Harold A. Bosley - "Pardon My Idealism" (June 1, 1958; October 5, 1958)
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| - | The title of this sermon was lifted from | 5:49 |
| a letter that came to me from one of the hundreds | 5:54 | |
| of our young people from the church | 5:59 | |
| who are engaged in college and university training. | 6:01 | |
| I confess to a selfish reason in keeping up | 6:07 | |
| a general correspondence with them. | 6:10 | |
| I find myself constantly indebted to them for | 6:14 | |
| the lucidity of their insights | 6:18 | |
| and insight into the genuine agony of spirit | 6:22 | |
| with which they face their future. | 6:25 | |
| And above all for their adopted determination | 6:29 | |
| to try to do something to arrest | 6:32 | |
| the pell-mell flight into disaster of this sad old world. | 6:35 | |
| Now, the phrase, pardon my idealism was gleaned | 6:42 | |
| from a letter of one who after confessing his own confusion | 6:45 | |
| wrote, "Pardon my idealism." | 6:49 | |
| But then he went on to state the main issues of our day | 6:52 | |
| as he sees them | 6:57 | |
| and to indicate the directions he thinks we ought to take | 6:59 | |
| in regard to them. | 7:02 | |
| That introductory phrase struck fire all around | 7:06 | |
| the circumference of my mind as I read it. | 7:10 | |
| Why should anyone least of all a young person | 7:15 | |
| feel apologetic about being idealistic? | 7:19 | |
| It would have been a little easier to understand | 7:24 | |
| if he had said, pardon my pessimism | 7:27 | |
| or pardon my materialism or pardon my confusion, | 7:30 | |
| but why pardon my idealism? | 7:36 | |
| Yet he is far from alone in his hesitant | 7:41 | |
| affirmation of idealism. | 7:45 | |
| In fact, I should say that probably one of the most | 7:48 | |
| eloquent characteristics of our time, | 7:52 | |
| at least the last 40 years has been the compromising | 7:55 | |
| if not the ditching of the ideas of our culture, | 8:01 | |
| both religious and social. | 8:08 | |
| To say that the way of the idealist is hard today | 8:13 | |
| is to put it mildly. | 8:17 | |
| The way of the idealist has always been hard. | 8:21 | |
| There is no reason to think that it will be different | 8:26 | |
| in the future. | 8:29 | |
| Now this is a matter of primary concern | 8:32 | |
| in a day like our own when, | 8:35 | |
| the battle of ultimates has been joined in dead earnest | 8:38 | |
| and neutralism is not permitted. | 8:43 | |
| Paraphrasing a line from Frost's poem Mending a Wall, | 8:49 | |
| something there is in this world in which we live that does | 8:54 | |
| not like a spectator and will not permit any one of us | 8:58 | |
| to pose as spectator for very long. | 9:03 | |
| We find it tempted just as difficult to be content with | 9:10 | |
| the little things of life | 9:14 | |
| as it is to avoid confronting the big issues. | 9:17 | |
| You may find some comfort as I do from a story which | 9:23 | |
| came out of Belgium a good many years ago. | 9:28 | |
| A certain old church they're engaged in order to just | 9:32 | |
| brighten up and repair the lovely artwork. | 9:35 | |
| That had become a little faded with the years. | 9:39 | |
| He completed the job and sent them a bill | 9:42 | |
| for a $67.30 cents, | 9:45 | |
| which the good folks thought it had been steep. | 9:48 | |
| They asked him to itemize the bill and he did | 9:52 | |
| on this complete list where these items, | 9:56 | |
| far correcting the 10 commandments, $5.12 cents. | 10:00 | |
| For renewing the heavens | 10:05 | |
| and adjusting the stars $7.14 cents. | 10:06 | |
| For touching up purgatory | 10:11 | |
| and restoring lost souls $3.6 cents, | 10:12 | |
| for a brightening up the flames of hell | 10:17 | |
| and doing odd jobs for the damned $7.17 cents. | 10:19 | |
| Now I mentioned this because I have a suspicion | 10:25 | |
| that some of you may be of the opinion | 10:28 | |
| that the world in which we live is in such a state, | 10:30 | |
| that all you can hope to get done | 10:32 | |
| is a few odd jobs for the damned. | 10:35 | |
| Now it's all right for the artist to feel this way | 10:38 | |
| about his work, but it's suicide | 10:41 | |
| for the rest of us to feel that way about our work. | 10:43 | |
| And I would urge you not to be too pessimistic | 10:48 | |
| about what you may be able to get done | 10:50 | |
