Letters of John Quincy
Adams to His Son on the Bible and Its Teachings
To the Young Men of
America this Little Volume Is Respectfully Inscribed
Editor’s Note
John Quincy Adams
(1767– 1848) was the sixth President of the United States, and son of the
second President, John Adams. The great majority of his life was spent in
public service. This began at the age of 14 when he received a Congressional
diplomatic appointment as secretary to the ambassador of the court of Catherine
the Great in Russia. During his life he served as foreign ambassador to
England, France, Holland, Prussia, and Russia, Secretary of State, a member of
the U.S. Senate, President, and then 18 years as a member of the House of
Representatives. He died in the U.S. Capitol on February 23, 1848.
His last words were:
“This is the last of earth; I am content.”[1] He could be content, for he
faithfully discharged his duties as a public servant, and his devout Christian
faith prepared him to face the eternal hereafter.
Shortly after his
death, a series of letters Adams had written from Russia to his son on the
Bible and its teachings were printed in a little book and widely distributed
throughout America. They were received with great enthusiasm and the book
underwent many printings and editions. This article contains one of the
nine letters Adams wrote to his son. This letter reflects well the Christian
faith of John Quincy Adams. Some additional materials on the faith of this man
are provided before his letter to his son.
Faith of John Quincy
Adams
Following are some
words and actions that reflect the devote Christian faith of John Quincy Adams.
1. For many years John
Quincy Adams was a member of the American Bible Society, and he served as one
of the Vice Presidents. In 1830 he wrote a letter to that body stating in part:
The distribution of
Bibles, if the simplest, is not the least efficacious of the means of extending
the blessings of the Gospel to the remotest corners of the earth; for the
Comforter is in the sacred volume: and among the receivers of that million of
copies distributed by the Society, who shall number the multitudes awakened
thereby, with good will to man in their hearts, and with the song of the Lamb
upon their lips?
The hope of a
Christian is inseparable from his faith. Whoever believes in the divine
inspiration of the holy Scriptures, must hope that the religion of Jesus shall
prevail throughout the earth. Never since the foundation of the world have the
prospects of mankind been more encouraging to that hope than they appear to be
at the present time. And may the associated distribution of the Bible proceed
and prosper, till the Lord shall have made “bare his holy arm in the eyes of
all the nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our
God.”[2]
2. Adams attended
church throughout his life, including services in the Capitol and other public
buildings in Washington, D.C.
Adams attended church
services in many places while living in Washington, D.C., including various
locations in the Capitol Building. In his diary entry for October 23, 1803 he
wrote: “Attended public service at the Capitol where Mr. Rattoon, an
Episcopalian clergyman from Baltimore, preached a sermon.”[3]
His diary entry
for Oct. 30, 1803 was:
[R]eligious service is
usually performed on Sundays at the Treasury office and at the Capitol. I went
both forenoon and afternoon to the Treasury.[4]
In 1827 while
President, Adams attended a service in the House Chamber in the U.S. Capitol to
listen to Harriet Livermore, an evangelical female minister. He “sat on the
steps leading up to her feet because he could not find a free chair.”[5]
In his diary of
February 2, 1806, he recorded:
Several of the Ladies went
to pay visits — I rode with them to the Capitol for the purpose of attending
Church; but I found there was no preaching at the House of Representatives, and
the Court-House below . . . was so crowded that I could not get within the
room.[6]
Adams also recorded in
his diary attending a four-hour Presbyterian service conducted in the War
Office on January 29, 1804.[7]
The last Sunday of his
life, February 20th, 1848, he attended public worship at the Capitol in the
morning, and at St. John’s church in the afternoon.[8]
3. Adams was
Vice-President of the American Bible Society and a member of the Massachusetts
Bible Society[9]
4. In an Oration
delivered July 4th 1837 he stated:
Is it not that, in the
chain of human events, the birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with
the birth-day of the Saviour? That it forms a leading event in the progress of
the gospel dispensation? Is it not that the Declaration of Independence first
organized the social compact on the foundation of the Redeemer’s mission upon
earth? That it laid the corner stone of human government upon the first
precepts of Christianity, and gave to the world the first irrevocable pledge of
the fulfillment of the prophecies, announced directly from Heaven at the birth
of the Saviour and predicted by the greatest of the Hebrew prophets six hundred
years before?[10]
5. Adams spoke of the
Christian faith of the American people:
[T]he people of the
North American union, and of its constituent States . . . were bound by the
laws of God, which they all, and by the laws of the Gospel, which they nearly
all, acknowledged as the rules of their conduct.[11]
6. Adams said that
Christianity produced the public morality necessary for civil freedom because
Christianity effects the heart.
