Foundation for cooperation
Illustration★★★★Whatever the superstructure may be, a foundation for world-wide coopera- tion has been built, and never before has such a foundation existed. It is not as if we were starting from the beginning. Ever since the Renaissance the process has been at work. Slowly and almost without our knowing of it, the intellectual life of the world has been largely internationalized, and a definite pattern of unity has been woven into human society.
There is not an area of activity in which this cannot be illustrated. In World War II, an American soldier wounded on a battlefield in the Far East owed his life to the Japanese scientist, Kitasato, who isolated the bacillus of tetanus. A Russian soldier saved by a blood transfusion was indebted to Landsteiner, an Austrian. A German soldier was shielded from typhoid fever with the help of a Russian, Metchnikoff.
A Dutch marine in the East Indies was protected from malaria because of the experiments of an Italian, Grassi; while a British aviator in North Africa escaped death from surgical infection because a Frenchman, Pasteur, and a German, Koch, elaborated a new technique. In peace, as in war, we are all of us the beneficiaries of contributions to knowledge made by every nation in the world. Our children are guarded from diphtheria by what a Japanese and a German did; they are protected from smallpox by an Englishman’s work; they are saved from rabies because of a Frenchman; they are cured of pellagra through the researches of an Austrian.
From birth to death they are surrounded by an invisible host—the spirits of 231 men who never thought in terms of flags or boundary lines and who never served a lesser loyalty than the welfare of mankind. The best that every indi- vidual or group has produced anywhere in the world is available to serve the race of men, regardless of nation or color. Raymond B. Fosdick E.
WORLD TEMPERANCE SUNDAY World Temperance Sunday, often observed on the last Sunday in October, is an occasion when the church underscores and reaffirms its message in regard to the relationship of temperance to individual and national welfare. Calls to Worship (Boldface type indicates response.)
Found in One Thousand And Forty One Sermon Illustrations, Ideas, And, edited by Charles L. Wallis
The point
An illustration showing how international scientific cooperation, developed since the Renaissance, saves lives across all nations and borders in both war and peace.