(January 18, 1782\u2013October 24, 1852), was an American politician and diplomat. His political career spanned almost four decades. Considered one of the greatest orators in American history, he served as Secretary of State for President William Henry Harrison, President John Tyler and President Millard Fillmore; was elected U.S. Senator, 1827; elected U.S. Representative, 1822; practiced law in Boston, 1816; elected U.S. Representative, 1812; admitted to the bar, 1805; and graduated from Dartmouth College, 1801. By a resolution of the Senate, Daniel Webster was esteemed as one of the five greatest senators in U.S. history.1788<\/p>\n
Daniel Webster stated:<\/p>\n
If there is anything in my thoughts or style to commend, the credit is due to my parents for instilling in me an early love of the Scriptures. If we abide by the principles taught in the Bible, our country will go on prospering and to prosper;<\/p>\n
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 \u2026 we may have the highest hopes of the future fortunes of our country; \u2026 <\/p>\n
But if we and our posterity neglect 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 and bury all our glory in profound obscurity.1789<\/p>\n
On December 22, 1820, in speaking at the Bicentennial Celebration of the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts, Daniel Webster declared:<\/p>\n
Lastly, our ancestors established their system of government on morality and religious sentiment. Moral habits, they believed, cannot safely be trusted on any other foundation than religious principle, nor any government be secure which is not supported by moral habits. \u2026 Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens.1790<\/p>\n
Cultivated mind was to act on uncultivated nature; and more than all, a government and a country were to commence, with the very first foundations laid under the divine light of the Christian religion. Happy auspices of a happy futurity! Who would wish that his country\u2019s existence had otherwise begun?1791<\/p>\n
Finally, let us not forget the religious character of our origin. Our fathers were brought hither by their high veneration for the Christian religion. They journeyed by its light, and labored in its hope. They sought to incorporate its principles with the elements of their society, and to diffuse its influence through all their institutions, civil, political, or literary. <\/p>\n
Let us cherish these sentiments, and extend this influence still more widely; in full conviction that is the happiest society which partakes in the highest degree of the mild and peaceful spirit of Christianity.1792<\/p>\n
[Plymouth is] the spot where the first scene of our history was laid; where the hearth and altars of new England were placed, where Christianity, and civilization, and letters made their first lodgement, in a vast extent of country.1793<\/p>\n
On June 17, 1825, fifty years after the battle, the cornerstone for the Bunker Hill Monument was laid. As the guest speaker, Daniel Webster spoke to a crowd of twenty thousand people, including General Marquis de Lafayette and 200 Revolutionary War veterans:<\/p>\n
We wish that this column, rising towards heaven among the pointed spires of so many temples dedicated to God, may contribute also to produce in all minds a pious feeling of dependence and gratitude.1794<\/p>\n
Let us thank God that we live in an age when something has influence besides the bayonet. \u2026 Let our object be our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country. And by the blessing of God may that country itself become a vast and splendid monument, not of oppression and terror, but of Wisdom, of Peace, and of Liberty, upon which the world may gaze with admiration, forever.1795<\/p>\n
All is peace; and God has granted you this sight of your country\u2019s happiness ere you slumber in the grave forever.<\/p>\n
He has allowed you to behold and to partake the reward of your patriotic toils; and He has allowed to us, your sons and countrymen, to meet you here, and in the name of the present generation, in the name of your country, in the name of liberty to thank you!1796<\/p>\n
On August 2, 1826, in a discourse commemorating Adams and Jefferson at Faneuil Hall, Boston, Daniel Webster declared:<\/p>\n
It is my living sentiment, and by the blessing of God it shall be my dying sentiment\u2014Independence now and Independence forever.1797<\/p>\n
Daniel Webster delivered these words in his second speech on Foote\u2019s Resolution, January 26, 1830:<\/p>\n
When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood.1798<\/p>\n
Behold the gorgeous ensign of the Republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original luster, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured. \u2026 [The motto is not] \u201cLiberty first and Union afterwards,\u201d but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart\u2014Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!1799<\/p>\n
On April 6, 1830, in presenting argument on the murder of Captain White, Daniel Webster spoke:<\/p>\n
A sense of duty pursues us ever. It is omnipresent, like the Deity. If we take to ourselves the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, duty performed or duty violated is still with us, for our happiness or our misery. If we say the darkness shall cover us, in the darkness as in the light our obligations are yet with us.1800<\/p>\n
In a speech on June 3, 1834, Daniel Webster exclaimed:<\/p>\n
God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it.1801<\/p>\n
