You all are very brave to come to a lecture on Alexander Hamilton.

He bookended his career with a six-hour speech at the Constitutional Convention in 1787,

and with a six-hour defense in a legal case in February of 1804.

I will try not to go six hours on Hamilton, but I was feeling the pains in trying to cut

here toward the end of the preparation.

Why in the world would a pastor like me care about Alexander Hamilton and work through

these primary sources and care nose biography and all that?

Well, before I was a seminarian in a pastor, I chose political science as my major at

Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina and graduated from Furman in 2003 with a degree

in Political Science, and I could not wait to get out of there and come to Bethlehem

to study Greek and Hebrew and the Bible and learn to preach the Bible.

So I have a political science background in college, and I am very happy to weave in

as much scriptural text as I can and bring this to you as a pastor here this evening.

In that light, let me pray for us.

So Father in Heaven, in this fascinating and complicated life of Alexander Hamilton,

whatever his final destiny we do not know for sure here, and we don't want to pretend

that we know that.

And yet we have some interesting things to go on and consider here this evening.

And we have lessons to learn for our own lives yet to be lived.

And so would you grant your grace even on this unusual and strange topic and theme that

brings us together tonight?

I do pray that far greater than Alexander Hamilton, that Jesus Christ would be exalted.

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