Lost Episodes: Our Hope in Suffering

Written by aaron | August 9, 2011

Once bitter political rivals, but now reconciled as friends, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were prolific in their correspondence later in life. Not surprisingly, the subject turned to matters of faith. On August 9, 1816, John Adams wrote his former sparring partner about a renowned Dutch pastor, and then turned to the sufferings of this life and the hope of eternity: 

“Promise me eternal life free from pain… [W]ithout the supposition of a future state, mankind and this globe appear to me the most sublime and beautiful bubble and bauble that imagination can conceive. Let us then wish for immortality at all hazards, and trust the Ruler with His skies. I do; and earnestly wish for His commands, which to the utmost of my power shall be implicitly and piously obeyed.”* 

John Adams testified that there was more than suffering and superficiality of this life, that there is a God who reigns, that He is our hope of eternal life free of pain, and that we are accountable to obey His commands. That is another lost episode in American history. 


*Source Citation: John Adams to Thomas Jefferson on August 9, 1816 as found in Albert Ellery Bergh, ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 20 vols., (Wash­ington, DC: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Assoc., 1907), 15:64.