Opposing Forces – Sunday, April 21, 1940
The great forces that are at work in the physical world have a close counterpart in the forces that are at work in the lives of men. In nature there is a constant leveling process which relentlessly attempts to void and off-set the great building-up movements. As the mountains rear their heads above the commonplace level of the earth’s surface, the winds and the rains, and the frosts and the heat of the day attempt to break them and wear them down to the common level, and the high places tend to be lowered and the valley to be filled in. It is difficult to be conspicuously different even in nature. And so it is in the lives of men. That force for good which constantly works within us would lift us to high places, but once let a man rear his head above mediocrity and immediately there seems to come into greater play those influences which would push him down again. It may be the jealousy and envy of his fellow men; it may be the power of evil; it may be a man’s own intoxication with his success; it may be the temptations that seem to multiply as we ascend. And so in human affairs it is difficult to be conspicuously different. But our generation needs those men who rear their heads above the common level and who have the strength to maintain themselves in places of high principle so that the eroding winds of temptation and the breaking heat and cold of jealousy and criticism, and the wearing-down work of compromise may not reduce them from high purpose, but rather increase their determination to lift themselves higher and their fellows with them, so that the pace that humankind travel and the direction in which they move may be determined, not by the worst elements in our society, but rather by the better influences among us.
In all nations and among all peoples, one of the most frequent questions is this: In what shall we place our trust? The query is being spoken in numberless different ways, and where it does not actually reach the lips of men, it finds deep place in their troubled hearts. It is part of human experience that when a man finds his material and intellectual world tumbling down upon his head, he seeks refuge in those eternal verities which seem for the moment, perhaps, to be less tangible, but which are, in fact, the only constant values in all the universe. And as an antidote for all this fear which has become so universal and so contagious, we refer to those words of the Lord spoken through his Prophet Isaiah: “‘Who art thou, that thou should be afraid of a man * * * and forgettest the Lord thy Maker?” (Isaiah 51:12,l3)
April 21, 1940
Broadcast Number 0,557