Hello everybody, and welcome to a special 4th of July blog. I wanted to take the opportunity of telling you of one of my favorite characters in American history, which I’ve written about and my book 100 Bible verses that made America. As I work through the history of our nation from the days of the explorers to current times there were several men and women whom I would very much like to have known, and I expect to meet them in heaven. Here’s one. The material I’m about to give you has come partly from my own book, partly from the great organization called Wall Builders, and partly from an old biographer.
The man is… Noah Webster. Few American heroes have been as eccentric, interesting, or brilliant as Webster. Often depressed, anxious, and obsessive-compulsive, he published more words than any of America’s founders and is called the “Father of American Scholarship and Education.” His American Dictionary of the English Language would “succeed in forever unifying the world’s most ethnically diverse nation with a common language.”
Webster was born in 1758 and graduated from Yale during the Revolutionary War. He tried teaching, but failed. He opened a school, but it closed. He became a lawyer, but struggled to make a living. He fell in love twice, but was rejected. He longed to become Washington’s official biographer, but that job went to someone else.
To keep from starving, Webster assembled a spelling textbook, The Blue-Backed Speller, and he invented the concept of a “book tour” to promote it, stopping in every state capital to lobby for copyright laws to protect his resource. Webster’s Speller taught generations of children to read, spell, and pronounce, and it gave him a trickle of sustained income. Except for the Bible, Webster’s Speller became the most purchased book in America for a century.
On October 26, 1789, Noah married Rebecca Greenleaf, a woman absolutely perfect for him. The only threat to their happiness was his massive debt and his failure to find a life’s work. In 1793, they moved to New York City to start a newspaper, but for years it too failed. Just as the tide turned and the paper showed signs of success, Webster lost interest. His mind was seized by another dream—compiling a dictionary of American English.
Relocating to New Haven, Connecticut, Webster announced his project in the local paper on June 4, 1800, referring to himself in third person: “Mr. Webster of this city, we understand, is engaged in completing…a Dictionary of the American Language.”
Webster worked at a round table in his second floor study from sunrise till four in the afternoon, usually standing while reading and writing, using a quill pen and pad, and surrounded by reference works. But the mental strain, financial worries, and constant criticism nearly broke him. That is, until he came to faith in Jesus Christ.
Rev. Moses Stuart, a local pastor, was a powerful preacher during the Second Great Awakening, and Webster’s teenage daughters were converted under his preaching. Webster was disturbed by that, and he requested a meeting with Stuart. For several weeks, Webster struggled with the Gospel message, but one morning in April 1808, “I instantly fell to my knees and confessed my sins to God, implored His pardon and made my vows to Him.” Calling his family, Webster announced his decision to follow Christ, and his inner turmoil ceased. “From that time,” he said, “I have had a perfect tranquility of mind.”
When his brother criticized him for “religious enthusiasm,” Webster replied in a letter, which was so long and thorough that it later became one of America’s premier apologetic pamphlets. He said, in part:
These sentiments may perhaps expose me to the charge of enthusiasm. Of this I cannot complain, when I read in the Gospel that the apostles, when they first preached Christ crucified, were accused of being full of new wine; when Paul was charged by Felix with being a madman; and when Christ Himself was charged with performing miracles through the influence of evil spirits. If, therefore, I am accused of enthusiasm, I am not ashamed of the imputation. It is my earnest desire to cherish evangelical doctrines and no other…for nothing is uniform but truth; nothing unchangeable but God and His works…. To reject the Scriptures as forgeries is to undermine the foundation of all history; for no books of the historical kind stand on a firmer basis than the Sacred Books.
Noah Webster published his dictionary in 1828, defining more than 65,000 words, shaping American English for the lifetime of the nation, and making “Webster” a household name that has spanned the centuries.
Even though, Noah Webster is most widely known for standardizing spellings and meanings of words through his Webster’s Dictionary, printed in 1828, he soon began an even greater task, which was to update The Holy Bible to exchange outdated and misunderstood words for more common ones. His belief in the inerrancy of Scripture was so strong, according to Wallbuilders, that he wrote an introduction to explain the changes that he made and the Scriptural integrity that was preserved. He said: The Bible is the chief moral cause of all that is good, and the best corrector of all that is evil, in human society; the best book for regulating the temporal concerns of men, and the only book that can serve as an infallible guide to the future felicity. With this estimate of its value, I have attempted to render the English version more useful, by correcting a few obvious errors, and removing some obscurities, with objectionable words and phrases; and my earnest prayer is, that my labors may not be wholly unsuccessful. N.W.
Here is a description of his death, given by an early biographer:
During the spring of 1843, Dr. Webster revised the Appendix of his Dictionary, and added some hundreds of words. He completed the printing of it about the middle of May. It was the closing act of his life. His hand rested, in its last labors, on the volume which he had commenced thirty-six years before.
Within a few days, in calling on a number of friends in different parts of the town, he walked, during one afternoon between two and three miles. The day was chilly, and immediately after his return, he was seized with faintness and a severe oppression on his lungs. An attack of peripneumony [pera-noo’-na-me] followed, which, though not alarming at first, took a sudden turn after four or five days, with fearful indications of a fatal result.
It soon became necessary to inform him that he was in imminent danger. He received the communication with surprise, but with entire composure. His health had been so good, and every bodily function so perfect in its exercise, that he undoubtedly expected to live some years longer. But though suddenly called, he was completely ready. He gave some characteristic direction as to the disposal of his body after death. He spoke of his long life as one of uniform enjoyment, because filled up at every stage with active labors for some valuable end. He expressed his entire resignation to the will of God, and his unshaken trust in the atoning blood of the Redeemer.
It was an interesting coincidence, that his former pastor, the Rev. Mr. Stuart, who received him to the church thirty-five years before, had just arrived at New Haven on a visit to his friends. He called immediately, and the interview brought into affecting comparison the beginning and the end of that long period of consecration to the service of Christ. The same hopes which had cheered the vigor of manhood, were now shedding a softened light over decay and sufferings of age. “I know in whom I have believed,’” – such was the solemn and affecting testimony which he gave to his friend, while the hand of death was upon him, – “I know in whom I have believed, and that He is able to keep that which I have committed to him against that day.” Thus, without one down, one fear, he resigned his soul into the hands of his Maker, and died on the 28th day of May, 1843, in the eighty-fifth year of his age….
This is an example of the kind of impact the Bible has made on the history of our nation, the history of the United States of America. For more stories like this please check out my book 100 Bible verses that made America. And you might also check out my friend doctor Tim Barton’s website wallbuilders.com. May God bless America on this 4th of July.