Benjamin Franklin

This is from an excellent podcast called the world and everything in it and their website is wng.org

The voice of one of our nation’s Founders still echoes across the centuries.

An elder statesman at the birth of the republic, he helped invent modern America—and warned it could not survive on human ingenuity alone.

Benjamin Franklin had an enduring belief that God governs in the affairs of men.

Franklin had just two years of formal schooling. But he became a polymath.

He made his first mark as a writer, publishing under the pseudonym Silence Dogood. He later founded the Pennsylvania Gazette and produced Poor Richard’s Almanac, still read nearly three centuries later.

By his early forties, Franklin had earned enough from printing to retire. Then he got busy.

He invented the lightning rod and bifocals. He helped found America’s first lending library, its first fire department, and the University of Pennsylvania. He improved colonial mail service. And through it all, Franklin showed a relentless curiosity about how the world works—and how societies hold together.

That curiosity shaped his moral outlook, too.

Former Secretary of State Tony Blinken once summed it up this way—quoting Franklin himself:

BLINKEN: No one knew better than Mr. Franklin the power of personal engagement, relationship building, and simply having a good time together—as he said, “Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better person.”

But Franklin’s most enduring work was not his inventions.

It was the country he helped bring into being.

Early on, Franklin hoped reconciliation with Britain was possible. But as tensions mounted, he became convinced the American cause was just. He served on the drafting committee for the Declaration of Independence and helped shape its language. And he understood the danger.

In a White House dramatization of the period, Franklin puts it plainly:

FRANKLIN: Nothing compared to the moment when I signed my name to our Declaration of Independence—knowing full well it might be my death warrant. “We must all hang together, or we shall most assuredly hang separately,” I quipped.

That line may be apocryphal—but the risk was not.

Franklin was older than most of the Founders—a steady, seasoned presence. During the Revolution, his diplomacy helped secure vital support from France. And at the Constitutional Convention, he often acted as a mediator when tempers flared and progress stalled.

He was a friend of evangelist George Whitefield, attended his sermons, and even published them.

Franklin understood something essential.

He understood Providence.

Late in the Constitutional Convention, after days of deadlock, the aging Founder rose and reminded his colleagues that nations do not rise by human effort alone. One dramatization captures his plea:

How has it happened that we have forgotten to humbly implore the Father of lights to illuminate our understanding? The longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth—that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall without His notice, is it probable that a great nation can rise without His aid.

Franklin was right.

After the Constitution was completed, Franklin was asked what the delegates had created.

A woman asked Franklin, ‘What have you brought us—a republic, a democracy, a monarchy?’ And Franklin replied, ‘A republic—if you can keep it.’

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