In 1837, speaking on the Constitution, Daniel Webster gave an appeal for the Union:<\/p>\n
I regard it as the work of the purest patriots and wisest statesmen that ever existed, aided by the smiles of a benignant Providence;<\/p>\n
for when we regard it as a system of government growing out of the discordant opinions and conflicting interests of thirteen independent States, it almost appears a Divine interposition in our behalf. \u2026 <\/p>\n
The hand that destroys the Constitution rends our Union asunder forever.1802<\/p>\n
On June 17, 1843, Daniel Webster spoke of the founding father\u2019s regard for the Bible in an address celebrating the completion of the Bunker Hill Monument, Charleston, Massachusetts:<\/p>\n
The Bible came with them. And it is not to be doubted, that to free and universal reading of the Bible, in that age, men were much indebted for right views of civil liberty. <\/p>\n
The Bible is a book of faith, and a book of doctrine, and a book of morals, and a book of religion, of special revelation from God; but it is also a book which teaches man his own individual responsibility, his own dignity, and his equality with his fellow-man.1803<\/p>\n
And let us remember that it is only religion, and morals, and knowledge, that can make men respectable and happy, under any form of government.1804<\/p>\n
Thank God! I\u2014I also\u2014am an American!1805<\/p>\n
Daniel Webster stated:<\/p>\n
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; <\/p>\n
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;<\/p>\n
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 will reign without mitigation or end. \u2026 The thought is one to cause solemn reflection on the par of every patriot and Christian.1806<\/p>\n
If we work on marble, it will perish; if on brass, time will efface it; if we rear up temples, they will crumble into dust; but if we work upon immortal minds and imbue them with principles, with the just fear of God and the love of our fellow men, we engrave on those tablets something that will brighten to all eternity.1807<\/p>\n
The Lord\u2019s Day is the day on which the Gospel is preached \u2026 and although we live in a reading age and in a reading community, yet the preaching of the Gospel is the human agency which has been and still is most efficaciously employed for the spiritual good of men. That the poor had the Gospel preached to them was an evidence of His mission which the Author of Christianity Himself proclaimed.1808<\/p>\n
I believe that the Bible is to be understood and received in the plain and obvious meaning of its passages; for I cannot persuade myself that a book intended for the instruction and conversion of the whole world should cover its true meaning in any such mystery and doubt that none but critics and philosophers can discover it.1809<\/p>\n
The Bible is our only safe guide. So long as we take it as our instructor for conduct and character, we will go on prospering in the future as in the past. But the moment we relegate it from our lives a catastrophe will come to us such as we have never known.1810<\/p>\n
I shall stand by the Union, and by all who stand by it. I shall do justice to the whole country \u2026 in all I say, and act for the good of the whole country in all I do. I mean to stand upon the Constitution. I need no other platform. I shall know but one country. The ends I aim at shall be my country\u2019s, my God\u2019s, and Truth\u2019s. I was born an American; I will live an American; I shall die an American; and I intend to perform the duties incumbent upon me in that character to the end of my career.1811<\/p>\n
Political and professional fame cannot last forever, but a conscience void of offence before God and man is an inheritance for eternity.<\/p>\n
Religion, therefore, is a necessity, an indispensable element in any great human character. There is no living without it. Religion is the tie that connects man with his Creator, and holds him to his throne.<\/p>\n
If that tie is sundered or broken, he floats away a worthless atom in the universe, its proper attractions all gone, its destiny thwarted, and its whole future nothing but darkness, desolation and death.1812<\/p>\n
In 1820, in the Convention of Massachusetts, Daniel Webster stated:<\/p>\n
I am clearly of opinion that we should not strike out of the Constitution all recognition of the Christian religion. I am desirous, in so solemn a transaction as the establishment of a Constitution, that should keep in it an expression of our respect and attachment to Christianity,\u2014not, indeed, to any of its peculiar forms, but to its general principles.1813<\/p>\n
In a discussion as he sat in a drawing room, Daniel Webster laid his hand on a copy of the Holy Scriptures and proclaimed:<\/p>\n
This is the Book. I have read the Bible through many times, and now make it a practice to read it through once every year.\u2014It is a book of all others for lawyers, as well as divines; and I pity the man who cannot find in it a rich supply of thought and of rules for conduct. It fits man for life\u2014it prepares him for death.<\/p>\n
My brother knew the importance of Bible truths. The Bible led him to prayer, and prayer was his communion with God. On the day he died he was engaged in an important cause in the courts then in session. But this cause, important as it was, did not keep him from his duty to God. He found time for prayer; for on his desk which he had just left was found a prayer written by him on that day, which for fervent piety, a devotedness to his heavenly Master, and for expressions of humility I think was never excelled.1814<\/p>\n
