinite capacity for opposing	9:39
	and an incapacity for differentiating intent and act.	9:43
	It's deified by the Scottish school master who said,	9:49
	"Thrash the pupil every day.	9:53
	If you don't know what he's done wrong, he does."	9:57
	Now censoriousness is not unknown	10:03
	in certain Christian bodies.	10:06
	And the seventh and last is depression of spirit.	10:09
	The inability to enjoy life.	10:14
	It is both the cause of, and the reflection of an existence	10:17
	without zest and tongue.	10:21
	It is abnormally anxious about everything and anything	10:25
	until it is pathologically interested	10:30
	in nothing but its own condition.	10:33
	It makes a clear distinction between the sacred	10:36
	and the secular.	10:39
	It willingly grants to the devil the jolliest tunes,	10:41
	the best games and the most fun.	10:46
	It defines sin as anything we enjoy doing.	10:50
	It says no most of the time,	10:55
	it's very sad,	10:58
	very sadly sad.	11:00
	There then are the seven deadly virtues	11:03
	one by one.	11:06
	Is that Christianity?	11:08
	Yes, to many people.	11:11
	That is what Christianity is even to some Christians.	11:16
	Makes one want to react to the words of Charlotte Bronte,	11:21
	"I can be on my guard against my enemies	11:25
	but God deliver me from my friends."	11:28
	Think of it and shudder.	11:32
	To be a Christian, one must be respectable,	11:34
	childish,	11:38
	mentally timid,	11:39
	dull,	11:41
	sentimental,	11:41
	censorious,	11:43
	and depressed in spirit.	11:44
	I know Christians like that.	11:46
	Oh, they don't possess all these virtues	11:48
	but they major in them	11:52
	and they work at them too.	11:56
	Dorothy Sayers says they're deadly.	12:00
	No wonder they murder the religion	12:02
	from which they are theoretically derived.	12:06
	But how may one rebut them?	12:10
	Well, there's one way.	12:14
	Place them alongside Jesus,	12:18
	after all he is the norm.	12:21
	I know we don't believe as he did.	12:24
	I know we won't act as he did, but he is still the norm.	12:27
	If we claim to be Christian,	12:34
	then the final judgment our virtues	12:38
	as individual Christians and as the church,	12:41
	the body of Christ will be measured	12:43
	against the qualities which his life displayed.	12:46
	Let's look at him then.	12:50
	In the first place, Jesus was not respectable.	12:52
	Respectability evidently didn't interest him	12:57
	to the point of emulation.	13:00
	He not only came from the wrong side of the tracks.	13:03
	He came from the wrong town.	13:07
	Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?	13:10
	It's like Jersey City.	13:14
	Anyone would suggest	13:19
	that the Messiah came from such a place.	13:20
	He went round with the wrong people.	13:23
	As we heard in the lesson, tax collectors and other sinners.	13:26
	He chatted to the wrong people	13:31
	like the woman at the well of Samaria,	13:33
	even his disciples raised their eyebrows at that one.	13:35
	He was honored by a woman of the streets	13:41
	and commended her action to a pillar of society	13:43
	and he ended up his earthly life	13:46
	as a public enemy crucified between two other convicts.	13:49
	If respectability is a Christian virtue	13:54
	then Jesus does not qualify.	13:57
	In the second place,	14:01
	Jesus did not advocate childishness, he condemned it	14:02
	as we heard from this morning's lesson.	14:06
	To what then shall I compare the men of this generation?	14:09
	What are they like?	14:12
	They are like children sitting in the market place	14:13
	and calling to one another,	14:16
	"We piped onto you and you didn't dance.	14:18
	We wailed and you did not weep."	14:23
	That's what Jesus thought of some of his contemporaries,	14:26
	spoiled brats who wouldn't play.	14:29
	What Jesus did recommend was childlikeness,	14:35
	simplicity, straightforwardness,	14:38
	especially, trustful dependence.	14:42
	Thirdly, it's hardly likely that a point of view	14:48
	which challenged both the normal philosophy of Judaism	14:51
	and the entrenched ecclesiasticism of the Sadducees	14:57
	was marked by mental timidity.	15:02
	There's a steady boldness	15:05
