James H. Charlesworth - "Following Humanitarianism or Christ?" (November 26, 1972) / Duke Chapel Recordings / Duke Digital Repository

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And to sing praises unto the name of the most high,

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to show forth his loving kindness in the morning,

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and his faithfulness every night.

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Therefore let us sing to the praise and the glory of God.

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The hymn 26.

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(organ music)

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(choir singing faintly)

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It is an awesome thing to come into the presence

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of the living God who is holy loved.

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Therefore, it behooves us to recognize

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that we are creatures and sinners,

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and to acknowledge the same with penitence and loneliness.

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Therefore, I beseech you who are here present

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to accompany me with sincerity and humility

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unto the throne of grace in a unison prayer of confession.

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Let us pray.

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Have mercy upon me, o, God.

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According to thy steadfast love,

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according to thy abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions,

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wash me thoroughly from my iniquity

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and cleanse me from my sin,

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for I know my transgression and my sin is ever before thee,

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against thee, thee only have I sinned,

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and done that, which is evil in thy sight.

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Create in me a clean heart, o, God,

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and renew a right spirit within me,

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restore to me the joy of thy salvation,

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and uphold me with a willing spirit, amen.

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Dearly beloved,

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you remember that Jesus told Peter

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that he should forgive his brother

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unto 70 times seven, 490 times.

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Which being interpreted means always, at all times,

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on every occasion forever.

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Do you think that God will do less for us

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who ask forgiveness in penitence and faith.

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Be of good cheer.

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Our sins are forgiven because God is merciful.

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Thanks be to God.

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And so let us join together in the prayer,

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which our Lord taught his disciples,

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saying, our father who art in heaven,

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hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come,

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thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.

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Give us this day our daily bread

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and forgive us our trespasses,

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as we forgive those who trespass against us,

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and lead us not into temptation,

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but deliver us from evil,

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for thine is the kingdom, and the power,

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and the glory forever, amen.

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(organ music)

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(organ music)

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(singing in Latin)

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(organ music)

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(singing in Latin)

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(organ music)

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(singing in Latin)

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(organ music)

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The Lord be with you.

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Let us pray.

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Let us offer first a prayer of Thanksgiving for the harvest.

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Almighty God, our Heavenly Father,

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the eyes of all wait upon thee,

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and thou give us them their meat in due season.

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What thou givest them, they gather,

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thy openest thine hand and they are satisfied with good.

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We glorify thee that thou hast again

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fulfilled thy gracious promise.

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And while the earth remaineth,

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seed time and harvest shall not cease.

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For the seasons of the ever changing year we thank thee,

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for the beauty of earth and sky,

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for cloud and sunshine, for rain and wind

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fulfilling thy work, for flour, and fruit, and tree,

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and now, for the bountiest harvest, we praise thee, o, God.

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And for as much as without thee, labor is vain,

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we thank thee for thy blessing upon the skill

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and diligence of those who plowed the earth,

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and sowed the seed,

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and now have reaped the fruit of the (indistinct).

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Thou hast crowned the year with thy goodness.

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O, Lord, our Lord,

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how excellent is thy name in all the earth.

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And let us offer two prayers of intercession,

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first for all who need us,

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and then for our hospitals.

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O, God, who has formed us for fellowship with one another,

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we pray for all who need us,

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for all who are underfed and starving,

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for all refugees, for the victims of oppression,

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injustice, cruelty, and racial prejudice.

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For all who are frustrated, for the sorely tempted,

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and for those who fall.

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For little children and youth who are neglected,

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and have never known what it is to be cared for and loved.

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Lord, hear our prayer.

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Almighty God, whose blessed son went about doing good,

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healing all manner of sickness and disease among the people,

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continue his gracious work among us,

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comfort and heal all sufferers,

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grant to physicians and surgeons wisdom and skill,

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to nurses sympathy and patience,

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to hospital administrators diligence and foresight.

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Prosper their work, o, God and send down thy blessing

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on all who give of their substance or service

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for its maintenance.

