PURITAN NATIONAL:

That God loved Alexander Hamilton is undeniable. But did Hamilton love God? Historians of the Revolutionary period are often asked about issues of faith. Did the Founding Fathers believe in God? Were they really Christians? For Alexander Hamilton, the answer was yes. Records indicate that Hugh Knox, a Presbyterian minister in St. Croix, influenced Hamilton at a young age. Knox's sermons and passion for God seemed to have affected Hamilton on a fundamentally core level. Hamilton's own desire to pursue godly living was ignited in St. Croix, and he carried this aspiration with him when he set sail for New York to further his education.

As a student at King's College (Columbia University today), his fellow classmates commented on Hamilton's sincere heart for worship and that he often went above the prescribed prayers and mandatory chapels. Chernow writes that Robert Troup, Hamilton's classmate at King's, confessed he had "often been powerfully affected by the fervor and eloquence of [Hamilton's] prayers" and that Hamilton "was a zealous believer in the fundamental doctrines of Christianity."

Like most faith journeys, Hamilton's ebbed and flowed between skepticism and belief. But at the end, his verdict was clear: "I have examined carefully the evidence of the Christian religion, and if I was sitting as a juror upon its authenticity, I should rather abruptly give my verdict in its favor."

Hamilton's analytical mind sought for proofs of religion and not merely emotional satisfaction. He studied A View of the Evidences of Christianity in search of reasonable answers to an elusive faith. As a child of the Enlightenment and relentless pursuer of the truth, Hamilton despised religious fanaticism and searched for "logical proofs." With the legal mind and intellectual tenacity he applied to the US Constitution and Federalist papers, Hamilton surveyed the Scriptures and religious evidence. "I have studied [Christianity] and I can prove its truth as clearly as any proposition ever submitted to the mind of man," he concluded.

To make such a declaration was not easy. Enlightenment ideals had swept into the colonies decades earlier, and Deism contended against traditional Christianity in fundamental ways.

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