MLK Special Edition

On this day when we remember Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., renewer of society and martyr, I would like to share this excerpt from a speech of his that appeared today in the Ocala Star Banner, Its message is a fresh and relevant as it was half a century ago. The drawing of Dr. King is by an elementary school student published in the Poughkeepsie Journal.

In recognition of the Rev. Martin Luther King Day, we offer the following, an excerpt from a sermon called "Rediscovering Lost Values" that King delivered in February 1954 in Detroit:

I want you to think with me this morning from the subject: rediscovering lost values. Rediscovering lost values. There is something wrong with our world, something fundamentally and basically wrong. I don't think we have to look too far to see that. I'm sure that most of you would agree with me in making that assertion. And when we stop to analyze the cause of our world's ills, many things come to mind.

We begin to wonder if it is due to the fact that we don't know enough. But it can't be that. Because in terms of accumulated knowledge, we know more today than men have known in any period of human history. We have the facts at our disposal. We know more about mathematics, about science, about social science and philosophy, than we've ever known in any period of the world's history. So it can't be because we don't know enough.

And then we wonder if it is due to the fact that our scientific genius lags behind. .... Well then, it can't be that. For our scientific progress over the past years has been amazing. Man through his scientific genius has been able to warp distance and place time in chains, so that today it's possible to eat breakfast in New York City and supper in London, England. ... It can't be because man is stagnant in his scientific progress. Man's scientific genius has been amazing.I think we have to look much deeper than that if we are to find the real cause of man's problems and the real cause of the world's ills today. If we are to really find it, I think we will have to look in the hearts and souls of men.

The trouble isn't so much that we don't know enough, but it's as if we aren't good enough. The trouble isn't so much that our scientific genius lags behind, but our moral genius lags behind. The great problem facing modern man is that, the means by which we live have outdistanced the spiritual ends for which we live. So we find ourselves caught in a messed-up world. The problem is with man himself and man's soul.

We haven't learned how to be just and honest and kind and true and loving. And that is the basis of our problem. The real problem is that, through our scientific genius, we've made of the world a neighborhood, but, through our moral and spiritual genius, we've failed to make of it a brotherhood. And the great danger facing us today is not so much the atomic bomb ... that you can put in an aeroplane and drop on the heads of hundreds and thousands of people ... But the real danger confronting civilization today is that atomic bomb which lies in the hearts and souls of men, capable of exploding into the vilest of hate and into the most damaging selfishness. That's the atomic bomb that we've got to fear today; the problem is with the men. Within the heart and the souls of men. That is the real basis of our problem.

 

AMEN!

May the Lord bless you on your journey, and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne







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