"Official records express the faith and theory of those who form and administer the civil institutions of a nation. The fathers and founders of the American republic, being Christian men and designing to form a Christian republic, would be expected to imbue their state papers and their civil constitutions with the spirit and sentiments of the Christian religion. This fact is historic in the civil institutions of the country, and gives to its official documents a Christian feature and influence which belong only to American constitutions and American political annals. During the Revolution, the States assumed their separate sovereignties and formed State constitutions. These civil charters, . . . were full and explicit in their incorporation of the fundamental doctrines of the Christian religion, and their constitutions prohibited men from holding office who did not publicly assent to their faith in the being of a God, the divinity of the Bible, and in the distinctive evangelical truths of Christianity."- Benjamin F. Morris 1864
Those words will not fit well with many in our nation today, they would like to remove such writings concerning our Christian heritage from the public conversation. It is popular today to portray the Founders of our nation as men of a Deist persuasion and unconcerned in religious matters of faith in civil government. However, an honest look at history presents an entirely different view of the nation's perception.
Mr. Morris's understanding in 1864 was simply a review of this history. A quick glance at the State Constitutions will demonstrate minds permeated with Christian doctrine and practice. The residue of their faith still marks our land. As one walks among our public monuments, they have to ask, where did all this scripture written in granite come from if these men before us were so unconcerned about religion.
"The true and lasting fame of the American nation—its political and moral glory—consists in the eminent and illustrious characters which have, in each successive age of the republic, adorned the state and directed its political destinies. Trained in a Christian school and formed under Christian influences, and deriving their ideas of civil and religious liberty from the Bible, their practical faith led them to adopt it as the rule of life and to consult it as the source of their civil and political views and principles, as well as of their religious belief and hopes. The monument of these men of Puritan and Revolutionary times is in the great Christian ideas and truths they elaborated and incorporated into the civil institutions of the nation, and in the Christian virtues, public and private, which they bore as the fruits of their Christian faith."- Benjamin F. Morris 1864
Here Mr. Morris reflects on the foundation for the ideas that formed the American experience. He is not alone in his reflections, for even those upon whom he reflected, in their own time also took consideration of those before them as they pondered the events that were taking place in this land we now call America. One such reflection came from America's 2nd President when considering their intended purpose: "Their greatest concern seems to have been to establish a government of the church more consistent with the scriptures, and a government of the state more agreeable to the dignity of human nature, than any they had seen in Europe: and to transmit such a government down to their posterity, with the means of securing and preserving it, forever." - John Adams (“A Dissertation on the Canon and the Feudal Law,” No. 2, 19 August 1765
Lord Chatham spoke only the truth when he said to Franklin of the men who composed the first Colonial Congress, “The Congress is the most honorable assembly of statesmen since those of the ancient Greeks and Romans in the most virtuous times. They were most of them profound scholars and studied the history of mankind so that they might know men. They were so familiar with the lives and thoughts of the wisest and best minds of the past, that a classic aroma hangs about their writings and their speeches; and they were profoundly convinced of what statesmen know and mere politicians never perceive—that ideas are the life of a people— that the conscience, not the pocket, is the real citadel of a nation.”- Lord Chatham (1708-1778)
Mr. Morris would continue, "Let a whole people grasp, in honest conviction, some sacred cause, some principle of immortal justice, and consecrate themselves to the work of vindicating that cause and enthroning that principle, and we have the grandest spectacle ever witnessed on earth. The grandeur of such a spectacle was seen in the faith and purpose of the fathers and founders of the American republic. These men, as well as the people, did grasp a great and “real thought of God,” and devoted themselves to its glorious realization; and the result was the vindication of eternal right and justice, and the creation and establishment of civil institutions in conformity to the principles and teachings of the Christian religion. It is in the light of this great historic fact that the faith and labors of the Puritans and the men of the Revolution are to be read and studied."- Benjamin F. Morris 1864
Christian thought permeated the minds of the Founders of this nation. We are not to be so naive as to suggest these men lived up to the standard of life set before them or the nation in which they set the foundation produced a perfect system of government. However, the Christian influences upon their lives produced exemplary men of character, and the nation they founded produced human freedom in government in the highest forms yet known to men. As we continue we will examine these institutions more precisely and look even more closely at the men behind them.
May the grace of God bless each of you,
David
