Life & Mortality Quote by Roger Sherman

A revolutionary politician telling you to stop living for yourself sounds like a scold until you remember the world Roger Sherman is speaking from: an 18th-century culture where public virtue was supposed to be more than branding. The line borrows the cadence and authority of the New Testament (especially Paul), and that’s the point. Sherman isn’t offering a private devotional slogan; he’s anchoring civic character in a cosmic debt. If Christ “gave Himself to die,” then self-advancement starts to look not just tacky, but morally illegible.

The intent is disciplinary and unifying. “Let us” pulls the reader into a collective vow, the kind suited to a fledgling republic obsessed with faction, ambition, and the fragility of shared trust. The subtext: liberty won on the battlefield can still be lost to vanity, greed, and personal grievance. Sherman frames self-denial as the antidote, and he does it by shifting the center of gravity from individual rights to sacrificial obligation. That’s a powerful move in a political environment where leaders needed citizens to act like stewards, not consumers.

It also reveals how early American public life often braided Protestant moral language into political legitimacy. Sherman’s Christ-centered appeal isn’t merely pious; it’s a technology of persuasion, offering a higher referee than party, profit, or ego. If you can be made accountable to “Him,” you might be made accountable to the common good.