April 2012
Like the FRAMERS of the Constitution, many Americans in the early years of the Republic truly regarded the Constitution as a miracle. Not only did they praise the competence, wisdom, and motivations of those who served in the federal convention of 1787, but they declared that the formation and adoption of our new system of federal government represented a political achievement unprecedented in human history.
They looked upon it as an event that was “influenced, guided, and governed” by the HAND OF GOD. As a result, it is not hard to understand why our Founding Fathers believed that the Constitution was destined to BLESS all mankind – and that it was “incumbent of their successors” to PRESERVE and DEFEND our national charter of liberty. These convictions in the following statements should move today’s Americans to seriously reflect what could happen if we continue to give way to secularism and abandon the Christian principles our nation were founded upon.James Madison: “The great objects which presented themselves [to the Constitutional Convention] … formed a task more difficult than can be well conceived by those who were not concerned in the execution of it. Adding to these considerations the natural diversity of human opinions on all new and complicated subjects, it is impossible to consider the degree of concord which ultimately prevailed as less then a miracle” (To Thomas Jefferson, October 24, 1787, in The Papers of James Madison, editor William T. Hutchinson).
James Wilson: “Governments, in general, have been the result of force, of fraud, and accident. After a period of six thousand years has elapsed since the creation, the United States exhibit to the world the first instance, as far as we can learn, of a nation, un-attacked by external force, un-convulsed by domestic insurrections, assembling voluntarily, deliberating fully, and deciding calmly concerning that system of government under which they would wish that they and their posterity should live” (Remarks in Pennsylvania ratifying convention, 26 November 1787, in Jonathan Elliot, ed., The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, 2d rev., 5 vols.).Wilson: “I can well recollect, though I believe I cannot convey to others, the impression which, on many occasions, was made by the difficulties which surrounded and pressed the [federal] convention. The great undertaking sometimes seemed to be at a stand; at other times, its motion seemed to be retrograde. At the conclusion, however, of our work, many of the members expressed their astonishment at the success with which it terminated” (IBID, p. 426).
