Proof The Bible Is True

In an age in which Lucifer statues are being erected, and the Ten Commandments are being torn down, it is useful to consider why the Founders believed that religion was necessary for a free society as an “anchor of the soul,” as I call it in my new book, “Liberty’s Secrets: The Lost Wisdom of America’s Founders”:

As a young man, [John] Adams asked the same question most human beings have asked in one form or another: What is the meaning of life? His answer placed the divine at the center of it:

“What is the proper business of mankind in this life? We come into the world naked and destitute of all the conveniences and necessaries of life. And if we were not provided for and nourished by our parents or others should inevitably perish as soon as born. We increase in strength of body and mind by slow and insensible degrees.

One-third of our time is consumed in sleep, and three-fourths of the remainder is spent in procuring a mere animal sustenance. And if we live to the age of three score and ten and then set down to make an estimate in our minds of the happiness we have enjoyed and the misery we have suffered, we shall find, I am apt to think, that the overbalance of happiness is quite inconsiderable.

We shall find that we have been through the greatest part of our lives pursuing shadows, and empty but glittering phantoms rather than substances. We shall find that we have applied our whole vigor, all our faculties, in the pursuit of honor or wealth or learning or some other such delusive trifle instead of the real and everlasting excellences of piety and virtue.

Habits of contemplating the Deity and his transcendent excellences, and correspondent habits of complacency in and dependence upon him, habits of reverence and gratitude to God, and habits of love and compassion to our fellow men, and habits of temperance, recollection and self-government will afford us a real and substantial pleasure. We may then exult in a consciousness of the favor of God, and the prospect of everlasting felicity.”

It is no surprise that Adams accorded religion a prime role as the great regulator of human actions. Man is a reasonable creature, to be sure, but his passions were apt to get the best of him, and the contemplation of the divine, the raising of his sights beyond himself and his surroundings, was the most effective way to curtail his selfish tendencies and restore the reason necessary to live a virtuous life. Franklin described his beliefs in a remarkably similar fashion:

“I conclude that believing a Providence we have the foundation of all true religion; for we should love and revere that Deity for his goodness and thank him for his benefits; we should adore him for his Wisdom, fear him for his Power, and pray to him for his Favor and Protection; and this religion will be a powerful regulator of our actions, give us peace and tranquility within our own minds, and render us benevolent, useful, and beneficial to others.”

Read More: Is America losing its ‘anchor of the soul’?