In stating his convictions, Daniel Webster declared:<\/p>\n
The Gospel is either true history, or it is a consummate fraud; it is either a reality or an imposition. Christ was what He professed to be, or He was an imposter. There is no other alternative.<\/p>\n
His spotless life in His earnest enforcement of the truth\u2014His suffering in its defense, forbid us to suppose that He was suffering an illusion of a heated brain. Every act of His pure and holy life shows that He was the author of truth, the advocate of truth, the earnest defender of truth, and the uncompromising sufferer for truth. <\/p>\n
Now, considering the purity of His doctrines, the simplicity of His life, and the sublimity of His death, is it possible that he would have died for an illusion? In all His preaching the Saviour made no popular appeals; His discourses were always directed to the individual.<\/p>\n
Christ and His apostles sought to impress upon every man the conviction that he must stand or fall alone\u2014he must live for himself, and die for himself, and give up his account to the omniscient God as though he were the only dependent creature in the universe. <\/p>\n
The Gospel leaves the individual sinner alone with himself and his God. To his own Master he stands or falls. He has nothing to hope from the aid and sympathy of associates.<\/p>\n
The deluded advocates of new doctrines do not so preach. Christ and His apostles, had they been deceivers, would not so have preached. If clergymen in our days would return to the simplicity of the Gospel, and preach more to individuals and less to the crowd, there would not be so much complaint of the decline of true religion. <\/p>\n
Many of the ministers of the present day take their text from St. Paul, and preach from the newspapers. When they do so, I prefer to enjoy my own thoughts rather than to listen.<\/p>\n
I want my Pastor to come to me in the spirit of the Gospel, saying: \u201cYou are mortal! Your probation is brief; your work must be done speedily; you are immortal, too. You are hastening to the bar of God; the Judge standeth at the door.\u201d When I am thus admonished, I have no disposition to muse or to sleep.1815<\/p>\n
In a speech, July 4, 1851, Daniel Webster expounded:<\/p>\n
Let the religious element in man\u2019s nature be neglected, let him be influenced by no higher motives than low self-interest, and subjected to no stronger restraint than the limits of civil authority, and he becomes the creature of selfish passion or blind fanaticism.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, the cultivation of the religious sentiment represses licentiousness \u2026 inspires respect for law and order, and gives strength to the whole social fabric, at the same time that it conducts the human soul upward to the Author of its being.1816<\/p>\n
When asked the question \u201cWhat is the greatest thought that ever passed through your mind?\u201d Daniel Webster responded: <\/p>\n
My accountability to God.1817<\/p>\n
On October 10, 1852, just two weeks before he died, Mr. Webster dictated what he desired to be engraved as an epitaph upon his tomb:<\/p>\n
"LORD, I BELIEVE; HELP THOU MINE UNBELIEF."<\/p>\n
Philosophical<\/p>\n
argument, especially<\/p>\n
that drawn from the vastness of the <\/p>\n
Universe in comparison with the appar-<\/p>\n
ent insignificance of this globe, has sometimes <\/p>\n
shaken my reason for the faith which is in me; <\/p>\n
but my heart has always assured and reassured me that <\/p>\n
the Gospel of Jesus Christ must be a Divine Re-<\/p>\n
ality. The Sermon on the Mount can not be a<\/p>\n
merely human production. This belief<\/p>\n
enters into the very depths of my<\/p>\n
conscience. The whole history<\/p>\n
of man proves it.<\/p>\n
Daniel Webster1818<\/p>\n
After executing his Last Will and Testament, Daniel Webster remarked:<\/p>\n
I thank God for strength to perform a sensible act. \u2026 And now unto God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, be praise for evermore. Peace on earth, and good will toward men. That is happiness\u2014the essence\u2014good will toward men.1819<\/p>\n
On October 24, 1852, only a few hours before his death, Daniel Webster said slowly:<\/p>\n
The great mystery is Jesus Christ\u2014the Gospel. What would the condition of any of us be if we had not the hope of immortality? \u2026 Thank God, the Gospel of Jesus Christ brought life and immortality to light, rescued it\u2014brought it to light.1820<\/p>\n
Having begun to recite the Lord\u2019s Prayer, he said:<\/p>\n
Hold me up; I do not wish to pray with a fainting voice. \u2026 1821<\/p>\n
Daniel Webster\u2019s last coherent words were:<\/p>\n
I still live.1822<\/p>\n
In the Eulogy for Daniel Webster given in the U.S. Senate, Senator Lewis Cass stated: <\/p>\n
And beyond all this he died in the faith of the Christian\u2014humble, but hopeful\u2014adding another to the long list of eminent men who have searched the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and have found it to be the word and the will of God.1823<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(January 18, 1782\u2013October 24, 1852), was an American politician and diplomat. His political career spanned almost four decades. Considered one of the greatest orators in American history, he served as Secretary of State for President William Henry Harrison, President John Tyler and President Millard Fillmore; was elected U.S. Senator, 1827; elected U.S. Representative, 1822; practiced … Continue reading “WEBSTER,
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