HUU Sermon Archives

The Eye of Providence: Deism USA

by Eric La Freniere
July 21, 2002

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Good morning, my name is Eric La Freniere, and I want to thank you for this opportunity.

NOW -

how many of us learned - as children - that the pilgrims shared an intimate thanksgiving dinner with local native Americans, or that George Washington confessed to chopping down the cherry tree? These are legends; their mythic content gives them a certain psychological resonance, but the facts are that the pilgrims refused to allow the "heathen savages" to so much as enter their compound, much less dine with them, and that the tale of the cherry tree was deliberately concocted by a minister.

I want to examine with you the historical facts in the case of a particular legend of religious nationalism, namely the legend that our most prominent founders were good Christians -puritans even -and that by extension, our nation has a Christian foundation.

I want to show that it was Deism -a powerful force of modernity-not any variant of Christianity, that had the greatest spiritual influence on our most prominent Founders. I do this, unabashedly, in the spirit of patriotism.

Let's start with some historical context:

THE PURITANS

The New World was colonized and conquered by Christians of various sects from the Old World, and the Puritans were one such group.

The Puritans were Calvinists and, ultimately, children of Luther's Reformation (it was Luther who had declared that "whoever wants to be a Christian, should tear out the eyes of his reason"). These people had an unshakeable faith in a supernatural God revealed to them through miracles and prophecy. In their view, man was innately flawed, a sinful creature in desperate need of salvation through the mystical sacrifice and resurrection of a God become man.

The Puritans envisioned the New World as the New Jerusalem, and interpreted their own efforts to be in fulfillment of various ancient prophecies. They thought they were living in the End Times, and they stood with one spiritual leg in what they believed to be the more important next world.

The Puritans strove for a universal literacy, more as an instrument of indoctrination than general education. They worked ceaselessly, with ferocious energy, not just out of frontier necessity, but also to demonstrate to themselves and to their peers that they were members of an Elect group Predestined to enter Heaven's Gates before the coming Apocalypse.

They were were a thoroughly superstitious folk, believing in the significance of dreams and portents, and "signs and wonders" such as "monstrous births." They were convinced of the reality, power and threat of Indian sorcery, the devil and demons, and witches and their curses and familiars.

The Puritans were what we today would call "fundamentalists," and they were famously and terribly intolerant of anyone who disagreed with their faith. They did not recognize the separation of government and religion, and, their fabled town meetings notwithstanding, their government included strong theocratic elements, including religious police, or wardens, as they were called. The Puritans enacted harsh penalties, including fines, whipping, banishment and execution, for the violation of sundry religious laws.

Their colonial founding document was the Mayflower Compact, in which they pledged allegiance to both their God and, in a traditional Judeo-Christian, corollary fashion, to His earthly representative, King James I, the man who had given them their version of Holy Writ. Significantly, they found no scriptural support for a declaration of independence from, much less a revolution against, their king and native country.

The historical episode for which we most remember the Puritans occurred in the town of Salem, MA, and involved the religiously inspired and sanctioned public execution of women. This was done in an atmosphere of communal hysteria wrought, ultimately, by the testimony of young girls.

THE ENLIGHTENMENT or THE AGE OF REASON

The spirit of the Renaissance had moved across the face of Europe. She had rediscovered her Classical past, and commerce, art and writing thrived as never before since the ascension of Christian principles. The first, thin light of the dawn of science could be discerned as da Vinci studied the details of the human form, and Copernicus, the motions of the planets. A new Humanism emphasized beauty, intelligence and the potential for joy in this world.

The Renaissance culminated in Elizabethan England. Here, Francis Bacon wed reason to the senses, giving birth to modern science, and wrote his New Atlantis, a utopian science-romance set in the New World. Shakespeare composed prose-poetry plays, alluding to pre-Christian historical figures, myths and concepts.

The Renaissance and Elizabethan Period flowed into the Enlightenment, or the Age of Reason. Philosophy ceased to be merely the handmaiden of theology, and started to come into its own again. The human mind began to range freely for the first time in ages. Newton conducted experiments and formulated basic scientific principles, and Locke advocated toleration and self-government. Innovative and daring ideas flowed through underground streams, as networks of like-minded thinkers worked, often in necessary secrecy, to gradually erode the foundations of oppressive structures erected during the Middle Ages (the Masons were but one such association, often viewed as unsympathetic to traditional political and religious institutions and principles . . . even subversive and heretical). The efforts of these thinkers seem all the more impressive when we realize that the use of reason in their time was much less common then the name of their era suggests; incredulity was not in short supply.