Human legislators can
undertake only to prescribe the actions of men: they acknowledge their
inability to govern and direct the sentiments of the heart; the very law styles
it a rule of civil conduct, not of internal principles. . . . It is one of the
greatest marks of Divine favor . . . that the Legislator gave them rules not
only of action but for the government of the heart.[12]
Three points of
doctrine, the belief of which, forms the foundation of all morality. The first
is the existence of a God; the second is the immortality of the human soul; and
the third is a future state of rewards and punishments. Suppose it possible for
a man to disbelieve either of these articles of faith and that man will have no
conscience, he will have no other law than that of the tiger or the shark; the
law of man may bind him in chains or may put him to death, but they never can
make him wise, virtuous, or happy.[13]
7. His faith is
expressed in his poetry.
Mr. Adams wrote a hymn
for the celebration of the 4th of July, 1831, in Quincy, Massachusetts. Stanzas
include the following:
Sing to the Lord a
song of praise;
Assemble, ye who love
his name;
Let congregated
millions raise
Triumphant glory’s
loud acclaim.
From earth’s remotest
regions come;
Come, greet your
Maker, and your King;
With harp, with
timbrel, and with drum,
His praise let hill
and valley sing.
. . . .
Go forth in arms;
Jehovah reigns;
Their graves let foul
oppressors find;
Bind all their
sceptred kings in chains;
Their peers with iron
fetters bind.
Then to the Lord shall
praise ascend;
Then all mankind, with
one accord,
And freedom’s voice,
till time shall end,
In pealing anthems,
praise the Lord.[14]
8. He said it is
shameful to be ignorant of the Bible.
To a man of liberal
education, the study of history is not only useful, and important, but
altogether indispensable, and with regard to the history contained in the Bible
. . . It is not so much praiseworthy to be acquainted with as it is shameful to
be ignorant of it.[15]
9. His view on the
laws of nature and nature’s God.
[T]he laws of nature
and of nature’s God . . . of course presupposes the existence of a God, the
moral ruler of the universe, and a rule of right and wrong, of just and unjust,
binding upon man, preceding all institutions of human society and of government.[16]
10. He expressed trust
in Christ for future life.
My hopes of a future
life are all founded upon the Gospel of Christ and I cannot cavil or quibble
away . . . the whole tenor of His conduct by which He sometimes positively
asserted and at others countenances His disciples in asserting that He was
God.[17]
11. He said the Ten
Commandments are the foundation of civil government:
The law given from
Sinai was a civil and municipal as well as a moral and religious code . . .
laws essential to the existence of men in society and most of which have been
enacted by every nation which ever professed any code of laws.[18]
Vain indeed would be
the search among the writings of profane antiquity . . . to find so broad, so
complete and so solid a basis for morality as this decalogue [the Ten
commandments] lays down.[19]
12. John Quincy Adams
and Unitarianism
In his later years
Adams was associated with the Unitarian Church, yet, Unitarianism at this time
was much different than it is today. For one, it was firmly rooted in the
Bible. Adams believed in the divine nature of the Holy Scriptures and the
assertion that Christ was God. Unitarians were described in the Theological
Dictionary of 1823 in these words:
In common with other
Christians, they confess that He [Jesus] is the Christ, the Son of the Living
God; and in one word, they believe all that the writers of the New Testament,
particularly the four Evangelists, have stated concerning him.[20]
* * * * *
The following is taken
from Letters of John Quincy Adams, to His Son, on the Bible and Its
Teachingsby John Quincy Adams (Auburn: James M. Alden, 1850).
