John Adams, John Q. Adams

John Adams, America’s second president, wrote in his diary on Feb. 22, 1756: “Suppose a nation in some distant region should take the Bible for their only law book, and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts there exhibited! Every member would be obliged in conscience, to temperance, frugality, and industry; to justice, kindness, and charity towards his fellow men; and to piety, love, and reverence toward Almighty God . . . What a Utopia, what a Paradise would this region be” (William Federer, America’s God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotations, 1996, p. 5).

Almost a decade later Adams wrote in his notes for A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, February 1765: “I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in Providence for the illumination of the ignorant, and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth” (ibid.).

John Adams’ son, John Quincy Adams, who became the sixth president of the United States, wrote a letter to his son in September 1811, while serving as U.S. ambassador to Russia. He had been pleased to hear that his son was reading the Bible daily.

“I have myself, for many years, made it a practice to read through the Bible once every year . . . My custom is to read four to five chapters every morning immediately after rising from my bed . . . 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 . . .

“It is in the Bible, you must learn them, and from the Bible how to practice 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 soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength, and thy neighbor as thy self.’ 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 . . .” (Federer, p. 16).

It's good and pleasant to see my ancestors quoted!