Scholars have said that the old Greeks were the fathers of freedom;
and there have been other peoples in the world's history who have
made glorious and successful struggles to throw off their tyrants
and be free. And they have said, We are the fathers of freedom;
liberty was born with us. Not so, my friends! Liberty is of a far
older and far nobler house; Liberty was born, if you will receive
it, on the first Easter night, on the night to be much remembered
among the children of Israel--ay, among all mankind--when God
himself stooped from heaven to set the oppressed free. Then was
freedom born. Not in the counsels of men, however wise; or in the
battles of men, however brave: but in the counsels of God, and the
battle of God--amid human agony and terror, and the shaking of the
heaven and the earth; amid the great cry throughout Egypt when a
first-born son lay dead in every house; and the tempest which swept
aside the Red Sea waves; and the pillar of cloud by day, and the
pillar of fire by night; and the Red Sea shore covered with the
corpses of the Egyptians; and the thunderings and lightnings and
earthquakes of Sinai; and the sound as of a trumpet waxing loud and
long; and the voice, most human and most divine, which spake from
off the lonely mountain peak to that vast horde of coward and
degenerate slaves, and said, 'I am the Lord thy God who brought thee
out of the land of Egypt.
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