Preface
John Quincy Adams, the
writer of the following Letters, is widely known as one of the purest and most
eminent men of our age. Born in 1767, during the fierce and absorbing
discussions of the rights and responsibilities of rulers which heralded our
Revolution and war of Independence, he entered his country’s service, while yet
a mere lad, as secretary to the Russian embassy, and remained through life, with
few and brief intermissions, a public servant, filling successively the posts
of secretary, embassador, United States senator, negotiator of the last treaty
of peace with Great Britain, secretary of state, president, and finally
representative in Congress, which station he filled from 1831 to the hour of
his death, which took place in the Capitol, February 23, 1848, he having been
stricken down with paralysis, while in the act of rising to address the house,
two days before; having lived more than eighty years, and passed nearly or
quite three fourths of his days in public stations. Though naturally reserved
and diffident in manner, and never in the obvious sense a popular man — for his
life was devoted to serving rather than pleasing his countrymen — he was
profoundly and generally esteemed for his fearless conscientiousness, his
ardent patriotism, his vast and various acquirements, and his unfaltering
devotion to human freedom. The funeral honors paid to his memory have had no
parallel in this country, except in the case of Washington. Those who had seen
fit to oppose his election and to defeat his re-election as president, and to
whom he had generally stood opposed in party differences, seemed to vie with
his warmest supporters in rendering homage to his memory.
The following letters
were written by Mr. Adams, while embassador at St. Petersburgh, to one of his
sons, who was at school in Massachusetts. Their purpose is the inculcation of a
love and reverence for the Holy Scriptures, and a delight in their perusal and
study. Throughout his long life, Mr. Adams was himself a daily and devout
reader of the Scriptures, and delighted in comparing and considering them in
the various languages with which he was familiar, hoping thereby to acquire a
nicer and clearer appreciation of their meaning. The Bible was emphatically his
counsel and monitor through life, and the fruits of its guidance are seen in
the unsullied character which he bore through the turbid waters of political
contention to his final earthly rest. Though long and fiercely opposed and
contemned in life, he left no man behind him who would wish to fix a stain on
the name he has inscribed so high on the roll of his country’s most gifted and
illustrious sons.
The intrinsic value of
these letters, their familiar and lucid style, their profound and comprehensive
views, their candid and reverent spirit, must win for them a large measure of
the public attention and esteem. But, apart from even this, the testimony so
unconsciously borne by their pure-minded and profoundly learned author to the
truth and excellence of the Christian faith and records, will not be lightly
regarded. It is no slight testimonial to the verity and worth of Christianity,
that in all ages since its promulgation, the great mass of those who have risen
to eminence by their profound wisdom, integrity, and philanthropy, have
recognised and reverenced in Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of the living God. To
the names of Augustine, Xavier, Fenelon, Milton, Newton, Locke, Lavater,
Howard, Chateaubriand, and their thousands of compeers in Christian faith,
among the world’s wisest and noblest, it is not without pride that the American
may add, from among his countrymen, those of such men as Washington, Jay,
Patrick Henry, and John Quincy Adams.
THE BIBLE AND ITS
TEACHINGS
LETTER I.
St. Petersburg, Sept.,
1811
MY DEAR SON: In your
letter of the 18th January to your mother, you mentioned that you read to your
aunt a chapter in the Bible or a section of Doddridge’s Annotations every
evening. This information gave me real pleasure; for so great is my veneration
for the Bible, and so strong my belief, that when duly read and meditated on,
it is of all books in the world, that which contributes most to make men good,
wise, and happy — that the earlier my children begin to read it, the more
steadily they pursue the practice of reading it throughout their lives, the
more lively and confident will be my hopes that they will prove useful citizens
to their country, respectable members of society, and a real blessing to their
parents. But I hope you have now arrived at an age to understand that reading,
even in the Bible, is a thing in itself, neither good nor bad, but that all the
good which can be drawn from it, is by the use and improvement of what you have
read, with the help of your own reflection. Young people sometimes boast of how
many books, and how much they have read; when, instead of boasting, they ought
to be ashamed of having wasted so much time, to so little profit.