| with the life and the time you have. | 10:52 | |
| Above all do not approach whatever work | 10:56 | |
| you choose to do with a dark and bitter attitude | 10:58 | |
| about its ultimate relationship to the human enterprise. | 11:02 | |
| Tennyson lifted what I've always regarded as a word of | 11:07 | |
| wise warning on this matter, when he causes one | 11:11 | |
| of his young men to cry out, | 11:15 | |
| "Oh, what shall I be at 50 should nature keep me alive. | 11:18 | |
| If I find the world so bitter when I am, but 25?" | 11:22 | |
| Unless you are going to be content with doing | 11:27 | |
| some odd jobs for the damned with your life. | 11:30 | |
| You will want to address yourself | 11:33 | |
| to some of their great issues of our day | 11:35 | |
| knowing full well that no one man | 11:37 | |
| and no one generation is going to be sufficient | 11:41 | |
| for the task, but the task will never be attempted, | 11:44 | |
| let alone be completed. | 11:48 | |
| Unless people with limited abilities | 11:50 | |
| and limited time addressed themselves to it, | 11:52 | |
| until the task is done. | 11:56 | |
| I know of none, no task that is more pressing | 11:59 | |
| than trying as best we can to get | 12:03 | |
| a notion of the proper relationship between the way of | 12:06 | |
| life that we love called the democratic way of life | 12:11 | |
| and the religious tradition in which most of us | 12:15 | |
| have been reared namely the Christian tradition. | 12:18 | |
| One thing is sure we're living at a time | 12:21 | |
| when the democratic way of life is being | 12:25 | |
| weakened by fears from within and assailed by foes | 12:29 | |
| from without as never before, | 12:33 | |
| in it's relatively long history. | 12:36 | |
| I will leave to others more competent than myself. | 12:39 | |
| A study of a specific problems confronting democratic | 12:43 | |
| institutions, I know they are many. | 12:47 | |
| But I should like to center our attention for the moments | 12:50 | |
| we have to gather. | 12:54 | |
| A bond what seems to me to be | 12:56 | |
| the most sadly neglected factor in all our thought | 12:58 | |
| about the problems and the future of democracy. | 13:03 | |
| Namely the relationship between religious faith | 13:07 | |
| and the democratic ideal. | 13:11 | |
| Now both religion and democracy are on the defensive, | 13:15 | |
| there's no denying that. | 13:18 | |
| Religion has been having a hard fight of it | 13:21 | |
| for some kind of prestige and importance in this | 13:23 | |
| world for the last 300 years. | 13:27 | |
| The testing days swept down on democracy | 13:30 | |
| at the more recent time. | 13:33 | |
| Beginning with the Russian revolution in dead earnest. | 13:35 | |
| And during the intervening years, 1917 to our own day, | 13:40 | |
| we have seen democracy derided | 13:45 | |
| as a delusion in all corners of the world. | 13:48 | |
| We have seen increasingly large segments | 13:53 | |
| of the human family lose faith in it. | 13:55 | |
| And even within our own ranks, | 13:59 | |
| the questions have begun to emerge as to its | 14:03 | |
| ultimate value and worth. | 14:06 | |
| A reappraisal is being forced upon us. | 14:09 | |
| And if democracy is to have any future, as an idea, | 14:13 | |
| as an ideal, as a way of life, | 14:16 | |
| it will be because we rediscover its religious rootage | 14:20 | |
| and nourish that rootage in our own thought and life. | 14:24 | |
| Now believing as I profoundly do | 14:29 | |
| in the Christian faith as the true view of life. | 14:31 | |
| And in democracy as that form of society, | 14:36 | |
| best fitted for the Christian view, | 14:39 | |
| do mature and bear fruit in. | 14:42 | |
| I want to indicate those points at which Christianity | 14:45 | |
| can contribute something essential to democracy, | 14:49 | |
| but warn you as I warn myself day by day, | 14:55 | |
| the only place where this contribution can be made | 15:01 | |
| is not on paper, but incarneth | 15:06 | |
| in lives of people like ourselves. | 15:11 | |
| I suppose that basic problem we have to face is | 15:15 | |
| whether or not democracy is possible. | 15:18 | |
| There are a great many people who believe that it cannot | 15:22 | |
| survive the challenges being leveled against it, | 15:25 | |
| largely because it simply is a misreading of human nature. | 15:28 | |
