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Daniel Webster

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Daniel Webster (1782-1852), was a famous American politician and diplomat.  He is considered one of the greatest orators in American history.  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.  Daniel Webster stated:

"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."  - Henry H. Halley, Halley's Bible Handbook (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1965), p. 18. also Alfred Armand Montapert, Distilled Wisdom (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1965), p. 37.

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."  - December 22, 1820.  The Works of Daniel Webster (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1853), Vol. I, pp. 22-24.  David Barton, The Myth of Separation (Aledo, TX: WallBuilder Press, 1991), p. 134. also Gary DeMar, God and Government, A Biblical and Historical Study (Atlanta, GA: American Vision Press, 1984), p. xiii. also The Rebirth of America (Philadelphia:  Published by the Arthur S. DeMoss Foundation, 1986), p. 29. also Burton Stevenson, The Home Book of Quotations (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1967), p. 266.  John Bartlett, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1855, 1980), p. 450.

"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?"  - The Works of Daniel Webster (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1853), Vol. I, pp. 22.  David Barton, The Myth of Separation (Aledo, TX: WallBuilder Press, 1991), p. 134.

"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."  - The Works of Daniel Webster (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1853), Vol. I, pp. 48.  David Barton, The Myth of Separation (Aledo, TX: WallBuilder Press, 1991), p. 134. "Our Christian Heritage," Letter from Plymouth Rock (Marlborough, NH: The Plymouth Rock Foundation), p. 5.  Walker Lewis, ed., Speak for Yourself, Daniel:  A Life of Webster in His Own Words (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1969), p. 86.  Peter Marshall and David Manuel, The Glory of America (Bloomington, MN: Garborg's Heart 'N Home, Inc., 1991), 12.22.  Marshall Foster, The American Covenant (Thousand Oaks, CA: The Mayflower Institute, 1992), p. 158.

On June 17, 1843, Daniel Webster spoke of the founding father's regard for the Bible in a speech at the Bunker Hill Monument, Charleston, Massachusetts:

"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."  - June 17, 1843, in his Speech at Bunker Hill Monument, Charlestown, Massachusetts.  Burton Stevenson, The Home Book of Quotations - Classical & Modern (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1967), p. 158.  Peter Marshall and David Manuel, The Glory of America (Bloomington, MN: Garborg's Heart 'N Home, Inc., 1991), 8.8.  Stephen Abbott Northrop, D.D., A Cloud of Witnesses (Portland, Oregon: American Heritage Ministries, 1987), p. 491.

Daniel Webster stated:

"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."  - Peter Marshall and David Manuel, The Glory of America (Bloomington, MN: Garborg's Heart 'N Home, Inc., 1991), 12.7.

"If we work on marble, it will perish; if on brass, time will efface it; if we rear up temples, they will crumble into dust; but if we work upon immortal minds and imbue them with principles, with the just fear of God and the love of our fellow men, we engrave on those tablets something that will brighten to all eternity."  - "The Voices of America's Heritage," Torch (Dallas, TX: Texas Eagle Forum, February 1994), vol. 1, no. 7, p. 4.

"The Lord's Day is the day on which the Gospel is preached... and although we live in a reading age and in a reading community, yet the preaching of the Gospel is the human agency which has been and still is most efficaciously employed for the spiritual good of men.  That the poor had the Gospel preached to them was an evidence of His mission which the Author of Christianity Himself proclaimed."  - Peter Harvey, Reminiscences and Anecdotes of Daniel Webster (Boston: Little, Brown & Co. 1890), pp. 393-394.  Peter Marshall and David Manuel, The Glory of America (Bloomington, MN: Garborg's Heart 'N Home, Inc., 1991), 1.16.

In a discussion, being seated in a drawing-room, Daniel Webster laid his hand on a copy of the Holy Scriptures and proclaimed:

"This is the Book.  I have read the Bible through many times, and now make it a practice to read it through once every year. - It is a book of all others for lawyers, as well as divines; and I pity the man who cannot find in it a rich supply of thought and of rules for conduct.  It fits man for life - it prepares him for death.

"My brother knew the importance of Bible truths.  The Bible led him to prayer, and prayer was his communication with God.  On the day he died he was engaged in an important cause in the courts then in session.  But this cause, important as it was, did not keep him from his duty to God.  He found time for prayer; for on his desk which he had just left was found a prayer written by him on that day, which for fervent piety, a devotedness to his heavenly Master, and for expressions of humility I think was never excelled."  - Tyron Edwards, D.D., The New Dictionary of Thought - A Cyclopedia of Quotations (Garden City, NY: Hanover House, 1852, The Standard Book Company, 1963), p. 49.  Charles Lanman, Private Life of Daniel Webster, p. 104.  Stephen Abbott Northrop, D.D., A Cloud of Witnesses (Portland, Oregon: American Heritage Ministries, 1987), p. 491.


 

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