Daniel Webster (1782 - 1852), was a famous American politician and diplomat. He is considered one of the greatest orators in American history. He served as a U.S. Congressman, a U.S. Senator and as the Secretary of State for three different Presidents: William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, and Millard Fillmore. His political career spanned almost four decades.
---"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; but if we and our posterity neglect its instructions and authority, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us and bury all our glory in profound obscurity."
---Daniel Webster, in speaking at the bicentennial celebration of the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, December 22, 1820, declared: "Lastly, our ancestors established their system of government on morality and religious sentiment. Moral habits, they believed, cannot safely be trusted on any other foundation than religious principle, nor any government be secure which is not supported by moral habits....Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens.
Cultivated mind was to act on uncultivated nature; and more than all, a government and a country were to commence, with the very first foundations laid under the divine light of the Christian religion. Happy auspices of a happy futurity! Who would wish that his country's existence had otherwise begun?
Finally, let us not forget the religious character of our origin. Our fathers were brought hither by their high veneration for the Christian religion. They journeyed by its light, and labored in its hope. They sought to incorporate its principles with the elements of their society, and to diffuse its influence through all their institutions, civil, political, or literary. Let us cherish these sentiments, and extend this influence still more widely; in full conviction that that is the happiest society which partakes in the highest degree of the mild and peaceful spirit of Christianity."
---In a speech at the Bunker Hill Monument, Charleston, Massachusetts, on June 17, 1843, Daniel Webster spoke of the Founding Fathers' regard for the Bible: "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 for 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.
Thank God! I - I also - am an American!"
All quotes and text taken from "America's God and Country" by William J. Federer.
I read several verses in Proverbs 30 today which struck me:
There is a generation that curseth their father, and doth not bless their mother.
There is a generation that are pure in their own eyes, and yet is not washed from their filthiness.
There is a generation, O how lofty are their eyes! and their eyelids are lifted up.
There is a generation, whose teeth are as swords, and their jaw teeth as knives, to devour the poor from off the earth, and the needy from among men. Proverbs 30:11-14
Does this sound like any generation you know? Oh, how far we have come!
I look forward to sharing with you the pictures I took at the Columbus Zoo in Ohio...and especially telling the story of a very special animal named Mac!
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