He offered a crystal-clear notion of right and wrong, an unambiguous definition of good and evil. And although his perspective was absolutist and unyielding, it presented a kinder, gentler alternative to Calvinism, which had been the ecclesiastical status quo in the early years of the American republic.

He was sublime in action, lowly in mind; inaccessible in virtue, most accessible in intercourse; gentle, free from anger, sympathetic, sweet in words, sweeter in disposition; angelic in appearance, more angelic in mind; calm in rebuke, persuasive in praise, without spoiling the good effect of either by excess, but rebuking with the tenderness of a father, praising with the dignity of a ruler, his tenderness was not dissipated nor his severity sour, for the one was reasonable, the other prudent, and both truly wise; his disposition sufficed for the training of his spiritual children, with very little need of words; his words with very little need of the rod, and his moderate use of the rod with still less for the knife…. He was the patron of the wedded and of the virgin state alike, both peaceable and a peacemaker, and attendant upon those who are passing from hence.… In a good old age he closed his life, and was gathered to his fathers, the patriarchs and prophets and apostles and martyrs, who contended for the truth.

William Jennings Bryan, told the president that "the basis of peace you propose is a new philosophy . . . that is, new to governments but as old as the Christian religion." It would put Wilson, Bryan averred, "among the Immortals."

Six hundred years before the birth of Christ absolutism held unbounded sway. Throughout the East it was propped by the unchanging influence of priests and armies. In the West, where there were no sacred books requiring trained interpreters, the priesthood acquired no preponderance, and when the kings were overthrown their powers passed to aristocracies of birth.

Between healthy nationalism and chauvinism, he chose chauvinism; between free-market economy and clientelism, he chose the latter. Instead of the cult of freedom, he chose the cult of the state. Between modernity and openness to the world, he chose traditionalism; a fatal choice for a small state like Croatia that needs to open for the sake of development.

Moreover, if the Jews, by accepting the enlightenment, were to forfeit the particular claims of Judaism, it was by no means certain that they would get a quiet life in return. The country which came closest to Mendelssohn’s ideal was the United States, where the notions of the enlightenment rested on a solid basis of English parliamentarianism and tolerant religious pluralism. The very year Mendelssohn was writing Jerusalem, Thomas Jefferson, in Notes on Virginia (1782), argued that the existence of a variety of sensible, ethical religions was the best guarantee of material and spiritual progress, and of human freedom.

Intolerant believers embrace what we may call Calvin's contradiction, after the theologian who, perhaps, most brazenly weds the notions of religious certainty and textual interpretive 'inerrancy' with the directly contradictory notion of humanity's moral and epistemic 'fallenness.' John Calvin's steadfast refusal to consider the implications of his view of human 'depravity' for his own claims regarding the nature and meaning of scripture has conditioned Protestant belief ever since, setting the stage for the flight from anxiety that has helped to push the self-satisfied certainty of many Christians in tragically (and sinfully) aggressive and intolerant directions.

The State government of Kentucky at that time was rebel in sentiment, but wanted to preserve an armed neutrality between the North and the South, and the governor really seemed to think the State had a perfect right to maintain a neutral position.

His heart was in the right place. He wanted a religion that could plausibly comfort widows and orphans without committing them to patriarchy, intolerance, fundamentalism, or weird dietary laws. He wanted a religion that wasn’t in a perpetual fistfight with modern cosmology.

The theory of the relations between states and churches is bound up with the theory of Toleratio, and on that suject the eighteenth century scarcely rose above an intermittend, embarrassed, and unscientific view. For religious liberty is composed of the properties both of religion and of liberty, and one of its factors never became an object of disinterested observation among actual leaders of opinion. They preferred the argument of doubt to the argument of certitude, and sought to defeat intolerance by casting out revelation as they had defeated the persecution of witches by casting out the devil. There remained a flaw in their liberalism, for liberty apart from belief is liberty with a good deal of the substance taken out of it. The problem is less complicated and the solution less radical and less profound.

He believed that secularism is the realization of the truth and every religion advocated love, tolerance, compassion and good-will. Besides, he was an ardent exponent of national and emotional integration.

Implicit … in the very idea of ordered liberty, was a rejection of absolute truth, the infallibility of any idea or ideology or theology or “ism,” any tyrannical consistency that might lock future generations into a single, unalterable course, or drive both majorities and minorities into the cruelties of the Inquisition, the pogrom, the gulag, or the jihad.
...
A rejection of absolutism, in all its forms, may sometimes slip into moral relativism or even nihilism, an erosion of values that hold society together…

He set forth his intractable ideas but was never partisan or restricted to his own subjective stance. He moved alone with the spirit of heaven and earth, and did not exalt himself above all things. He did not dispute right and wrong, but sought to live peacefully with the prevalent views.

We either must jump in this mess strongly regardless of the risk or refuse to take our rightful place in the world. More than at any time since the Napoleonic period Western Civilization and Christianity are at stake. That puts it strongly but is no exaggeration just the same. Lincoln was a moral and upright man. He was a pacifist at heart. But when there was no other alternative he did not equivocate nor cravenly talk of peace when there was no peace. He grabbed the bull by the horns; realizing that the nation could not endure half slave and half free, he threw down the gauntlet and eradicated the evil. We are faced with the same thing and the longer we wait the worse it becomes.