A Very Wonderful & Special Country

     What a country this is! To my way of thinking, there is nothing like it anywhere in the world. I have visited many beautiful lands, but upon returning to the United States, there is always the feeling that Almighty God carved out here a very wonderful and special country.

     We need to recount the stories of the great souls America has produced and who produced America. We need to tell and retell these stories beginning with the Pilgrim Fathers. Bibles under their arms, setting forth in little ships across a stormy sea, driven not by the winds that raged the Atlantic and caught the sails of their little boats, but by the mighty conviction that as sons of God no one could make slaves of them.

     Something within drove them across trackless wastes to an inhospitable shore, where unhampered by the autocracy of men, they could worship God in all the dignity of free men.

     We, too, need that spirit of freedom in our hearts. We need to recover the cleanness and manhood and power and might of the United States in our minds. We must reemphasize morality, decency and honesty. We need more of God and more of Jesus Christ. Deeply rooted in the American tradition are the sovereignty of God and the sacredness of human personality. Upon these two pillars rests American freedom.

-Dr. Norman Vincent Peale from
his sermon "I Pledge Allegiance"