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National: Quotations from Burning Words

With the exception of the writ of habeas corpus, a privilege not required under the Jewish government, simply because it did not allow of imprisonment, there is not a single feature of free government that is not distinctly developed in the Bible.— GARDINER SPRING

It is when the hour of conflict is over that history comes to a right understanding of the strife, and is ready to exclaim, “Lo, God is here, and we knew Him not!"— GEORGE BANCROFT

No advanced thought, no mystical philosophy, no glittering abstractions, no swelling phrases about freedom, not even science with its marvelous inventions and discoveries, can help us much in sustaining this republic; still less can godless theories of creation, or any infidel attempt to rule out the Redeemer from His rightful supremacy in our hearts, afford any hope of security. That way lies despair. -— ROBERT C. WINTHROP

In the study of such events we do well to remember that the hand once nailed to the tree holds the chain that binds the past, the present, and the future. His way is in the sea, His path is in the great waters, and His footsteps are not known. But wisdom marks His plans; truth and justice attend their development, and out of seeming evil He brings triumphant good.— JOHN LANAHAN

Human society reposes on religion. Civilization without it would be like the lights that play in the northern sky - a momentary flash on the face of darkness ere it again settles into eternal night. Wit and wisdom, sublime poetry and lofty philosophy, cannot save a nation, else ancient Greece had never perished. Valor, law, ambition, cannot preserve a people, else Rome had still been mistress of the world. The nation that loses faith in God and man loses not only its most precious jewel, but its most purifying and conserving force. Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert those pillars of human happiness, those firmest props of the duties of men and citizens.— GEORGE WASHINGTON

It must never be forgotten that religion gave birth to Anglo- American society. In the United States, religion is therefore commingled with all the habits of the nation and all the feelings of patriotism; whence it derives a peculiar force.— DE TOCQUEVILLE

Make us mindful of Thy mercies in the past, and faithful to the memories and traditions of truth and justice, of religion and patriotism, in those that have gone before us.— BISHOP W. C. DOANE

Says Oliver Cromwell : "What are all histories but God manifesting Himself, that He hath shaken down and trampled under foot whatsoever He hath not planted?" History is not a series of jumbled happenings. God is in the facts of history as truly as He is in the march of the seasons, the revolution of the planets, or the architecture of the worlds,— JOHN LANAHAN

The whole track of history is marked with the ruin of empires which having been founded in injustice, or perpetuated by wrong, were ultimately destroyed. -— WM. M. TAYLOR

Sow but one seed of primal evil in the moral soil of a nation, it will grow to be a tree as broad as the sky, - to take fruitfulness from the earth wherein it is rooted, and to cover it instead with barrenness and gloom.— HENRY GILES

To avert national decay, then, the moral character must be guarded. The mighty heart of the nation must be kept sound, so that its pulses, when once roused, will, like the ocean in its strength, sweep all before it. So long as the moral tone is preserved, the sun of our glory will not set; there will come no national decay and death.— F. W. ROBERTSON

If the great questions of the beginning of this century were mainly political, those which will convulse the world at its close will be social.— DE TOCQUEVILLE