|
Transcript |
January 4, 1943 Evan's Fur - MJJD Memorial Day Sermon May 30, 1948 Not every broadcaster is as fortunate in his sponsor as I am, for the cooperation I receive in adjusting the broadcasting to a busy speaking schedule is a courtesy which I deeply appreciate. I'm making this broadcast early in the afternoon, in order to be in Elgin, Illinois this evening for I am giving the commencement address for the engineering, science, management and war training groups of the University of Illinois Extension. I appreciate the cooperation of the Evan's Fur Company in making it possible for me to leave Chicago early this evening. I'm making the broadcast two hours before you will hear it, and I will have the rare privilege of hearing the broadcast myself tonight. More and more, there is increasing evidence that the people of this nation are beginning to take the long look of human history. The necessity for economic adjustments and industrial programs, together with the inauguration for the entire machinery necessary to the actual operation of war is undeniably entering a successful phase. There have been many mistakes, much duplication of effort, undoubtedly much waste, and all the other factors which are inevitably involved in a program of such speed and intensity as we have had to face. But that the situation is clearing and clarifying, none can doubt. The increasing restrictions upon ourselves as individuals are being met with the traditional willingness of Americans to do what is required of them. The whole mechanism of the war effort is beginning to operate more smoothly and more effectively. As this happens, there will be more and more attention paid to the kind of world that may result from all this activity and program. There are two distinct schools of thought in regard to this future pattern. This is not surprising. It is to be expected, and on the whole it is evidence of a healthy condition. There are those who maintain, quite dogmatically, that this is no time to talk about the post-war condition. That we have only objective, and that is to win a military victory. The other side contends that this is the very hour in which the best minds and the most competent leadership in every field of our American life should be seriously at work in the formulation of some sort of a world blueprint. From my point of view, there might be more argument for the intensification of the war effort, and the elimination of any concrete plan for a world after the war, were it not for the danger that it is possible to win a military victory over Hitler and Japan, and at the same time, not defeat Nazism or the Paganism which is the heart and soul of the Japanese life and character. It is possible to destroy Hitler and not eliminate Hitlerism. It is possible to whip Japan from a military point of view, and yet not eliminate the seeds of twenty-six centuries of Japanese mythology. Military victories, as such, may not be necessarily final. Something more is involved than merely a continuation of the geopolitics which have governed and dictated much of the policy of nations, and has been directly in the background of the whole Hitler bid for world supremacy. Just as you can deport human beings, and not deport ideas, so it is possible to wage wars and not destroy principles or motives. Military victory is not enough. Military victory must be followed up with a technique which will establish and preserve in international relations, the ideals for which a war is being fought. That means the creation of the environment for the practice and the articulation of peace. This was the tragedy of the years which immediately followed 1918. There had been no favorable environment created for the acceptance and propagation of the fundamental ideals which had motivated the war itself. To avoid the repetition of that tragedy ought to be as much a part of our effort in the United Nations as fighting successfully from a military point of view, the war itself. If the world is to return to the old international diplomatic technique of balance of power, and if buffer states are to be created and combinations of nations are to be instituted, only for the purpose of blocking or anticipating future action on the part of other nations and states, we are in for a repetition of all the tragic defects of the past. Such would be unutterable tragedy. If we believed this was going to be the only result of this world-scale war, it would take the heart out of all of us. And would bring such a disillusionment to the youth of the nations, that one would tremble for what they might do when they return to return their normal places in the social and political structure. The men and women who are making the supreme sacrifice in this hour are no longer going to be pawns on the chessboard of international diplomats. They will have had a great deal of power when this thing is over, and they will know what it means, realistically. And we might as well make up our minds, right here and now that they will not stand for much foolishness. Peace is not an automatic thing, which suddenly comes with the stopping of actual fighting. Never in all history, must peace be worked for and planned for, that it be established on economic, industrial, and democratic ideology as in this very hour. If we expect peace to materialize suddenly and abruptly, and if we think we will be able to meet the challenge of that peace without adequate, thoughtful, critical, creative, cooperative preparation, we are deceiving ourselves. And self-deception is the most disastrous form of deception. Of course no one can be dogmatic about this future world. It is impossible for anyone to sit down and draw a map of the world after this war. It is impossible to remake the character, and habits, and customs, and overcome the traditions of the centuries in the twinkling of an eye. I am not advocating the miracle any more than I am advocating utopia. Nor do I think it can be established with a degree of permanency, which will not be assailed and assaulted as the centuries pass. I'm trying to think realistically about the problem. And I have concluded that the most dangerous thing we could do is to wait for a haphazard peace plan which will grow out of the psychological, and inevitable hysterical moments that follow victory. I think we should welcome all of the efforts being made in every one of the United Nations. And such efforts are being made on the part of a wide variety of individuals and groups and commissions and societies. Organizations and individuals. All of whom are attempting to envisage and to articulate a world when this war is finished. In our own country, there have been organized various groups, with various backgrounds, whose sincerity and, in most respects, authority cannot be impeached. They represent the economists, the industrialists, labor, the religionists, the educators, the workers, the farmers. Practically every angle of our American life is represented. They should be encouraged rather than criticized as impractical dreamers, theorists, and ephemeral idealists. It ill-behooves a democracy or cast aspersions or condemnations on dreamers and idealists. Every decent, beautiful thing about our nation was first a dream. Every civil, and religious, and governmental privilege and right which