The World’s Oldest Contest – Sunday, December 22, 1940
As we look out upon Christmas 1940, we are reminded that the world’s greatest cause has often seemed to be a lost cause – the cause of right against wrong. Going back more than nineteen centuries we find this same cause having again the appearance of being lost.
There was Gethsemane, and there was Calvary. There was Pilot who knew better than he did and Judas who sold his friend and his soul, and Peter who thrice denied his Lord. And there followed gross darkness covering the earth, with the hunting and killing of those who gave allegiance to that so-called “lost cause.” But the victories of “lost causes” have been repeated times without number.
Truth has been on trial in the clouded minds of men in all ages. The struggle with error; with oppression, the struggle with evil and sin, and perhaps, most of all, the struggle with ignorance, which is at the root of all these other things, has seen no armistice, no cessation of hostilities, no treaty of peace. It may give us comfort — and it is more to be hoped that it will give us courage and determination — to know that right causes have been on trial before. The light of freedom has often grown dim. The physically strong have repeatedly walked over the weak. Liberty has often been sold for a price; vicious men have bullied and deluded people many times over. Slavery in all its forms and degrees is not new. Human passions have burst their bounds before this. But despite all this, there is only one right cause– truth; and only one wrong cause– error — and as to the final outcome of the contest between them, there is no question.
That cause for which Jesus the Christ lived and died, will never be a lost cause in a final sense, in assurance of which we recall these words of the Master, “These things I have spoken unto you that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” Tragedy enters the scene, not when a right cause seems to be lost, but only when intelligent men and women forsake a cause they know to be right, no matter how lost it seems,
December 22, 1940
Broadcast Number 0,592