UF00083766_00026.pdf

UF00083766_00026.txt

UF00083766_00026_pdf.txt

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Farris Bryant 0*;~ 6 1966
Remarks to Florida Seventh-day Adventists Youth Rally. February 24

Crow

Our newspapers headline our problems.

In a changing world we need to cling to the eternal.

The catalogue of our crimes is too horrible to contemplate.

Our mental hospitals are over-flowing with people who cannot face
life as they see it.

Moral decadence seems to spread like gangrene over the social order.
Our national power ewes the rest or the world.
Our individual and collective wealth is beyond the wildest

dream of a score of years ago.

Our scientific competence has no apparent limits.
But our spiritual life withers away.
v'We place our faith in material things.
~ In this age of wealth, we reason that if only we had more, sin
would be banished from the earth.
There is no crime so revolting that we cannot attribute it to
poverty.

tThsre is no alcoholic so drunk that we cannot trace his stupor
to phyeaseloeeeneel-dieeeeew cc.a '(K. ..<=o' '~L-\.

-We placidly watch missionaries murdered or driven from the
lands they have labored to help and explain it all as a

reasonable by-product of national development.

V Nowhere in our rationalization is there a place for the thought that

our troubles compound because we ignore the foundations of our
national character -- and identity.

Somehow we seem to forget the parable of the foolish man who built

his house on the sands.

Somehow we seem to turn our backs on Amos as he holds a plumb line

in his hand, put there so that we might build straight and true.

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~We Americansapridesourselves upon being a just people. Justice
is a proposition implicit in our national history and existence --
it is instinct in our national character. I could conceive of

America without the State of Florida: I could not conceive of Amer-
ica without justice as a purpose and goal.

Not justice as a product of power. If power alone were the
fountainhead of justice. the strong would always rule and the weak

be crushed: the laborer would still be on his knees: the slave would
still war his chains.

But "justice" as Moses understood it -- the product growing out

of the commitment of a people to the statutes and ordinances of God;

Justice as Amos understood it: "Let justice roll down like waters.

and righteousness as a mighty stream."

America has taken its stand as a nation governed not by men -- men
who for the moment wield power -- but by laws: laws which are

the embodiment of our concept of justice.

They protect the weak from the strong, not because the weak

command, but because it is right -- and just -- so to do:

because it is God's will so to do.

For what is justice if it is not the naked assertion of power?
Either there is some immutable, unchanging standard toward which

we grope - some standard which exists not because of us

but in spite of us -- some rule binding not just upon the

helpless but upon every individual. and upon the state

itself -- or there is no justice.

ither there is a standard above us, after which we try to pattern
our laws. or there is only power: in the army. in a police
force, in a guerrilla band. in a mob -- to make whatever laws,

whatever standards of justice. serve the purposes of the

moment 0

his is no hypothetical. or purely philosophical, proposition.
In china today. in RusSia. there are laws, and they are what-
ever the men in power from time to time say that they
are -- whatever seems to serve at the moment their vagrant

purposes.

There is no standard by which to measure those laws

except convenience. expedience.

Justice for them is not a goal -- it is a tool.

nat's what the Magna carta was about.
The nobles were no longer willing to accept as law whatever
one man from day to day might decree it to be.
They wanted Justice. embodied in laws.
Their understanding of justice was not very enlightened, but

they groped toward it.

iats what the Declaration of Independence was about:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident -- that all men

are created equal: that they are endowed by their Creator

with certain unalienable rights . that to secure these

rights governments are instituted among men . .

Almost that could have been plucked from Deuteronomy.
It springs from Moses. and from the mind or God.
Yet by some strange mental perverSion we have concluded that.
although justice is our national goal. our children may

not be exposed for the greater portion of their waking

hours to the source and the ideal of justice.

How can a child understand the idealism o! the Declaration of

Independence if he does not know the Bible?

I: he does not know the Bible what can he conclude
other than that the Declaration of independence

is a fraud.

How shall the children of this nation understand Lincoln?

was he a tool or denagogue when he expressed the wish
"that this nation. under God. shall have a new birth of
freedom.:

What shall they conclude about Washington. who in his first
inaugural address expressed the conViction that "It
would be peculiarly improper to omit. in this first
official act, my tervent supplication to the Almighty

being, who rules over the universe . who resides

in the councils of nations . "

The keystone in the great arch of our liberties which has distin-

guished this nation from all others is the concept of justice

under God, because Justice without God would be like freedom

without choice. or muscle without mind.
The rules that govern our lives. individually and as parts of
society, are either expressions of power. or expressions of

principle.

If they are expressions of principle. as we Americans claim

that they are, they must be either the product of contem-

porary learning. changing with each new discovery. or the

product of eternal and unchanging truths.

God told Amos that he held a plumb line by which people could live.
and Amos reported that the people must either live by that

plumb line or perish.

We Americans have a vast responsibility.

For the first time in history we stand within sight of the

satisfaction of men's material needs.

And we are being encouraged to make for ourselves a

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