| Democracy has been defined altogether too many ways | 15:33 | |
| I suspect, at one end of the spectrum | 15:36 | |
| we have Carlyle's definition of it. | 15:39 | |
| Democracy he said is a plurality of blockheads | 15:42 | |
| that seems to leave a little out though | 15:46 | |
| upon occasion about every four years | 15:48 | |
| it seems to explain a good deal to. | 15:50 | |
| But a much better definition came from | 15:54 | |
| Abraham Lincoln in his famous phrase, | 15:56 | |
| "A democracy is a government of the people by the people | 15:59 | |
| and for the people." | 16:03 | |
| But there's no denying that this conception of democracy | 16:05 | |
| has had hard sledding in history. | 16:08 | |
| To begin with, I suppose we might as well admit | 16:12 | |
| it's seldom been tried, | 16:14 | |
| and where it has been the results have not been encouraging. | 16:15 | |
| Democracy in Periclean Greece had a good try there | 16:20 | |
| within severely limited circumstances. | 16:23 | |
| it lasted a 100 years. | 16:27 | |
| It weakened and fell may cause first vices within the sword | 16:29 | |
| of Macedonia was simply the last | 16:36 | |
| and most obvious historical blow. | 16:38 | |
| It was the provincialism of the city state. | 16:42 | |
| It was the selfishness of the Greek citizen. | 16:46 | |
| It was his belief that somehow or other God had ordained him | 16:50 | |
| to rule the whole world that in a later phrase, | 16:54 | |
| the world was his oyster and that he could open it with | 16:58 | |
| whatever instrument he chose. | 17:01 | |
| He was his own master. | 17:04 | |
| He believed that about himself. | 17:06 | |
| He believed that about his city state in evidently collision | 17:08 | |
| came not only between and among the Greeks, | 17:13 | |
| but finally the great city states, | 17:17 | |
| Athens and Sparta squared off against each other and opened | 17:19 | |
| the veins up one of the greatest civilizations | 17:23 | |
| the world has ever seen. | 17:25 | |
| Did die before their very eyes because of their own vices. | 17:29 | |
| You wonder sometimes whether democracy can ever avert that. | 17:37 | |
| Certainly we're suffering from it today. | 17:42 | |
| We've seen it in operation in the Western world | 17:46 | |
| for several hundred years. | 17:49 | |
| It's now fighting for its life against doubts | 17:52 | |
| and vices within and opponents without. | 17:54 | |
| How is it that the democratic ideal | 17:59 | |
| has so much trouble when we try to live it up? | 18:02 | |
| One of the best answers I've ever | 18:06 | |
| come across was given by Dr. T.V. Smith. | 18:08 | |
| One of the few philosophers statesman of our time. | 18:12 | |
| He said, "That men will live for private gain we know, | 18:16 | |
| that they will die for our public ends we know, | 18:21 | |
| but whether the average man in the continuous long run | 18:25 | |
| will work efficiently for public ends we do not know." | 18:31 | |
| Nor is he alone in this stuff. | 18:37 | |
| Some of the most disciplined minds, | 18:40 | |
| the human race has ever produced are sure | 18:42 | |
| you cannot count on the average man's loyalty to anything | 18:46 | |
| other and bigger than himself. | 18:52 | |
| He will talk about the ideals of democracy | 18:58 | |
| and general welfare | 19:01 | |
| and the rights of other people, but put the pinch on him, | 19:03 | |
| he's talking about his own welfare and his own rights | 19:08 | |
| and he doesn't care a hang about others. | 19:11 | |
| How a formidable array of thinkers | 19:17 | |
| from Plato to Thomas Hobbes will | 19:19 | |
| stand up and say amen to that indictment of the average | 19:22 | |
| man's neglect of the fundamental ideals of democracy. | 19:26 | |
| Well, if giants like these, aren't interested in it | 19:33 | |
| you have a right to ask who is? | 19:36 | |
| Who does think that man is capable of democracy? | 19:39 | |
| As far as I can understand the situation, | 19:43 | |
| there are two groups of people in our society who have some | 19:45 | |
| confidence in the democratic ideal just now. | 19:49 | |
| One is the secularist and the other is the religionist | 19:53 | |
| if I may use those two times for a moment. | 19:56 | |
| A secularist is a man who does not think religion has very | 20:00 | |
| much of importance to contribute | 20:04 | |
