HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!
Godly Meditations from America’s Founding Fathers:
“No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand which conducts the affairs of men more than the people of the United States. Every step, by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation, seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency.” –George Washington
“I have so much faith in the general government of the world by Providence that I can hardly conceive a transaction of such momentous importance [as the framing of the Constitution] …should be suffered to pass without being in some degree influenced, guided, and governed by that omnipotent, omnipresent, and beneficent Ruler in whom all inferior spirits live and move and have their being.” –Benjamin Franklin
“The real wonder is that so many difficulties should have been surmounted [in the federal convention], and surmounted with an unanimity almost as unprecedented as it must have been unexpected. It is impossible for any man of candor to reflect on this circumstance without partaking of the astonishment. It is impossible for the man of pious reflection not to perceive in it a finger of that Almighty hand which has been so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the revolution.” –James Madison
“In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness [religion and morality].” –George Washington
“I thank God that I have lived to see my country independent and free. She many long enjoy her independence and freedom if she will. It depends on her virtue…. The sum of all is, if we would most truly enjoy the gift of Heaven, let us become a virtuous people; then shall we both deserve and enjoy it.” –Samuel Adams
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” –John Adams
“From the day of the Declaration…they [the American people] were bound by the laws of God…and by the laws of the gospel, which they nearly all acknowledged as the rules of their conduct.” –John Quincy Adams
“[The adoption of the Constitution] will demonstrate as visibly the finger of Providence as any possible event in the course of human affairs can ever designate it.” –George Washington
“Here is my creed: I believe in one God, the Creator of the universe. That He governs it by his providence. That He ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable service we render Him is in doing good to His other children. That the soul of man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental points in all sound religion.” –Benjamin Franklin
~Quoted in W. Cleon Skousen, The 5000 Year Leap: The 28 Great Ideas that Changed the World