I advise you, my son,
in whatever you read, and most of all in reading the Bible, to remember that it
is for the purpose of making you wiser and more virtuous. I have myself, for
many years, made it a practice to read through the Bible once every year. I
have always endeavored to read it with the same spirit and temper of mind,
which I now recommend to you: that is, with the intention and desire that it
may contribute to my advancement in wisdom and virtue. My desire is indeed very
imperfectly successful; for, like you, and like the Apostle Paul, “I find a law
in my members, warring against the laws of my mind.” But as I know that it is
my nature to be imperfect, so I know that it is my duty to aim at perfection;
and feeling and deploring my own frailties, I can only pray Almighty God, for
the aid of his Spirit to strengthen my good desires, and to subdue my
propensities to evil; for it is from him, that every good and every perfect
gift descends. My custom is, to read four or five chapters every morning,
immediately after rising from my bed. It employs about an hour of my time, and
seems to me the most suitable manner of beginning the day. But, as other cares,
duties, and occupations, engage the remainder of it, I have perhaps never a
sufficient portion of my time in meditation, upon what I have read. Even
meditation itself is often fruitless, unless it has some special object in
view; useful thoughts often arise in the mind, and pass away without being
remembered or applied to any good purpose — like the seed scattered upon the
surface of the ground, which the birds devour, or the wind blows away, or which
rot without taking root, however good the soil may be upon which they are cast.
We are all, my dear George, unwilling to confess our own faults, even to
ourselves: and when our own consciences are too honest to conceal them from us,
our self-love is always busy, either in attempting to disguise them to us under
false and delusive colors, or in seeking out excuses and apologies to reconcile
them to our minds. Thus, although I am sensible that I have not derived from my
assiduous perusal of the Bible (and I might apply the same remark to almost
everything else that I do) all the benefit that I might and ought, I am as
constantly endeavoring to persuade myself that it is not my own fault.
Sometimes I say to myself, I do not understand what I have read; I can not help
it; I did not make my own understanding: there are many things in the Bible
“hard to understand,” as St. Peter expressly says of Paul’s epistles: some are
hard in the Hebrew, and some in the Greek — the original languages in which the
Scriptures were written; some are harder still in the translations. I have been
obliged to lead a wandering life about the world, and scarcely ever have at
hand the book, which might help me to surmount these difficulties. Conscience
sometimes puts the question — whether my not understanding many passages is not
owing to my want of attention in reading them. I must admit, that it is; a full
proof of which is, that every time I read the Book through, I understand some
passages which I never understood before, and which I should have done, at a
former reading, had it been effected with a sufficient degree of attention.
Then, in answer to myself, I say: It is true; but I can not always command my
own attention, and never can to the degree that I wish. My mind is ofttimes so
full of other things, absorbed in bodily pain, or engrossed by passion, or
distracted by pleasure, or exhausted by dissipation, that I can not give to
proper daily employment the attention which I gladly would, and which is
absolutely necessary to make it “fruitful of good works.” This acknowledgment
of my weakness is just; but for how much of it I am still accountable to God, I
hardly dare acknowledge to myself. Is it bodily pain? How often was that
brought upon me by my own imprudence of folly? Was it passion? Heaven has given
to every human being, the power of controlling his passions, and if he neglects
or loses it, the fault is his own, and he must be answerable for it. Was it
pleasure? Why did I indulge it? Was it dissipation? This is the most inexcusable
of all; for it must have been occasioned by my own thoughtlessness or
irresolution. It is no use to discover our own faults and infirmities, unless
the discovery prompts us to amendment.
I have thought if in
addition to the hour which I daily give to the reading of the Bible, I should
also from time to time (and especially on the Sabbath) apply another hour
occasionally to communicate to you the reflections that arise in my mind upon
its perusal, it might not only tend to fix and promote my own attention to the
excellent instructions of that sacred Book, but perhaps also assist your
advancement in its knowledge and wisdom. At you age, it is probable that you
have still greater difficulties to understand all that you have read in the
Bible, than I have at mine; and if you have so much self-observation as your
letters indicate, you will be sensible of as much want of attention, both
voluntary and involuntary, as I here acknowledge in myself. I intend,
therefore, for the purpose of contributing to your improvement and my own, to
write you several letters, in due time to follow this, in which I shall
endeavor to show you how you may derive the most advantage to yourself, from
the perusal of the Scriptures. It is probable, when you receive these letters,
you will not, at first reading entirely understand them; if that should be the
case, ask your grand-parents, or your uncle or aunt, to explain them: if you
still find them too hard, put them on file, and lay them by for two or three
years, after which read them again, and you will find them easy enough. It is
essential, my son, in order that you may go through life with comfort to
yourself, and usefulness to your fellow-creatures, that you should form and
adopt certain rules or principles, for the government of your own conduct and
temper. Unless you have such rules and principles, there will be numberless
occasions on which you will have no guide for your government but your
passions. In your infancy and youth, you have been, and will be for some years,
under the authority and control of your friends and instructors; but you must
soon come to the age when you must govern yourself. You have already come to
that age in many respects; you know the difference between right and wrong, and
you know some of your duties, and the obligations you are under, to become
acquainted with them all. It is in the Bible, you must learn them, and from the
Bible how to practise them. Those duties are to God, to your fellow-creatures,
and to yourself. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart, and
with all thy strength, and thy neighbor as thyself.” On these two commandments,
Jesus Christ expressly says, “hang all the law and the prophets;” that is to
say, the whole purpose of Divine Revelation is to inculcate them efficaciously
upon the minds of men. You will perceive that I have spoken of duties to
yourself, distinct from those to God and to your fellow-creatures; while Jesus
Christ speaks only of two commandments. The reason is, because Christ, and the
commandments repeated by him, consider self-love as so implanted in the heart
of every man by the law of his nature, that it requires no commandment to
establish its influence over the heart; and so great do they know its power to
be, that they demand no other measure for the love of our neighbor, than that
which they know we shall have for ourselves. But from the love of God, and the
love of our neighbor, result duties to ourselves as well as to them, and they
are all to be learned in equal perfection by our searching the Scriptures.
