Noah Webster, of dictionary fame, is spoken of as the founding father of American scholarship and education. His words are just as true today as they were in 1832 when he spoke them. And they need no commentary from me.

“It is extremely important to our nation, in a political as well as religious view, that all possible authority and influence should be given to the Scriptures; for these furnish the best principles of civil liberty, and the most effectual support of representative government. They teach the true principles of that equality of rights which belong to everyone of the human family, but only in consistency with a strict subordination to the magistrate and the law.”

The Scriptures are intended by God to be the guide of human reason. The Creator of man established the moral order of the Universe; knowing that human reason left without a divine guide or rule of action, would fill the world with disorder, crime, and misery.

A great portion of mankind, ignorant of this guide or rejecting its authority, have verified the fact; and the history of 3,000 years is a tissue of proof that human reason left to itself can neither preserve morals nor give duration to a free government. Human reason never has been, and unquestionably never will be, a match for ambition, selfishness, and other evil passions of man. On the other hand, opposed to the force of these passions, constitution and laws are generally found to be mere cobwebs and gossamer.

The principles of all genuine liberty, and of wise laws and administrations are to be drawn from the Bible and sustained by its authority. The man therefore who weakens or destroys the divine authority of that book may be accessory to all the public disorders which society is doomed to suffer.

. . . The Bible is the chief moral cause of all that is good, and the best corrector of all that is evil, in human society; the best book for regulating the temporal concerns of men, and the only book that can serve as an infallible guide to future [eternal] felicity [happiness].”

Brian Squiers

Tama