NATURE'S GOD

The distinctive religious perspective of the Enlightenment was Deism, a non-dogmatic creed based simply on the idea of an unknowable, largely impersonal Creator God. Charmed by nature's order, the Deists retained and expounded upon the idea of a Creator, but rejected revelation, miracles and prophecy, the doctrines of the Trinity, the Fall and Salvation -and the virgin birth, divinity, resurrection and bodily ascension of Christ. Indeed, nearly everything supernatural was purged in this highly moralistic, natural religion of the Enlightenment (although, usually, a vaguely defined but eternal soul, to be judged in the hereafter, was retained).

That Deism was not a denomination of Christianity was recognized by Protestant preacher Jonathan Edwards, who figured prominently in colonial America's Great Awakening, an enthusiastic, reactionary religious movement. Edwards is best remembered for his sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." In his History of the Works of Redemption, Edwards wrote: "The Deists wholly cast off the Christian religion, and are professed infidels. They are not like the Heretics, Arians, Socinians, and others, who own the Scriptures to be the word of God, and hold the Christian religion to be the true religion." True, Edwards conceded, "they own the being of God; but deny that Christ was the son of God, and say he was a mere cheat; and so they say all the prophets and apostles were: and they deny the whole Scripture. They deny that any of it is the word of God. They deny any revealed religion . . . and say that God has given mankind no other light to walk by but their own reason."

According to the Deists, the Great Architect of the Universe stood back, after the Creation, to watch the Cosmos unfold according to its own intrinsic Natural Law -also called General Providence by the Deists. Humans could best apprehend the Laws of Nature, and thus the mind of Nature's God, through the faculty of Reason applied to the evidence of the senses. The Deists concluded that, because humans are rational animals, and reason functions best when unhindered, human nature requires freedom, that is to say, freedom is humanity's natural right. It could be said that, to the Deists, humanity without freedom was like an eagle -with clipped wings, or a phoenix -trapped forever in the form of ashes.

OUR FREETHINKING FOUNDERS

That Deist thought was accessible to, and an influence upon, the generations of our Founders is evidenced by testimony from the much-revered, older scientist-statesman, Benjamin Franklin (from his Autobiography): "My parents had given me betimes religious impressions, and I received from my infancy a pious education in the principles of Calvinism. But scarcely was I arrived at fifteen years of age, when, after having doubted in turn of different tenets, according as I found them combated in the different books I read, I began to doubt of Revelation itself." (And later in the same text:) "Some books against Deism fell into my hands. . . . It happened that they wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the Deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a thorough Deist."

The great sage, an active Mason, remained influenced by a Deist skepticism throughout his life; a month before his death he wrote to a friend: "As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion . . . has received various corrupting Changes, and I have, with most of the present dissenters in England, some doubts as to his Divinity . . . ."

The patriot-pamphleteer, Thomas Paine, whose incendiary "Common Sense" stoked the fire of the American Revolution to full flame, stated: "It is the duty of every true Deist to vindicate the moral justice of God against the evils of the Bible." He maintained that "the most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion."

The Revolutionary War hero of the Battle of Ticonderoga, Ethan Allen, authored the book Reason the Only Oracle of Man, in which he systematically assaulted the principles and history of the Christian tradition. He noted that he found himself " . . . denominated a Deist, the reality of which I have never disputed, being conscious that I am no Christian." Allen halted his own marriage ceremony until the officiating judge acknowledged that the God referred to in the vows was Nature's God, whose laws were "written in the great book of nature."

Our first President, George Washington, would not kneel for prayer or take communion in church. When pressed about this by his minister, Washington fixed the man with an icy stare, and, from that day on, made it his practice to leave church early, before the communion service. Washington was an ardent Mason, and he maintained (to the United Baptist Churches in Virginia in May, 1789) that every man "ought to be protected in worshipping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience." On one occasion, he went out of his way to champion the right of a Unitarian minister to serve as a military chaplain, when other such chaplains petitioned to have the man removed.

Like most of his peers, Washington believed that a liberalized religion was essential to the maintenance of public morality and the development of civic virtue. His church attendance, although often sporadic (apparently, he preferred to go fox-hunting on Sundays), was intended to set a good example, and was in his social and political best interest.

Washington wrote many letters, in which he never mentioned Jesus, although he had much praise for "Providence," which he conceived of as similar to fate or destiny. After his death, Dr. Abercrombie, Washington's minister, was asked about our first President's religion; he replied, "Sir, Washington was a Deist."