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Through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

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And let us offer a prayer of supplication for ourselves.

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Help us this day, o, God, to serve thee devoutly,

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and the world with sympathy.

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May we do our work wisely.

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Give sucker secretly, go to our meat appetitely,

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sit there at discreetly, arise temporately,

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please our friend duly,

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and go to our bed merrily, and sleep surely,

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for the joy of our Lord Jesus Christ.

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And, o, Lord, tamper with tranquility

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our manifold activity that we may do our work for thee

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with very great simplicity.

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Amen.

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The scripture lesson this morning is taken from the gospel

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according to Luke, chapter 16, verses one through nine.

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He also said to the disciples,

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there was a rich man who had a steward,

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and charges were brought to him

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that this man was wasting his goods.

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And he called him and said to him,

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what is this that I hear about you?

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Turn in the account of your stewardship.

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For you can no longer be steward.

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And the steward said to himself,

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what shall I do?

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Since my master is taking this stewardship away from me,

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I am not strong enough to dig and I'm ashamed to beg.

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I have decided what to do so that people may receive me

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into their houses when I am put out of the stewardship.

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So summoning his master's debtors one by one,

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he said to the first, how much do you owe my master?

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He said, a 100 measures of oil.

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And he said to him, take your bill,

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sit down quickly, and write 50.

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Then he said to another, and how much do you owe?

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He said, a 100 measures of wheat.

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He said to him, take your bill and write 80.

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The master commended the dishonest steward for his prudence,

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for the sons of this world are wiser in their own generation

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than the sons of light.

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And I tell you, make friends for yourself

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by means of unrighteous mammon, so that when it fails

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they may receive you into the eternal habitations.

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May the Lord bless unto us and clarify unto us

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the meaning of this scripture.

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(organ music)

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(choir singing faintly)

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We believe in God who has created and is creating,

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who has come in the true man Jesus

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to reconcile and make new,

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who works in us and others by his spirit.

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We trust him, He calls us to be in his church

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to celebrate his presence, to love and serve others,

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to seek justice and resist evil,

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to proclaim Jesus crucified and risen,

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our judge and our hope.

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In life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us.

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We are not alone, thanks be to God.

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The sermon title this morning

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is following humanitarianism or Christ.

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It might be subtitled

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Jesus, the Gale Sayers of the first century.

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Is a Christian different from a humanitarian?

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Christians readily and easily answer this question

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with an emphatic yes.

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Those who wish to dissolve Christianity

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either into a philosophy of existence or a code of morals

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are not following Jesus, they are simply following Judas.

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What makes humanitarianism different than Christianity?

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How or in what way are the acts of a Christian

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appreciably or categorically different

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from those by a humanitarian?

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How is a Christian act in Harlem to a destitute

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any way different than that of a humanitarian?

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Or again, how is a Christian missionary different

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than a member of the priest corps?

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I am convinced that this is a mandate placed upon us

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by our culture, especially as it becomes more sophisticated,

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more demanding.

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In my intermittent conversations with scholars, students,

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and the so-called untrained laborers, both here and abroad,

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this is one question that seems paramount.

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What is different?

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What is unique about Christian service?

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As we seek for an answer to this question,

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I think we must admit that it's quite different

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than the first one, it simply can't be answered

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by a easy yes or no.

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It cannot be answer glibly or lackadaisically.

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Let us be honest.

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And I found that as I myself worked on this,

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I began to realize that I had simply not been honest

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to the humanitarians.

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I had been thinking about an atheistic humanitarianism

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and this isn't quite fair.

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So let us think, as we try to compare

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and juxtapose Christianity with humanitarianism.

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Both humanitarianism at its best

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and Christianity at its best.

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Let us juxtapose then the best in each,

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and in so doing, hopefully, we will have a fruitful answer

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to our question.

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I think we have to recognize that if we were to observe

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the actions of a humanitarian

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or of a Christian night and day,

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we would be unable to distinguish

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which one was the Christian.

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Both would act compassionately,

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both would act in love,

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and both would act selflessly.

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In fact, if we were to ask one of them,

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who is your example for this moral action?

