Need for Right Principles
Morality depends on the right kind of religious principles. George Washington, the first president of the United States, sensed this and said in his “Farewell Address to the People of the United States”: “Let it simply be asked, Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”