Thou inquirest what liberty is…- Sunday, July 03, 1955
We should like to begin today with a sentence with which we could well conclude—a sentence taken from the New Testament—”Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty”1—and then to add to it a question and an answer from Seneca: “Thou inquirest what liberty is? [It is] to be a slave to nothing…”2
There are many lures to tempt men away from freedom, and all such lures are made to look desirable. “The people never give up their liberties,” observed Edmund Burke, “but under some delusion.”3 The fish is caught, and loses his freedom and his life, not in pursuit of the hook, but in pursuit of something that cleverly conceals the hook— something tempting that is made to look good, that is made to seem safe.
Any man, or almost any man, will fight against losing his freedom if he sees it being taken from him forcibly, but the greatest threat to freedom is not always the obvious force.
The greatest threats are often the subtle and insidious threats—those which have the hook embedded in the bait. And in appraising all the choices of life, all the issues, all philosophies, all institutions, all men and all motives—in judging all these we should always distinguish between these two: between those who really want men to have more freedom, and those who want more regimentation of men—between those that tend toward dominating men or letting them live freer lives.
Seldom it seems does any man seek to enslave another man without saying that the enslavement is somehow for the benefit and blessing of the person so enslaved—without saying that the enslavement somehow has some good within it which offsets its evil.
But despite all subtlety and subterfuge, the fact remains that men were meant to be free, that they cannot grow to full stature without freedom, and that the Lord God Himself is committed to giving His children their choice, even to fail, if they will. (The right to fail is in fact as important as the right to succeed.)
In closing we recall Thomas Jefferson’s stirring words for freedom: “I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”‘ “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”4
1II Corinthians 3:17
2 Seneca: Epistulae morates and Lucilium
3Edmund Burke, Speech at a meeting in Buckinghamshire, 1784
4Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Benjamin Rush, 1800
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July 03, 1955
Broadcast Number 1,350