Christopher Columbus
And yet, what the Founding Fathers had to say about God is so inspiring that I wish there were a way that American children could be made aware of this. It’s easy enough for homeschoolers to get this knowledge. David Barton has written books on the subject, and there’s an excellent book by William J. Federer, America’s God and Country, Encyclopedia of Quotations, filled with wonderful and inspiring words from the time of Columbus to the present day, proving that belief in God, acknowledging his blessings, and working to fulfill his promises are the most important themes in the entire American enterprise. Christopher Columbus wrote in his Book of Prophecies:
It was the Lord who put into my mind (I could feel His hand upon me) the fact that it would be possible to sail from here to the Indies....
There was no question that the inspiration was from the Holy Spirit, because he comforted me with rays of marvelous illumination from the Holy Scriptures ... encouraging me continually to press forward, and without ceasing for a moment they now encourage me to make haste.
In a letter written in 1493 to Spain’s General Treasurer Gabriel Sanchez, Columbus wrote:
That which the unaided intellect of man could not compass, the spirit of God has granted to human exertions, for God is wont to hear the prayers of His servants who love His precepts even to the performance of apparent impossibilities. Therefore, let the king and queen, our princes and their most happy kingdoms, and all the other provinces of Christendom, render thanks to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
The Pilgrim Fathers
In June of 1630, ten years after the Pilgrims founded the Plymouth Colony, Gov. John Winthrop landed in Massachusetts Bay with 700 people in 11 ships, thus beginning the Great Migration, which lasted 16 years and saw more than 20,000 Puritans embark for New England. In a sermon aboard the ship Arbella before disembarking on the shores of New England, Winthrop said:
We are a Company, professing ourselves fellow members of Christ, and thus we ought to account ourselves knit together by this bond of love....
Thus stands the cause between God and us: we are entered into covenant with Him for this work. We have taken out a Commission, the Lord hath given us leave to draw our own articles....
We must hold a familiar commerce together in each other in all meekness, gentleness, patience, and liberality. We must delight in each other, make one another’s condition our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our Commission and Community in this work, as members of the same body....
We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies, when He shall make us a praise and glory, that men of succeeding plantations shall say, "The Lord make it like that of New England."
For we must Consider that we shall be as a City upon a Hill, the eyes of all people are upon us.
That’s the kind of religious fervor and covenantal love that permitted the Puritans to create a Christian civilization in the wilderness of the new world. And from that community came some of the most learned men of God that Christendom has ever known. Harvard College was founded in 1636 for the purpose of training up a learned clergy. And indeed it did. Increase Mather, who became President of Harvard, was one of the first to criticize the British monarch, Charles II, for demanding in 1684 the return of the charter which had given the colonists the right to govern themselves. He wrote:
To submit and resign their charter would be inconsistent with the main end of their fathers’ coming to New England.... [Although resistance would provoke] great sufferings, [it was] better to suffer than sin. Let them trust in the God of their fathers, which is better than to put confidences in princes. And if they suffer, because they dare not comply with the wills of men against the will of God, they suffer in a good cause.
Already one can see the seed of the War for Independence being planted in the soil of New England.
Jonathan Edwards
Jonathan Edwards, the great theologian whose preaching began the revival known as the Great Awakening, was the third President of Princeton University. Concerning the Great Awakening, he wrote:
And then it was, in the latter part of December, that the Spirit of God began extraordinarily to ... work amongst us.... In every place, God brought His saving blessings with Him, and His Word, attended with Spirit ... returned not void.
George Whitefield, the famous dynamic evangelist of the Great Awakening, preached up and down the Eastern seaboard of America. Benjamin Franklin wrote that he was able to hear Whitefield’s voice nearly a mile away. Whitefield wrote:
Those who live godly in Christ, may not so much be said to live, as Christ to live in them.... They are led by the Spirit as a child is led by the hand of its father....
They hear, know, and obey his voice.... Being born again in God they habitually live to, and daily walk with God.
Sarah Edwards, wife of Jonathan Edwards, wrote of Whitefield:
It is wonderful to see what a spell he casts over an audience by proclaiming the simplest truths of the Bible. ... Our mechanics shut up their shops, and the day laborers throw down their tools to go and hear him preach, and few return unaffected.
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin wrote:
It was wonderful to see the change soon made in the manners of our inhabitants. From being thoughtless or indifferent about religion, it seemed as if all the world were growing religious, so that one could not walk thro’ the town in an evening without hearing psalms sung in different families of every street.
On matters of education, in 1750 Franklin wrote to Dr. Samuel Johnson, the first president of King’s College (now Columbia University):
I think with you, that nothing is of more importance for the public weal, than to form and train up youth in wisdom and virtue.... I think also, general virtue is more probably to be expected and obtained from the education of youth, than from the exhortation of adult persons; bad habits and vices of the mind being, like diseases of the body, more easily prevented than cured.
I think, moreover, that talents for the education of youth are the gift of God; and that he on whom they are bestowed, whenever a way is opened for the use of them, is as strongly called as if heard a voice from heaven.
Franklin wrote in his Autobiography this prayer that he prayed every day:
O powerful goodness! Bountiful Father! Merciful Guide! Increase in me that wisdom which discovers my truest interest. Strengthen my resolution to perform what that wisdom dictates. Accept my kind offices to thy other children as the only return in my power for thy continual favors to me.
Wouldn’t that be a wonderful nonsectarian prayer for school children to recite each day? It is said that Franklin was a Deist. He had been brought up and educated as a Presbyterian, but he rejected many of the doctrines of the Presbyterian faith. But he writes in his Autobiography:
I never doubted, for instance, the existence of the Deity; that he made the world, and governed it by his Providence; that the most acceptable service of God was the doing good to man; that our souls are immortal; and that all crime will be punished, and virtue rewarded, either here or hereafter.
In July 1776, Franklin was appointed to a committee to draft a seal for the newly formed United States. He proposed:
Moses lifting up his wand, and dividing the red sea, and pharaoh in his chariot overwhelmed with the waters. This motto: "Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God."
In 1787 Franklin wrote in a letter:
Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.
At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Franklin, disturbed by the bitter debates among the delegates, said in a speech to the convention:
I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth—that God Governs in the affairs of men....
We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings, that "except the Lord build the House, they labor in vain that build it."...
I therefore beg leave to move—that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessing on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the clergy of this city be requested to officiate in that service............
https://chalcedon.edu/magazine/the-founding-fathers-on-religion-and-morality
