CanTherebeUnity
2. We live in a land where our "actions" are free. So long as we support ourselves, we are free to choose what we will do, where we will go, and how we will spend our time. 3. We live in land where our "consciences" are free. So long as we are peaceful about our beliefs, and do not interfere with others, we are free to worship God as we please, and no one can compel us to take his way to heaven. 4. We live in a land where no foreigner rules over us. Our laws are made and altered by people like ourselves, and our governors and leaders live among us, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. In short, we have every kind of freedom to an extent which no other nation on earth can equal. We have personal freedom, civil freedom, religious freedom, and national freedom. We have free bodies, free consciences, free speech, free thought, free action, free Bibles, a free press, and free homes. How vast is this list of privileges! How endless are the comforts which it contains! The full value of them perhaps can never be known. It was well said by the Jewish Rabbis of long ago, "If the sea were ink and the world parchment, it would never serve to describe the praises of liberty." And yet, the desire for this freedom has been the most fertile cause of misery to nations in every age of the world. What reader of the Bible can fail to remember the sorrows of the children of Israel, when they were slaves under Pharaoh in Egypt, or under the Philistines in Canaan? What student of history needs to be reminded of the misery inflicted on the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, and Italy by the hands of foreign oppressors, or the Inquisition?
Who, even in our own time, has not heard of that enormous fountain of wretchedness, the slavery of the Negro race? Certainly no misery is so great as the misery of slavery. To win and preserve freedom has been the aim of many national struggles which have flooded the earth with blood. Liberty has been the cause in which scores of Greeks, and Romans, and Germans, and Poles, and Swiss, and Englishmen, and Americans have willingly laid down their lives. No price has been thought too great to pay in order that nations might be free. The champions of freedom in every age have been rightly esteemed among the greatest benefactors of mankind. Such names as Moses and Gideon in Jewish history, such names as the Spartan Leonidas, the Roman Horatius, the German Martin Luther, the Swedish Gustavus Vasa, the Swiss William Tell, the Scotch Robert Bruce and John Knox, the English Alfred and Hampden and the Puritans, the American George Washington, are deservedly preserved in history, and will never be forgotten. To be the mother of many patriots is the highest praise of a nation. The enemies of freedom in every age have been rightly regarded as the parasites and irritations of their times. Such names as Pharaoh in Egypt, Dionysius at Syracuse, Nero at Rome, Charles IX in France, bloody Mary in England, are names which will never be rescued from disgrace. The public opinion of mankind will never cease to condemn them, on the one ground that they would not let people be free. But why should I dwell on these things? Time and space would fail me if I were to attempt to say ten percent of what might be said in praise of freedom. What are the chronicles of history but a long record of conflicts between the friends and foes of liberty? Where is the nation on the earth that has attained greatness, and left its mark on the world, without freedom? Which are the countries on the face of the globe at this very moment which are making the most progress in trade, in arts, in sciences, in civilization, in philosophy, in morals, in social happiness? Precisely those countries in which there is the greatest amount of true freedom. Which are the countries today where there is the greatest amount of internal misery, where we hear continually of secret plots, and murmuring, and discontent, and attempts on life and property? Precisely those countries where freedom does not exist or exists only in name—where men and women are treated as slaves, and are not allowed to think and act for themselves. No wonder that a mighty Transatlantic Statesman declared on a great occasion to his assembled countrymen, "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I do not know what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" [Patrick Henry, an American Statesman of the 1 century]. Let us beware of "underestimating" the liberty we enjoy in this country of ours. I am sure there is need of this warning. There is, perhaps, no country on earth where there is so much grumbling and fault-finding as there is here. Men look at the alleged evils which they see around them, and exaggerate both their number and their intensity. They refuse to look at the countless blessings and privileges which surround us, or underrate the advantages of them. They forget that comparison should be applied to everything. With our faults and defects there is at this hour no country on earth where there is so much liberty and happiness for all classes, as there is here. They forget that as long as human nature is corrupt, it is vain to expect perfection here below. No laws or government whatever can possibly prevent a certain amount of abuses and corruptions. Once more then, I say, let us beware of undervaluing our liberty, and running eagerly after everyone who proposes sweeping changes.