No New Principles – Sunday, February 18, 1951
In facing the present and the future we must always draw upon the experiences and the principles of the past. Of course, we pass through the limits of this life only once, but other men have been through before, and things which seem new to us now we shall find, in reviewing history and human experience, are not essentially different from what has been faced before.
It is true that there are new players, new settings and scenery, new weapons and new words, but basically there are no new plots and no new principles. Whether a man faces a battle axe or an atom bomb, whether be is fighting for a cottage or a country or a continent (or a world), whether he steals a dollar or a whole domain, whether be is a tyrant in his own little town or a tyrant over millions of men, we are still dealing with essentially the same human nature, with the same fight for freedom, the same desire to dominate, and the same false philosophies opposed to the same eternal principles, with the same pleas to people to give up their liberties and to shift their allegiance for promises of the improbable or the impossible—with the same subtle suggestions of something for nothing, and the same appeals to evils and appetites and excesses.
The costumes and the curtain may be new, but the principles and the basic problems go right back to the roots—back, no doubt, before the world was. There are no new plots; there are no new principles. Honor and honesty, modesty and morality, moral courage and brotherly kindness, tolerance and temperance, freedom—freedom for the search for truth, freedom for the mind and spirit of man, willing work and abhorrence of waste, humility and faith before God and trust in timeless truths—these are still among the essentials that must go into the making of the safety and soundness of our future.
And in spite of new players, new words, and new weapons, we must still look to the past for the principles that will preserve us in the present and the future. And that we shall reap as we sow is more certain than that we shall receive from an adding machine the sum of the figures we feed into it.
“The Spoken Word,” heard over Radio Station K S L and the nationwide Columbia Broadcasting System, from the Tabernacle, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Sunday, February 18, 1951, 11:00 to 11:30 a.m., Eastern Time. Copyright, 1951
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February 18, 1951
Broadcast Number 1,122