Sweet Land Of Liberty 7/4/43

Scripture: Psalm 119: 33-48

Text: Psalm 119: 45 .. “I will walk at liberty; for I seek thy precepts.”

A Christian American could hardly escape, if he would, the thought of his own country’s welfare on this, an anniversary of his country’s birth.

The fourth of July is an American institution; an American holiday. Everett Palmer says: “It is as American as hot dogs, ice cream, and the ‘Star Spangled Banner’.” It is being celebrated, in American fashion, today and tomorrow all over the nation, and among American people in faraway corners of the earth. Personally, I would prefer seeing all of the secular type of celebration, scheduled for this afternoon, postponed until tomorrow; for I think that Americans could make good use of an entire Sunday to remind themselves of the essential spiritual qualities of our loved country, and of our nation’s dependence on God’s values.

The spirit which produces our Fourth of July is something that throbs in the hearts of men everywhere, because it is put in those hearts by the Divine. I think it may well be more than a mere gesture of courtesy that British “limeys” have desired to help American “yanks” celebrate today, at or near the common fighting front.

The desire for freedom links the hearts of people together all around the world. I know that that desire smolders, and flickers low, in some spots. I recognize, for instance, that patient Japanese people have never yet wanted it hotly enough to throw off the yoke of a tyrannous governing clique. I know, too, that there are hosts of people who want some selfish sort of freedom for themselves, but would deny it to others, and even snatch it from others.

Nevertheless, in spite of these perversions, the desire for liberty was born with every man. The earliest stories of the earliest man deal with it. The latest accounts of man tell of his dying for it. Love of liberty is a treasure that will never die in the hearts of mankind. Our carnivals, our firecrackers and our Independence Day speeches may be regarded by others as a purely local American affair. But the love of freedom is everybody’s affair!

Granted that all men want liberty, one question presses us persistently: “How do we get freedom?” A quick and obvious answer leaps to our lips - “By fighting for it. Our spiritual forefathers fought for it. The men of 25 years ago and the men of today, in the nation’s armed services, struggle for it on fields of battle.” That is certainly part of an answer. But it is no answer if left to stand by itself! A military victory can never be more than a bare beginning for those in the pursuit of true liberty. Vital as a complete victory in arms may seem to us, the sacrifices of our soldiers, sailors, and marines on land and sea and in air, would be utterly in vain without the solemn determination of millions of us undistinguished home folk to meet, and make, liberty in the very quality of our lives.

Somewhere in our country, in the office of a certain high school principal, there hangs framed in a prominent place these words: “Liberty is not the right to do what you choose; it is the responsibility of choosing what is right.” A wise school principal must have known that the pupils and teachers alike in his school would need those words now and again. I suspect we all need such a reminder, frequently. “Liberty is not the right to do what you choose; it is the responsibility of choosing what is right.”

I guess that is a hard lesson for us to learn. We all want to be free. We’d like freedom to take the car and drive to Canada or the Yellowstone. We’d like freedom to buy, and eat, a good sirloin steak, whenever we feel like it. We’d like to forget the evil plagues of the earth, call home the boys, and sit together around our own hearths for a week end. But liberty does not consist in any inherent right to these things we might choose to do. “Liberty is the responsibility of choosing what is right.” It is disciplined obedience. It is self-discipline, and restraint, and guided effort.

The Psalmist approached it when he wrote, “I will walk at liberty; for I seek thy precepts.” When a man is willing to subject his own desires, ambitions and whims, to the law of what is eternally right, then he is on the path toward true freedom.

You see a swimmer plunge easily into the water of a lake and start toward the opposite shore with graceful, easy strokes. You watch the rhythmic progress of his body for a few moments, and you say to yourself, “Why there is nothing to that; I can do it too, if I just discover the knack.” Perhaps you get around to trying it when you go on your vacation. After threshing around a minute or so, you climb out on the same shore. You decide you won’t swim across the lake today; just don’t feel like it; haven’t quite got the knack, anyway. If you are sensible enough and honest enough, you will recognize that you will never have the knack unless or until you have practiced those long hours which that other swimmer practiced before he brought the nerves and muscles of his body under the complete, coordinated control that makes a long distance swimmer.

How many times do you suppose an Olympic champion sprinter has practiced starting? A hole dug in the ground; a crouch with toe in the hole; a spring forward; a run of a few steps; then return, crouch, spring again, run, return, crouch, spring and so on time after time for how many days of his life through the years that led to his final victory?