| to the solving of problems like this. | 20:06 | |
| He believes that we may be able to develop a civilization on | 20:10 | |
| a minimum basis of live and let live. | 20:13 | |
| He argues that possibly with this as the beginning, | 20:17 | |
| we may be able to build up a culture over a period of | 20:20 | |
| several hundred years in which we train people to respect | 20:23 | |
| each other's rights. | 20:27 | |
| Not because we love each other or are really interested in | 20:28 | |
| each other, not at all, | 20:32 | |
| but just because we don't want the other person to hurt us. | 20:33 | |
| The whole motif moves from the center out, | 20:37 | |
| It's I, me and mine. | 20:40 | |
| That's the center of the thought of the secularist. | 20:43 | |
| He says, it's possible for us to build | 20:47 | |
| a powerful social ethic on this basis. | 20:49 | |
| And it may even approach the grandiose formulation | 20:52 | |
| one for all and all for one. | 20:55 | |
| No matter how selfish and individual is | 20:59 | |
| the secularist continuous, | 21:01 | |
| he will finally realize he must learn | 21:03 | |
| to respect the rights of others if he is to survive. | 21:06 | |
| And since he's interested in surviving himself | 21:10 | |
| and the only way he can is to let another person survive, | 21:13 | |
| he may over a period of time, be willing to do that. | 21:16 | |
| Thus, he reasons the reasoning is always self-centered | 21:23 | |
| and self seeking. | 21:28 | |
| And it is for this kind of a thinker that the modern admin | 21:30 | |
| have coined a phrase on the billboards, | 21:34 | |
| be careful how you drive the life you save may be your own. | 21:38 | |
| That's the ultimate in ethical appeal. | 21:43 | |
| Your own hide your own welfare, nothing more. | 21:49 | |
| Can you build a democratic society on that ethic? | 21:58 | |
| That is the question. | 22:04 | |
| Looks plausible but it suffers from one fatal weakness | 22:08 | |
| it overlooks what Adam Salim once called the gravity of sin. | 22:12 | |
| Are certain weaknesses in human nature. | 22:18 | |
| We must do our thinking about ourselves and our capacities, | 22:22 | |
| not with what good boys we are, | 22:28 | |
| but with our prejudices, our passions, | 22:33 | |
| our selfishness and our greed. | 22:38 | |
| Any thought about ourselves that ignores this | 22:43 | |
| as points of departure is certain to be | 22:47 | |
| superficial and useless. | 22:51 | |
| Now we do not begin with greed for an example, | 22:54 | |
| is the fact to be found and face sometime in the future | 22:57 | |
| we begin with it as a part of who we are right now. | 23:01 | |
| We do not consciously choose to be prejudiced, | 23:06 | |
| we begin our conscious life by being prejudiced. | 23:10 | |
| We do not suddenly come to a stage in our early maturity. | 23:14 | |
| Look about us and say, | 23:17 | |
| we're against this or that minority group before | 23:18 | |
| this or that reason. | 23:22 | |
| From our earliest infancy, we breathed in the prejudices | 23:24 | |
| that are now molded into every pattern | 23:28 | |
| of our mind and spirit. | 23:30 | |
| There's no point at which we consciously, for example, | 23:33 | |
| decide to begin to be prejudiced against the Negro. | 23:37 | |
| There is however, | 23:42 | |
| a point in our life when consciously recognize that | 23:43 | |
| prejudice for the blight it is why do we cherish it then? | 23:46 | |
| The answer is hard and simple. | 23:52 | |
| We cherish this prejudice because it ministers to our desire | 23:55 | |
| for status, esteem, honor, privilege. | 23:59 | |
| We like to regard some people as less than we are, | 24:05 | |
| because we thus then feel greater than we actually are | 24:08 | |
| without earning it. | 24:13 | |
| We like to have people weaker than we are because we feel | 24:15 | |
| stronger than we actually are. | 24:18 | |
| We like to have people work for us in service, | 24:21 | |
| because it gives us the illusion of pride, mastery | 24:24 | |
| and superiority and that's food we all like to feed on. | 24:28 | |
| Therefore we continue feeding prejudice | 24:34 | |
| because it ministers do that rapacious | 24:37 | |
| self-esteem called pride, | 24:39 | |
| which knows it cannot stand up to the criticism | 24:41 | |
| of reason, conscience and Christian faith. | 24:45 | |
