“We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!”

Source: A Swiftly Tilting Planet

The Writings of Marguerite Bourgeoys, p. 170

Romans 5:1-5
Epistle to the Romans

Speech at the Dedication of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, September 2, 1940
1940s

1920s, Ways to Peace (1926)

1920s, Toleration and Liberalism (1925)

1920s, The Progress of a People (1924)
Context: In such a view of the history of the Negro race in America, we may find the evidences that the black man's probation on this continent was a necessary part in a great plan by which the race was to be saved to the world for a service which we are now able to vision and, even if yet somewhat dimly, to appreciate. The destiny of the great African continent, to be added at length — and in a future not now far beyond us — to the realms of the highest civilization, has become apparent within a very few decades. But for the strange and long inscrutable purpose which in the ordering of human affairs subjected a part of the black race to the ordeal of slavery, that race might have been assigned to the tragic fate which has befallen many aboriginal peoples when brought into conflict with more advanced communities. Instead, we are able now to be confident that this race is to be preserved for a great and useful work. If some of its members have suffered, if some have been denied, if some have been sacrificed, we are able at last to realize that their sacrifices were borne in a great cause. They gave vicariously, that a vastly greater number might be preserved and benefited through them. The salvation of a race, the destiny of a continent, were bought at the price of these sacrifices.

Source: Adam Bede (1859)

Original: (la) Μundo morere, ejus insaniam rejiciens: vive Deo, per ipsius cognitionem, veterem generationem repudians. Νοn facti sumus ut moreremur, sed nostra culpa morimur. Perdidit nos libera voluntas: servi facti sumus, qui liberi eramus: per peccatum venditi sumus. Νihil mali factum est a Deo: nos ipsi improbitatem produximus. Εam vero qui produxerunt, denuo repudiare possunt.
Source: Address to the Greeks, Chapter XI, as translated by J. E. Ryland