Os Guinness - The Magna Carta of Humanity: Sinais Revolutionary Faith and the Future of Freedom

InterVarsity Press
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2021 by Os Guinness

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All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the New American Standard Bible, copyright 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

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Cover design and image composite: David Fassett
Images: cover painting: Eugne_Delacroix_-_Le_28_Juillet._La_Libert_guidant_le_peuple. (wikimedia)
Washington painting: Washington_Crossing_the_Delaware_by_Emanuel_Leutze,_MMA-NYC,_1851
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ISBN 978-0-8308-4716-7 (digital)

ISBN 978-0-8308-4715-0 (print)

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DOM

And to Jenny,

My beloved, my friend, and my hearts delight.

And with heartfelt gratitude to Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks,

whose brilliant, creative, and fruitful wisdom is

a compass and a guiding light in the present chaos.

And to all who long and strive for a

brighter human future in our time.

Let my people go!

You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

Should any of our nation be asked about our laws, he will repeat them as readily as his own name. The result of our thorough education in our laws from the very dawn of intelligence is that they are, as it were, engraved on our souls.

A good man, though a slave, is free; but a wicked man, though a king, is a slave. For he serves, not one man alone, but, what is worse, as many masters as he has vices.

Freedom is the man that will turn the world upside down, therefore, no wonder, he hath enemies.

I doubt much, very much indeed, whether France is at all ripe for liberty on any standard. Men are qualified for civil liberty, in exact proportion to their disposition too put moral chains upon their appetites; in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity; in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption; in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions form their fetters.

I will insist that the Hebrews have contributed more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations.... They are the most glorious nation that ever inhabited this earth. The Romans and their empire were but a bubble in comparison to the Jews.

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

The absolute monarchies have dishonored despotism; let us be careful that the democratic republics do not rehabilitate it.

Since the Exodus, freedom has spoken with a Hebrew accent.

What will one not give up for freedom?

The time is coming when we shall have to pay for having been Christians for two thousand years.

Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can do much to help it.

We are impressed by the towering buildings of New York City. Yet not the rock of Manhattan nor the steel of Pittsburgh but the law that came from Sinai is their ultimate foundation. The true foundation upon which our cities stand is a handful of spiritual ideas.

If we fail in our promises to each other, and lose the principles of the covenant, then we lose everything, for they are we.

The Western world has arrived at a decisive moment. Over the next few years, it will gamble the existence of the civilization that created it. I think that it is not aware of it. Time has eroded your notion of liberty. You have kept the word and devised a different notion. You have forgotten the meaning of liberty.

To defend a country you need an army. But to defend a free society you need schools. You need families and an educational system in which ideals are passed on from one generation to the next, and never lost, or despaired of, or obscured. There has never been a more profound understanding of freedom. It is not difficult, Moses was saying, to gain liberty, but to sustain it is the work of a hundred generations. Forget it and you lose it.