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Steve
Farrell's
Liberty
Jabs
Best
of the Liberty Letters Blog - #1 - May 18,
2005
Divine
Providence
Americans used to believe in Divine Providence,
especially as it related to the role of the United
States in world history, past, present, and
future.
Here is how George Bancroft, writing in his
History of the United States back in 1834,
approached the intro to his monumental classic on
American History:
- It is the object of the present work to
explain how the change in the condition of our
land has been brought about; and, as the
fortunes of a nation are not under the control
of blind destiny, to follow the steps by which a
favoring Providence, calling our institutions
into being, has conducted the country to its
present happiness and glory.
Would to God that we could return to this
enlightened perspective, not just because it
promotes faith, and mission, and goodness among our
young people. But because it is a true reflection
of how the founding generation felt; and history
ought to be about truth.
Columbus'
Last Words
"Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit," were
the words of Christopher Columbus, as on Ascension
Day, 1506, he breathed his last. &endash; Source,
History of the United States by George
Bancroft, 1834.
American
Colonists Like Israel of Old
More from history your kids are no longer
permitted to study.
In a chapter summarizing the settling of
America, and the establishment of the 13 colonies,
historian George Bancroft observes in his 1834
work, History of the United States:
- The people, separating itself from all other
elements of previous civilization; the people,
self-confiding and industrious the people, wise
by all traditions that favored its culture and
happiness&emdash;alone broke away from European
influence, and in the New World laid the
foundations of our republic. Like Moses, as they
said of themselves, they had escaped from
Egyptian bondage to the wilderness, that God
might there give them the pattern of the
tabernacle. Like the favored evangelist, the
exiles, in their western Patmos, listened to the
angel that dictated the new gospel of freedom.
Overwhelmed in Europe, popular liberty, like the
fabled fountain of the sacred Arethusa, gushed
forth profusely in remoter fields.
Christianity:
The Cradle of Liberty
Again quoting from Bancroft's History of the
United States, here's another unmentionable
your kids and my kids are not permitted to study in
the 'open-minded,' 'free speech protecting,' 'truth
seeking' public school system:
- The colonists, including their philosophy in
their religion, as the people up to that time
had always done, were neither skeptics nor
sensualists, but Christians. The school that
bows to the senses as the sole interpreter of
truth had little share in colonizing our
America. The colonists from Maine to Carolina,
the adventurous companions of Smith, the
proscribed Puritans that freighted the fleet of
Winthrop, the Quaker outlaws that fled from
jails with a Newgate prisoner as their
sovereign&emdash;all had faith in God and in the
soul. The system which had been revealed in
Judea&emdash;the system which combines and
perfects the symbolic wisdom of the Orient and
the reflective genius of Greece&emdash;the
system, conforming to reason, yet kindling
enthusiasm; always hastening reform, yet always
conservative; proclaiming absolute equality
among men, yet not suddenly abolishing the
unequal institutions of society; guaranteeing
absolute freedom, yet invoking the inexorable
restrictions of duty; in the highest degree
theoretical, and yet in the highest degree
practical; awakening the inner man to a
consciousness of his destiny, and yet adapted
with exact harmony to the outward world; at once
divine and humane&emdash;this system was
professed in every part of our widely extended
country, and cradled our freedom.
History
Hinges on the Actions of 'Insignificant'
Players
The settlement of New England was a result of
implacable differences between Protestant
dissenters in England and the established Anglican
church.
Who will venture to measure the consequences of
actions by the humility or the remoteness of their
origin? The Power which enchains the destinies of
states, overruling the decisions of sovereigns and
the forethought of statesmen, often deduces the
greatest events from the least considered causes. A
Genoese adventurer, discovering America, changed
the commerce of the world; an obscure German,
inventing the printing-press, rendered possible the
universal diffusion of ever-increasing
intelligence; an Augustine monk, denouncing
indulgences, introduced a schism in religion which
changed the foundations of European politics; a
young French refugee, skilled alike in theology and
civil law, in the duties of magistrates and the
dialectics of religious controversy, entering the
republic of Geneva, and conforming its
ecclesiastical discipline to the principles of
republican simplicity, established a party of which
Englishmen became members, and New England the
asylum.
Source: Bancroft, Hist. of the U.S.,
vol.1, p.177
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