Pledge, Law, and Song
The Pledge and Law are the guiding principles of Pathfinders, the defining characteristic of the life of a Pathfinder. All members agree to abide by the Pledge and Law, to let them guide their actions, thoughts and lives in or out of uniform.
Pathfinder Pledge:
By the grace of God,
I will be pure, kind, and true.
I will keep the Pathfinder Law.
I will be a servant of God
and a friend to man.
Explanation of the Pathfinder Pledge
By the grace of God:
Only as we rely on God to help us can we do His will.
I will be pure:
I will fill my mind with everything that is right and true and spend my time in activities that will build a strong, clean character.
I will be kind:
I will be considerate and kind, not only to my fellow man, but also to all of God’s creation.
I will be true:
I will be honest and upright in study, work and play and can always be counted upon to do my very best.
I will keep the Pathfinder Law:
I will seek to understand the meaning of the Law and will strive to live up to it’s spirit, realizing that obedience to law is essential in any organization
I will be a servant to God:
I will pledge myself to serve God first, last, and best in everything I am called upon to be or do.
I will be a friend to man:
I will live to bless others and do unto them as I would have them do unto me.
Pathfinder Law:
The Pathfinder Law is for me to:
Keep the morning watch
Do my honest part
Care for my body
Keep a level eye
Be courteous and obedient
Walk softly in the sanctuary
Keep a song in my heart
Go on God’s errands
Explanation of the Pathfinder Law
Keep the Morning Watch:
I will have prayer and personal bible study each day.
Do my honest part:
By the power of God I will help others, and do my duty and my honest share, wherever I may be.
Care for my body:
I will be temperate in all things and strive to reach a higher standard of physical fitness.
Keep a level eye:
I will not lie, cheat or deceive, and will despise dirty talk or evil thinking.
Be courteous and obedient:
I will be kind and thoughtful of others, reflecting the love of Jesus in all my association with others.
Walk softly in the sanctuary:
In any devotional exercise I will be quiet, careful and reverent.
Keep a song in my heart:
I will be cheerful and happy and let the influence of my life be as sunshine to others.
Go on God’s errands:
I will always be ready to share my faith and go about doing good as Jesus did.
Pathfinder Song
Oh, we are the Pathfinder Strong,
The servants of God are we
Faithful as we march along,
In kindness, truth, and purity
A Message to tell to the world
A truth that will set us free!
King Jesus the Savior’s coming back
For you, and me!
History of the Pathfinder Song
In the spring of 1949, Henry T. Bergh, John H. Hancock, Clark Smith and Miller Brocket met for the MV Director’s Council. Among other items that were worked on, John Hancock suggested to Henry Bergh that he write a Pathfinder song. Henry replied, “I’m no song writer. I’ve never written a song and I am not a musician.”
In a letter written to the World Pathfinder Director, Michael Stevenson in 1984, Elder Bergh wrote, “I dispatched that idea very quickly. But along in May 1949, I was driving to a Sabbath appointment at Monterey Peninsula from San Jose (70-80 miles). I was riding along thinking about Pathfinders and about our need for the song and started thinking about a tune. What would be a good tune for a Pathfinder song? Then I thought, well, I could write the words. So I tried to compose a poem.… I started thinking of what things would I want to put in the poem for a Pathfinder song. I thought about the JMV pledge—pure and kind and true, with a message to go to the world, and things started to fall into place. I pulled over to the side of the road, took a piece of paper out of my Bible, and began to write:
Oh, we are the Pathfinders strong,
The servants of God are we
Faithful as we march along
In kindness, truth, and purity.
A message to tell to the world,
A truth that will set us free
King Jesus the Savior’s coming back
For you and me.
Well, I thought, that’s not bad.… I took off again for my Sabbath appointment and got down the road a ways and started to hum a tune. Then I started singing the words with that tune. I have said repeatedly that God gave me the tune because I am not a musician and I have never written a song before or since. The Lord just gave it to me. I pulled off the side of the road, turned the sheet of paper over, and put down five lines for a staff.
I knew enough about music to be able to read it, so I started humming the tune that was going through my mind and putting dots on the staff.…
That evening when I got home, I asked my wife Miriam to play this thing for me from the dots on the page. We corrected where I had misplaced the dots and got the tune just as it is today. I still wasn’t confident that it was good enough for a Pathfinder Song, so I sent it to Wayne Hooper, who is a personal friend of ours and was the musical director for the radio program Voice of Prophecy. I asked Wayne to edit it and to harmonize it. He sent it back and said, ‘It’s a good song—go ahead and publish it!’
So we mimeographed it for use among our Pathfinder clubs (in the Central California Conference). I think that the first time it was really introduced on a conference-wide scale was at the Pathfinder Officer’s Convention in Ascilimar, near Monterey, California, January of 1950.”
~taken from the Pathfinder Staff Manual, 2007 edition, page 13