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Regardless of whether he was a humanitarian or a Christian,

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he could very easily say Jesus.

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And we must admit that many humanitarians

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have, as their extreme example,

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the life of Jesus of Nazareth.

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And herein, I think of their first insight

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that whereas they both would say the same thing,

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behind the Christian affirmation

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that he was following Jesus

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there would be a depth of meaning

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that the humanitarian would wish to divorce himself from.

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For example, the humanitarian would divorce himself

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from any claims of being a slave to any man.

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And yet the Christian would claim that he in fact

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was a slave, and that Jesus was his master.

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I think this is an observation

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that we should placard before us.

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And I think there are two men that have laid it out best.

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One is Soren Kierkegaard,

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when he argued that if we were to examine

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and to follow closely the knight of faith,

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we would find that there would be no action

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that would distinguish him from the man of ethics.

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And here to speak more mundanely and pedestrian,

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we must admit that there is nothing that really

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can help us clarify what distinguishes a kiss by a lover

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from a kiss by a traitor.

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And this is certainly what W.H. Auden had in mind

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when he said, which is Tristan, which Don Giovanni,

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no peeping Tom can tell.

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Here then we have a consensus by both the humanitarians

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and the Christians that they would condemn the cancers

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in our society, that aspect of our society,

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which turns people into means for self gratification

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or success.

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Both a humanitarian and a Christian would condemn the aspect

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of our culture represented by, for example,

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H. Robbins "The Inheritors",

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which climaxes with a beautiful starlet

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curled lifelessly between the toilet and the bathtub,

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staring lifelessly into nothingness

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with her right fingers touching the needle

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still embedded in her left elbow.

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Or again, of J. Susann's "The Love Machine",

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which depicts in swelling motion the mechanistic stampedes

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of the sexual appetites of one Robin Stone

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who finally succeeds in finding himself in being human

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when he says, "I need you."

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I think both of these novels brilliantly reflect

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the cancers in our society, both humanitarianism

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and Christianity speak categorically against them.

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How can we explain this that humanitarianism

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and Christianity share so many emphases?

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I think we must admit that humanitarianism,

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as we know it today, evolved out of Christianity.

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It was during the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries,

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especially the 17th and 18th century,

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when philosophy blocked away from theology

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the so-called queen of the sciences in that day.

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When morals were divorced from theology,

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when ethical codes went with philosophy

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that we began to see the humanitarianism began to emerge,

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at least humanitarianism as we know it.

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I think we can see this as we take, for example,

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two attempts to write a utopia or the perfect society,

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the perfect society of brotherly love.

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If, for example, we would take the 17th century book

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by Thomas Hobbes entitled "Leviathan",

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and compare it with one a century earlier,

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that by Sir Thomas More, the well known "Utopia",

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we would find exactly what I think is to be the case.

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The former that is Thomas Hobbes' "Leviathan"

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was written by a man who rejected the biblical ideas

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and concept of God.

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The latter, which came a century earlier,

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sir Thomas More was a devout Catholic

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who was beheaded for his belief.

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I think this long introduction is necessary

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because we simply have to be honest,

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we are not comparing Christianity

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with the papier-mache humanitarianism,

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but we did catch one glimpse of one little thing,

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which seems to distinguish the two.

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That is the Christian, when he's says he follows Jesus,

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brings with him a depth of commitments

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that the humanitarian refuses.

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Permit me to share with you what I believe

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are three distinguishing categorical differences

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between Christianity and humanitarianism.

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Now, I admit this takes some audacity,

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what can be said that hasn't been said already,

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and certainly much better.

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But shouldn't we admit

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that just because it's been said before,

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doesn't mean that it has been read?

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Or to admit that it has been said better does not mean

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that we have memorized it?

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The three things that I see

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that distinguishes a Christian act of love

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from a humanitarian act of compassion are,

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first, Christ, the incarnate word,

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second, Christ, the radical,

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and third, Christ, the pioneer.

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Christ, the incarnate word,

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Christ, the radical, Christ, the pioneer.