	in his criticism of their positions.	15:07
	"Ye have heard it said, but I say unto you."	15:10
	That occurs six times in 24 verses.	15:16
	Matthew 23 is filled with statements like,	15:20
	"Woo unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites.	15:23
	You're like whitewashed tombs.	15:28
	You serpents, you generation of vipers,	15:31
	how shall ye escape the judgment of hell?"	15:33
	Now this isn't just by declaration,	15:36
	ecclesiastical name calling,	15:39
	this is a value judgment	15:42
	on the religious leaders of his day	15:45
	based upon his interpretation of what was good in life.	15:48
	And you watch him in the last days of his life	15:53
	arguing with his adversaries in the temple courts,	15:56
	priests, Pharisees,	16:00
	Herodians, Sadducees.	16:04
	Mark's Gospel summed it up by quoting	16:07
	the estimate of an ecclesiastical lawyer,	16:09
	he answered them,	16:13
	"Well, one may often accuse his followers	16:16
	of mental timidity, but not Jesus."	16:20
	In the fourth instance,	16:26
	it would be the quintessence of misinterpretation	16:27
	to label Jesus as a dull person.	16:30
	The common people do not hear a dull man gladly.	16:34
	He did not preach dully.	16:38
	His parables sparkled with the vignettes	16:42
	of the life around him.	16:44
	Dull people are not publicly executed.	16:47
	They may be publicly avoided	16:52
	or even privately murdered	16:55
	but mobs don't follow them	16:59
	or ecclesiastical counsels pass judgment on them	17:01
	or government authorities legally assassinate them.	17:04
	If Christianity is really the faith of Jesus the Christ	17:09
	carried down through our history to our own day,	17:14
	then it may be accused of being wrong	17:17
	or inadequate or even absurd	17:21
	but dull should not be a valid adjective to apply to it.	17:26
	Fifth, it's a misreading	17:34
	of script to accuse Jesus of sentimentality.	17:35
	He didn't gush.	17:40
	On one occasion he called his favorite disciple the devil,	17:42
	"Get thee behind me Satan."	17:47
	When he called one man to follow him	17:52
	and the man asked permission first of all	17:54
	to bury his father,	17:56
	Jesus said, "Leave the dead to bury the dead.	17:59
	But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God."	18:02
	I think Jesus had been well interpreted for us in a letter	18:07
	which a soldier wrote to his nurse	18:11
	from a hospital bed in World War I.	18:14
	"The Christ of the gospels is gentle	18:18
	with the weak and the young and the broken	18:21
	but he's a stern man with humbugs.	18:26
	He's a man of caustic humor at times,	18:31
	keen-eyed for self-deceit and cruelty and pride."	18:34
	Altogether, he seems to me just what Robert Louis Stevenson	18:38
	calls him, the celestial surgeon.	18:42
	"I think if the man in the street pictured the surgeon,	18:46
	a quiet shrewd man, infinitely patient,	18:51
	infinitely gentle, yet strong enough to inflict pain,	18:54
	strong enough to watch pain when necessary,	18:59
	he'd be far nearer to the authentic Christ."	19:04
	I like that description.	19:07
	I've liked it since I read it over half a century ago.	19:09
	I know what he's trying to say about Christ	19:16
	and he's right, gentle with the weak	19:18
	and the young and the broken	19:21
	but a stern man with humbugs.	19:24
	That isn't sentimentality.	19:27
	In the sixth place,	19:30
	Jesus was not censorious,	19:31
	though it may be that he came closer to this deadly virtue	19:34
	than to any other.	19:41
	Yet I think there's one marked dissimilarity,	19:43
	he distinguished the sinner from the sin.	19:46
	He passed judgment on sin.	19:52
	He hated sin	19:54
	and sin hated him.	19:57
	In fact, it was sin in man that killed him.	19:59
	But while he hated sin,	20:03
	he still had goodwill toward the sinner.	20:05
	Moreover, he differentiated between sins,	20:09
	the sins of the flesh never worried him half as much	20:13
	as the sins of the spirit.	20:17
	And the amazing thing is at the end,	20:22
	when you might feel he had some right to be censorious,	20:26
	hanging on the cross, what did he say?	20:31
	"Father, forgive them.	20:34
	They know not what they do."	20:39
