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03 - Letters of John Quincy Adams to His Son, on the Bible and Its Teachings by John Quincy Adams · Letters of John Quincy Adams to His Son, on the Bible and Its Teachings

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  Speaker 1: Section two of letters of John Quincy Adams to his
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  Speaker 1: son on the Bible and its teachings. This LibriVox recording
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  Speaker 1: is in the public domain. Read by Dale Berkley, Letter two.
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  Speaker 1: The first point of view in which I have invited
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  Speaker 1: you to consider the Bible is in the light of
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  Speaker 1: divine revelation. And what are we to understand by these terms?
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  Speaker 1: I intend as much as possible to avoid the field
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  Speaker 1: of controversy, which I am not well acquainted with, and
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  Speaker 1: for which I have little respect and still less inclination.
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  Speaker 1: My idea of the Bible as a divine revelation is
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  Speaker 1: founded upon its practical use to mankind, and not upon
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  Speaker 1: metaphysical subtleties. There are three points of doctrine, the belief
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  Speaker 1: of which forms the foundation of all morality. The first
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  Speaker 1: is the existence of a God, the second is the
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  Speaker 1: immortality of the human soul, and the third is a
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  Speaker 1: future state of rewards and punishments. Suppose it possible for
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  Speaker 1: a man to disbelieve either of these articles of faith,
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  Speaker 1: and that man will have no conscience. He will have
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  Speaker 1: no other law than that of the tiger or the shark.
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  Speaker 1: The laws of man may bind him in chains, or
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  Speaker 1: may put him to death, but they never can make
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  Speaker 1: him wise, virtuous, or happy. It is possible to believe
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  Speaker 1: them all without believing that the Bible is a divine revelation.
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  Speaker 1: It is so obvious to every reasonable being that he
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  Speaker 1: did not make himself, and the world which he inhabits
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  Speaker 1: could as little make itself, that the moment we begin
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  Speaker 1: to exercise the power of reflection, it seems impossible to
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  Speaker 1: escape the conviction that there is a creator. It is
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  Speaker 1: equally evident that the Creator must be a spiritual and
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  Speaker 1: not a material being. There is also a consciousness that
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  Speaker 1: the thinking part of our nature is not material but spiritual,
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  Speaker 1: that it is not subject to the laws of matter,
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  Speaker 1: nor perishable. With it hence arises the belief that we
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  Speaker 1: have an immortal soul. In pursuing the train of thought
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  Speaker 1: which the visible creation and observation upon ourselves suggest, we
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  Speaker 1: must soon discover that the Creator must also be the
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  Speaker 1: governor of the universe, That his wisdom and his goodness
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  Speaker 1: must be without bounds, That he is a righteous God
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  Speaker 1: and loves righteousness, That mankind are bound by the laws
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  Speaker 1: of righteousness and are accountable to Him for their obedience
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  Speaker 1: to them in this life. According to their good or
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  Speaker 1: evil deeds. This completion of divine justice must be reserved
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  Speaker 1: for another life. The existence of a creator, the immortality
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  Speaker 1: of the human soul, and a future state of retribution
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  Speaker 1: are therefore so perfectly congenial to natural reason when once discovered,
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  Speaker 1: or rather, it is so impossible for natural reason to
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  Speaker 1: disbelieve them, that it would seem the light of natural
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  Speaker 1: reason could alone suffice for their discovery, but the conclusion
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  Speaker 1: would not be correct. Human reason may be sufficient to
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  Speaker 1: get an obscure glimpse of these sacred and important truths,
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  Speaker 1: but it cannot discover them in all their clearness. For example,
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  Speaker 1: in all their numberless false religions which have swayed the
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  Speaker 1: minds of men in different ages and regions of the world.
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  Speaker 1: The idea of a God has always been included Father
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  Speaker 1: of all, in every age, in every clime, adored by saint,
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  Speaker 1: by savage, and by sage Jehovah, job or Lord, so
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  Speaker 1: says Pope's Universal Prayer. But it is the God of
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  Speaker 1: the Hebrews alone who has announced to us as the
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  Speaker 1: creator of the world. The ideas of God entertained by
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  Speaker 1: all the most illustrious and most ingenious nations, of antiquity
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  Speaker 1: were weak and absurd. The Persians worshiped the sun. The
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  Speaker 1: Egyptians believed in an innumerable multitude of gods, and worshiped
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  Speaker 1: not only oxen, crocodiles, dogs, and cats, but even garlics
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  Speaker 1: and onions. The Greeks invented a poetical religion, and adored
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  Speaker 1: men and women, virtues and vices, air, water and fire,
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  Speaker 1: and everything that a vivid imagination could personify. Almost all
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  Speaker 1: the Greek philosophers reasoned and meditated upon the nature of
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  Speaker 1: the gods, but scarcely any of them reflected enough even
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  Speaker 1: to imagine that there was but one God, and not
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  Speaker 1: one of them ever conceived of him as the creator
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  Speaker 1: of the world. Cicero has collected together all their opinions
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  Speaker 1: upon the nature of the gods and pronounced them more
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  Speaker 1: like the dreams of madmen than the sober judgment of
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  Speaker 1: wise men. In the first book of Ovid's Metamorphoses, there
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  Speaker 1: is an account of the change of chaos in the
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  Speaker 1: world before the sea and the earth and the sky
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  Speaker 1: that surrounds all things. Says Ovid, there is a thing
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  Speaker 1: called chaos, and some of the gods he does not know,
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  Speaker 1: which separated from each other the elements of this chaos,
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  Speaker 1: and turned them into the world. Thus far and no
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  Speaker 1: farther could human reason extend. But the first words of
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  Speaker 1: the Bible are in the beginning God cre created the
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  Speaker 1: heavens and the earth. The blessed and sublime idea of
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  Speaker 1: God as the creator of the universe. The source of
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  Speaker 1: all human happiness, for which all the sages and philosophers
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  Speaker 1: of Greece and Rome groped in darkness and never found,
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  Speaker 1: is recalled in the first verse of the Book of Genesis.
