Howard C. Wilkinson - "Has the Bottom Dropped out of Everything?" (June 30, 1968)

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-	Testing, one, two, three. Testing.	0:10
-	The necessities of strangers,	0:15
	the helplessness of the weak,	0:18
	the despondency of the weary,	0:21
	the failing powers of the aged,	0:25
	O God draw near to each,	0:30
	for the sake of Jesus Christ, our Lord.	0:33
	O God who has formed us for fellowship with one another,	0:38
	we pray for all who need us,	0:43
	for all who are underfed and starving,	0:47
	for the victims of oppression, injustice,	0:52
	cruelty, and racial prejudice,	0:56
	for all who are frustrated,	1:01
	for the sorely tempted,	1:04
	and for those who fall,	1:07
	for little children and youth who are neglected	1:11
	and have never known what it is to be cared for and loved.	1:16
	Lord, hear our prayer,	1:20
	and let our third prayers be those	1:28
	of supplication for ourselves.	1:30
	O God who hast made the church a royal priesthood	1:36
	that we may offer unto thee prayers of supplication,	1:40
	hear us as we pray for the gifts	1:45
	of gaiety and freedom and simplicity,	1:48
	for kindness, generosity, gentleness,	1:55
	honor, courtesy, and self-control,	2:00
	for the consecration of the discontent of the young,	2:07
	for wisdom in the conservatism of the middle-aged,	2:13
	for resiliency in the obstinacy of the aged.	2:19
	Help us both to know and to acknowledge	2:25
	that the standard for man's life	2:28
	has been shown us in Jesus Christ, our Lord.	2:31
	O God, author of the world's joy	2:39
	and bearer of the world's pain,	2:41
	make us glad that we are alive	2:45
	and have inherited the world's burden.	2:48
	Deliver us from the luxury of cheap melancholy	2:52
	and at the heart of all our trouble and sorrow,	2:57
	let unconquerable gladness dwell,	3:01
	through Jesus Christ, our Lord.	3:05
	And now as our savior Christ hath taught us,	3:11
	we humbly pray together, saying,	3:15
	our father who art in heaven,	3:18
	hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come,	3:22
	thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.	3:27
	Give us this day our daily bread	3:31
	and forgive us our trespasses	3:35
	as we forgive those who trespass against us	3:37
	and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.	3:41
	For thine is the kingdom, and the power,	3:46
	and the glory, forever.	3:49
	Amen.	3:53
-	Three weeks ago, I was enjoying a cup of coffee,	4:17
	in mid-morning, at one of the tables	4:21
	in Ted Minah's dining halls.	4:25
	A man whom I knew brought his cup of coffee	4:29
	and sat down across from me, and we had a conversation	4:31
	which primed the pump of today's sermon.	4:37
	The man made a number of statements to me,	4:41
	and then he asked this question:	4:44
	"Has the bottom dropped out of everything, Chaplain?"	4:47
	The context of the question is formed	4:53
	by the statements which he made to me	4:55
	before asking the question.	4:57
	When I returned to my office that morning,	5:00
	I wrote down his statements as well as I can remember them.	5:02
	And here they are:	5:06
	"Chaplain, I am discouraged.	5:09
	Within the last few years,	5:12
	three national leaders have been assassinated.	5:14
	The chaplain of one of America's greatest universities	5:20
	has been convicted in federal court	5:24
	on a charge of conspiring	5:27
	against the government of the United States.	5:29
	More than 1000 students	5:36
	and faculty members of Duke University	5:38
	left their classrooms and dormitories a few weeks ago	5:40
	to make severe demands of the administration	5:44
	and the trustees, and even worse things have happened	5:46
	at a score of other universities.	5:50
	A sexual revolution is going on,	5:56
	which threatens to sweep away every vestige of decency	5:59
	and to undermine all of the religious principles	6:03
	of sexual conduct.	6:07
	Has the bottom dropped out of everything, Chaplain?"	6:11
	This was his list of things	6:17
	which are disturbingly wrong with our nation today.	6:19
	If I had been talking with a different person,	6:24
	he probably would've mentioned	6:27
	an alternate category of woes.	6:28
	You can select your own roster of calamities this morning.	6:32
	Are you upset by inflation?	6:37
	Do steadily increasing taxes give you ulcers?	6:40
