Radio Script #18
Little Talks On Common Things
March 13, 1949
A little, but sometimes astounding, thing is silence. Those who read a few days ago in the newspapers of the gracious compliment paid to our Maine Senator, Margaret Chase Smith, by the Republican floor leader, Senator Wherry, when he appointed her acting floor leader in his absence for a few hours, may have imagined a picture quite different from the facts. They may have pictured Mrs. Smith as making an impassioned speech, marshaling forces of Republican votes against the enemy ramparts, upholding the banner of her side in momentous debate.
Now Mrs. Smith’s appointment as acting floor leader of the minority was a fine compliment to her popularity and her worth. She was the first woman ever to occupy that position in the whole history of the Senate. That perhaps was honor enough, but it was not without toil. For what was Mrs. Smith’s job as floor leader last Tuesday? It was the job of an alert watch-dog, to sit in silence, and give the alarm only if the enemy launched a surprise attack. For last Tuesday in the Senate the southern filibuster was in full sway, although this time it was not a southerner, but Senator Cain of Washington who held the floor for seven straight hours. Ostensibly he was arguing against the confirmation of President Truman’s nomination of Mon Wallgren to be chairman of the National Security Resources Board. Part of the time Mrs. Smith and Senator Cain were the only senators in the senate chamber. Even genial Alben Barkley, president of the senate by virtue of his office as Vice-President of the United States, had fled the ordeal, turning the chair over to Huey Long’s son Russell, the new senator from Louisiana.
Those who know Margaret Smith can be very sure she didn’t go to sleep. Even if so many senators, both Republican and Democrat, had not taken pity on her lonesome vigil, to drop into a neighboring seat for a friendly chat, while Senator Cain droned on and on, Mrs. Smith would have stuck to her post. No slick parliamentary trick would be put over on her. The lady from Skowhegan can always be depended upon to do any job she agrees to undertake.
We persons over fifty years of age often remark how young people today take for granted many things that did not exist in our own childhood. What remarkable changes these young folks missed — these kids who never knew a day with no automobiles, no airplanes, no radios, no electric refrigerators, no oil burners. Only by a most lively imagination can they understand what we mean by the horse and buggy days. But it doesn’t so easily occur to us that we too take for granted many things that our grandfathers never knew. My father, who was born in 1861, and who from the age of 18 until his death at 84, was in the grocery business, could remember when the first yellow bananas came to Maine. For some time the big red bananas had been known, but before the Civil War no resident of inland Maine had seen a yellow one.
In my grandmother’ s girlhood no one would eat those new fangled fruits -or were they vegetables .:.- called love apples. For love apple was the old name for the tomato. And don’t you fastidious folk call me to task for my pronunciation. Look it up in Webster. The favored pronunciation today is to-may-to; the secondary pronunciation to-mah-to is an affectation.
Oranges have been common in Maine for many years. My great grandfather used to drive an ox-team, ~~hauling freight from West Gorham to Portland. That journey which can easily be made in an hour now for the round trip used to take him two whole days — one day in and one day back. Great-grandmother, who lived until I was twelve years old, used to regale us children with wonderful stories of those early Gorham days. And one of the stories included the oranges that great-grand- father used to bring home from Portland once a year at Christmas time. But grapefruit is another story. I myself was well along in grammar school before I saw the first of those eye-squirting missiles. In rural Maine at least grapefruit have not been known very long.
Well, enough of that subject for now. We’ll return to it again some day. But right here I want to tell of an old-time incident that happened in Waterville about seventy years ago. It concerns the national pastime, the American sport of baseball. The Rev. William Abbott Smith, beloved pastor emeritus of the Congregational Church, was then a small town boy in the then comparatively small town of Waterville. Like all the other small boys of the community, he went up to the college one Saturday afternoon to see Colby and Bowdoin play baseball. As the game progressed one vigorous batter clouted a mighty wallop down beyond the north end of Shannon Observatory. The right fielder went to look for the ball; he was soon joined by the center fielder and the third baseman. Soon the whole team was hunting for that ball, but they could not find it.
Now at the game with one of his spirited horses hitched to a light buggy was Hod Nelson, owner of the famous trotter Nelson, a nationally known racer of that time. Hod jumped into his buggy, raced his horse down to Main Street, purchased a new ball, and raced back to the field. Meanwhile the game had just stopped, to be resumed with cheers when Hod appeared with the new ball. That’s quite a story folks. A championship game between Colby and Bowdoin being played with only one baseball.
In this Lenten season I want to call your attention to a book that many of you will be eager to read. It is by Fulton Oursler and bears the same title as the radio program that follows this one each Sunday evening: “The Greatest Story Ever Told”. When I first picked up the book I thought it was merely an account of how that program was organized and conducted. But I found it to be much more than that. Mr. Oursler has written a significant and memorable life of Christ.
It does not pretend to be a scholarly book. It is not a discussion of Biblical criticism. It is a simple, straightforward story in the simplest language, written for the average, ordinary reader to appreciate and understand. And in one respect, to which we shall refer in a few minutes, it is the most extraordinary life of Jesus that has ever been written.