| Now these then pride, greed, prejudice, ignorance. | 24:50 | |
| These are the basic spiritual problems of democracy that we | 24:53 | |
| must win over if the democratic ideal is to triumph. | 24:57 | |
| The secularist has no answer for them, | 25:03 | |
| he he admits defeat in the face of them. | 25:08 | |
| They cannot be solved by overthrowing some external power, | 25:12 | |
| or even by altering by law some social system, | 25:18 | |
| no matter how many external enemies we conquer, | 25:23 | |
| these internal challenges must be met and overcome. | 25:27 | |
| And if not, every attempt at democracy | 25:31 | |
| will die in the throes of a | 25:35 | |
| revolution that ushers in some form of tyranny or other. | 25:38 | |
| Now I am convinced that the Christian religion has the | 25:43 | |
| courage to look at these problems squarely. | 25:46 | |
| And having looked at them do suggest ways of overcoming them | 25:49 | |
| ways found in faith in God. | 25:55 | |
| And in man, the secularist says, well, give us time | 25:59 | |
| these problems will work themselves out. | 26:03 | |
| I do not know of a single page anywhere in human history, | 26:06 | |
| that can be quoted as evidence for that fatuous hope. | 26:11 | |
| They did not work themselves out in any single | 26:16 | |
| previous civilization. | 26:19 | |
| They've had a 100 years in which to do it | 26:21 | |
| in other civilizations and many hundreds in our own. | 26:24 | |
| I'm impressed with the way all previous civilizations have | 26:28 | |
| gone down pleading for a little more time. | 26:32 | |
| They thought they could work them out with time alone | 26:36 | |
| problems like these never solved themselves. | 26:40 | |
| If time is the only agent applied, | 26:44 | |
| they get worse with the passing of time. | 26:47 | |
| And the one thing we do not have today is time. | 26:52 | |
| The Christian faith has a long acquaintance | 26:59 | |
| with these spiritual problems. | 27:01 | |
| From bitter experience we know that a man | 27:04 | |
| must struggle at them from the very inmost texture | 27:06 | |
| of his soul if he's to overcome. | 27:09 | |
| With full realism then the Christian faith looks at them | 27:13 | |
| and says, | 27:15 | |
| "If you are willing to base your life on faith in God | 27:17 | |
| that he created you, that he created other people | 27:22 | |
| that by his will he destined you for a human family, | 27:25 | |
| living together in a spirit of fraternity in community. | 27:29 | |
| If you are willing to base your thought in life | 27:33 | |
| on that premise, you can overcome these internal enemies | 27:35 | |
| upon no other basis can you hope to do it." | 27:42 | |
| In answer to the question are we capable of democracy? | 27:45 | |
| The Christian faith answers with God's help and under his | 27:48 | |
| guidance and in obedience to him, we are, | 27:52 | |
| but under no other circumstances is it possible. | 27:57 | |
| This is the discipline, | 28:01 | |
| a hard discipline in thought and life. | 28:04 | |
| Great ideas always require it. | 28:07 | |
| They're not given to us for the asking | 28:10 | |
| or even for the needy. | 28:13 | |
| Democracy cannot survive without a rebirth of Christian | 28:16 | |
| idealism incarnate, in people like ourselves. | 28:19 | |
| I suspect you would expect to preach like me to say that to | 28:24 | |
| you, but I'm not alone in saying that to this generation, | 28:27 | |
| other men from other walks of life, | 28:31 | |
| I've said it in times that cannot be mistaken. | 28:33 | |
| I think of what William Faulkner said when he was given the | 28:38 | |
| Nobel prize a couple of years ago, he said, | 28:42 | |
| "I do not accept a pessimistic estimate of man now current, | 28:46 | |
| I refuse to accept it because I believe that man was not, | 28:52 | |
| will not merely endured. | 28:55 | |
| He will prevail why? | 28:57 | |
| Because he is immortal, he has a soul, | 28:59 | |
| a spirit capable of compassion, sacrifice, endurance." | 29:02 | |
| Now, whenever you'll find Bertrand Russell | 29:09 | |
| studying the The Sawdust Trail, | 29:11 | |
| things have really reached a difficult situation. | 29:13 | |
| Yet in 1950, he was looking at it very fixedly | 29:17 | |
| asking what lay ahead of us | 29:22 | |
| and whether there was any way out? | 29:24 | |
