The Constitution of Our Country – Sunday, September 17, 1950
A century and sixty-three years ago the Constitution of the United States was signed by the Constitutional Convention. Less than a century later it was described by Britain’s Gladstone as “the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.” But we earnestly believe that its coming into being was inspired beyond the “brain and purpose of man.” And we are grateful for the protection and for the freedom it has fostered. Sometimes we may become impatient with the safeguards, the checks, and the processes it prescribes. Sometimes some people feel, or have felt, that it slows down some things they would like to see move faster. No doubt there are or have been impatient people who would urge by-passing it in some respects, perhaps not realizing that one of the priceless functions of the Constitution is to protect people against their own or others’ impetuous and sometimes rash impatience. Human wisdom was never known to be infallible. The power to judge and the power to execute judgment is fraught with many pitfalls. And time and history have taught us that tyranny is always in the offing, and that hasty judgment always has its hazards. We are well aware that there are those who advocate ideas contrary to the Constitution, who, nevertheless, when they are in trouble, quickly claim their constitutional rights. And so it is that under the Constitution justice may be retarded—but so is injustice, so is tyranny, so is slavery, and so are all the other abuses against which our fathers fought. And despite processes which may sometimes seem slow, freedom under the Constitution is our source of safety and soundness and strength and effective efficiency. Whatever else to the contrary may sometimes be supposed, and whatever the minds or motives of those who would openly destroy it, of those who would stealthily undermine it, or of those who would impatiently by-pass it, it is a great and “glorious standard,” a banner and bulwark of freedom in our own land and elsewhere in all the world. And we re-utter our belief that it was brought into being “in the wisdom of God,” and are grateful for a century and sixty-three years under the Constitution of our country.
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September 17, 1950
Broadcast 1,100