Református ujság - Fraternity-Testvériség, 1940 (18. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1940-04-01 / 4. szám
4 TESTVÉRISÉG TRUE GREATNESS OF TWO GREAT AMERICANS By: Dr. Charles Vincze America celebrated the birthday anniversaries of two great Americans during the course of February. One was George Washington, and the other Abraham Lincoln. As we honor the memory of these two great men, we avail ourselves of the opportunity to point out the characteristics and the requirements of true human greatness. No true human greatness apart from God! I. First of all we cannot escape the conclusion that human greatness is just as well the outcome of God’s creative will, pre-ordination and power as is the greatness of the universe and all the beauties thereof. There were, I presume, a goodly number of Virginia gentlemen like George Washington himself in Washington’s days. But how is it that of all the eminent men of his days he came to possess the honor of being known as "the father of his country?” It was destined for him. In its own time God brought everything to a head so that the man elected by Him before the laying of the foundation of the world simply had to become the key-man to the establishment of a new free nation with an independent country of its own. In order to get an intelligent explanation of human greatness we simply must refuse the theory that it is just circumstances that make men. We rather must say that it is a purposeful God, who designates both the man of the hour and the hour for His chosen man. I felt this even more keenly while looking at the cabin in which Abraham Liiicoln was born in the hilly country of Kentucky, than while walking from room to room in the colonial mansion at Mt. Vernon. Those hilly sections out there in Kentucky look pretty much God-forgotten even today, in the days of electricity, telephone, automobile and radio. You don’t very well wish to travel there at night. And there stood and stands even today a selfconstructed simple one-room log cabin. That was the place and the surroundings in which Abraham Lincoln came into this world. You would be inclined to think that even God failed to take notice of him. But He did take notice! Just as well as of the manger in the stable of Bethlehem. And it is just the utter absence of all humanly conceived requisites of greatness that brings into bold lines the workings of God’s predestination. The little boy, who according to all human calculations was to become just another Kentucky hill-billy, became a shining star whose brightness not even these spacious United States of America were able to absorb, but had to share it with all the rest of the earth. God’s ways are mysterious and wonderful, and we must recognize that there is no true human greatness apart from the Father of lights, the giver of every good and perfect gift. Not notorious but great II. In the second place we must observe that the particular concern of every truly great man is in harmony with the spirit of the Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ. Of course there is the possibility of a greatness in the negative direction also, that is, running contrary to the Spirit of Christ the Lord, when somebody, like A1 Capone, Dutch Schultz or any other star racketeer excells in banditry. But such excellence we don’t call greatness, we call it notoriety. The word, greatness, is reserved for excellence in good, and what’s truly good, cannot but harmonize with the spirit of the Lord. Both causes, that lay at the heart of Washington and at the heart of Lincoln, are in harmony with a Christian view of life, therefore both causes held the assurance of greatness for those whom God destined to be leaders in them. Washington was the personification of the conviction that this land should not be subjected to the rulers of any far-away countries, but that its people should become, under God and their own just Constitution, an independent sovereign nation. What Christian could find any fault with that idea? I cannot. Lincoln was of the mind that the country representing the idea of government by the people and for the people should not be a house divided against itself and thereby doomed to impotence among the countries of the world, but on the contrary it should be as great, as powerful and as united as possible. And then he was of the mind that this country should not be hypocratical and just halfway faring in the matter of human freedom, giving out orations about freedom, liberty and the pursuit of happiness on the one hand, and keeping millions in slavish