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Let us look at each of these seriatim.

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Every Christian act of love is done so

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in light of the imminence of God,

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and the affirmation that God himself is behind that act.

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This was succinctly said by Thomas a Kempis

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"De Imitatione Christi"

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when inspired by Paul's poem on love,

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and anticipating Immanuel Kant's

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primacy of the will over action,

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he wrote, "Without love and outward act, prophet's nothing,

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but whatever is done out of love,

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no matter how small and of little repute,

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it will become holy fruitful.

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For God weighs more the motive than the act.

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For God weighs more the motive than the act."

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Christian service is an acting out of a commandment,

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a divine commandment to love.

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Christianity is an attempt to embody God's will.

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Whereas humanitarianism,

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according to Webster's Dictionary, is a doctrine

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that man's obligations are limited

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to the welfare of mankind.

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Christianity is a faith that focuses upon an attempt

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to do God's will, and sees this action of doing God's will

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or attempting to do God's will

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not only in the context of men,

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but in the totality of all creation.

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And, of course, that includes ecological concerns.

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This means that the image of God is man,

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and service to man is as much the conclusion

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as the presupposition

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of the belief that God is love.

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I am one of those who see that this has many other aspects

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of Christianity, as been inherited from Judaism,

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and permit me, therefore, to turn to the book

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called the "Zohar".

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Which has a very beautiful story, it goes like this.

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When God loves a man, he sends him a poor man

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so that he may do to him and for him deeds of compassion.

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And by so doing, he winds around his head the cord of grace

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on the right side.

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So that when the time of destruction comes,

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the destroyer would see the marks,

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the imprints upon the forehead and leave him alone.

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And palpable contrast to other religions, however,

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Christianity has more than an idea, more than a cord,

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it has an example, an example reflected

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in Jesus, the incarnate word.

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In Jesus, the Christian has sufficient example

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of what God's will is for man.

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And this is best explained, I think, in the gospel,

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according to John, chapter five, verse 19,

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where Jesus himself says,

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"Truly, truly I say to you,

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the son can do nothing of his own accord,

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but only what he sees the father doing.

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For whatever he does, that the son does likewise."

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In essence, Jesus is the reflection of God's will.

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This is beautifully portrayed

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in the earliest Christian hymn,

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which says, "Behold, the Lord is our mirror,

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open your eyes and see them in him."

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Here we see the first categorical difference

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between a Christian act of compassion,

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a Christian act of love and that by a humanitarian.

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He has an example, he has placarded before him

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the incarnate will of God, Christ, the incarnate word.

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The second is that Jesus is the radical,

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Jesus is the radical.

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And this entails the infinite possibility

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for radical action.

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Here, we confront the incisive question,

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and this may be the pivotal one as of all,

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as we look at when comparing humanitarianism

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with Christianity.

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If we recognize that humanitarianism

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has a moral code as a guide,

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but Christianity, an unseen force, then is it possible

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that a Christian would be authentically motivated

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to an immoral deed?

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That means, since Christianity does not have as its guide

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a written law or a written code,

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but the guide is God himself,

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then is it possible that the Christian

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would ever hear the words,

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which would force him into an immoral act?

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The way I see it,

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Kierkegaard is the only man, the only Christian theologian

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who has sensitively heard this paradigmatic question.

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His answer was unequivocal, the answer yes.

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He turned to the story in Genesis 22

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that you all know, the time when Abraham was called

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to sacrifice Isaac.

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Kierkegaard claims that God called Abraham

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to perform an immoral deed,

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and immoral action.

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But it seems clear to me that Kierkegaard has simply read

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the mores, the codes of his own society,

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his own culture back into the second millennia

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when Abraham lived.

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An age in which it was highly religious

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and ethically proper to sacrifice the firstborn son.

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While much in Genesis does support Kierkegaard's insight

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that Abraham is grasped by the absurd,

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here he is promised, Abraham is promised,

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that through him his descendants would be as numerous

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as the sands in the sea, and the stars in the sky.

