[From an Editorial in the Springfield Union, Massachusetts]

Another anniversary of the birthday of the father of his country has been permitted to dawn upon the American republic. The prayer of every freeman and patriot on this occasion must be that centuries may roll away, and still find the American people united and free—with their national Constitution unimpaired, their valuable institutions erect and flourishing, their liberties purified and strengthened by the lapse of time. ...

Never was there a period since the formation of our government when the character of the first President might be studied with more profit and admonition than the present, and it would be well for our present rulers, well for the country, if they would look back to his history, and endeavor to imitate his illustrious example. His memory will ever be cherished by the patriot, and his example be pointed to with admiration by his countrymen, so long as they delight to worship at the shrine of liberty, and while the spirit of freedom kindles in their bosoms. ...

The foregoing editorial was written more than a hundred years ago, and the reader may determine for himself how far present circumstances reflect its appropriateness today. We could also turn to those words of Washington which were designed as a message to his country for all time: "It is important that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments into one and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism. ... Let there be no change by usurpation. It is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed."

[Bishop William T. Manning, as quoted in the New York Times, New York]

If free government is to be preserved in this world, America and the British Commonwealth of Nations and France and other freedom-loving countries must stand together for those ideals and institutions of constitutional democracy under which alone liberty exists. And if democracy is to survive it must be Christianized and must be truer to its own ideals.

Those who believe in liberty must show that democracy can more fully realize its ideals and that it can meet justly the great problems—social, economic, and industrial—of this present time. ...

The democratic ideal does not mean only political democracy, it means also social and economic democracy, but let us never forget that without political democracy there is no freedom and no democracy at all.

[Rev. L. B. Ashby, in the Morning Post, London, England]

We cannot, in fact, make anything of our life, or our work, or our citizenship, or our social relationships until we first see them from the point of view of the claim which God has upon us. It is only when we are quite clear about what it is that we have to render to God that we can be sure about what it is that we can rightly render to Caesar.

There are two opposite dangers into which we may fall. The one is to render to Caesar, without first stopping to ask whether what is demanded of us is compatible with what we owe to God. The state may demand of us things which conflict with what we know to be the claims of God upon our obedience to Him; and when rendering to Caesar is seen to mean robbing God of what is His due, then resistance to Caesar can become a sacred duty in the name of righteousness and freedom and the dignity of human life. There have been times when true men are called to obey God rather than men. ...

The opposite danger is that of despising the lesser authority of the state and of claiming to be a law unto oneself, setting up one's private judgment—right or wrong—above the properly constituted and rightful order of the state. This phenomenon we have also witnessed in recent times, when a supposed rendering to God has been held to justify a refusal to render to Caesar at all.

Between these extremes [Jesus] Christ's teaching holds the balance. In one way, Christianity is insurrectionist in its criticism of social conditions, its demand for justice, its hatred of oppression; but at the same time it upholds the ... right of the state in its true function, on the ground that order expresses the Mind of God, and that for the maintenance of the moral order authority is necessary.

So the New Testament teaches that it is the duty of Christians to give honor and willing obedience to lawful authority; and, whilst it bids men "fear God," tells them also to "honor the king."

[From the Pasadena School Review, California]

Perhaps one of the reasons for some of the many social and economic ills of the present age is that the school of yesterday, being modeled after the old world traditions of authoritarianism, forced children to live for eight, twelve, or sixteen years in an atmosphere which precluded original thought, original choice, and original action, and then graduated these same children as adults into a social order which was striving for a democratic way of life where, to be free, these graduates were suddenly faced with the necessity of completely revising their school-taught theories to conform to the actualities of life.

We cannot operate a successful democracy until we practice democracy in the home and in the school.

[Rev. Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, as quoted in the Spectator, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada]

To be free—that is one of the deepest, strongest forces in every healthy boy and girl.

But, boys and girls, if you really are going to be independent and take charge of your life, you must have real stuff in you. Whatever else you can run away from, you can't run away from yourself. You always have to take yourself along. You may some day not have to obey anything outside you, but you always will have to obey something inside you. And you can begin that now, obeying the inner voice, your best self, your conscience, the "still small voice," as the Bible calls it, in which God comes to each of us. That's being really independent and taking charge of your own life, when you begin to obey the inner monitor.

[Rev. Canon Barry, in the Church Magazine, Yarmouth, Isle of Wight]

The price of liberty is eternal vigilance—more over ourselves than over others. Democracy makes upon those who would enjoy it bigger moral demands than dictatorship. The democratic tradition presupposes certain moral and spiritual qualities: if these fail it becomes unworkable. It is an exacting adventure, which can only be carried through successfully on high moral and spiritual altitudes. It can only live in the daylight of faith; and when the climate changes, it withers. ... Today, stark political necessity is driving us back on the Christian religion. ... What democracy needs for its survival is not to borrow the slogans of its enemies, but the leadership of spiritual conviction. ... Everywhere in contemporary life there are signs of a lowering of standards, acquiescence in the second-rate. But nobody can preserve commanding standards, in morals, politics, or anything else, except in the strength of some ultimate conviction: and on this the man of today is losing hold. ... Nothing less than faith in a living God can secure personal and human values amid the pressure of economic determinism and the ruthless organization of power politics. ... Compunction and reverence for human dignity spring out of the soil of Christianity, and in no other soil can they flourish.

[Rev. Justin W. Nixon, D. D., as quoted in the Cornell Daily Sun, Ithaca, New York]

There are many voices speaking to us today from the field of education who tell us that there is a kind of law of diminishing returns operating now in that great area of our national interest. President Butler of Columbia, President Hutchins of Chicago, and various speakers at the Harvard Tercentenary celebration warn us that education is of little value unless it proceeds ... toward goals which are often entirely outside the educator's field of vision. Education today deals largely with means. But it is the ends of life, which are of supreme importance.

There is where religion comes in. Religion deals with the ends, the supreme purposes and goals of life. And religion has a name for the experience in which a man adjusts himself to the supreme purpose or end of life. Religion calls it conversion. Conversion implies that a man forms his true purpose or aim in life with difficulty. ...

The drifts of life carry us along with the crowd—the easy way. It takes decision and conversion to reverse the trend and find the supreme goal of our lives. And we could never do it unless God called us and came to us and added His strength to our feebleness and enabled us to do it. Education without conversion is not enough. And there is no conversion that is adequate without the sustaining grace of God.

[From the Cape Times, Capetown, South Africa]

The man who honors his country by hating another country is shaming his fatherland with the grossest insult it is possible to give. Real love of country must mean a full understanding of, and sympathy with, another man's love of his country; and only on this basis can there be real peace in the world.

[William T. Ellis, in the Herald, Calgary, Alberta, Canada]

There is comfort beyond all telling in this truth that we are sons of God. More than that, there is power in it. Once he realizes his high birth, and his obligations as a member of the divine family, a person is going to behave in a manner befitting this relationship. He cannot stoop to low deeds that would besmirch his name as a son of the King. And he cannot help behaving royally in his relations with all men. All of life is changed when this truth of divine sonship grips one's soul. Families are altered, neighborhoods are elevated, business and industry become fraternal, and peace, the child of good will, walks happily abroad in the earth.