Our Second President, John Adams, was a Unitarian, who, in his private correspondence, devoted almost as much time praising natural religion as he did railing on Christianity. He wrote (in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, June 20, 1815): "The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles?" Also (in a letter to John Taylor, !814): ". . . even since the Reformation, when and where has existed a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate A FREE INQUIRY?"

Our Third President, Thomas Jefferson, was a freethinker who owned a carefully assembled library which included the works of many well-known Deists. The unchurched author of our Declaration of Independence wrote (in a letter to Alexander Smyth, January 17, 1825), "I trust that there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian." That Jefferson was wrong on this count does not change the fact that he considered such an outcome desirable.

Jefferson wrote (in a letter to William Short): "I have examined all the known religions of the world, and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity not one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology." He found the idea of the supernatural so distasteful, that he used the cut-and-paste technique to create his own Jefferson Bible, an distillation of virtuous morality, without any references to turning water into wine or the Resurrection. He sat with razor in hand, during his first term as President, in his own words "2. or 3. nights only at Washington, after getting thro' the evening task of reading the letters and papers of the day" (from the Jefferson Bible). Jefferson proclaimed (in a letter to the Reverend Ezra Styles Ely, June 25, 1819), "You say you are a Calvinist. I am not. I am of a sect by myself, as far as I know."

Our fourth President, James Madison, was a staunch advocate of the separation of government and religion, a then-radical notion which followed implicitly from an Enlightenment / Deist insistence on toleration and freedom of conscience. He wrote, somewhat diplomatically: "Whilst we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess, and to observe the Religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to those whose minds have not yet yielded to the evidence which has convinced us." Also (in his A memorial and Remonstrance, 1795): "During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been it fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution."

In a sermon in October 1831, Episcopalian minister and religion researcher Bird Wilson could say (to his chagrin) that "Among all of our Presidents, from Washington downward, not one was a professor of religion, at least not of more than Unitarianism." During our Revolutionary period, the Unitarian church was a haven for religious dissenters and freethinkers in general, and Deists in particular.

OUR DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

is not a legal document, but it is invaluable, because it goes to our future founders' state of mind and intent, and its signing was recognized by them as the commencement of our American Revolution. Let us examine the preamble of our Declaration of Independence. Though the words have been with us for over two centuries, let us listen to them with fresh ears and open minds:

When in the Course of human events, (not "in the Course of the unfolding of Biblical Prophecy" or "in Accordance with the Will of the God of our fathers" but "in the Course of human events")

. . . it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station (not "we are God's Chosen People, the most favored of all the nations" but "among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station")

. . .to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, (not "the will of the God of Abraham and the Bible", but "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God," a clear reference to the natural religion of Deism)

. . . a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to separation. (not "those who do not know the Will of God as we do are wrong and evil", but "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind")

We hold these truths to be self-evident, (not through second-hand "Revelation," but "self-evident" to the common sense of reasonable persons)

. . . that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator [the Deist Nature's God, already mentioned] with certain unalienable Rights, (not "unbelievers have not Rights as do God's Elect" but "all men . . .are endowed . . . with . . . unalienable Rights")

. . . that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. (not "we must adhere to a proper and pious Faith or suffer God's Wrath in this life and the next" but we can and should embrace freedom and joy in this life, which has value in itself)

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed. (not "from the Sovereignty of Our Lord, Jesus Christ" or any of his alleged spokesmen but "from the consent of the governed")

There is nothing distinctly Judeo-Christian about our Declaration's preamble; the language is Deist and Humanist.

Our Declaration ends with the words: "AND for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our Sacred Honor." Just as the word "Creator" refers to "Nature's God" within the context of our Declaration, so the phrase "divine Providence" can reasonably be understood to refer to "the Laws of Nature," or, perhaps, inexorable fate or historical destiny. Significantly, our Declaration's only reference to anything "Sacred" is this-worldly.

OUR U.S. CONSTITUTION

is an elegant work of political science, devoid of any of the ostentatious flourish we associate with religious texts and the documents they inspire. Only the brief preamble smacks of the lyrical, and it states: "We the People of the United States . . . do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." It does NOT state "We the People in Accordance with the Will of God as Revealed through Scripture" or "We the People recognizing the Sovereignty of our Lord, Jesus Christ," but simply "We the People," in large script.