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And yet as absurd as the record has it,

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he is told subsequently to sacrifice his only son.

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So we must admit with Kierkegaard that Abraham

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is grasped by the absurd.

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But nothing in the Genesis' accounts,

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nothing in Genesis, nothing in the New Testament,

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nothing in the Old Testament intimates

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that Abraham thought he was doing something

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that was unethical.

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Is there no other text that we can turn to?

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Is there no other passage in the Bible

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that will help clarify our dilemma?

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There is one parable, the parable you heard this morning

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that I think presents this question to us.

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Here, we have the story,

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the parable of the unjust steward

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who cheats his master,

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falsifies the records, and even alters the debts

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according to an iniquitous standard,

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one man owes a 100, it's reduced to 50,

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another man owes a hundred and it's reduced to 80.

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And yet, it concludes with these incredible words,

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the master praised the steward.

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The master praised the dishonest steward.

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After reading some of the voluminous work

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published on this parable,

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I must say that I'm convinced

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that there's only one point being made here

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that Jesus is the one who says to commend the steward.

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It seems that this is a parable of crisis,

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that the one point that made is that Jesus is pointing to

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the prudence of the man in the light of an impending crisis.

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Jesus is by no means commending the morality,

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the immorality, or the dishonesty of the steward.

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He encouraged rather the foresight and imprudence

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in face of the impending crisis.

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Here, again, we can look to the life of Jesus himself.

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Is there anything immoral,

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is there ever an unethical or immoral act

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in the life of Jesus?

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There is one that has been highly suspect,

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especially over the last few decades.

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What was Jesus doing in the temple?

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By what criteria and by what code

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was he whipping those men?

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And is now recognized by both Jewish critics

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and Christian critics that there wasn't anything immoral

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about Jesus' action.

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The temple cultists had become unbelievably corrupt,

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and Jesus, in an act of anger,

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tried to correct the evils poured upon his own people.

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I think we need here to to juxtapose Jesus,

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the man who loved and knew how to hate

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with the Buddhist monk who sits contemp

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in his little corner,

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never raising a finger to help anyone,

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shunning any thoughts of hate

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because they would moral his placidness.

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Jesus was a man who loved

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and balanced this by righteous indignation.

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One of the greatest preachers of this century said it best

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when he said, Jesus hated evil tremendously

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because he loved the people whom evil was ruining.

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I think, though, we have to admit to Jesus' action

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in the temple was radical.

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It was radical not only for himself,

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but also for his contemporaries.

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But was it a violent, physical,

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and political revolutionary act

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bent upon destruction of the Roman Empire?

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The last decade and a half has seen numerous books,

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which have argued precisely that,

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that Jesus was a political revolutionary.

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And if this is the case, you can follow him,

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except the militant, such as Reverend Cleage.

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Saner research has proved conclusively

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that Jesus was a revolutionary,

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but he was not a political revolutionary.

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He did not advocate political violence.

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He advocated self sacrifice

43:32

as example for the passage in John 13

43:33

where he washes the disciples' feet.

43:38

And his goal was not nationalism, but spiritualism,

43:42

as well exampled in the passage where he says,

43:46

"Do you not know that my kingdom is not of this world?"

43:49

The ground has again been cleared for social activists

43:54

to follow Jesus and to imitate Christ.

43:57

And his calls were radical.

44:00

Let the dead bury the dead,

44:02

still, all you have, give to the poor, come follow me.

44:04

And the statement, which follows the parable

44:08

of the unjust steward, no man can serve two masters.

44:10

Here, we see Jesus, the radical.

44:15

We have seen Jesus, the incarnate word.

44:19

Now let us take a glimpse at the cons

44:22

of Jesus, the pioneer.

44:24

Christianity has a dream,

44:27

it has a dream that God will act very soon

44:30

and bring an end to all secular history and all finiteness.

44:33

The humanitarian also has a dream.

44:38

His dream is quite different.

44:41

He believes that through his own moral power

44:43

and those of others that a new and golden age

44:48

will be inaugurated.

