On the Cusp of the New World

While still aboard the Arabella, not quite yet landed to settle the Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Winthrop preached his famous message “A Model of Christian Charity.” It is most famous for the reference to “A City Upon a Hill”–a reference which Reagan used repeatedly. But it also contained one of the most beautiful sentences ever spoken in English:

We must delight in each other, make other’s conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, our community as members of the same body.”