1. DEDICATION to George Washington
after eight long years as commander in chief of the army of the republic, washington was ready to resign his commission. he wrote from his head quarters at newburgh, june 14,1783, in his circular letter to the states,
'i now make it my earnest prayer,
that God would have you, and the state over which you preside,
in His holy protection,
that He would incline the hearts of the citizens
to cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to government,
to entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another,
for their fellow citizens of the united states at large,
and particularly for their brethren who have served in the field,
and finally, that He would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all,
to do justice,
to love mercy,
and demean ourselves with that charity, humility and pacific temper of mind,
which were the characteristicks of the divine author of our blessed religion,
and without an humble imitation of whose example in these things,
we can never hope to be a happy nation'.
2. (note: on another page, after the dedication,
webster gives amazing facts about the sequoia tree
ending with the fact that many are from 3,000 to 4,000 years old...and concludes,)
'here they remained while the chain of christianity moved westward
with 'signs following'-
the liberty of the individual and of nations.
just yesterday, in the sequoia's life,
came the flowering of these bethlehem principles in government-
'we hold these truths to be self evident,
that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable
(not transferable to another or capable of being repudiated (to reject as having no authority or binding force)
that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness-
that to secure these rights,
governments are instituted among men....'
(note: compare this kind of liberty to what Jesus says in
JOHN 8.31f...'if you ABIDE IN MY WORD, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and YOU SHALL KNOW THE TRUTH and the truth shall make you FREE...
v34...'everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin.
and the slave does not remain in the house forever;
the son does remain forever.
if the SON SHALL MAKE YOU FREE you shall be FREE INDEED.
webster's word 'right' shows the difference between God's view of 'rights' and man's view..
definition 2
'in morals and religion,
just,
equitable,
ACCORDANT TO THE STANDARD OF TRUTH AND JUSTICE OR THE WILL OF GOD. that
ALONE IS RIGHT in the sight of God, which is consonant to His will or law;
this being the only perfect standard of truth and justice. (ie. john 8)
in social and political affairs, (the above view, God's has been changed by men...)
THAT IS RIGHT
WHICH IS CONSONANT TO THE LAWS AND CUSTOMS OF A COUNTRY,
( in a democracy, X OUT THIS LAST LINE) provided these laws and customs are not repugnant to the laws of God.'
reflecting on how far the founding fathers' view of the WORD 'liberty'
is from Jesus' view of freedom..i journaled,
the core WORDS of any human language are, ideally, to be granite like indicators of the reality, all created by God...never changing, revealing the way a man ought to live before God and in connection with unchanging truth. however the study of words, as actually used among men, show that
they are clear indicators of man's fallen nature, of his 'bent' away from God and His truth that started in the garden of eden.
...continuing...now when we read these words ('life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness') they kind of do something to us..maybe bring a lump to the throat and a tear to the eye..
as americans we tend to invest them with a mystical, a magical power.
but as christians we realize they are at best misleading
...and at worst, a lie.
following is some commentary that flowed into a journal after reading them:
men are created equal only in the sense
that every man is created in the image of God,
that every man is invited by God to call upon Him
for deliverance from and forgiveness of his sin.
aside from these
there equality ends
due to the fact that we live in a world which has become alienated from God.
human beings
do not see other human beings as equal
other than a public head nod to poetical expressions of the same.
the realities of life show this fact.
the day to day of man's inhumanity to man is a much truer picture of reality
than men treating those around them as they would like to be treated themselves.
secondly, men are created by God
for the exercise of His will
and have nary a right before Him
even though men may claim to create, out of thin air, the 'right' or 'rights' of men.
it is nothing more than a paltry human devise which creates a legal fiction
that does not square with reality before Him...
and exist objectively no where outside the dictionary.
(1. 'right', a just claim or title, whether legal, prescriptive, or moral. 2. sometimes, 'rights', that which is due to anyone by just claim, legal guarantees, moral principles)
finally,
LIFE and LIBERTY
are not rights.
they are gifts given
by certain men to certain men
in the providence of God.
further,
THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS
as viewed by God,
far from being a right,
is an evidence of departure
from the duty
God calls man to.
a person truly born of God is
HIS SLAVE FIRST, LAST AND ALWAYS.
where he lives is absolutely immaterial
if he is deciding how he will live
-continually breaking the first and foremost commandment of God
THOU SHALT HAVE NO OTHER GOD BEFORE ME-
rather than doing what God commands.
every man,
having become alienated from his creator
through the sin of the first man, adam,
does what HE not God wants..
he pursues his own happiness.
(the source of this is happenings here..on earth.)
any man,
having become a child of God
through the sacrificial death of God's Son, Jesus,
increasingly over time,
comes to do
and love to do
what God commands.
(the source of this is the One who waits for us there..in His eternal kingdom in heaven)
Thou wilt show me the path of life:
in Thy presence is fullness of joy;
at Thy right hand there are pleasures for
evermore. psalm 16.11
3. another introductory page..
noah webster's famous 'blue-backed speller', his 'grammars' and 'readers' all contained biblical and patriotic themes and webster spearheaded the flood of educational volumes emphasizing christian, constitutional values for more than a century...the 1828 American Dictionary has the greatest number of biblical definitions given in any secular volume. he felt 'education useless without the bible'
'and while he cautioned against too extensive use of the bible in the schools as 'tending to irreverence' he reiterated
'in my view, the christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government, ought to be instructed. ..no truth is more evident to my mind than that the christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people'..
(note: whether he knew that only a true believer in Christ and the bible could be free is not stated..certainly the more generally accepted the values of christianity are in a society, the more that society can take on the appearance of freedom by the, say, cultural imitation of the ten commandments etc...maybe he was thinking the salt and light of true believers would cause the general increase of christians.)
'upon horace mann rests the blame for removing from the curriculum the study of an american philosophy of government. opposed to the fundamental conceptions of our american constitution namely, property, self government and voluntary union, horace mann,
'the father of progressive education', removed the spirit of constitutionalism and allowed only the letter to remain. the bible, which noah webster indicated as the source of 'the principles of republican government' was closed to its primary function'
namely to testify of God's redeeming grace for mankind through Jesus Christ. actually, it was mann in the 1840s who removed the bible and its sacred purpose from the schools, not the..supreme court in the 1960s.
through the european pilgrimages of horace mann and his contemporaries the alien seeds of foreign ideologies and philosophies of education were implanted in american soil. the independence from european 'maxims of government' which noah webster had worked so diligently to achieve was subverted during the early years when american education was made the ward of the state. 'a federal catechism', part of 'the american spelling book, had introduced civics into the curriculum in 1794, it gave a short explanation of the principles of the american constitutional form of government and defined america as 'a representative REPUBLIC
(note: rule by law (reflective of the bible) as opposed to, what we have had for the last 150 or so years, democracy, the rule of people)
is 'a better form of government'. the 'defects of democracy' were discussed and students learned distinctly why a 'federal representative republic' is 'a better form of government'. shortly after schools became organized under state systems the substitution of democracy for republic was made'.
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