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  Speaker 1: I call it the source of all human virtue and happiness,
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  Speaker 1: because when we have attained the conception of a being who,
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  Speaker 1: by the mere act of his will created the world,
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  Speaker 1: it would follow as an irresistible consequence, even if we
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  Speaker 1: were not told that the same being must also be
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  Speaker 1: the governor of his own creation, that man, with all
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  Speaker 1: other things, was also created by him, and must hold
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  Speaker 1: his felicity and virtue on the condition of obedience to
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  Speaker 1: his will. In the first chapters of the Bible, there
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  Speaker 1: is a short and rapid historical narrative of the manner
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  Speaker 1: in which the world and man were made, of the
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  Speaker 1: condition upon which happiness and immortality were bestowed upon our
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  Speaker 1: first parents, of their transgression of this condition, of the
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  Speaker 1: punishment denounced upon them, and the promise of redemption from
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  Speaker 1: it by the seed of the Woman. There are, and
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  Speaker 1: always have been where the Holy Scriptures have been known,
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  Speaker 1: petty whitlings and self conceited reasoners who cavil it some
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  Speaker 1: of the particular details of this narration. Even serious inquirers
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  Speaker 1: after truth, have sometimes been perplexed to believe that there
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  Speaker 1: should have been evening and morning before the existence of
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  Speaker 1: the sun, That man should be made of clay and
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  Speaker 1: woman from the ribs of man, That they should have
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  Speaker 1: been forbidden to eat an apple, and for disobedience to
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  Speaker 1: that injunction be with all their posterity doomed to death,
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  Speaker 1: And that eating an apple could give the knowledge of
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  Speaker 1: good and evil, that a serpent should speak and beguile
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  Speaker 1: a woman. All this is undoubtedly marvelous and above our comprehension.
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  Speaker 1: Much of it is clearly figurative and allegorical. Nor is
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  Speaker 1: it easy to distinguish what part of it is to
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  Speaker 1: be understood in a literal and not in a symbolic sense.
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  Speaker 1: But all that it imports us to know or understand
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  Speaker 1: is plain. The great and essential principles upon which our
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  Speaker 1: duties and enjoyments depend are involved in no obscurity. A God,
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  Speaker 1: the creator and governor of the universe, is revealed in
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  Speaker 1: all his majesty and power. The terms upon which he
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  Speaker 1: gave existence and happiness to the common parent of mankind
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  Speaker 1: are exposed to us in the clearest light. Disobedience to
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  Speaker 1: the will of God was the offense for which he
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  Speaker 1: was precipitated from paradise. Obedience to the will of God
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  Speaker 1: is the merit by which paradise is to be regained. Here, then,
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  Speaker 1: is the foundation of all morality, the source of all
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  Speaker 1: our obligations as accountable creatures. This idea of the transcendent
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  Speaker 1: power of the supreme being is essentially connected with that
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  Speaker 1: by which the whole duty of man is summed up
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  Speaker 1: obedience to his will. I have observed that natural reason
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  Speaker 1: might suffice for an obscure prisines, but not for the
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  Speaker 1: clear discovery of these truths. Even Cicero could start to
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  Speaker 1: his own mind the question whether justice could exist upon
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  Speaker 1: earth unless founded upon piety, but could not settle it
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  Speaker 1: to his own satisfaction. The ray of divine light contained
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  Speaker 1: in the principle that justice has no other foundation than
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  Speaker 1: piety could make its way to the soul of the heathen,
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  Speaker 1: but there it was extinguished in the low, unsettled, and
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  Speaker 1: inconsistent notions, which were the only foundations of his piety.
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  Speaker 1: How could his piety be pure or sound when he
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  Speaker 1: did not know whether there was one God or a thousand,
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  Speaker 1: whether he or they had or had not any concern
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  Speaker 1: in the formation of the world, and whether they had
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  Speaker 1: any regard to the affairs or the conduct of mankind.
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  Speaker 1: Once assumed the idea of a single God, the creator
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  Speaker 1: of all things, whose will is the law of moral
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  Speaker 1: obligation to man and to whom man is accountable, and
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  Speaker 1: piety becomes his rational as it is essential. It becomes
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  Speaker 1: the first of human duties, and not a doubt can
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  Speaker 1: henceforth remain that fidelity in the associations of human piety
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  Speaker 1: and that most excellent virtue, justice repose upon no other foundation.
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  Speaker 1: At a later age than Cicero, Longinus expressly quotes the
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  Speaker 1: third verse of the first chapter of Genesis as an
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  Speaker 1: example of the sublime and God said, let there be light,
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  Speaker 1: And there was light, and wherein consists its sublimity in
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  Speaker 1: the image of the transcendent power presented to the mind
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  Speaker 1: with the most striking simplicity of expression. Yet this verse
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  Speaker 1: only exhibits the effects of that transcendent power which the
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  Speaker 1: first verse discloses in announcing God as the creator of
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  Speaker 1: the world. The true sublimity is in the idea given
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  Speaker 1: us of God. To such a God, the heart of
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  Speaker 1: man must yield with cheerfulness the tribute of homage which
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  Speaker 1: it never could pay to the numerous gods of Egypt,
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  Speaker 1: to the dissolate debauchi of the Heathen mythology, nor even
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  Speaker 1: to the more elevated, but not less fantastical imaginations of
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  Speaker 1: the Grecian philosophers and sages. From your affectionate father, John
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  Speaker 1: Quincy Adams, end of Section two