Is it not that, in the chain of events, the birthday of the nation is
indissolubly linked with the birthday of the Saviour? .... Is it not
that the Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact
on the foundation of the Redeemer's mission? That it laid the
cornerstone 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 600 years before?
-- John Quincy Adams, 1837
