Quote from the Washington Star - Fredrick Brown Harris

THE SWORD: PRICE OF FREEDOM

            In America , a man stood up in a free pulpit to preach. He quoted detached sentences from the Christ whose hand held the lash when his Father’s house was made a den of thieves, and whose eyes were often as a flame of fire.  The preacher declared that evil, no matter how diabolical, was never to be resisted with any physical weapons.  Rhetorically, he asked, “What has a sword ever accomplished worthwhile?”

            In a pew was a worshipper in whose heart was an aching void and in whose home was a Gold Star speaking of the valor of a young crusader who had marched forth with a righteous sword and had not come back. At the church door, following the service that worshipper said to the clergyman: “I can tell you one thing that the righteous sword has done.”

            “What?” asked the minister.

            Replied the listener with deep feeling: “The sword in the hands of those who have resisted militant evil has given you the right to stand here today and to proclaim your convictions without fear of being liquidated.”

                        Frederick Brown Harris, Chaplain,

                        U.S. Senate, in the Washington Star