	Are you alarmed because the Supreme Court has decided	6:45
	that now, after 200 years, it is un-American	6:48
	to say a prayer in a public school?	6:52
	Does it give you nightmares to think of the rise	6:56
	in the use of mind-altering drugs?	6:59
	Billy Graham made his own list	7:05
	of things badly wrong with our civilization	7:07
	and announced at the San Antonio Hemisfair,	7:09
	two weeks ago on June 16th,	7:12
	that the world would very soon come to an end.	7:15
	He said, and this is a direct quote,	7:19
	"Everybody knows it. Everybody feels it.	7:22
	It's in the air."	7:26
	Graham went on to say, "This cosmos is going	7:29
	to come to an end by a gigantic convulsion."	7:32
	Well, a great many people are concerned	7:36
	with the aggregate number of events	7:39
	and trends which alarm them.	7:40
	Different things, of course, alarm different people.	7:44
	If we were to review the list given	7:48
	by my companion at morning coffee,	7:50
	you probably would think that he was an irate alumnus	7:52
	paying his first visit to the campus in 40 years.	7:56
	Or perhaps you would think he was	8:01
	one of the more conservative members	8:02
	of our board of trustees, or at least	8:04
	one of the older members of the Duke administration.	8:08
	But it is not so.	8:13
	Instead, my questioner	8:15
	was an undergraduate student of Duke University,	8:17
	with a 3.0 average, handsome, well-liked on campus,	8:21
	well-informed on current events and issues,	8:27
	friendly, responsible, but disturbed.	8:31
	He is a splendid young man who shows no sign	8:37
	of abandoning his own high principles,	8:39
	but who wonders if almost everyone else	8:42
	has not abandoned theirs.	8:45
	Now I shall not tell you his name, but it could be Elijah.	8:49
	You will recall how, in this morning's scripture lesson,	8:55
	Elijah stood at the mouth of the cave and wailed,	8:58
	"I have been very jealous for the Lord, the God of hosts.	9:01
	For the people of Israel have forsaken thy covenant,	9:05
	thrown down thy altars,	9:08
	and slain thy prophets with the sword.	9:10
	And I, even I only, am left."	9:12
	And the Lord said to him,	9:18
	"Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus.	9:20
	I will leave 7,000 in Israel,	9:24
	all the knees that have not bowed to Baal."	9:28
	Well, you see, just as the ancient Elijah	9:33
	could not see the 7,000 faithful Israelites in his day,	9:35
	and therefore thought he was the only faithful one left,	9:40
	so my Trinity College summer school friend	9:44
	was looking at the problems rather than at the resources,	9:46
	and he wondered if the bottom	9:50
	had not dropped out of everything.	9:51
	Well, one of the problems which my young friend had,	9:55
	and which a great many other sincere people have,	9:57
	is that he did not see contemporary dilemmas	10:00
	in the light of history.	10:03
	And it is because his problem	10:06
	is the problem which many people have,	10:08
	that I have chosen to speak on his question this morning.	10:11
	Even if we were to assume that the present picture	10:16
	is just as dark as he painted it to be,	10:19
	a glance at history would put	10:23
	an altogether different interpretation	10:25
	on the present scene from the one he was giving it.	10:27
	If we were to look at the problems he brought up,	10:32
	and even if we were to understand them	10:34
	in the terminology he used,	10:35
	we would not have to conclude that now, finally,	10:39
	the bottom has dropped out of everything.	10:41
	Listen to this statement:	10:45
	"Youth is disintegrating.	10:48
	The youngsters of the land	10:51
	have a disrespect for their elders	10:53
	and a contempt for authority in every form.	10:55
	Vandalism is rife and crime of all kinds	10:59
	is rampant among our young people.	11:03
	The nation is in peril."	11:05
	Who do you think spoke those alarming words?	11:09
	They were spoken by a discouraged Egyptian priest,	11:16
	about 2000 years before Christ.	11:19
	Listen to these words:	11:23
	"Children today love luxury.	11:26
	They have bad manners, a contempt for authority,	11:28
	a disrespect for their elders,	11:31
	and they like to talk instead of work.	11:32
	They contradict their parents, they chatter before company,	11:35
	they gobble up the best at the table	11:37
	and they tyrannize their teachers."	11:39
