Sabbath Rest: Walls of Compact

Just as fifty-five delegates made their way to Philadelphia to discuss the Articles of Confederation in 1787, one of Connecticut’s finest preachers stood before his state’s governor and legislature. Elizur Goodrich had personally fought against the Stamp Act nearly twenty years earlier. His passion was so strong he believed the Revolution had been as much a religious duty as a political one. He believed the current crisis created by the Articles’ weakness threatened to tear down the walls of security constructed by the war. Goodrich believed “the honour and safety of the confederate republic” was just as important to America “as the peace and prosperity of Jerusalem, were to the several tribes of Israel.” Goodrich’s solution was to build “walls of compact,” or pillars of unity, instead.

“Jerusalem was a city, defended with strong walls, the metropolis of the kingdom of Israel, and the capital seat of the Hebrew empire,” described Goodrich. Its inhabitants were “not a loose, disconnected people, but most strictly united, not only among themselves, but with all the tribes of Israel, into a holy nation and commonwealth, under Jehovah their king and their God,” he continued.

Compact, as it says in the Psalms, was important to Israel. Likewise unity, or a “compact,” was critical to the future of America. “If the national union, by concentrating the wisdom and force of America, was the means of our salvation from conquest and slavery,” he reasoned, then unity and agreement was just as important to America’s sovereignty after the war.

“If these things are true, which I leave, gentlemen, to your own consideration, certainly there are no objects of greater magnitude and importance, more loudly calling the attention of America, than the national union, the necessity of supporting the national honour, and to give the federal government energy at home, and respectability abroad,” asserted Goodrich.

Goodrich believed it was absurd to think that each state “can singly preserve and defend itself.” He compared the idea to building a grand structure. Failing to unite was like men who poured a “costly foundation” and erected “the mighty frame of a most magnificent palace” and then retired to their own rooms without finishing the walls.

“I only add, gentlemen, on this subject, my most sincere prayer, that heaven would guide all your deliberations,” he continued.

Elizur Goodrich knew that walls of unity were essential supports for “securing the peace, and prosperity of the whole, and the benefit of it reach to the most distant ages, and increase from generation to generation to the latest posterity.” Unity is the heart of a constitution.

PRAYER

Father, erect walls of unity in my life that I may enjoy the blessings of “compact” with my family, my coworkers, and those closest to me.

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