THE CALL FOR MORAL COURAGE

We still see discrimination in this world, and slavery and slaughter and starvation. Governments repress their people. Hundreds of millions are trapped in poverty, while nations grow rich and their wealth is lavished in inefficient ways everywhere, including corruption and coveting.

These are differing evils but they are the common works of men, they reflect the imperfection of human justice, the inadequacy of human compassion, our lack of sensitivity towards the suffering of our fellows, but we can perhaps remember, even if only for a time, that those who live with us on mother earth are our brothers and sisters; that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek as we do, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness winning but satisfaction and fulfillment that they can.

Surely this bond of common fate; surely this bond of common goals, can begin to teach us something. Surely we can learn at the least to look around at those of us of our fellow man, and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the rooms among us and to understand in our heart that we are brothers and sisters.

The answer is to rely on you, not of time of life but of state of mind; a temper of the will; a quality of imagination; a predominance of courage over timidity; of the appetite for adventure together with the love of thee.

But cruelly an obstacle of this swiftly changing planet will not yield the obsolete dogmas and out warned slogans. They cannot be moved by those that claim to a present that is already dieing; who prefer the illusion of security to excitement of danger that come with even the most peaceful progress.

It is a revolutionary world we live in, and this generation at home and around the world, has had trusted upon them a greater burden of responsibility, than any generation that has ever lived.

Some believe that nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world’s ills. Yet many of the world’s great movements are thawed in action have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the protest of reformation; a young general extended the empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth; a young woman reclaimed the territory of France.

These men moved the world and so can we all. Few will have the greatness to bend history in itself but each of us can make a change; a small portion of event and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.

Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the love of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope. And crossing each other from millions of centers from an energy endearing, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

Few are willing to bade the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the rash of their societies; moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change.

Those with the courage to enter the moral conflict will find themselves with the companions in every corner of the globe.

For the fortunate among us there is the temptation to follow the easy familiar path, of personal ambition and financial success so grandly spread before those who enjoy the privilege of education, but that is not the road history has marked out for us.

Like it or not we live in times of danger and uncertainty, but they are also more open to the creative energy of men than any other time in history. All of us will ultimately be judged and as the years pass we will surely judge ourselves on the efforts we have contributed to the building of a new world society and the extent to which our ideals and goals have shaped that event.

Our future may lie beyond our vision but it is not completely beyond our control.

It is the shaping impulse of our societies that neither fate nor nature nor the irresistible ties of history, but the work of our own hands, matched to reason and principle that will determine our destiny. That is the only way to live.