ancient paths

Rep. Robert Charles Winthrop (1809-1894), Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives in 1849, warned:
Men may as well build their houses upon the sand and expect to see them stand...as to found free institutions upon any other basis than that of morality and virtue, of which the Word of God is the only authoritative rule...
Societies...must be governed... The less they have of stringent State Government, the more they must have of individual self-government. The less they rely on public law or physical force, the more they must rely on private moral restraint.
Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled either by a power within them, or a power without them; either by the word of God, or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible or by the bayonet (Bill Federer, American Quotations, 2001).