By faith the voyaging Mayflower embarked
from Old England and found harbor off the
bleak New England shores. By faith the Pilgrim Fathers set up a government on a new
continent dedicated to God and inspired by a
desire to do his will on earth as it is done in
heaven.
By faith Thomas Jefferson was stirred to
strike a blow for political independence and
wrote the thrilling document that declared
that all men are created equal and endowed
with certain inalienable rights.
By faith he
said, "Love your neighbor as yourself and
your country more than yourself."
By faith George Washington left his spacious mansion at Mount Vernon and espoused the cause of the tax-burdened colonists.
By faith he forsook ease and comfort,
choosing rather to suffer hardship with his
men at Valley Forge than to enjoy the favor
of a king.
By faith he became the President of
the newly born republic and endured as
seeing Him who is invisible.
By faith Alexander Hamilton established
the financial credit of the nation. In the eloquent words of Daniel Webster: "He touched
the corpse of public credit and it sprang into
life. He smote the rock of national resources
and abundant streams of revenue flowed."
By
faith James Madison gave richly of his scholarly mind to form the Federal Constitution.
By faith Andrew Jackson fought the battle of
the impoverished and underprivileged many
against the privileged few.
By faith Abraham Lincoln bore the awful
burden of four purgatorial years seeking to
preserve the Federal Union.
By faith he carried a dreadful war to its conclusion without
hate in his heart, saying, "I have not only
suffered for the South, I have suffered with
the South."
By faith Woodrow Wilson in the dreadful
heartbreak of a world war dreamed a dream
of a war less world in which the nations should
be leagued together to keep the peace.
By
faith he glimpsed that promised land which,
like Moses, he might not enter.
And what shall I more say? For time would
fail me if I should tell of that unnumbered
host, the unnamed and obscure citizens who
bore unimagined burdens, sacrificed in si-
lence and endured nobly, that a government
of the people, for the people, and by the
people might not perish from the earth.
