Jedidiah Morse-clergyman, geographer, and father of the painter and inventor Samuel Morse-was a significant figure in post Revolutionary New England. Through his popular geography texts, he described the new nation to Americans. As a prominent Congregationalist minister, he involved himself deeply in the heated religious controversies of his day. In an election sermon in 1799, Dr. Jedediah Morse reminds us of our part in the preservation of our Christian form of government:
“Whenever the pillars of Christianity shall be overthrown, our present republican forms of government, and all the blessings which flow from them, must fall with them.”
The pillars of Christianity…
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
The founders of our great republic believed that a people who obeyed these two commandments internally, in the heart, would need no other external law. Sadly, conditions today confirm the prophetic words of early American geographer and minister Dr. Jedediah Morse.
Do our personal lives affirm that we stand on a foundation supported by the twin pillars of both our faith and our republic?
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