[continued from previous message]   
      
            [Let] us suppose that the minister in beginning his   
            sermon should say, "I want to consider with you some   
            ideas of Jesus as they are recorded in the preamble   
            of the Declaration of Independence," would you be   
            shocked?  You might be shocked to hear it from a   
            pulpit, but would you be shocked at the statement   
            itself?  Almost all the other worshippers would.   
            Would you?  Would it not at present be generally   
            regarded as sacrilegious to suggest that Jesus and   
            Jefferson had worked at the same task?   
      
            And yet what is the simple fact, obvious to anyone   
            from whom it has not been hidden by a smoke screen?   
            Look at the preamble of the Declaration.  The three   
            basic rights which it treats -- "life, liberty and   
            the pursuit of happiness" -- are not these subjects   
            exactly paralleled in the teaching and thought of   
            Jesus? First -- "life"; said Jesus, "I have come   
            that they may have life and may have it in   
            abundance."  Second -- "liberty"; said Jesus, "Ye   
            shall know the truth and the truth will make you   
            free."   Third -- "the pursuit of happiness"; said   
            Jesus, "I have spoken to you that my joy might   
            remain in you and that your joy might be full."   
      
   And later Jackson said in a statement to the Committee of Finance   
   of the United States Senate in 1935:   
      
            "Strangely enough the right to work was not among   
            the basic natural rights listed by Thomas Jefferson   
            in the great declaration which gave birth to the   
            Nation; only the rights to life, liberty, and the   
            pursuit of happiness.  But the right to the pursuit   
            of happiness is merely theoretical and meaningless   
            unless one has the right to the things which   
            produce happiness; the right to liberty is   
            theoretical and meaningless unless one is in a   
            position to exercise it; the right even to life   
            itself is theoretical and meaningless unless one   
            has a right to secure the means necessary to support   
            it.  The right to work, to earn a living, to earn   
            enough to support a family in decency, is a prior   
            antecedent right, without which no other rights have   
            value."   
      
   One wonders what HUAC would have made of this interpretation of   
   the Bible.   [-ecl]   
      
   ===================================================================   
      
                         Mark Leeper   
                         mleeper@optonline.net   
      
      
              Future: that period of time in which our affairs prosper,   
              our friends are true, and our happiness is assured.   
   				          --Ambrose Bierce   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)