	Who said that?	11:42
	Well, before I tell you who did,	11:46
	let me report to you that on last Tuesday,	11:48
	I read those words to a gentle lady	11:52
	who works over in the union building.	11:54
	And I asked her the same question, who said that?	11:57
	You know what she said?	12:01
	"Chaplain, I don't know who said it, but whoever he was,	12:04
	he surely knew what he was talking about."	12:07
	She was astonished when I told her	12:12
	that those words were spoken by Socrates in ancient Greece.	12:13
	In fact, she was so astonished	12:18
	that she was not ready to accept their ancient origin	12:22
	until I showed her the reference	12:26
	on page 64 of Roul Tunley's book,	12:28
	entitled "Kids, Crime, and Chaos".	12:31
	Now the only point I am focusing on just at the moment	12:36
	is that events and trends which disturb or alarm us	12:40
	generally have their parallels in history.	12:45
	So if we are to view them in historical perspective,	12:49
	we shall be able to learn enough from them to be wise,	12:53
	but we shall avoid learning too much from them.	12:57
	You may recall Mark Twain's cat,	13:02
	concerning whom the famous writer reported	13:04
	that the cat sat down on a hot stone in the backyard.	13:07
	Mark Twain said that it would've been an ideal situation	13:12
	if the cat had learned from this experience	13:14
	not to sit down on hot stones.	13:17
	But the cat learned too much from the experience, he said.	13:20
	He would never again sit down on any stone at all.	13:23
	This is often our human problem	13:29
	when we're confronted by things that we do not like.	13:32
	We learn too much from the confrontation.	13:36
	We learn some things indeed that are not true.	13:40
	Without probing the experience with searching questions,	13:44
	we tend to give in to a fatalistic mood of despair.	13:48
	Just because one stone was hot,	13:55
	it does not follow that all stones are hot	13:57
	and always will be.	13:59
	Just because some people in Elijah's day	14:02
	had forsaken Jehovah's covenant, had thrown down his altars,	14:04
	and had butchered the prophets with the sword,	14:08
	it did not necessarily follow that every knee in Israel	14:12
	except Elijah's had bowed to Baal.	14:15
	Indeed, God pointed out that there were 7,000 other people	14:21
	who were making the scene in righteousness.	14:25
	But what we need to do is to use our God-given minds	14:30
	and think about the experiences which upset us.	14:33
	Often we shall find elements, of course,	14:38
	which represent loss.	14:40
	And just as often, we seem to discover significant gains	14:43
	which are woven into the fabric of the same experience.	14:48
	So let us examine one by one	14:53
	the woes which my student friend listed	14:56
	to see what wisdom we can glean concerning them.	14:58
	Now don't worry about this exposure of my friend's words,	15:03
	because he and I have discussed these items in detail,	15:08
	and he is entirely willing	15:11
	that they should be used in this way today.	15:13
	First, he mentioned the assassination	15:17
	of three national leaders	15:20
	within the space of only a few years.	15:21
	Obviously this is bad.	15:26
	What is bad about it is that John F. Kennedy,	15:28
	Martin Luther King, and Robert F. Kennedy are dead,	15:31
	and that the world has been deprived of their leadership.	15:35
	A second bad aspect is that a lone assassin	15:40
	was able in three instances	15:43
	to veto the leadership choice of a vast throng of people.	15:45
	Even if history subsequently shows	15:52
	that one or more of the killers had accomplices,	15:54
	the number will still be infinitesimally small.	15:58
	Beyond these two tragic aspects, what more should we say?	16:03
	That there is a sickness in the soul of our people	16:09
	which rose up and slew these men?	16:11
	No, I think not.	16:15
	John F. Kennedy had been elected	16:19
	President of the United States by a majority of the voters.	16:21
	The people of our land had shown	16:26
	that they were very proud of him.	16:27
	As for Martin Luther King,	16:32
	he had been awarded the Nobel Prize,	16:34
	and while he lived, he had been honored in America	16:37
	as no courageous prophet has ever before	16:40
	been honored by our people.	16:43
	On the day of his burial in the city of Atlanta,	16:46
	the official estimate was that 500,000 people	16:49
