JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
Born in Braintree, Massachusetts in 1767, John Q. Adams was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, and diarist who served as the sixth president of the United States, from 1825 to 1829. Being the son of 2nd President, John Adams, he was afforded a unique perspective regarding the inception and planning of the American Revolution. John Q. Adams served as a foreign diplomat of the United States in several nations beginning at the age of 27. John Q. Adams was the first President of the U.S. to ever be photographed. Adams passed away in Washington D.C. in February of 1848.
"That kingdom of the just, which had floated in the virtuous visions of John Adams, while he was toiling for his country's independence,-that kingdom of our Father in Heaven, for which His Son taught us to approach Him in daily prayer,- has it yet come; and if not, have our advances towards it been as pure, as virtuous, as self-denying, as were those of our fathers in the days of their trial of adversity?...The highest, the transcendent glory of the American Revolution was this - it connected, on one indissoluble bond, the principles of civil government with the precepts of Christianity. "
" The Declaration of Independence cast off the shackles of this dependency. The United States of America were no longer Colonies. They were an independent Nation of Christians...
... you can shake off all belief, both of the prophesies and revelations of the Scriptures; - suppose them to all be fables of human invention; yet say with me, that thousands of years have passed away since these volumes were composed, and have been believed by the most enlightened of mankind as the oracles of truth..."
"From the day of the Declaration, the people of the North American Union and of its constituent States, were associated bodies of civilized men and christians, in a state of nature; but not of Anarchy. They were bound by the laws of God, which they all, and by the laws of the Gospel, which they nearly all, acknowledged as the rules of their conduct."
"...for so great is my veneration for the Bible & so strong my belief that when duly read & meditated upon, it is of all the books in the world, that which contributes most to make men good, wise, & happy, that the earlier my children begin to read it & the more steadily they pursue the practice of reading it throughout their lives, the more lively & confident will be my hopes that they will prove useful citizens to their Country respectable members of society & a real blessing to their Parents...
In your Infancy and youth you have been and will be for some years under the authority and controul of your friends and instructors—you must soon come to the age when you must govern yourself, you have already come to that age in many respects—you know the difference between right and wrong—you know some of your duties, and the obligation you are under of becoming acquainted with them all—it is in the bible that you must learn them, and from the bible how to practice them.
those Duties—are to God—to your fellow creatures—and to yourself “thou Shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind and with all thy strength and thy neighbour as thyself, Luke X. 27th Math 22 40....
let us then search the Scriptures—and in order to pursue our inquiries with methodical order, let us consider the various sources of Instruction that we may draw from, in this study—the Bible contains the revelation of the Will of God. it contains the History of the Creation of the World and of mankind—and after wards,the history of one peculiar Nation—certainly the most extraordinary Nation that has ever appeared upon Earth—It contains a system of Religion and of Morality, which we may examine upon its own merits, independent of the Sanction it receives from being the world of God:"
Emphasis added