One Nation Under God America's Christian Heritage

Daniel Webster is considered one of the greatest orators in American history. He was a famous attorney, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and then the U.S. Senate. He served as Secretary of State for three Presidents. Webster was also a fervent Christian, as his statements below reveal:

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.

December 22, 1820, to celebrate of the 200 year anniversary of the Pilgrim landing at Plymouth Rock, Webster 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...

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 this is the happiest society which partakes in the highest degree of the mild and peaceful spirit of Christianity.

Webster, on June 17, 1843, at the Bunker Hill Monument in Charleston, Massachusetts, spoke these stirring words about our forefathers' reverence 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 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.

Thank God! I -- I also -- am an American!

Daniel Webster also made this statement regarding the importance of the Christian faith in preserving and prospering America:

If religious books are not widely circulated among the masses in this country, I do not know what is going to become of us as a nation. If truth be not diffused, error will be;

If God and His Word are not known and received, the devil and his works will gain the ascendancy; If the evangelical volume does not reach every hamlet, the pages of a corrupt and licentious literature will;

If the power of the Gospel is not felt throughout the length and breadth of the land, anarchy and misrule, degradation and misery, corruption and darkness will reign without mitigation or end.

Published by the Christian Defense Fund.
© Copyright 1997 by the Christian Defense Fund. All rights reserved.

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