Fall History & Heritage — #2 (week of September 19)
Students, parents & friends, the following comments or H&H-type questions may assist
you in thinking through our early September Christian Almanac readings:
September 1 — Scots’ Patriotism
An overview of a great revival of Scots’ patriotism in the 19th-century (1800s), its
primary themes being family, faith, and freedom. The revival was fueled by the poetry of
Robert Burns (d. 1796), the novels of Sir Walter Scott (d. 1832), and the preaching
and teaching ministry of Thomas Chalmers (d. 1847). The mid-1800s raising of the
national monument commemorated the heroism of warrior William Wallace (d. 1305),
champion of the struggle for Scottish independence from Edward I’s England.
September 6 — The Mayflower
The Pilgrims, a tight-knit group of English Calvinists separated from the Church of
England (a.k.a. “Separatists”), began their historic voyage to America (original
destination northern Virginia) upon the Mayflower on September 6, 1620. The ship
itself, only 90 feet long and 26 feet wide, carried 101 passengers across the Atlantic in a
little over 2 months, first landing on what is today Cape Cod, Massachusetts. With an
heroic determination to advance the gospel and establish Christian civilization, they built
Plymouth Plantation.
September 6 — William McKinley (1843–1901)
An Ohio lawyer and Republican party politician, McKinley became the third U.S.
president to be victimized by assassination (after fellow Republicans Lincoln & Garfield).
He was elected to the presidency twice (1896 & 1900) and, like most leaders of his
party, promoted aggressively the interests of powerful bankers, industrialists, and
merchants. Pro-big business Republican policies included protective tariffs, financial
grants and subsidies, favorable tax rates and regulations, and the construction of
transportation and communication systems that spanned the continent (like railroads).
September 8 — The Wit and Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
We are all familiar with Lincoln’s poetic description of democracy at Gettysburg
(November 19,1863) as “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
Here’s another gem implying the advisability of democracy in the longterm delivered in
1858 in a speech in Clinton, Illinois: You can fool all of the people some of the time;
some of the people all of the time; but not all of the people all of the time.
September 8 — Samuel Rutherford (1600–1661)
17th-century Scottish professor, pastor, and theologian who participated in England’s
Westminster Assembly and helped shape the influential Westminster Shorter
Catechism, the one that begins with the question, “What is the chief end of man?”
Rutherford is best known, however, for his argument for limited government, even
limitations upon the powers of kings, in Lex Rex (Law is King). Our assigned reading
highlighted his loyalty to everyday people in his small rural parish by noting, “He was
always praying, always preaching, always visiting the sick, always catechising, always
writing, and always studying.”
September 13 — catechisms
According to English literary giant Samuel Johnson (1709–1784), the miniature
questions and answers of these Christian instructional booklets “afford us a glimpse
at the inner framework of the Western view of the world”? The first such booklets,
apparently, were drafted by scholarly monks like Alcuin in the early Middle Ages. But it
was the 16th-century Reformation, through the writings of men like Luther and Calvin,
that revived and advanced the highly effective teaching technique.
September 15 — Preamble to the U.S. Constitution
The following paragraph, from the pen of Founding Father Gouverneur Morris (NY &
PA), forms this section or subdivision of the U.S. Constitution(?):
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish
justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the
general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do
ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
September 15 — Gouverneur Morris (1752–1816)
A New York lawyer, planter, and statesman of distinguished ancestry, this American
Founder (1752–1816) edited and revised the final draft of the U.S. Constitution and the famous words of its Preamble are his? He spoke more often at the Great Convention
than any other delegate (173 times), and his leanings were aristocratic (the president
the Senate, he argued, should be elected for life). Biographer M.E. Bradford called him
the “least sanguine of the Framers, but one of the most brilliant.”
