The Context of Freedom

Page 4 Baccalaureate Sermon destroyed by any power under God. And God Himself respects the human freedom which He grants to us that we may seek temporal happiness here and eternal happiness hereafter. The source of human freedom is the source of human nature. At no time did human nature become free. Human nature has always been free. Science cannot take a monkey out of tree and make him a free man. Nor can politics and war drive free man underground and make him a mole. Always, when human nature is human, it is free. You can chain hands, but you cannot chain the heart that will not be chained. You can make a dungeon, but you cannot make prisoner the free spirit. For in its free choices, the soul is its own captain. Internally it will enjoy freedom from contradiction, freedom of specification, and freedom of contrariety. No one can gainsay its choice, no one can change its choice and no one can deny its choosing, no matter what the external coaction applied to destroy the enjoyment of its liberty. So, says the poet, stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage. Such is the liberty of human nature which finds such salubrious political air in this great and free country. Never before have such political liberties been acquired by men. Never before has Christian teaching reached such a high development of freedom. This is the land of the free. When we say "land of the free", we do not nevertheless mean that freedom is more important than anything in the land. The people are more important than their freedom, even though you cannot separate them from it