Our Legacy of Liberty

On July 4, 1776, fifty-six American signed what has since become a symbol of our legacy of liberty: the Declaration of Independence. Now, because these men of liberty have become legend, we may sometimes suppose that what they did was not so difficult a thing to do in their day. But they were men, even as other men, loving their families, their friends, their freedom. They didn’t love life less than we love it. (And God grant that we don’t love liberty less than they.) It wasn’t easy for them to oppose prevailing fallacies or to offer to lay down their lives for liberty. But they had God-given convictions, convictions that they, and all men, “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”… and that “governments… [derive] their just powers from the consent of the governed.” History has proved that the right of liberty is not an unchallenged right nor an imperishable privilege except as people pay its price and live its principles. History has proved that we cannot always draw upon the privileges that were given us by those of the past without devotion to the divine principles on which freedom is founded. And solemnly we recall these words cited from William Penn, the founder of that same city in which the Declaration of Independence was signed: “Those people who are not governed by God will be ruled by tyrants.” No matter what we today may do for the future, we shall never overpay our debt to the past. No matter what we may do for our children’s children, we shall never do enough in all our days for the blessings we have had from the God of heaven. God grant that we may “proclaim liberty throughout all the land,” and, as did our fathers, “pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor” to preserve for ourselves, for our children, and for all mankind, our legacy of liberty.