Nor can it ever be known in this world how much of the success,
prosperity, and happy conservatism which have marked this commonwealth
in all the days and years since, have come directly from this planting
of it on the grand corner-stone of all national stability, order, and
happiness. Surely, a widely different course and condition of things
would have come but for this secure anchoring of the ship on the
everlasting Rock. And a thousand pities it is that the influence of
French atheism was allowed to exclude so wholesome a principle from
the Declaration of our national Independence and from our national
Constitution. Whilst such recognition of Jehovah's supremacy and
government abides in living force in the hearts of the people, the
absence of its official formulation may be of no material
disadvantage; but for the better preservation of it in men's minds,
and for the obstruction of the insidious growth of what strikes at the
foundation of all government and order, it would have been well had
the same been put in place as the grand corner-stone of our whole
national fabric, as it was in the original organization of the
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and kept in both clear and unchangeable
for ever. We might then hope for better things than are indicated by
the present drift, and the outlook for those to come after us would be
less dark and doubtful than it is.
But, since weakenings and degeneration in these respects have come
into the enactments of public power, it is all the more needful for
every true and patriotic citizen to be earnest and firm in witnessing
for God and his everlasting laws, that the people may be better than
the later expressions of their state documents. The example of the
fathers makes appeal to the consciences of their children not to let
go from our hearts and lives the deep and abiding recognition and
confession of that almighty Governor of all things from whose
righteous tribunal no one living can escape, and before whom no
contemner of his authority can stand.