3 January—The editorial in yesterday’s Sunday Republican is titled “Can virtue be revived?” It laments the decline of religious affiliation in America while suggesting there’s a modicum of hope for the country if we shape up morally and religiously. And the editorial suggests we follow the 13 virtues that Benjamin Franklin urged everyone to practice in daily life.

Franklin’s 13 virtues are (in alphabetical order) Chastity, Cleanliness, Frugality, Humility, Industry, Justice, Moderation, Order, Resolution, Silence, Sincerity, Temperance, Tranquility. The editorial tells us that “Franklin acknowledged he was an imperfect practitioner of these virtues, yet he proposed them ‘as necessary or desirable.’”

While he admitted that “natural inclination” often got the better of him, Franklin maintained that he found Order the hardest virtue to practice. That rather surprises me, though I totally understand the difficulty in practicing and especially achieving Order. And where would we be without natural inclination?

The 13 virtues, by the way, have nothing to do with the 13 colonies at the time Franklin came up with them, but rather with the calendar: 13 goes into the 52 weeks of a year four times. Convenient, I guess, especially for a man with order problems.

Percipient readers will have noticed that among Franklin’s virtues isn’t Religion or anything having to do with God or gods. Curious, but not surprising. Yet again, totally understandable. Like most of his enlightened contemporaries, Franklin was a deist; calling himself a “thorough deist,” he acknowledged the existence of a supreme being, based on reason, but rejected revealed religion. In other words, God created the universe but remains apart from it, and we aren’t supposed to believe in prayer or that God intervenes in history.

Franklin’s God is a given—it’s assumed—so why is it even necessary to mention among his virtues? Faith is great and it works, theology is a distraction. Belief in a god is not as important as living a life of virtue, love, and significance. And that Benjamin Franklin certainly did.

A few weeks before he died, Franklin wrote to Ezra Stiles, the president of Yale College, whose strict Calvinism was antithetical to Franklin’s own philanthropic belief, “Here is my Creed. I believe in one God, Creator of the Universe. That He governs it by His Providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable Service we render to him, is doing Good to his other Children. That the Soul of Man is immortal, and will be treated with Justice in another Life respecting its Conduct in this. As for Jesus of Nazareth, I think the system of Morals and Religion as he left them to us, the best the World ever saw, but I have some Doubts to his Divinity; though it is a Question I do not dogmatism [sic] upon, having never studied it, and think it is needless to busy myself with it now, where I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble.”

I like to think that Franklin threw in the God “ought to be worshipped” bit just to make Stiles happy . . .