|
Yes, it is true. And it is true, or so I profoundly believe, that in
the second half of the 20th Century the struggle in which we are
engaged is sure to issue either in the greatest advancement of
freedom, justice and brotherhood the world has ever known, or in the
destruction of the greater part of the civilized world and the
general degradation of mankind.
If we are to avert this latter alternative, we must yield
completely--sincerely, genuinely and without the plausible excuses,
the old, worn-out hypocrisies with which we have procrastinated in
the past--to the law of God that makes us, each of us, his brother's
keeper, and tells us that we are neighbors, from one pole of the
earth to the other, and that we must love our neighbors as
ourselves.
This we must do, not as a matter of pious affirmation, warm with
sentiment, but as social and political action, drawing politics and
morality together, as Morley said we must; and doing better, not
just a little better, but enough better, with each fateful year that
passes.
Whether we shall do this or not, I do not know, and in that sense, I
do not know whose is the future. But I know whose it is if it isn't
ours. Mind you, I am not saying that it is sure to be Russia's. The
first half of the 20th Century held many surprises, and so may the
second. The Soviet sands may be running out in ways that would
astonish the men of the Kremlin. For they are not men of vision, or
even of sagacity. They are dogmatists, and dogmatists are frequently
outmarched by realities. They are conspirators, and conspirators
take the risk of being caught in their own nets. They are shrewd
little men, but the problems of the modern world cannot be solved
either by shrewdness or littleness. So after a while, it may be
Germany again; or a coalition; or any of quite a lot of things.
But whatever it is it will be essentially the same thing--the thing
it was in Hitler, the thing it is in Stalin, the ancient evil that
it always is, trampling, oppressing, brutalizing, destroying: always
that, even though it be in the name of the Fatherland of "Strength
through Joy," or of the salvation of the downtrodden, or the working
man's Utopia: always the same thing, and always identified by its
contempt of freedom, its disdain for human rights, its bitter
cynicism, its falsification of truth, its slaughter of heretics--by
these things and by others, which now, one may suppose, are at least
familiar.
To win the future and destroy this hydra-headed threat, we must as I
say, be strong; and being strong, we must be just. Just, as we have
never been before. And yet, in a harsh world, we must also do this
difficult thing: we must carry sympathy and compassion in our
hearts. We must love the gentleness, the kindness, the quiet peace
of a world that we ourselves may never see. We must carry its
qualities with us at the same time that we practice the more
rigorous ones. Is this possible? Of course it is! The weak are never
gentle. They fumble and damage what their grasp is too feeble to
hold. Only the strong can be gentle; and the very strong can be very
gentle. And at the same time, of course, very strong.
Will we do all this? I do not know. But I do know that we must if
the aims and hopes we serve are to survive and claim the future. And
I am sure that we can.
To us, to whom the reverses of the first half of the 20th Century
still seem surprising, it appears strange that we should be living
so insecurely, and with such desperate tasks to undertake. But this
is only because our perspectives are very short ones, and we have
been spoiled by our earlier security. Actually, it has often
happened--if not with the same scope, nevertheless with the same
intensity of obligation--that people have had to attempt what we are
now attempting. As, for instance, when the exiled Jews returned to
their ruined city, nearly 2500 years ago, and they built the walls,
the Scriptures tell us, standing with a sword in one hand and a
trowel in the other. But they built the walls. They rebuilt their
national life and built it better than it had ever been in the past.
Such things can be done because they have been done.
Whose is the future? The future belongs to those who are willing to
deserve it and resolved to possess it, who make neither boasts nor
excuses, but whose quiet faith is such that having undertaken the
task in hand, they expect to complete it.
God give to all of us a readiness to share this task, and zeal and
courage equal to its burdens.
|