44:53

But the Christian knows all too well

44:54

that no matter how he performs an ethical deed,

44:56

no matter how infinite number they may be,

44:59

this will in no way entice God to act,

45:01

and bring in the final day.

45:04

This is best exampled by the parable

45:07

of the seed growing secretly, the man out night and day,

45:09

and though he crawls through the thickets

45:13

with his ever-ready batteries

45:15

and stares at the spot where he laid his seed.

45:16

He does not know how it grows.

45:19

He has no control over it.

45:22

The kingdom of God is as this seed,

45:24

which sprouts and grows, he knows not how.

45:27

The charges often made that this claim

45:31

is much too idealistic,

45:33

Christianity is certainly too idealistic, but is it?

45:34

Is it not more realistic than the humanitarian things

45:41

that as man has brought in tech technological society,

45:43

so will he bring an immoral society?

45:48

Is not Christianity much more realistic when it admits

45:51

that man of his own efforts can do nothing

45:55

without God's help,

45:57

that man has fallen bar short, he's in sin.

45:59

Isn't this the explanation why the Christian was shocked,

46:07

but the humanitarian was shattered

46:13

when they both saw rising over the country of (indistinct)

46:14

Ramsbach and Schweitzer,

46:18

the shocking smoke from the ovens

46:21

of Auschwitz, Belzec, Treblinka, and Belzec.

46:22

Out of the terrible inhuman atrocities that we have seen,

46:32

both in Germany of the late thirties and nearly forties,

46:34

Biafra, Vietnam, the Middle East,

46:38

the Christian has the audacity to have the incredible dream

46:42

and hope of a better future.

46:47

He finds this in the New Testament where we have the claim

46:50

that the world is under the throws of evil forces.

46:53

But that a new age will come in God's own time,

46:58

an age of peace, prosperity.

47:03

I think the conclusion to what we've been saying

47:09

this morning, the categorical difference

47:12

between the humanitarian and the Christian

47:13

is best exampled on page 43 of Gale Sayers

47:17

"I am third".

47:21

But to understand its import,

47:23

permit me both an autobiographical and biographical note.

47:24

About 20 years ago, I loved to curl up on the floor

47:28

and to read biographies.

47:32

Two in particular must have made

47:35

a profound influence upon me.

47:36

One was about Thorpe, and the other about Red Grange.

47:39

I was convinced that never again

47:46

would a man wed such magical moves with such infinite speed.

47:47

I was wrong.

47:54

More recently, a pro football player has accepted

47:56

the epithet magic.

47:59

In 1969, the pro football hall of fame

48:01

picked an all time pro football team,

48:04

and the backfield was not Thorpe and Grange.

48:07

But Jim Brown and Gale Sayers.

48:11

Now, if I were to read to you the statistics

48:15

of what he did in his rookie season,

48:16

22 touchdowns, six in one game,

48:19

and how they are still standing in the NFL records,

48:21

they would not portray to you as beautifully

48:26

as Bill Cosby has done

48:29

in the introduction to "I am third".

48:30

When he says, "I was standing on the sidelines

48:33

and here came Gale around the left end,

48:35

there were five or six defensive men standing and waiting,

48:37

just waiting to catch him.

48:40

And Gale Sayers simply split himself in two,

48:42

threw part of himself on the right side of the field,

48:46

and with the rest of his body continued down the left side.

48:48

The defensive backs looked at each other,

48:51

then looked at the referee,

48:53

claiming that a rule had been broken."

48:54

But diligent research showed that nowhere was there a rule

48:59

in the NFL record books or anywhere in the rules books

49:04

that a man could not split himself in two.

49:09

And what does this come down in terms of this sermon?

49:12

Around Gale Sayers' neck hangs a medallion,

49:16

and inscribed on it is the motto,

49:20

the Lord is first, my friend second, and I am third.

49:23

And he himself says, what a wonderful thing to live up to.

49:30

I am third.

49:36

I believe Jesus alone lived this standard,

49:42

and Gale Sayers himself admits that he can't.

49:44

But he tries, for Jesus alone, God was always first,

49:49

others were second, and himself third.

