A CALL FOR THE WISDOM FROM OUR EARLIEST AMERICANS

A CALL FOR THE WISDOM FROM OUR EARLIEST AMERICANS

IN PURSUIT OF THE TRUTH - HTTP://WWW.CINOPSBEGONE.BLOGSPOT.COM - SAT. DEC. 7 /19

THE GLORY OF AMERICA (A CALENDER) BY PETER MARSHAL & DAVID MANUEL, 1999

Preface: Dec. 7, Daniel Webster, Federer  America's, 671.

    "If religious books are not widely circulated among the masses in this country, I do not know what is going to become of us as a nation. If truth be not diffused, error will be: If God and His Word are not known and received, the devil and his works will gain the ascendancy:

If the evangelical volume does not reach every hamlet, the pages of a corrupt and licentious literature will: If the power of the Gospel is not felt throughout the length and breadth of the land, anarchy and misrule, degradation, and misery, corruption and darkness reign without mitigation end."

Dec. 5, Lyman Beecher, writing in his newspaper The Spirit of the Pilgrims, stated in 1831"

    "The government of God is the only government which will hold society, against depravity within and temptation without: and this must d by the force of its own law written upon the heart. This is that unity of the Spirit and that bond of peace which can alone perpetuate national purity and tranquility - that law of universal and impartial love by which alone nations can be kept from ruin. There is no safety for republics but in self-government, under the influence of a holy heart, swayed by the government of God." Miller, Life,, Vol. 1, 36

Dec. 4, John Cotton, the great Puritan preacher, was born on this day in 1585. He said:

"But ever let the name of the Lord be your strong tower, and the word of His promise, the rock of your refuge. His word that made heaven and earth will not fail, till heaven and earth be no more."

"If God make a covenant to be a God to thee and thine, then it is thy part to see to it that thy children and servants be God's people." Morison, Winthrop, 25

Dec. 2, In the early years of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, when families wanted to settle in the wilderness, they first gathered into churches which would eventually grow into towns. But increasingly, some independent men just went off on their own. Puritan minister John Cotton said of them:"But when men thus depart, God usually followeth them with a bitter curse: either taking their lives away from them, or blasting them with poverty, or exposing them to scandal where they come, or in entertaining them from such restless agitations that they are driven to repent of their former rashness, and many times return to the church from which they had broken away." Foster, Way, 58.

Nov. 28, People wonder how the Pilgrims came to be called, when originally they called themselves Separatists, for having separated themselves from the Church of England. The expression may have come from something Bradford wrote, as they were traveling by barge to the coast of Holland, where they would board the Mayflower.

"The knew they were Pilgrims, and looked not much on those things, but lifted up their eyes to the heavens, their dearest country, and quieted their spirits." Bercovitch, Typology, 104

Nov. 27, When the pilgrims brought in their first harvest, it was so beautiful that they decided to have a time of giving thanks. They invited their Indian friends to join them - and were inwardly dismayed when 90 braves arrived. But these had brought deer and wild turkey. There was more than enough for all. The next year, after being reduced to near starvation in the winter, the Pilgrims experienced a record harvest, and planned a second Day of Thanksgiving. They began by giving each person five kernels of corn on it - which had been their ration that winter, when things were at their lowest ebb. Marshall and Manuel, TLTG, 135-36; 143-44

Nov. 25, In the little colony they called Plymouth Plantation, the Pilgrims practiced their faith, not only with their lips but in their lives. Recalling their life together, their perennially re-elected Governor William Bradford, would one day write:

    "Thus out of small beginnings greater things have been produced by His hand that made all things of nothing, and gives being to all things that are: as one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone unto many, yea in some sort to our whole nation; let the glorious name of Jehovah have all the praise."  Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 230    George H. Kubeck - 400th.org