The Freedom We Love                                                        5/26/46

 

Scripture:  Galatians 5: 1, 5, 13-18, 22-26.

 

Text:  Galatians 5: 13;  “For ye, brethren, were called for freedom; only use not your freedom for an occasion to the flesh, but through love be servants one to another.” (American Standard Version).

 

Thousands of the youth who served our country in wartime have known, sung, and loved the hymn we have just used.  It is  particularly a young people’s hymn: “I Would Be True.”  Consciously or unconsciously it has represented part of the idealism that went into the determination of thousands of young men and women to keep this land free, wherein other young folk also could seek and practice liberty.

 

We rejoice as the season of Memorial Day returns, that only 26 of the 136 men and women of this church and congregation have yet to finish their duty with the armed forces.  The end of hostilities has permitted the return of all the others to civilian life, and to the freedom defended by the combined efforts of all who struggled abroad and at home for that liberty. 

 

We hold in solemn and grateful remembrance the names and the character of those six young men who gave their lives in this struggle - the same six we remembered a year ago.  We did not willingly see their lives so spent.  They, themselves, did not go out to toss away their earthly futures.  They all went to duty, to win a war whatever it might cost.  We can only hold them in most grateful remembrance, dedicated, ourselves, to the freedom which their sacrifice has bought so dearly.

 

They loved freedom.  They accepted severe discipline in order to maintain it.  And that is its price!  For the right to pursue genuine happiness under such freedom we are truly grateful.

 

This week marks the graduation on Wednesday of the class of 1946 from Lincoln High School.  With all of those of our church family in this class, we rejoice.  We give them our congratulations on this achievement; and our earnest hope that the next years of life will bring them, not success handed on a platter, but the deep satisfaction of duties willingly undertaken and voluntarily performed.

 

May they and all their fellows of this year’s class in school and nation take a full share in making the land great - not in power, not in arrogance or boastfulness, but in sincerity and truth.  This is a land where people are free to continue becoming educated in mind and emotion as long as they live.

 

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, May 26, 1946.