The Honors of Men – Sunday, May 12, 1940
For all men life is a search – a constant reaching from the known into the unknown. Even those who have a conviction that they have found its meaning and are travelling the way that leads to exalted places, are reaching always for an understanding of things not understood in an everlasting journey that moves toward an infinite goal.
In our day a great many honors are bestowed by man upon their follow men in recognition of various accomplishments. We have the so-called earned and honorary scholastic degrees. We have honors and awards for achievements in science and literature and the arts; recognition for contributions to that elusive peace which the world has not yet found; we have the honors and titles and vestments bestowed by churches and fraternal orders; and the recognitions meted out by social and civic organizations. Some of these honors which men bestow are partisan and prompted by causes other than merit. Some of them are sincerely earned and deeply deserved. Others are the creations of enterprising publicity agents. Some of them are spontaneously generated. Others are helped on their way by endowments, funds and gifts of money. Some such honors are passed out by one political regime and withdrawn by another.
Thus bridges and dams and highways and cities may have their names changed, according to the winds of favor. Some honors are bestowed by one dynasty and stripped away by a succeeding dynasty, which reminds us of the ever present possibility of there arising a “Pharaoh who knew not Joseph” – or if he knew him, at least he didn’t like him. While it is a generous and commendable thing for men and organizations to recognize by formal designation the merits of their contemporaries, those honors that men bestow mean nothing more than integrity and judgment and motives of those who bestow them and those who receive them. Two men may be given the accolade of knighthood or the degree of doctor, but there may be more difference between one who is called doctor and another than there is between the deep places of the sea and the high places of the earth. In an absolute sense there is no hallmark of character and no un- questioned label of sterling, except as a man demonstrates the fineness of his metal by the good works of a lifetime and by those pronouncements which shall be heard in that realm in which no element of intelligence or personality is ever lost and no quality of character ever goes unrecorded. So much for the honors of men, which are of passing nature, to say the least.
May 12, 1940
Broadcast Number 0,560