Thought for Thanksgiving Day
On December 22, 1820 Daniel Webster delivered a speech before the Pilgrim Society at Plymouth, Massachusetts. These excerpts demonstrate not only the statesman's skill at oration, but also his solid devotion to both religious and public liberty -- principles which resound equally today as they did one, two, three, and four centuries ago.
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We have come to this rock to record here our homage for our Pilgrim Fathers; our sympathy in their sufferings; our gratitude for their labors; our admiration of their virtues; our veneration for their piety; and our attachment to those principles of civil and religious liberty which they encountered the dangers of the ocean, the storms of heaven, the violence of savages, disease, exile, and famine, to enjoy and to establish.
And we would leave here, also, for the generations which are rising up rapidly to fill our places, some proof that we have endeavored to transmit the great inheritance unimpaired; that in our estimate of public principles, and private virtue; in our veneration of religion and piety; in our devotion to civil and religious liberty; in our regard to whatever advances human knowledge, or improves human happiness, we are not altogether unworthy of our origin.
The love of religious liberty is a stronger sentiment, when fully excited, than an attachment to civil or political freedom. That freedom which the conscience demands, and which men feel bound by their hopes of salvation to contend for, can hardly fail to be attained. Conscience in the cause of religion, and the worship of the Deity, prepares the mind to act, and to suffer beyond almost all other causes. History instructs us that this love of religious liberty, a compound sentiment in the breast of man, made up of the clearest sense of right, and the highest conviction of duty, is able to look the sternest despotism in the face, and, with means apparently most inadequate, to shake principalities and powers.
Thanks be to God, that this spot was honored as the asylum of religious liberty. May its standard, reared here, remain forever! May it rise up high as heaven, till its banner shall fan the air of both continents, and wave as a glorious ensign of peace and security to the nations!
We are bound to maintain public liberty, and by the example of our own systems, to convince the world that order and law, religion and morality, the rights of conscience, the rights of persons, and the rights of property, may all be preserved and secured, in the most perfect manner, by a government entirely and purely elective. If we fail in this, our disaster will be signal, and will furnish an argument, stronger than has yet been found, in support of those opinions which maintain that government can rest safely on nothing but power and coercion.
As far as experience may show errors in our establishments, we are bound to correct them, and if any practices exist contrary to the principles of justice and humanity, within the reach of our laws or our influence, we are inexcusable if we do not exert ourselves to retrain and abolish them.
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Qtd. in Liberty: A Magazine of Religious Freedom, a publication of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, September/October 2008 edition.
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We have come to this rock to record here our homage for our Pilgrim Fathers; our sympathy in their sufferings; our gratitude for their labors; our admiration of their virtues; our veneration for their piety; and our attachment to those principles of civil and religious liberty which they encountered the dangers of the ocean, the storms of heaven, the violence of savages, disease, exile, and famine, to enjoy and to establish.
And we would leave here, also, for the generations which are rising up rapidly to fill our places, some proof that we have endeavored to transmit the great inheritance unimpaired; that in our estimate of public principles, and private virtue; in our veneration of religion and piety; in our devotion to civil and religious liberty; in our regard to whatever advances human knowledge, or improves human happiness, we are not altogether unworthy of our origin.
The love of religious liberty is a stronger sentiment, when fully excited, than an attachment to civil or political freedom. That freedom which the conscience demands, and which men feel bound by their hopes of salvation to contend for, can hardly fail to be attained. Conscience in the cause of religion, and the worship of the Deity, prepares the mind to act, and to suffer beyond almost all other causes. History instructs us that this love of religious liberty, a compound sentiment in the breast of man, made up of the clearest sense of right, and the highest conviction of duty, is able to look the sternest despotism in the face, and, with means apparently most inadequate, to shake principalities and powers.
Thanks be to God, that this spot was honored as the asylum of religious liberty. May its standard, reared here, remain forever! May it rise up high as heaven, till its banner shall fan the air of both continents, and wave as a glorious ensign of peace and security to the nations!
We are bound to maintain public liberty, and by the example of our own systems, to convince the world that order and law, religion and morality, the rights of conscience, the rights of persons, and the rights of property, may all be preserved and secured, in the most perfect manner, by a government entirely and purely elective. If we fail in this, our disaster will be signal, and will furnish an argument, stronger than has yet been found, in support of those opinions which maintain that government can rest safely on nothing but power and coercion.
As far as experience may show errors in our establishments, we are bound to correct them, and if any practices exist contrary to the principles of justice and humanity, within the reach of our laws or our influence, we are inexcusable if we do not exert ourselves to retrain and abolish them.
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Qtd. in Liberty: A Magazine of Religious Freedom, a publication of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, September/October 2008 edition.
posted by Heidi Rodeback at 11:07 AM
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