we enjoy was first a reality in the mind and heart of the idealist. For a democracy to condemn the dreamer is to pollute the fountain of liberty at its source. There will be no perfect pattern. There will be no flawless system. There will be no plan which can meet every test and every requirement. But the mere fact that we seek for one and work for one, and hope for one is evidence that we are worthy of our own tradition of freedom and are appreciative of the unprecedented agony and sacrifice being made by the gallant men of our own military forces on every continent and sea of the globe. And now, Mr. Brett Morrison will bring you a message from our sponsor, and I will return in just a moment for our closing thought. -this lovely poem by Thomas Curtis Clark I think appropriately fits itself into our broadcast tonight. "Dreams are they, But they are God's dreams. Shall we decry them and scorn them? That men shall love one another? That white shall call black men brother? That greed shall pass from the marketplace, That lust shall yield to love for the race. That men will meet with God face to face? Dreams are they all. But shall we despise them, God's dreams. – Singing. Triumphantly. Beautifully. With dignity. Singing at the open grave of a little child. Then he turned to me and he said this. We Welsh have a proverb. I don't know whether you're familiar with it or not in America. But if you're not, you take it back with you to America. We Welsh have a proverb. And that proverb is, "Our dead are never dead as long as they are remembered." And while upon the face of it, it seems to indicate an impossible situation, because of the finality that we associate on our materialistic plane with this experience of death, are never dead as long as they are remembered. That is what America is trying to do today. That is why this is called Memorial Day. We know that the immortality of the dead on this sphere of consciousness is assured in our hearts as long as our memories live. And that's what we're all doing. That's all that life finally is, is just a process of building memories. And as life goes on and deepens, and we know that we are with every second of passing time nearer the parting of the curtains that hang like thin mists in front of our eyes, but which open onto the eternal vistas of the country of God. That on this plane, our happiness, our misery, will depend on the memories that we have built in life. Building memories. And the art of forgetting is just as important as the art of remembering. And that is why it is all the more important and all the more beautiful that we should try to build beautiful memories. What a pity that we don't. What a pity that we don't live better than we do. What a pity that we permit life to create for us memories which blend and burn. What a pity. When it could be so beautiful. Memory is the father of hope. Without our memories, hope would die and cease to be. Almost every day of my life and somedays more often than once, I am standing beside someone's beloved dead. Almost every day I see a little procession of broken hearts walk up to an open casket. I go through that experience daily. And I have observed over all these years, standing beside the beloved dead, many times from Sunday to Sunday, that when it happens – it happened only this week. When a venerable, splendid man who had been companioned for forty-eight years of life with the one who answered the needs of his heart, what unutterable happiness. And there she was. And he turned to me and even though upon his face was the inexpressible agony, a smile. A smile, sculpted there in the presence of his grief, lighted his face. There was a glow. A beautiful glow such as comes from the faces of those who live beautifully. And a smile crept across that face as he said to me, "Dr. Bradley, I haven't anything left but beautiful memories. Life with her has been so beautiful. And I shall live the rest of it in those memories." Building memories. That's what the heart of America is trying to say today. We're not glorifying war. All these flags and uniforms in this church today aren't glorifying war. We're not trying to make war romantic. Nor are we trying to make it glamorous. There isn't a romantic thing or a glamorous thing about war. There's nothing about war except heartaches and tears. And bankruptcy. No. We're not making glamorous war. Nor making it attractive, nor dramatic. No, our deepest hearts, our deepest instincts want to pay tribute to the dead. All the dead of America. Those whose blood and bones have entered into the very structure of America until they have fertilized our nation with dignity and greatness. We are trying to say to them, as we build our memories of tomorrow, "Take us. Take our brains. Take our hearts. Take us, country." The ideals, the hopes, the love, take us. Break us. Do anything with us, but in the name of God, let us who live try to the limit of our exhaustion and ability to create the world that the dead died to build. That's all. We've no other task. We're not interested in an acre of any nation's land. If you are, America, shame upon you. We're not interested in boundary lines, merely, or what nation has this city, or what nation has that. We're not interested in dollars. And I happen to believe that there isn't a drop of oil in all pseudo-Arabia that's worth one red drop of an American boy's blood. And I don't think it's worth one red drop of a British boy's blood. Or a Jewish boy's blood. Or a Russian boy's blood. No. Men don't die merely for oil and dollars and land. If that is the vision before the diplomats of the world, in this hour, if that is all they're seeing, if that's what prime ministers and foreign secretaries, and presidents, and secretaries of state, if that is in their hearts, then let the people of the world discard them at the first opportunity. Get rid of them. Eliminate them. And let them put in their places men and women of the nations of the earth who believe in the dignity of the human personality. And the righteousness of noble ideals. Let's not make a smokescreen or a scapegoat out of Jews and oil and land! When the eternal righteousness of God in the affairs of nations, and for which men die, is the only important thing. Then, we are building memories for tomorrow out of the greatness of those who have died. I know that life seems very transitory. I know that it doesn't take society long to forget. I know that men who seem great and important pass from the scene of life, and very soon are forgotten or maligned. I know how transitory and fickle public claim is, public fame. I know that men who have tried to do, and say, and be something to help the world in the great passion of their finest moments are soon forgotten. Why, one of these days they'll carry me down the aisle of this church. And I shall rest in front of this pulpit. And perhaps you will look upon my dead body. Of course that will happen. I shall be gone, dead. My voice will not even be a memory. And it won't be long until the generation which I knew and loved will have passed too. And shall have forgotten. We know how the world treats time. And we know how time treats human hearts. And we know how the cold brutality of forgetting sometimes seeks to destroy memories. |
People’s Church Audio Recordings Collection
