Take Stock, Inventory.

Great Orations of American History often go unnoticed as years start to pass and they fade into the history books in which we are forced to read as young people in high school and sometimes we never read or hear them at all. This week’s blog is dedicated to inserts from great people that you never thought would have spoken such wonderful words with meanings that a grand to each and every one of use born in America.

“It is probable that in no period of human history has more pains been taken with the education of women that was taken in Greece; in all their accomplishments, in learning, in music, in dance, in poetry, in literature, in history, in philosophy, even in statesmanship, women were very highly educated—provided they were to live the lives of courtesans. The fact is simply astounding that in the age of Pericles intelligence and accomplishment were associated with impudicity, and were the signs of it, and that ignorance and modesty were associated ideas. If a woman would have the credit of purity and uprightness in social relations she must be the drudge of the household, and if any woman appeared radiant in person beauty and accomplished, fitted for conversation with statesmen and philosophers, it was taken for granted that she was accessible. We have thrown on this subject in the New Testament, not well understood hitherto. That noble old Jewish book, the Bible reveals a higher station to womanhood in the ancient Israelitish days than in any other Oriental land, and form the beginning of the Old Testament to the end of it there is no limitation of a woman’s rights, her functions and her position. She actually was public in the sense of honour and function; she went with unveiled face if she pleased; she partook of religious services and led them; she was judged, she was even a leader of armies; and you shall not find, either in the Old Testament or in the New, one word that limits the position of a woman till you come to the Apostle’s writing about Grecian women, for only in “Corinthians” and in the writing of Paul to Timothy, who was the Bishop of the Greek Churches in Asia Minor, do you find any limitation made. Knowing full well what this public sentiment was at the time Paul said: ‘Suffer not a woman to teach in your assemblies; let your women keep silence.’ Why? Because all, in that corrupt public sentiment, looking upon intelligent teachers in the Christian Church, would have gone away and said: ‘This is done of licentiousness, women are teaching:’ and in public sentiment that associated intelligence and immorality it is not strange that prudentially and temporarily, women were restrained. But that has all gone; woman has risen; not only in intelligence, she is the universal teacher not alone in the household but in the school; not alone in common schools but in every grade; till she has attained professorships in universities and even presidency in  women’s colleges—at least in our land. She is the right hand of the charities of the Church; she walks unblushing with an unveiled face where men do walk; and she is not only permitted in the great orthodox churches of New England to speak in meeting, but when they send her abroad, ordained to teach the Gospel to the heathen, there she is permitted to preach. When they come home women may still teach in a hall, but not often in a church, for dear old men there are yet so conservative that they are reading through gold spectacles their Bibles, and says: ‘I suffer not a woman to preach.’”  Henry Ward Beecher

Beecher, Henry Ward. Lectures and Orations. Fleming H Revell. New York: 1913. Pg 97-99.

[Thayer Award] “Coming from a profession, I have served so long, and a people I have loved so well, it fills me with an emotion I cannot express. But this award is not intended primarily to honor a personality, but to symbolize a great moral code—the code of conduct and chivalry of those who guard this beloved land of culture and ancient descent. That is the animation of this medallion. For all eyes and for all time, it is an expression of the ethics of the American soldier. That I should be integrated in this way with so noble an ideal arouses a sense of rind and yet of humility which will be with me always. Duty, Honor, Country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying points: to build courage when courage when courage seems to fail; to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn. Unhappily, I possess neither that eloquence of diction, that poetry of imagination, not that brilliance of metaphor to tell you all that they mean. The unbelievers will say they are but words but a slogan, but a flamboyant phrase. Every pedant, every demagogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every troublemaker, and I am sorry to say, some other of an entirely different character, will try to downgrade them even to the extent of mockery and ridicule. But these are some of the things they do: they build your basic character. They mold you for your future roles as the custodians of the nation’s defense. They make you strong enough to know when you are weak and brave enough to face yourself when you are afraid. They teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure but humble and gentle in success; not to substitute words for actions, not to seek the path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur of difficulty and challenge; to learn to stand up in the storm but to have compassion on those who fall; to master yourself before you seek to master others; to have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high; to learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; to reach into the future yet never neglect the past; to be serious yet never to take yourself too seriously; to be modest so that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength. They give you a temper of the will, a quality of imagination, vigor of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life, a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of an appetite for adventure over love of ease. They create in your heart the sense of wonder, the unfailing hope of what next, and the joy of inspiration of life. They teach you in this way to be an officer and a gentleman. And what sort of soldiers are those you are to lead? Are they reliable? Are they brave? Are they capable of victory? Their story is known to all of you. It is the story of the American man-at-arms.”

General Douglass McArthur. “Duty Honour Country”. New York: 1962. http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/douglasmacarthurthayeraward.html  (accessed 20^th February 2013.)

These are just two great inserts that were very charged! What has happened to our society? Do we not have great men or women to stand at the pulpit or the helm and speak, to mold the hearts of our countrymen anymore?  Have we all forgotten what it is important in our lives? We were once a great nation, but as I have aged it doesn’t necessarily seem that we are great anymore. We are hated outside our shores for being lazy and contemptuous.  What was once our ally’s now spit on what is important, the flag of our nation. Yet, our government has failed to make the destruction of what we hold so dear a crime on our own shores. For we are a nation that cries bloody tears from the shores where our ancestors have once stood proud and protecting of this great nation we call America. We have lost our way.

We are now a nation of confused people that is unable to understand the truth from falsehoods. We are a nation that has become ignorant in the hearts of our young. It is the truth that we cannot back track into the history of our past, but we can repair the future of what is to come and point it into a righteous direction. Have we lost the original meaning of faith? We still in essence have a moment of silence, which gives us the option of prayer in our schools, we still stand and say pledge of allegiance, we still have all our civil rights in order to give us our liberties and freedoms and yet we still walk upon soil afraid of the unknown. Is it because we say we are believers and yet follow a crowd walking through the motions?   

This is where we must take stock of ourselves. Hebrews 11:3, “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. (6)And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he reward those who earnestly seek him…(14) People say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. (15) If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. (16) Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them. (40) God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.”

Do we still have the faith? Oh there are so many that say yes, but do you really mean it? Do we have hope or have we used the word that hope is warned out?  What are we going to do to about it because the overall essence of our society shows that many have lost that faith in God and replaced it with manmade objects? Are our social statuses so important that we look the other way when our brother asks us to share a dime? That dime is a tithe—a tenth (being represented by 100% of a US Dollar bill); that tithe is also 10 minutes or every hour or 10 hours of every day or 10 days out of every month, or 10 months out of every year or 10 years out of every life. It matters not. But, do not ever mistake that a tithe means to write out a check and be done with it. A minister once said, it is not a sin to be wealthy but it is a sin to die wealthy.

It made a lot of sense because we were born with nothing (naked) not knowing. We should die with nothing (naked) not knowing. If God steals us, our very life, our souls, our existence, God has no use for our world money in Heaven or anything else of this world in this life. The day to take stock in ourselves is today. It is now.