The rest of the document is textbook dry; there is no mention of Judeo-Christian principles in this, our founding document. We find no hint of the idea of a Chosen People or the Ten Commandments, no mention of man's sinful nature, no longing for redemption . . . . Indeed, even the Deist Nature's God is a no-show. Our conclusion: not only is our Constitution a proud Humanist document ("We the People"), but it is a confident secular document, outlining a system of government designed to propel our new nation into an indefinite but optimistic future -in this world.

There is one place that religion is mentioned for practical consideration: toward the end, in Article VI, Section 3, it states quite clearly that ". . . no religious test shall ever be required as qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." This can hardly be construed as an endorsement of Judeo-Christian principles or as proof of their influence upon the founding of our nation.

The last paragraph of our Constitution does close with the phrase "in the Year of our Lord," but this was simply pro forma at the time the Constitution was drafted; in this small instance, our Constitution did not differ from any official government document, drafted to be formally signed, of its era. It is a good measure of the desperation of some that they cling to this tidbit, in no way unique or essential, as proof of the guiding influence of Judeo-Christian principles on our founders.

Regarding the idea of a so-called "Miracle at Philadelphia," John Adams, our second President, had this to say (in his "A Defense of the Constitutions of Government in the United States of America," 1787 - 88) about the proceedings of the Constitutional Convention in which he had participated: "The United States have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature, and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history . . . ."

"It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven . . . it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses . . . . Neither the people nor their conventions, committees or subcommittees considered legislation in any other light than as ordinary arts and sciences, only more important . . . . The people were universally too enlightened to be imposed on by artifice . . . . Governments thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretense of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favour of the rights of mankind."

The claims of revisionists notwithstanding, there is no indication that any of the sessions of our Constitutional Convention opened with prayer. Indeed, there was only one time, four or five weeks into deliberations, that we know the issue arose. It was during an especially trying week of serious disagreement, when the convention was in danger of breaking up, that Benjamin Franklin (a self-professed Deist) proposed they bring in a clergyman. After some discussion, his motion was rejected by the embarrassed delegates, but it had the effect of impressing upon them the need for compromise and their best and most creative efforts, which was, perhaps, Franklin's aim in the first place.

In October, 1787, an anonymous writer warned, in a letter to the editor in the Virginia Independent Chronicle, against "the pernicious effects" of our newly ratified Constitution's "cold indifference to religion." A Thomas Wilson, also of Virginia, complained that our "constitution is deistical in principle, and in all probability the composers had no thought of God in all their consultations." It seems these men were right.

SEPARATION OF STATE AND RELIGION

Of course, there's the First Amendment to our Constitution, in the Bill of Rights, which states "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . . ." Far from being an endorsement of religion in general, much less any particular faith, the First Amendment actually sets up a wall of separation between the state and religion. There is nothing Judeo-Christian about this principle, which was, at the time of our Founders, quite radical. It is perhaps significant that they saw fit to enshrine it in the very first part of the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights.

Thomas Jefferson, our third President, offered this interpretation of the First Amendment (in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, January 1, 1802):

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State." Thus, the author of our Declaration of Independence coined the phrase.

In "The Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom," which he wrote in support of the ratification of his state's pre-revolutionary precursor of our First Amendment, Jefferson pointed out that "Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, more than on our opinions in physics and geometry. . . . The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." When an amendment was proposed which would have caused this law to read in part ". . . Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion," Jefferson tells us (in his Autobiography) that: ". . . the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindu and the Infidel of every denomination."

James Madison, our fourth President, author of Our Constitution, put it thusly:

"Religion and government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together."

In his essay entitled "Monopolies" (written around 1815), Madison wrote: "Strongly guarded as is the separation between religion and Government in the Constitution of the United States, the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies may be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short history."

Perhaps Madison was referring to the appointment of Congressional chaplains, a practice held over from the days of the Continental Congress, of which he wrote (in his Detached Memoranda): "Is the appointment of Chaplains to the two Houses of Congress consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious freedom? In strictness the answer on both points must be in the negative."