	moved through the streets of the city,	16:54
	from the place of his funeral to the place of his interment.	16:56
	I was personally present and I can testify	17:00
	that I have never witnessed such an outpouring	17:03
	of loyalty and affection in my life,	17:06
	from all types of people, from every corner of the nation	17:09
	and from all sections of the earth.	17:13
	As for Robert Kennedy, his death is so recent	17:17
	that we can all remember how he led	17:19
	in the preferential polls,	17:22
	how he was celebrated in the news media,	17:24
	and how he was idolized by millions of our citizens.	17:26
	No, I think we're learning too much from the assassinations	17:31
	if we learned that the masses of people	17:34
	wished these three leaders to be dead,	17:36
	or that a general sickness within us rose up and slew them.	17:41
	What we have to say is that three or more individuals	17:46
	wished these leaders to be dead.	17:49
	This does not mean that history	17:52
	has suddenly started swinging on its hinges,	17:54
	for it has always been true	17:58
	that even the most popular leaders of men	17:59
	have had to be on guard against the lurking assassin.	18:02
	Kings have always had their palace guards.	18:06
	Every commanding general has had his personal bodyguard,	18:10
	not to protect him from the army's enemy,	18:14
	but from the assassin within his own army.	18:17
	Certainly we need to discover a more effective way	18:21
	to protect our leaders from the assassin	18:24
	who would nullify the people's choice,	18:26
	but we contribute nothing constructive	18:30
	when we go on to judge the majority	18:32
	by the guilt or the sickness of the few.	18:34
	The bottom hasn't dropped out of everything yet.	18:39
	Second, my coffee companion was distressed and depressed	18:45
	because the chaplain of one	18:49
	of America's greatest universities	18:51
	has been convicted in federal court	18:54
	on a charge of conspiring against the government	18:56
	of the United States.	18:58
	He said it would not be so distressing	19:01
	were it to have been a representative of the lunatic fringe.	19:04
	But a Presbyterian minister,	19:10
	who came from one of the honored families of the church	19:12
	and of the university,	19:15
	who had been chosen as chaplain by a great institution,	19:18
	that was disturbing.	19:22
	It was upsetting because one assumes the Christian religion	19:25
	and its spokesmen will be in support of law and order,	19:29
	and will be loyal to the government of a democracy	19:33
	and not conspire against it.	19:36
	The assumption also has been that the university,	19:40
	like Christianity, supports the government of a republic.	19:43
	When, therefore a federal court	19:48
	found a great university's chaplain guilty of conspiracy,	19:50
	the head of my student friend began to swim.	19:55
	What do we learn from this? What does wisdom teach?	20:01
	I have read thousands of inches of type	20:07
	about the trial of the Yale chaplain,	20:12
	and so have many of you.	20:15
	The verdict has been rendered and the case is under appeal.	20:18
	Now is not the time and here is not the place	20:24
	to retry this case.	20:27
	Certain things, however, can be stated with assurance.	20:30
	While in a dictatorship or in an oligarchy,	20:35
	it may often be the Christian duty of men	20:39
	to break the law of the land, to defy the government,	20:42
	and to seek its overthrow,	20:47
	it becomes the Christian to acknowledge gratefully	20:50
	the difference between government by the few	20:54
	and government by the majority.	20:58
	But Government by the majority,	21:01
	no less than government by the few,	21:05
	must govern by law.	21:08
	Law is meaningless if it is not obeyed.	21:12
	Order is impossible without this obedience to law.	21:16
	Contrary to what some emotionally unstable people believe,	21:22
	there absolutely cannot be progress without civil order.	21:26
	Steps toward progress in an atmosphere of civil disorder	21:33
	will go forward by one and will slip backward by five.	21:36
	This means that majority law is always a package deal.	21:43
	Personally, I am interested in the national parks,	21:50
	but I'm not interested in some of the other things	21:53
	which I am taxed to support.	21:55
	I would willingly pay taxes to support the parks,	21:58
