Excerpt from Literary and Historical Miscellanies by George Bancroft

For the regeneration of the world it was requisite that the Divine Being should enter the abodes and hearts of men and dwell there; that a belief in Him should be received which would include all truth respecting His essence; that He should be known, not as a distant Providence of boundless power and uncertain and inactive will, but as God present in the flesh… Amid the deep sorrows of humanity during the sad conflict which was protracted during centuries for the overflow of the past and the reconstruction of society, the consciousness of an incarnate God carried peace into the bosom of humanity… This doctrine once communicated to man, was not to be eradicated.

— “The Progress of Mankind," from Literary and Historical Miscellanies

George Bancroft (1800–1891) was an American historian and statesman perhaps most famous for establishing the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, in 1845. He was also a prominent proponent of secondary education and the author of one of the first definitive histories of the United States, History of the United States, from the Discovery of the American Continent.