	These are not the words of a censorious man.	20:41
	And last of all is but little evidence	20:46
	that Jesus suffered from depression of spirit.	20:48
	He enjoyed life too much for that.	20:52
	In fact, his critics were upset	20:54
	because he enjoyed life so much.	20:56
	They thought a religious teacher should fast	20:59
	but he wouldn't.	21:03
	In fact, he was so far from fasting	21:05
	that they accused him of being a glutton and a winebibber.	21:09
	And if he took the trouble to deny that	21:15
	it hasn't been reported to us.	21:18
	As he read his last will and testament to his disciples,	21:22
	what did he leave them?	21:25
	Joy and peace.	21:26
	Peace which is poise,	21:29
	inner peace that gives quietness of the heart	21:32
	in the midst of turmoil.	21:36
	Oh, it may be that on the cross,	21:38
	he did lose his nerve for a moment,	21:41
	"My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?"	21:44
	But his last saying is,	21:48
	"Father, into thy hands,	21:49
	I commend my spirit."	21:53
	These are the words of a man	21:56
	who's in control of himself again.	21:57
	Exaltation of spirit, not depression of spirit.	22:00
	There then is the rebuttal,	22:04
	Jesus himself the God-centered man.	22:06
	If 20th century Christianity	22:10
	is regarded as sponsoring the seven deadly virtues,	22:13
	then it is a travesty,	22:18
	a caricature	22:21
	of the way in which Jesus lived its heresy.	22:22
	Unfortunately, it is a heresy	22:26
	which too many have accepted as descriptive of Christianity.	22:30
	Christianity is going to be attacked,	22:35
	that is inevitable.	22:38
	But for God's sake and the sake of His son,	22:41
	let it be attacked for what it is	22:46
	and not for what it's misinterpreted to be,	22:50
	as Dorothy Sayers puts it so well at the end of that essay,	22:53
	"If all men are offended because of Christ,	22:57
	let them be offended.	23:02
	But what is the point Of their being offended	23:06
	at something that is not Christ and nothing like him?	23:10
	We do him singularly little honor	23:15
	by watering down his personality	23:19
	till it could not harm a fly."	23:22
	Let our Christian faith be criticized	23:26
	for its courage to ignore custom	23:28
	when divinely necessary	23:32
	rather than for its respectability,	23:34
	for childlikeness but not for childishness,	23:37
	for faith in scar of the consequences	23:42
	but not for mental timidity,	23:46
	for integrity rather than dullness,	23:49
	for goodwill but never sentimentality,	23:53
	for hatred of sin but not censoriousness,	23:57
	for seriousness about life	24:03
	but not depression of spirit.	24:06
	He that had ears to hear,	24:11
	let him hear.	24:15
	And let us pray.	24:19
	Almighty God who has revealed thy character	24:23
	and thy will in Jesus, the Christ,	24:26
	grant unto us his insight and his courage	24:29
	that we may not be conformed to this world estimate of him	24:33
	but transformed in his likeness through thy Holy Spirit.	24:41
	Amen.	24:48
	(instrumental music)	24:53
	(choral music)	25:17
	(instrumental music)	26:57

Item Info

Title:

James T. Cleland - "The Seven Deadly Virtues" (March 17, 1968)

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https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4fn14t6b

Date:

March 17, 1968

Speaker:

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

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Duke University. Chapel

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UA.17.01.0003 RR-0422
ref6047_2e6
uachapelsermaud
duke:628573
dcrau002414
ark:/87924/r4fn14t6b
252d20e9-f1c9-4932-9c53-19c159726405

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Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

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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 - "The Seven Deadly Virtues" (March 17, 1968)

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1. James T. Cleland - "The Seven Deadly Virtues" (March 17, 1968)

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James T. Cleland - "The Seven Deadly Virtues" (March 17, 1968)

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