Regarding this same matter, Madison wrote (in a letter to Edward Livingston, July 10, 1822): "It would have been a much better proof to their Constituents of their pious feeling if the members had contributed for the purpose, a pittance from their own pockets. As the precedent is not likely to be rescinded, the best that can now be done, may be to apply to the Constitution the maxim of the law, de minimis non curat. . . ." Interestingly, the early Congressional Chaplains complained of thin attendance at prayer sessions and a general lack of respect, which they attributed to the prevalence of freethinking (Anson Phelps Stokes, Church and State in the United States, Vol. 1, p. 456 )

As for the revisionist claim that the principle of separation of state and religion is a Twentieth Century product of various Supreme Court rulings made in violation of our Founders' original intent, we note the words Alexis de Tocqueville, a keen social observer writing only a couple of generations after the ratification of our Constitution. In his Democracy in America (1835) he stated: "They all attributed the peaceful dominion of religion in their country mainly to the separation of church and state. I do not hesitate to affirm that during my stay in America I did not meet a single individual, of the clergy or the laity, who was not of the same opinion on this point."

THE TREATY OF TRIPOLI

As our young nation began to act in the sphere of international relations, few foreign nations knew or understood U.S. intentions. The Treaty of Tripoli (full title: Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the United States of America and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli, of Barbary) was an effort by our early statesmen to allay the concerns of a potential trade partner, and to head-off the threat of piracy.

The treaty was initially drafted under Washington, but, under Adams' administration, the treaty came to include an article which stated, with complete candor:

"As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Musselmen; and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."

Thus modified, the treaty was endorsed by the Secretary of State, who then sent it to President Adams, who concurred. The Senate approved the treaty, and it was officially ratified on June 10, 1797.

During this multi-review process, the wording of the article raised no alarm or concern among the administration or legislature. When it was printed publicly a week after its ratification, there was no public outcry. Thus went into effect a U.S. international treaty, a legal document bearing the full force of Constitutional law, which stated explicitly: ". . . the government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion." These were the words of our Founders and their peers, and they were considered uncontroversial in their time.

OUR GREAT SEAL

Let us look now at the Great Seal of the United States, our nation's coat-of-arms, adopted by our Founders in 1782. If you have a dollar bill, look at the back. We are looking for anything on the two circular faces of our Great Seal which might symbolize or pay tribute to a Judeo-Christian influence or heritage, but we find no image of the Cross of Christ or the Ark of the Covenant, and no Biblical quotations on our Great Seal itself ("In God We Trust" was not added to our currency until the time of our Civil War, and, in any case, is not an element of our Seal or a Biblical quotation).

The obverse side of the Great Seal shows a bald eagle. There is nothing distinctly Judeo-Christian about the use of a bird of prey in heraldry. For the same purpose, the Sumerians used a modified desert eagle, the Egyptians, a hawk, and the Romans, their eagle. Indeed, although in the New Testament, pagan Rome plays the role of villain, our eagle differs from the Roman eagle only in that it is our native, bald eagle and that the olive branch is extended first, signifying our nation's first desire, peace.

The Latin phrase "e. pluribus unum," our real and original national motto, means simply "out of many one," in reference to the national Union of the states by our Constitution; the spelling of the phrase has been altered to symbolize the original thirteen states.

The reverse side of our Great Seal (curiously, displayed first on the back of our dollar bill) is quite startling. In the Old Testament, Egypt plays the role of villain, yet an unfinished Egyptian-style pyramid emblazons our Great Seal! This pagan religious edifice, not any Judeo-Christian structure (such as the Temple of Solomon), was used by our Founders to symbolize our young nation! The pyramid has thirteen courses of masonry (there is space for more), representing the original thirteen states. The pyramid's base is adorned with the Roman numeral "1776," the year, not of our Constitution's ratification, but of the signing of our Declaration of Independence, symbolizing our Founder's recognition of the basic necessity of willful, active resistance against the forces of tyranny. Suspended above the pyramid is the radiant, Masonic Eye of Providence or the All-Seeing Eye of the Great Architect of the Universe (the Deist Nature's God, by another name). In esoteric lore, this symbol is traced back to the Eye of Horus, a resurrected Egyptian savior-god associated with the sun and the power of the pharaohs.

The over-arching Latin phrase "annuit coeptis" is adapted from a prayer to Jupiter found in the pagan poet Virgil's Aneid and means "he looks favorably upon our work." Within the context of our Great Seal, this refers to the Eye of Providence. The Latin phrase "novus ordo seclorum" was adapted from another work by Virgil, and means "a new order of the ages." The spelling of this phrase has also been altered for numerological reasons.

There can be little doubt that our Founders believed they were involved in a sacred enterprise, but, perhaps significantly, they employed no Judeo-Christian symbols to commemorate their Great Work.

CLOSING

I'd like to close with the words of Thomas Jefferson, from a letter to his young nephew:

"fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolde fear. . . . do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of it's consequences. if it end in a belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue on the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise and in the love of others which it will procure for you."

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