There is nothing stable but Heaven and the Constitution.
I believe at its core we have a Constitution, as our Supreme Court's first great justice, Marshall, said in 1819, and I quote, "intended to endure for the ages to come and consequently to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs."
None but a people advanced to a high state of moral and intellectual excellence are capable in a civilized condition of forming and maintaining free governments, and among those who are so far advanced, very few indeed have had the good fortune to form constitutions capable of endurance.
Is that which was deemed to be of so fundamental a nature as to be written into the Constitution to endure for all times to be the sport of shifting winds of doctrine?
We must never forget that it is a constitution we are expounding ... a constitution intended to endure for ages to come, and consequently, to be adopted to the various crises of human affairs.
Continue to execute all the express provisions of our national Constitution, and the Union will endure forever-it being impossible to destroy it, except by some action not provided for in the instrument itself.
Perpetuity is stamped upon the Constitution by the blood of our fathers.
A constitution is framed for ages to come, and is designed to approach immortality as nearly as human institutions can approach it.
