This from Mike Sr.:
Everytime I read from the pages of Benjamin Franklin's autobiography I am overtaken by a certain sense of sadness. Perhaps I have fallen under the spell of that great man's well crafted image as a man of kindly reason and general good will. He was, after all, the consummate self-made man. Perhaps the chief product of such labors was this rustic reasonable public persona that quietly smiles upon us from the historic portraits now hung in our nation's hallowed halls. I wouldn't be the first to so succomb to this affable image of bonhomme. Norman Cousins, one of America's greatest men of letters, described Franklin thus: He was rounded in interests without being polished; aristocratic in intellect without being undemocratic in thought; daring in ideas without being impractical in their execution; perennially youthful in outlook but consistently mature in approach. The Republic of Reason , New York: Harper & Row, 1958, p. 16
Why such sadness then? Primarily it is because the great man came so close to the gospel. At least so he would have us believe. Yet he remained to his dying day uncommitted to its message. A few weeks before his death at 84 in 1790, Franklin replied to a letter addressed to him by the President of Yale University, Ezra Stiles. Evidently Stiles had inquired as to Franklin's faith. Franklin wrote: "As to Jesus of Nazareth I have... some doubts as to his divinity though it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble."
This is heartbreaking. The Christian knows too well the trouble that awaits an indifferent soul in eternity. Another sad note in Franklin's account of his life was sounded in the familiar comments on his friendship with the great evangelist, George Whitefield. They were good friends. Franklin said that he did not doubt Whitefield, who died 20 years before Franklin, prayed for his soul every day of his life. "But," Franklin observed, "to no avail." Perhaps the saddest aspect of Benjamin Franklin's failure to believe lies in these many connections with evangelical Christians. Charles Hodge, the noted Princeton theologian, married Franklin's great-great granddaughter and the features of Franklin can be seen almost eerily in the photos of their son, Archibald. The American poet, John Greenleaf Whittier, only a generation removed from Franklin, wrote: "for all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: it might have been." I suppose this sums up my melancholy over Benjamin Franklin. What might have been? Franklin's strongest ties to Christianity lay in his family's heritage of faith. From the pages of his autobiography we read: "This obscure family of ours was early in the Reformation, and continued Protestants through the reign of Mary, when they were sometimes in danger of trouble on account of their zeal against popery. They had got an English Bible, and to conceal and secure it, it was fastened upon with tapes under and within the cover of a joint-stool. When my great-great grandfather read it to his family, he turned up the joint-stool upon his knees, turning over the leaves then under the tapes. One of the children stood at the door to give notice if he saw the apparitor who was an officer of the spiritual court. In that cast the stool was turned down again upon its feet, when the Bible remained concealed under it as before."
What happened to Franklin's faith? I can only hazard a guess that comes from the counsel of God's Word. "Faith comes from hearing, and hearing the Word of Christ." (Romans 10:17) Somewhere along the roadside of his long and illustrious life the Evil One snatched away the Word of God from the mind of Benjamin Franklin. Once taken it could not be restored. And as great a mind as Franklin's remained unrepentant and unbelieving to the very end. How sad! How frightening! No wonder we are commanded over and over again to guard, protect, and regularly attend to the Word of God. To cite an old proverb that I found written on the fly leaf of my first Bible: "This book will keep you from sin or sin will keep you from this book." A final footnote. Perhaps my maudlin sentiment is overly indulgent and too romantic. My sadness over Franklin's admissions is greater than any he ever expressed. After all, I can no more know the heart of Benjamin Franklin than I could any man's heart other than my own. I must ask myself, then, what is the reason for my remorse? Perhaps the truth is found in the words of Gerard Manly Hopkins. Hopkins wrote of seeing a young girl weep over the falling leaves of autumn. He asked "Margaret why are you weeping?" and concluded the young girls tears were common to us all. "It was," he said, "the blight man was born for. It is Margaret that you mourn for." My sorrow, I suppose, is less for Benjamin Franklin's loss of faith and more for the threat to myself and all my loved ones, if we do not attend daily to the hearing of the Word of God. It is as though God were saying "if this can happen to the greatest of men, what chance have you apart from my grace?" May God, the only sovereign creator and sustainer of life, keep me and my beloved ones ever and always in that place where he can bless us. May he keep us in his word.