	but I would prefer not to pay taxes	22:01
	to support governmental activities I don't like.	22:03
	But this is not an option open to me.	22:07
	I can vote against it, speak out against it,	22:12
	demonstrate peacefully against it,	22:15
	protest against it with all my resources,	22:17
	but if in the end I cannot persuade	22:21
	the majority to vote my way,	22:23
	I have to be governed by the decision of the majority.	22:25
	This, the federal court ruled,	22:30
	the Yale chaplain had not been willing to do.	22:33
	A devout churchman, Dr. Erwin Griswold,	22:38
	recently Dean of the Harvard Law School	22:42
	and now Solicitor General of the United States,	22:44
	was quoted last month as follows:	22:46
	"One who contemplates civil disobedience	22:50
	out of moral conviction	22:53
	should not be surprised and must not be bitter	22:55
	if a criminal conviction ensues,	22:59
	and he must accept the fact that organized society	23:03
	cannot endure on any other basis.	23:06
	His hope is that he may aid in getting the law changed.	23:10
	But if he does not succeed in that,	23:15
	he cannot complain if the law is applied to him."	23:17
	End of quote.	23:23
	Yet the fact that the Yale chaplain	23:26
	has had the law applied to him	23:27
	is not an indication that the bottom has dropped out	23:29
	of the universe, or the Church, or even of Yale University.	23:31
	Chaplain Coffin did not enterprise to break the law of men.	23:37
	He enterprised to obey the law of God.	23:43
	It turned out that his effort to be obedient to God	23:50
	had as a byproduct the effect of his being disobedient	23:54
	to the American government.	23:58
	And as he sought to increase the certainty	24:01
	of his obedience to God,	24:04
	he decreased the certainty of his obedience to man's law.	24:06
	And however much we may criticize him for this,	24:13
	we must acknowledge at the same time	24:18
	that the stuff of his legal conviction	24:20
	is very much like this stuff of the Old Testament prophets	24:24
	and the New Testament martyrs.	24:29
	So, has the bottom dropped out of everything?	24:32
	I think it has not.	24:37
	Well, the third distress of my undergraduate friend	24:42
	was the recent Duke vigil,	24:45
	about which literal volumes have been and will be written.	24:47
	Time does not now permit me to attempt even a brief summary.	24:54
	I shall limit my remarks to a few sample statements	25:00
	of the kind I think should characterize	25:04
	a wise analysis of any disturbing and cataclysmic event.	25:06
	First, there was good reporting of the vigil	25:13
	and bad reporting of it.	25:16
	Some people in America therefore made up their minds	25:18
	on the basis of the bad reporting they read	25:21
	and some on the basis of the good reporting they read,	25:24
	and this accounts were different opinions, in part.	25:26
	Second, even as members of the church	25:30
	join the church for varying reasons,	25:34
	some better than others,	25:37
	so students and faculty joined the vigil	25:39
	for strangely different reasons.	25:43
	Some were motivated by a desire to help their fellow man.	25:46
	Some thought it was a different kind of game to play.	25:50
	Some were aware of the economic realities under discussion.	25:54
	Some were not.	25:59
	Some believed moral passion	26:01
	was a sufficient antidote for fiscal ignorance.	26:03
	For instance, since the vigil was successful	26:08
	in elevating the wages of our dining hall employees,	26:12
	it had to follow that the price of meals	26:17
	would be increased to pay the new wage, how else?	26:19
	Some vigil members knew this	26:24
	and gladly pay the increased price.	26:26
	Other vigil members grumbled as soon as the price went up	26:30
	and began to eat downtown at the greasy spoon,	26:34
	where wages in the kitchen are lower than at Duke.	26:38
	Third, I think it cannot be overly accented	26:43
	that the goals of the Duke vigil were the most lofty staging	26:47
	of the perennial tension between child and parent	26:53
	which could be imagined.	26:57
	Though other factors were present,	27:00
	the vigil was essentially a student versus authority affair.	27:03
	It was son versus father.	27:09
	It was a moral field of battle	27:13
	on which could be continued the age-old struggle	27:15
	between parent types and young people types.	27:18
