“For The Living of These Days”

I am visited this morning by Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878-1969) through my own collection of notes gleaned from reading his many books and sermons.  Fosdick was a Baptist pastor, but served as pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in New York City and then at the historic, interdenominational Riverside Church in Morningside Heights, Manhattan.  His autobiography, published in 1956, is titled, For The Living of These Days. This title came from his great hymn, “God of Grace and God of Glory.”   My teacher and friend, D. Elton Trueblood, is credited with helping Fosdick choose that title for his autobiography.  

I’ve found through the years that one friend or teacher begets another.  I’ve written in recent days of Rufus Jones and Howard Thurman—both of whom were friends with Harry Emerson Fosdick.  I’ve already mentioned the friendship between Fosdick and my mentor, Elton Trueblood.  Fosdick, wanting to honor his friendship with Rufus Jones,  wrote an anthology:  Rufus Jones Speaks to Our Time. 

I could not ask for better teachers and friends.  “The next best thing to being great,” my friend Elton wrote, “is to walk with the great.”  I have walked with men and women of greatness—and their influence on my life and thinking has been immense and  beyond measure.

These friends of mine have long since departed this world, but that does not mean they no longer speak of, for, and to this world in which you and I live.  They visit me and they can be your visitors too. They do speak just as Plato and Socrates still speak to our time .  There are those plagued by the disease of “contemporaneity” who refuse to read anything other than that which is current or on The New York Times Best Seller List. This contemporaneity leaves us bereft of the roots of greatness needed to understand what “great men and women” are saying and writing today.  Harry Emerson Fosdick, Rufus Jones, Howard Thurman, and so many others of another time still give me what is needed “For The Living of These Days.”

“Lo! the hosts of evil round us

 scorn thy Christ, assail his ways!

Fears and doubts too long have bound us;

free our hearts to work and praise.

Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,

for the living of these days…”