Quotes from great Americans.
George Washington copied 110 Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation, which included:
108) When you speak of God, or His Attributes, let it be Seriously & Reverence, Honor & Obey your Natural Parents
altho they be poor.
109) Let your Recreations be Manful not Sinful.
110) Labour to keep alive in your Breast that little Spark of Celestial fire called Conscience.
In 1607, as a result of religious persecution upon their persons, reputations, families, and livelihood, the "Separatists,"
or Pilgrims, departed from England for Holland. Governor Bradford recorded:
" Being thus constrained to leave their native soyle and countrie, their lands and livings, and all their friends and famillier
acquantance....to goe into a countrie they knew not (but by hearsay) where they must
learne a new language, and get their livings they knew not how, it being a dear place, and subject to the miseries of war,
it was by many thought an adventure almost desperate, a case intolerable,
and a miserie worse than death....
But these things did not dismay them (though they did sometimes trouble them) for their desires were sett
on ye ways of God and to enjoye His ordinances; but they rested in His providence, and knew
whom they had believed."
Governor William Bradford stated:
"They shook off this yoke of antichristian bondage, and as the Lord's free people, joined themselves by a covenant of the
Lord into a church estate in the fellowship of the gospel, to walk in all His ways,
made known unto them, according to their best endeavours,whatsoever it should cost them, the Lord assisting them."
Daniel Webster, (January 18, 1782-October 24, 1852), was an American politician and diplomat. His political career spanned almost four decades. Considered one of the greatest orators in American history,
he served as Secretary of State for President William Henry Harrison, President John Tyler and President Millard Fillmore; was elected U.S. Senator, 1827; elected U.S. Representative, 1822; practiced law
in Boston, 1816; elected U.S. Representative, 1812; admitted to the bar, 1805; and graduated from Dartmouth College, 1801. By a resolution of the Senate, Daniel Webster was esteemed as one of the five
greatest senators in U.S. history.
Daniel Webster stated:
"If there is anything in my thoughts or style to commend, the credit is due to my parents for instilling in me an early love of the Scriptures. If we abide by the principles taught in the Bible, our country will go on prospering and to prosper;
If we and our posterity shall be true to the Christian religion, if we and they shall live always in the fear of God and shall respect
His Commandments...we may have the highest hopes of the future fortunes of our country;...
But if we and our posterity neglect religious instruction and authority; violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality, and recklessly destroy the political constitution which holds us together,
no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us and bury all our glory in profound obscurity."
On June 17, 1843, Daniel Webster spoke of the founding father's regard for the Bible in an address celebrating the completion
of the Bunker Hill Monument, Charleston, Massachusetts:
"The Bible came with them. And it is not to be doubted, that to free and universal reading of the Bible, in that age, men were
much indebted for right views of civil liberty.
The Bible is a book of faith, and a book of doctrine, and a book of morals, and a book of religion, of special revelation from God;
but it is also a book which teaches man his own individual responsibility, his own dignity, and his equality with his fellow-man.
And let us remember that it is only religion, and morals, and knowledge, that can make men respectable and happy, under
any form of government."
Thank God! I - I also - am an American!
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling, which thinks nothing is worth a war is worse. A man who has nothing which he cares more about than his own personal
safety is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless he is made free and kept so by the exertion
of better men than himself." ~John Stuart Mill