49:53

He therefore, is our paradigm for authentic Christian Love.

49:56

And that is simply what we mean when we say

50:01

that he is the incarnate word, the radical, the pioneer.

50:03

Let us pray.

50:11

Our Heavenly Father,

50:15

we thank thee for the lives of great men,

50:19

such as Gale Sayers,

50:22

and Brian Piccolo,

50:25

and others in their human ways

50:27

in their own weakness attempt to do thy will.

50:31

We thank thee for the example, for our blessed Lord.

50:36

And pray for courage and insight to follow him, amen.

50:42

(organ music)

50:53

(choir singing faintly)

51:56

(faint organ music)

53:14

(organ music)

53:57

♪ The reflection ♪

54:23

♪ The purest, the fairest this day to receive ♪

54:25

♪ The purest ♪

54:31

♪ The fairest ♪

54:33

♪ Repair thyselves the young ♪

54:36

♪ With tender reflection ♪

54:42

♪ Repair thyselves the young with tender reflection ♪

54:48

♪ The pureset, the fairest this day to receive ♪

54:53

♪ Repair thyselves the young with tender reflection ♪

54:59

♪ The pureset, the fairest this day to receive ♪

55:05

♪ The fairest ♪

55:11

♪ The pureset ♪

55:14

♪ Repair thyselves the young ♪

55:17

♪ With tender reflection ♪

55:23

♪ Repair thyselves the young with tender reflection ♪

55:28

♪ The purest, the fairest this day to receive ♪

55:34

(organ music)

55:41

♪ Thou must meet him with a heart with love overflowing ♪

56:04

♪ With a heart with love overflowing ♪

56:12

♪ Hasten then with heart over ♪

56:17

(music drowns out singer)

56:20

♪ Haste then, haste then with heart of love ♪

56:24

(music drowns out singer)

56:32

♪ To welcome ♪

56:38

(organ music)

56:41

♪ Thou must meet him with a heart with love overflowing ♪

56:53

♪ Haste then with a heart of love ♪

57:09

(music drowns out singer)

57:12

♪ To welcome ♪

57:13

(organ music)

57:15

♪ Repair thyselves the young with tender reflection ♪

57:38

♪ The purest, the fairest, this day to receive ♪

57:43

♪ The purest, the fairest, ♪

57:49

♪ Repair thyselves the young ♪

57:55

♪ With tender reflection ♪

58:01

♪ Repair thyselves the young with tender reflection ♪

58:06

♪ The purest, the fairest this day to receive ♪

58:12

♪ Repair thyselves the young with tender reflection ♪

58:18

♪ The purest, the fairest this day to receive ♪

58:24

♪ The fairest, ♪

58:30

♪ The purest ♪

58:32

♪ Repair thyselves the young ♪

58:36

♪ With tender reflection ♪

58:41

♪ Repair thyselves the young with tender reflection ♪

58:47

♪ The purest, the fairest this day to receive ♪

58:53

(organ music)

59:00

(organ music)

59:30

-

All things come of thee, o, Lord,

1:00:49

and of thy known do we give thee,

1:00:53

grant that as we live by thy grace

1:00:57

and by the labor of others, so by our labor,

1:01:01

others may live the better Through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

1:01:07

May the strength of God pilot you,

1:01:20

may the power of God preserve you,

1:01:24

may the hand of God protect you.

1:01:30

May the way of God direct you.

1:01:35

May the shield of God defend you.

1:01:40

May the host of God guard you against the snares of evil

1:01:44

and the temptations of the world.

1:01:50

This day, and forevermore, amen.

1:01:54

(bells ringing)

1:02:02

(organ music)

1:02:16

(organ music)

1:03:02

James H. Charlesworth - "Following Humanitarianism or Christ?" (November 26, 1972)

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1. James H. Charlesworth - "Following Humanitarianism or Christ?" (November 26, 1972)

Duke University Archives

James H. Charlesworth - "Following Humanitarianism or Christ?" (November 26, 1972)

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Duke University Archives