What produced a physique like that of Johnny Weismuller? A sickly youngster, he started swimming in the Chicago river for his health - and kept at it day after day for years. The desire for health, and the faithful, daily practice of its rules - this discipline is the only way to achieve strong physique.

How do you suppose the spirit of a man like Peter was built? In no other way than by seeking, and practicing, the precepts of God as he saw them illustrated in the life of his Lord.

Sometimes we chafe at law and disregard it. The traffic laws seem a unnecessary burden. Part of our freedom of movement seems to have been taken when the street lights were installed and an ordinance passed requiring us to stop on a red light and allowing us to go only on the green. But suppose you and I disregard that light, and the law that makes it effective? Let’s drive across the intersection when we please as free men not subject to anybody’s orders! The chances are that we will not live long. And if we do live, we are apt to be compelled to re-study the importance of the law!

But of course it is essential that we distinguish between good laws and bad; between the precepts of righteousness and those of evil. The swimmer could follow a set of rules that would make him awkward and lacking in stamina. Men could dwarf their souls in observance of the minute laws of the Pharisees. Nazi procedure in Germany is based upon law - laws that have been passed in perversion of all that is decent, right or enduring. Much of the foulness that is the Nazi system has been built on the gullible simplicity of minds that can be made to feel that all is well if it conforms to law. All that a designing leadership has to do to control such minds is to pass the anti-Semitic laws, to lay down the election rules, to assure everyone that everything is “in order.” But who of us would say that such law leads to liberty?

It takes obedience to the right kind of law to gain freedom. And it is the tremendous claim of Christianity that the life and teaching of Jesus plainly revealed the law that can make men free, as they were intended from creation to be free. The men who recorded the New Testament and built the Christian Church testified, “If the Son, therefore, shall make you free, you shall be free indeed.” [John 8: 36].

This claim rests, not on fancy, but on facts tested by the experience of millions of sincere in intelligent people. Let us concern ourselves with obeying the laws which make freedom possible. If democracy, which has reached so high a peak in our nation, should fail, it would be only when God is forgotten and his laws are unheeded. And unless God is remembered and his laws of righteousness heeded no feat of arms can save the liberty which we cherish.

Listen to words of great men, for the evidence of their lasting greatness. Lincoln still speaks to our situation in the words he uttered more than three generations ago, when he said, “Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. -- No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down, in honor and dishonor, to the latest generation --- We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of earth.

“The real issue --- is the eternal struggle between these two principles - right and wrong - throughout the world. It is the same spirit that says, ‘You toil and work and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.’ No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.”

Christians of America, this is a time for greatness of soul. The German and Japanese lords might have attained their ends when sufficient blood had been shed. For their ends involve a despicable enslavement of other peoples.

Victory for us, though entirely essential, is but a beginning. It is nothing in itself. It will bear fruit only if millions of our undistinguished lives are lifted in the determination to live in elementary rightness. Liberty can not be turned out on the production lines of our factories nor in the laboratories of our engineers. It can only be found in the quality of our lives!

As we close this hour together on the birthday of our nation, will you ponder some words of Professor George Fox? “Let’s not fight for money,” he says. “Let’s not fight for markets. Let’s not fight for a higher standard of living. Let’s fight for an idea. We can say, ‘We too are strong, but we will use our strength, not to take away from the weak, but to defend the weak. We do not like strength for its own sake. Strength for its own sake is ugly and brutal and blind. We exert our strength to defend the only things that make life tolerable: honor and beauty and truth and loving kindness.’

“Let’s fight for the independence of the South American Republics, not because if we do they will trade with us, but because if we do they will have the right to trade freely, without compulsion, with whomsoever they wish. Let’s do it even if we lose money. Let’s do it because that is the kind of world we think men should live in!

“Are we ashamed to be as good as this? Are we --- afraid of being called idealists? If so, we have already given away America. -----

“Everything is unknown about the future save this alone: if the American idea prevails the future will offer man some dignity and make some chance for self-improvement. If the American idea is presently extinguished, the future will be dark for uncountable years. And the American idea cannot be saved by the sword alone; it can exist only if we live it. ‘The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history.’”

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Dates and places delivered:

Wisconsin Rapids, July 4, 1943