What They Said

"If we and our posterity shall be true to the Christian religion, if we and they shall live always in the fear of God, and shall respect his commandments, if we and they shall maintain just moral sentiments, and such convictions of duty as shall control the heart and life, we have the highest hopes for the future of our country; and if we maintain those institutions of Government and political union, exceeding all praise, as much as it exceeds all former examples of political association, we may be sure of one thing, that while our country furnishes materials for a thousand masters of the Historic Art, it will afford no topic for a Gibbon. It will have no decline and fall; it will go on prospering and to prosper. But if we and our posterity reject religious instruction and authority, violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality, and recklessly destroy the political constitution, which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us, that shall bury all our glory in profound obscurity. “

Daniel Webster