	Indeed, sometimes the middle-aged alumnus	27:24
	who gives a verbal scorching	27:29
	to the university administration	27:32
	because of student protests on campus	27:34
	is simply venting upon the university	27:38
	his own rage and frustration,	27:41
	which had built up during years of tension	27:44
	between himself and his own children.	27:46
	The curious thing, the ironical thing,	27:50
	is that the other side of the coin	27:53
	is very much like this one,	27:56
	in that psychiatrists inform us that it often is true	27:59
	that when students seek to clobber	28:05
	a university administration and make protests against it,	28:07
	they're giving vent to the frustrations they have built up	28:11
	against their own parents through the years.	28:14
	And thus you can see that the university authorities	28:18
	are often made to be the whipping boys	28:21
	by both sides of the parent-child tension.	28:24
	Parents scold the university for being unable to control	28:29
	sons or daughters they couldn't control at home,	28:34
	and sons and daughters rebel	28:38
	against in loco parentis types at college	28:40
	who look like the fathers and mothers	28:43
	against whom they rebelled at home.	28:46
	Well, if the Duke vigil means that the bottom is out,	28:52
	at least it hasn't just now dropped out.	28:56
	It dropped out a long time ago.	28:59
	Last, let's take a couple of minutes	29:05
	to look at the final woe my coffee companion mentioned.	29:10
	He is a young man of high moral principles,	29:16
	and he was dismayed at what he understood	29:20
	the present sexual revolution to mean.	29:23
	He had the impression that the sexual revolution	29:28
	was sweeping away every remnant of decency	29:32
	and undermining all of the religious principles	29:37
	of sexual conduct.	29:39
	Was he right?	29:41
	Perhaps the first thing we should do	29:45
	is simply to list the elements	29:47
	which compose the sexual revolution.	29:49
	As I understand it, the elements are as follows.	29:53
	First, the general diffusion	29:56
	of Freudian insights concerning sex	29:59
	throughout the population, and particularly among students.	30:03
	Words like id and libido are as common as guitar and pizza.	30:08
	Second, The proliferation of devices and drugs	30:15
	designed to prevent conception.	30:20
	Third, the multiplying of surveys, questionnaires,	30:24
	and scientific observation of sexual behavior.	30:28
	Fourth, immoral sexual behavior	30:32
	which previously would've been secret to you	30:36
	now is openly known, and in some cases even paraded.	30:39
	Fifth and last, theological fads relating to sex	30:44
	have encouraged some people to believe	30:49
	there no longer are valid religious principles	30:52
	governing sexual behavior.	30:56
	These ingredients compose what is commonly referred to	30:59
	as the sexual revolution.	31:03
	Do they together mean that the bottom has dropped out	31:06
	of sexual decency, that promiscuity has taken over?	31:09
	I personally do not think so.	31:15
	Let us examine some of these ingredients.	31:18
	The diffusion of Freudian sexual insights	31:22
	is a wholesome corrective	31:27
	to the unhealthy Victorian concepts	31:30
	which too long were identified with Christian sex ethics.	31:35
	These insights do not call for promiscuity at all,	31:40
	and one who is fully educated in Freudian literature	31:46
	may cheerfully support the principle of premarital chastity	31:49
	and postmarital fidelity.	31:54
	Second, expert testimony indicates	31:58
	that the proliferation of contraceptive devices	32:02
	has neither increased fornication and adultery	32:06
	nor reduced the rate of illegitimate pregnancies.	32:11
	Both of these conclusions came as a distinct surprise to me	32:17
	recently when I made a study of this.	32:21
	Although sex is far more discussed now	32:25
	than it was when Grandmother was a teenager,	32:28
	the rate of fornication and adultery	32:32
	is almost identical now to what it was then.	32:35
	And in spite of contraceptives, pregnancies out of wedlock	32:42
	occur at about the same rate as before.	32:47
	The chief difference between then and now is that back then,	32:51
	they thought they might get pregnant and did,	32:54
	whereas now they're sure they won't get pregnant, but do.	32:58
	Last, the theological fad of situation ethics	33:04
