Model of Christian Charity by John Winthrop (1630)
For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world. We shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God, and all professors for God's sake. We shall shame the faces of many of God's worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us till we be consumed out of the good land whither we are agoing. . . .
Therefore let us choose life,
that we and our seed
may live; by obeying His
voice, and cleaving to Him,
for He is our life, and
our prosperity.
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- "We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven ... We have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown.
"But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious Hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us;
"And we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.
"Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!
"It behooves us then to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins and to pray for ... forgiveness."—Abraham Lincoln, March 30, 1863, National Day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer