aliquid Christi in all my letters.[1] I am a yet willing pilgrim for his great name sake, and I trust a blessing attends my poor feeble labours.
He had already, more than two years before, written a letter to be referred to later on, upon the new Academy in which he held the same anxious language on behalf of his friend's plans for the education of youth.
It was about nine years before his meeting with Whitefield that Franklin "put down from time to time such thoughts as occurred" to him on the subject of religion.[2]
That there is one God, who made all things.
That he governs the world by his providence.
That he ought to be worshipped by adoration, prayer and thanksgiving.
But that the most acceptable service of God is doing good to man.
That the soul is immortal.
And that God will certainly reward virtue and punish vice, either here or hereafter.
That portion of his Autobiography in which we find these lines recorded was written, he tells us, in 1788. It was but a twelvemonth before he thus took up his pen to renew his interesting personal narrative, that occurred that memorable appeal by him in the Convention for framing the Constitution for the use of daily prayers in the deliberations of an assembly upon whom rested the perpetuation of a solid government for the United States. "He seldom spoke in a deliberative assembly except for some special object, and then briefly and with great simplicity of manner and language." Sparks[3] tells us, on the occasion now referred to, he rose and said:
In the beginning of the contest with Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayers in this room for the divine protection. Our prayers, Sir, were heard; and they were graciously answered. All of us, who were engaged in the struggle, must have observed frequent instances of a superintending Providence in our favor. To that kind Providence we owe this happy opportunity of consulting in peace on the
- ↑ Two years previously Whitefield made the same allusion regarding the proposals for the new Academy, in writing to Franklin 26 February, 1750: "but, I think there wants aliquid Christi in it, to make it as useful as I would desire it might be." Tyerman, ii. 251.
- ↑ Bigelow, ii. 190.
- ↑ Sparks, i. 514.