	has been interpreted by many students to mean	33:10
	that there are no valid Christian principles left	33:13
	that govern sexual behavior,	33:17
	that everything is a matter of subjective, personal choice,	33:20
	depending upon how one feels about another.	33:25
	Well of course, in such a confused state,	33:30
	some have understandably made mistakes,	33:32
	and it is to be hoped that this confusion	33:36
	will soon be replaced by clearer guidelines,	33:39
	and we look here to our colleagues whose discipline it is	33:44
	to give leadership in the theology of ethics.	33:49
	However, it does not seem to me	33:54
	that the sexual revolution as a whole	33:55
	indicates that the bottom has dropped out	33:58
	of our sexual morals.	34:00
	Actually, the sexual revolution may bring us	34:02
	to a needed substitution of New Testament sexual ethics	34:06
	for an outmoded Victorian platform, which was consistent	34:12
	neither with the New Testament nor human nature.	34:17
	Now, what is being called for this morning in this sermon	34:23
	is not a Pollyanna attitude which refuses to acknowledge	34:27
	that the world has any problems at all,	34:31
	or that if we will only look at them,	34:35
	we'll see that they aren't the problems they seem to be.	34:37
	But what we're calling for	34:42
	is an attitude of thoughtful examination,	34:43
	which interprets current trends in historical perspective	34:47
	and which insists on basic Christian values	34:52
	in all of our human dilemmas.	34:57
	And if we can have grace enough	35:01
	to maintain such an attitude,	35:03
	we will avoid the overcompensation of Mark Twain's cat	35:05
	and avoid the despondency of an Elijah.	35:11
	Perhaps we can even be wiser than Socrates,	35:15
	for we shall have the benefit	35:18
	of hindsight as well as foresight	35:20
	to a degree which he could not have.	35:24
	Let us pray.	35:28
	Almighty God, our heavenly father,	35:30
	we thank thee that thou has called us seriously	35:35
	to witnessing and to living in a day	35:39
	where choices are important and where values are dependable,	35:43
	in a world where Christ is alive.	35:50
	We pray that He may walk with us as we live for His glory,	35:56
	and in His name, amen.	36:01
	(grand organ music)	36:08
	(grand choral music)	36:34
	(contemplative organ music)	38:31
	(joyous choral music)	39:28
	(grand organ music)	41:55
	(grand choral music)	42:24
-	Here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord,	42:59
	our silver and our gold,	43:02
	the symbol of ourselves to be a reasonable,	43:05
	holy, and lively sacrifice unto thee	43:10
	through Jesus Christ, our Lord.	43:15
	Amen.	43:18
	And unto God's gracious mercy and protection	43:21
	do we commit you.	43:25
	May the blessing of God come upon you abundantly.	43:27
	May it keep you strong and tranquil	43:31
	in the truth of His promises through Jesus Christ, our Lord.	43:35
	(organ chord)	43:42
	♪ Amen ♪	43:46
	♪ Amen ♪	43:51
	(bell tolling)	44:03
	(grand organ music)	44:16
	(churchgoers chattering)	45:11

Item Info

Title:

Howard C. Wilkinson - "Has the Bottom Dropped out of Everything?" (June 30, 1968)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r47d2v88x

Date:

June 30, 1968

Speaker:

Wilkinson, Howard C.

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0440
ref6083_3do
uachapelsermaud
duke:628348
dcrau002431
ark:/87924/r47d2v88x
352f8080-bab2-4e6e-8495-f6eee78f3c43

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

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Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

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Language:

English

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United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

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

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Howard C. Wilkinson - "Has the Bottom Dropped out of Everything?" (June 30, 1968)

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1. Howard C. Wilkinson - "Has the Bottom Dropped Out of Everything?" (June 30, 1968)

Duke University Archives

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Howard C. Wilkinson - "Has the Bottom Dropped out of Everything?" (June 30, 1968)

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