But first, let me mention the book’s preface, which does recount most interestingly how the now famous radio program, The Greatest Story Ever Told, came to its perfection and its popularity. Mr. Oursler’s plan for the book preceded any thought of a program on the air. Some years ago Rabbi Solomon Freehof of Pittsburgh had said to Oursler: “The unspoken scandal of our times is the hidden fact that Bible-reading has been largely given up in America.” Later, as Oursler traveled around the country, he talked to many different kinds of men and women — fellow passengers in Pullman and day coach. To these people he made casual allusions to Biblical passages, and he soon discovered that references taken for granted in his boyhood had no meaning for these traveling companions.
When he would utter such expressions as “thirty pieces of silver”, “the angel that troubled the waters”, and “tribute unto Ceasar”, he would be greeted with blank stares. Yet when he explained the meaning, interest was aroused. One sample from the great life invariably aroused the appetite for more. This experience convinced Oursler to write the story, centering it around incidents, so that each incident could be a little story in itself. His book offers no argument, no explanations. It is, rather, an attempt to tell faithfully, by record of incidents, just what the four gospels of Mathew, Mark, Luke and John assert to have happened during’ the thirty-three years of Jesus’ life.
I must not spoil your own reading of Oursler’s preface by telling you how the manuscript for the then unprinted book became the basis for the famous radio program. Suffice it to say that, in spite of a host of skeptics who said that such a program could not be produced without offending one or more religious sects, Paul Litchfield, head of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, decided to take a chance. So the first and best known of those broadcasts, “The Good Samaritan”, was made, followed by “The Unmerciful Servant”.
Now comes the unusual feature of Oursler’s book, the feature which explains the universal success of the program. Not on a single page of the book and not in anyone of the broadcasts has there been any incident or any remark that could give offense to any religious group: Protestant, Catholic or Jew. For the radio program each script has been read, corrected, and approved by Monsignor Joseph Nelson of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, Dr. Samuel Shoemaker, rector of Calvary Protestant Episcopal Church, Dr. Paul Wolfe, minister of Brick Presbyterian Church in downtown Manhattan, and Mr. Otto Frankfurter, brother of Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter. Yes, here is the astounding thing. Instead of meeting opposition from Jewish clergy and citizens, Mr. Oursler’s telling of the story has their praise and support. Because Jesus was indeed a Jew. It was a Jew who lived the greatest life that was ever lived.
So I want to show you how in his book Mr. Oursler tells the crucifixion story, because for 2,000 years fine, patriotic, high-minded Jewish citizens of every country have been persecuted and taunted because men have said the Jews killed Jesus. It was that great friend of the American colonies, Edmund Burke, who told the British Parliament in 1775, “There is no known method of drawing an indictment against a whole people~ Yet that is what the whole Christian world did for centuries when they blamed all Jews for the crucifixion of Jesus.
So, without going one inch beyond the record in the four gospels, Mr. Oursler shows how an inner circle of Jewish priests, fearing the loss of their own power, and dreading the results of a popular uprising behind this self-avowed Messiah, plotted Jesus I arrest, conviction and execution. Led by Annas and Caiphas, they had Jesus brought before Pilate, placed Pilate in a position where, to save his own neck, he had to hand Jesus over for crucifixion, and thought they were well rid of this trouble maker. Then came the glorious happenings of Easter morning.
In the last pages of Oursler’s book Caiphas has come to the older patriarch priest Annas to say,”We must get rid of all Christians. I have come to you that we may agree on a strong policy.” These two had heard the reports of the risen Jesus’ appearance to his disciples by the sea of Tiberias, and how he had appeared to others on a mountain in Galilee. Now in the moist warmth of the torrid night these two Jewish priests sat together in the dark, remembering much of this man whom they had ordered killed, yet who could still plague their peace of mind.
“I thought you had already started a strong policy”. said Annas. “We condemned one”, replied Caiphas. “And stoned him to death”, said Annas, “Stephen, the first Christian martyr”. “He will not be the last”, stormed Caiphas. “But has it occurred to you”, asked Annas, “that this brave death contradicts all that you have said earlier this evening. Would any man be willing to die — in heroic, glorious martyrdom like this — for some conjurer’s trick involving the stealing of a corpse from a sealed tomb? Let me make it plainer”, continued Annas. “On the night we killed him, you remember that two of his disciples followed him into Jerusalem, but one of them denied him three times, and both hid away. What happened to the other nine? They couldn’t get away fast enough. They went back to Galilee where they came from. Why? Because they were afraid. But now these same men are not run-away cowards, but fearless martyrs. Why? Because they know what they stand for, and what you stand for, Caiphas, and they know this world will always be a place of fear, of want, of war, of suffering, as long as those two conflicting points of view exist. The world will be a better p,lace, Caiphas, only when their side wins. And they will win. We can only kill them; but they can conquer us.”
“Lord Annas”, said Caiphas, “the views taught by the followers of this man are traitorous and subversive. I propose to stamp these people out, so that they will never be heard of again. There won I t be a Christian left in the world.” “Very well”, said Annas with a sigh that showed it was no use to argue longer. “Do as you will do anyhow, Caiphas. But remember these roots are deep and spreading. Before you get through — God only knows. I have a horrible feeling that we have blundered. History may blame us. Worse still, history may blame our nation, all Israel, for the guilt that belongs so much to you and me and our rich and powerful friends. It may be, Caiphas, that we have been afraid of the truth.”
Year: 1949