Monday Morning Music Ministry

7-4-22

When my children were young, my wife and I had them memorize our family’s address, in case they ever strayed from home or lost their way. To orient themselves or assist those who would help.

In these times, we would do well – all of us, adults as well as children – to memorize another Address ourselves. We have, in many and substantial cases, strayed from Home as a people. Our culture seems to have lost its way.

On the Fourth of July we observe a national birthday, commemorating the date affixed to the Declaration of Independence. With the Constitution and other founding documents, speeches, and sermons, it is testimony that the nation and the very “idea” of a Republic were endowed by our Creator.

Many Americans have grown cold or indifferent to those ideals, and we see examples of citizens taking their rights and blessings for granted At the other extreme, radicals denigrate those ideals and besmirch the Founders and Framers.

However, elsewhere in the world there remain lonely and courageous freedom-seekers who are inspired by those words. There are young and fragile governments who model their struggles on those words.

There should be American children and, yes, adults, too who commit to memory some of the ringing words of our heritage.

July Fourth is a unique day for several reasons. Among them, the Declaration was signed; it was when Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders secured San Juan Hill in a bloody battle; and it was the day (actually one of three days) that the consequential Battle of Gettysburg was fought.

There are some people today who reject the idealism of statesmen and soldiers of our past. They dismiss the sacrifices and hard-fought benefits of our difficult civic evolution. They reject the blessings of God; His working in a land when His guidance was sought; they deny God Himself.

Among other heresies, people claim that the conscience of a nation was not roused by the cancer of slavery; that other motives animated a civil war. But I have archives newspaper and magazines of the era, and it is striking how simple citizens – even newly arrived immigrants – affirmed and reaffirmed allegiance to a nation they could not abide splitting apart. And there was a burning determination to end slavery. As President Lincoln said, “If slavery is not wrong, then nothing is wrong,” and hundreds of thousands died so that bondsmen they did not know would be free.

When I was in grade school I chose to memorize Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. I am still moved when I recite it, or read it, or hear it spoken. It is only about 250 words long, and when Lincoln delivered it, the address followed a two-hour speech by that event’s “main” speaker. Witnesses say that the assembled crowd had barely settled, after stretching their bodies and routinely applauding, when it ended!

But its words – Lincoln’s message and meaning – were soon regarded as profound. It is now regarded as one of the great orations, great essays, of humankind.

I am afraid, to use Lincoln’s invitations, that if we cannot re-dedicate ourselves to what constitutes “this nation, under God,” we are lost as a people. The world might indeed little note nor long remember whatever it was we have done here in America.

We need to be reminded of our home addresses, so to speak, for we have lost our way.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

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