| He said, "The road of the matter is a very simple | 29:25 | |
| and old fashioned thing, a thing so simple | 29:28 | |
| that I'm almost ashamed to mention it | 29:31 | |
| for fear of derives it smiles with which wise cynics | 29:33 | |
| will greet my words. | 29:37 | |
| The thing I mean, please forgive me | 29:38 | |
| for even mentioning it is love, | 29:40 | |
| Christian love or compassion. | 29:43 | |
| If you feel issue, have a modif existence, | 29:45 | |
| a guide for action, | 29:48 | |
| a reason paradise necessity for intellectual honesty." | 29:50 | |
| Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, one of the most sensitive | 29:57 | |
| and courageous thinkers of our time. | 30:01 | |
| Was asked recently by someone, | 30:04 | |
| whether there was anything that an individual could do | 30:05 | |
| in the face of the complexity of our time. | 30:08 | |
| He answered, | 30:12 | |
| "Why yes, we can help because we can love one another." | 30:12 | |
| Yes, we can love one another providing there's any reason | 30:19 | |
| behind it or for it | 30:22 | |
| We can do it only because we feel that it is congruent with | 30:26 | |
| the fundamental nature of the world in which we live. | 30:29 | |
| Religion can and will pour courage and foresight into the | 30:35 | |
| flagging democratic ideal. | 30:39 | |
| Providing we are willing to give the religious approach | 30:41 | |
| to this problem that kind of rootage in our life | 30:45 | |
| that it must have, if it's to mean anything at all. | 30:49 | |
| Whatever else religious faith is, | 30:53 | |
| it is not a collection of high sounding words. | 30:55 | |
| But before you feel apologetic about your religious | 30:59 | |
| idealism, remember then that the Christian faith makes three | 31:02 | |
| indispensable contributions to the democratic ideal. | 31:07 | |
| First it tells us who we are. | 31:13 | |
| We are the children of God. | 31:18 | |
| Secondly, it places deep within us, | 31:22 | |
| a quality of imperishable worth that no man, no institution, | 31:24 | |
| no society has right either to compromise on neglect | 31:31 | |
| in spiritual worth. | 31:37 | |
| And thirdly, God help us all. | 31:40 | |
| It expects us to live that way. | 31:43 | |
| We are back on our ultimate ethical resources now. | 31:48 | |
| Democracy can survive if there is a rebirth | 31:53 | |
| of Christian faith deep within the heart | 31:56 | |
| and the soul of those of us who have been brought up | 31:59 | |
| where these two traditions flow together. | 32:02 | |
| The Christian faith stands far beyond any known form | 32:06 | |
| of democracy criticizing every form and every institution | 32:09 | |
| at the point of their weakness | 32:15 | |
| asking us always to seek to be more perfect embodiments | 32:17 | |
| of the will of God. | 32:22 | |
| I'm sure I shall not be telling you anything new | 32:26 | |
| if I make two predictions. | 32:28 | |
| First, the next 25 years are certain to be the roughest | 32:31 | |
| parts of the voyage of the enterprise to date. | 32:37 | |
| Only those who have spiritual compasses in true relationship | 32:43 | |
| with the magnetic field of the universe, | 32:47 | |
| in which we live can hope to contribute | 32:50 | |
| to the safety of the journey. | 32:54 | |
| The second prediction is this. | 33:00 | |
| You're going to be either the best generation | 33:03 | |
| morally and spiritually speaking that this old world has | 33:10 | |
| ever seen or you're going to be the last. | 33:13 | |
| Now, pardon my idealism but I think you can come through. | 33:20 | |
| Oh God of all men who givest unto each one of thy children, | 33:37 | |
| a uniqueness of spirit that shows for even thy knows | 33:41 | |
| spirit laid thy hand upon these thy children. | 33:45 | |
| And by thy judgment, | 33:49 | |
| grace and love guide them in the way everlasting. | 33:50 | |
| May their life and work be blessed with such insight | 33:54 | |
| and foresight that their children | 33:57 | |
| and their children's, children will rise up | 34:00 | |
| and call them blessed. | 34:02 | |
| And fold us with thy blessing and thy benediction. | 34:04 | |
| May the peace that passeth all understanding | 34:08 | |
| and the love that will not let us go | 34:10 | |
| enter into our lives and make them radiant | 34:13 | |
| for Christ's sake. | 34:16 | |
| Amen. | 34:18 |