Let us, then, search
the Scriptures; and, in order to pursue our inquiries with methodical order,
let us consider the various sources of information, that we may draw from in
this study. The Bible contains the revelation of the will of God. It contains
the history of the creation of the world, and of mankind; and afterward the
history of one peculiar nation, certainly the most extraordinary nation that
has ever appeared upon the earth. It contains a system of religion, and of
morality, which we may examine upon its own merits, independent of the sanction
it receives from being the Word of God; and it contains a numerous collection
of books, written at different ages of the world, by different authors, which
we may survey as curious monuments of antiquity, and as literary compositions.
In what light soever we regard it, whether with reference to revelation, to
literature, to history, or to morality — it is an invaluable and inexhaustible
mine of knowledge and virtue.
I shall number
separately those letters that I mean to write you upon the subject of the
Bible, and as, after they are finished, I shall perhaps ask you to read them
all together, or to look over them again myself, you must keep them on separate
file. I wish that hereafter they may be useful to your brothers and sisters, as
well as to you. As you will receive them as a token of affection for you,
during my absence, I pray that they may be worthy to read by them all with
benefit to themselves, if it please God, that they should live to be able to
understand them.
From your affectionate
Father,
John Quincy Adams.
End Notes
1. William H. Seward,
Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams (New York: C.M. Saxton, Barker
& Co., 1860), p. 336.
2. Seward, pp.
248-249.
3. John Quincy Adams, Memoirs
of John Quincy Adams, Charles Francis Adams, editor (Philadelphia: J.B.
Lippincott and Co., 1874), Vol. 1, p. 268, Oct. 30, 1803.
4. Ibid., p. 265.
5. James H.
Hutson, Religion and the Founding of the American Republic (Washington: Library
of Congress, 1998), p. 87.
6. Hutson, p. 90.
7. Ibid., p. 91.
8. Seward, p. 332.
9. See David Barton,
Original Intent (Aledo, Tex.: WallBuilder Press, 1996), p. 139.
10. An Oration
Delivered before the Inhabitants of the Town of Newburyport, at Their Request,
on the Sixty-First Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, July 4th,
1837, by John Quincy Adams. Newburyport: Charles Whipple, printed by Morse and
Brewster, 1837, pp. 5-6.
11. Barton, p. 88
& 169.
12. John Quincy Adams,
Letters of John Quincy Adams to His Son on the Bible and Its Teachings (Auburn:
James M. Aledn, 1850), p. 62.
13. Ibid., pp. 22-23.
14. Seward, p. 237.
15. Letters of John
Quincy Adams to His Son, p. 64.
16. John Quincy Adams,
The Jubilee of the Constitution (New York: Published by Samuel Colman, 1839),
pp. 13-14.
17. John Adams and
John Quincy Adams, The Selected Writings of John and John Quincy Adams,
Adrienne Koch and William Peden, eds. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946), p.
292, John Quincy Adams to John Adams, January 3, 1817.
18. Letters of John
Quincy Adams to His Son, p. 61.
19. Ibid., pp. 70-71.
20. Barton, p. 304.
SOURCE:
