American Heritage Library


Heroes of Faith
by Edgar De Witt Jones

By faith the voyaging Mayflower embarkedfrom Old England and found harbor off thebleak New England shores.

By faith the Pilgrim Fathers set up a government on a newcontinent dedicated to God and inspired by adesire to do his will on earth as it is done inheaven.

By faith Thomas Jefferson was stirred tostrike a blow for political independence andwrote the thrilling document that declaredthat all men are created equal and endowedwith certain inalienable rights.
By faith hesaid, "Love your neighbor as yourself andyour 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 hismen at Valley Forge than to enjoy the favorof a king.
By faith he became the President ofthe newly born republic and endured asseeing Him who is invisible.

By faith Alexander Hamilton establishedthe financial credit of the nation. In the eloquent words of Daniel Webster: "He touchedthe corpse of public credit and it sprang intolife. He smote the rock of national resourcesand abundant streams of revenue flowed."

Byfaith James Madison gave richly of his scholarly mind to form the Federal Constitution.
By faith Andrew Jackson fought the battle ofthe impoverished and underprivileged manyagainst the privileged few.

By faith Abraham Lincoln bore the awfulburden of four purgatorial years seeking topreserve the Federal Union.
By faith he carried a dreadful war to its conclusion withouthate in his heart, saying, "I have not onlysuffered for the South, I have suffered withthe South."

By faith Woodrow Wilson in the dreadfulheartbreak of a world war dreamed a dreamof a war less world in which the nations shouldbe leagued together to keep the peace.
Byfaith he glimpsed that promised land which,like Moses, he might not enter.

And what shall I more say? For time wouldfail me if I should tell of that unnumberedhost, the unnamed and obscure citizens whobore unimagined burdens, sacrificed in si-lence and endured nobly, that a governmentof the people, for the people, and by thepeople might not perish from the earth.

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