Oganga from the Ogowe

Is religion a force in the spiritual life of our age?

No.

The question was asked by Dr. Albert Schweitzer, one of the world's ablest theologians. The answer was given by Dr. Albert Schweitzer, one of the most famed medical missionaries in the West African jungle. The occasion was Dr. Schweitzer's appearance in England last October to deliver the Hibbert Lectures, given annually by men of renown at Manchester College, Oxford and University College, London. To report Dr. Schweitzer's words The Christian Century had a stenographer on hand. Last week and the week before that alert U. S. interdenominational weekly summarized the Hibbert Lectures, which will later be published in book form.

"There is still religion in the world," declared Lecturer Schweitzer. "There is much religion in the church; there are many pious people among us. Christianity can still point to works of love. . . . And yet we must hold to the fact that religion is not a force. The proof? The War! ... In the War religion lost its purity and lost its authority. It joined forces with the spirit of the world. The one victim of defeat was religion. And that religion was defeated is apparent in our time. For it lifts up its voice, but only to protest. It cannot command. . . ."

Likening present-day religion to the trickling remains of a once mighty African river, Dr. Schweitzer said that idealism has given way to realism: "What is characteristic of our age is that we no longer really believe in social or spiritual progress, but face reality powerless." Identifying idealism with ethics and with "thinking religion," he recalled that this spirit flourished in the 18th Century, that it gave impetus to such reforms as the abolition of slavery, that its great desire was "to make the kingdom of God a reality on earth." But in the 19th Century Napoleon Bonaparte and philosophers like Hegel put realism to the fore.

Searching for signs of hope, Dr. Schweitzer concluded that there is no other remedy for present-day ills than the ethics of Jesus which, reduced to simplest terms, is "reverence for all life." Said he: "We wander in darkness now, but one with another we all have the conviction that we are advancing to the light. . . ."

Few white folk penetrate 200 miles into French Equatorial Africa to the settlement of Lambarene on the sluggish River Ogowe. Such strangers as do turn up there are mightily surprised to hear, among the night sounds of the jungle, an organ crashing out one of Johann Sebastian Bach's Toccatas and Fugues. Albert Schweitzer is no more famed as a man of God than he is as a man of music. Author of a two-volume biography of Bach, he is the world's No. 1 interpreter of the great German's organ music, which he has edited in five volumes.

Born in Alsace 59 years ago, Albert Schweitzer studied music under a church organist, was later taught by the great French Organist Charles Marie Widor. Concurrently he studied theology, took degrees at the University of Strasbourg. A Protestant curate at 25, he became organist at 28 to the Societe J. S. Bach of Paris, later played tor the Orfeo Catala in Barcelona. Rapidly becoming an expert on the eschatological elements in Christ's thought, Dr. Schweitzer published in 1906 his epochal work The Quest of the Historical Jesus. But he felt satisfied neither as a man of letters nor as a man of Bach. A statue of a savage Negro turned his mind and later his feet toward Africa. After studying medicine for four years, Schweitzer obtained from a French missionary society a tract of land at Lambarene, went there in 1913. As a present from friends he took with him into the wilds a piano stoutly constructed to protect it from the climate. The same friends later gave the missionary a small organ, the case of which had been carefully ant-proofed.

In his first nine months at Lambarene, Dr. Schweitzer treated 2,000 cases--practically every imaginable disease except cancer. Some of his black patients accepted the Jesus he preached. Most of them called the doctor "Oganga," the medicine man.

Today Albert Schweitzer is big, husky, with a mop of black hair and a vast walrus mustache. Hearty and good-natured, he lives simply, drinks only wine and smokes not at all, travels always in the cheapest class. The income from his books,* his lectures and his infrequent organ recitals in Europe goes to support his village of corrugated iron buildings on the banks of the Ogowe. There "Oganga" expects to die. He explains: "Through the spirit of Jesus I became conscious that a man can be called to a place without knowing exactly just why. For years I have been preaching about Christianity. But inwardly I was longing to be practicing Christianity. . . . This I do now--or I try to do."

*He tells of his life and works in The Forest Hospital at Lambarene and Out of My Life and Thought--Henry Holt & Co. .

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