Since today is Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, I thought I would post some of my favorite quotes from him.
From Lincoln’s Second Annual Address to Congress, December 1, 1862:
“In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free – honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save – or meanly lose – the last, best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just – a way which if followed the world will forever applaud and God must forever bless.”
In reading this quote I was so struck by the second sentence. Just think about it; “We shall nobly save – or meanly lose – the last, best hope of earth.” We have this beautiful form of freedom and democracy, this one chance to bring the world to a higher way of life. We will either reform the world or lose our chance and our freedom through a series of stupid mistakes and evil choices. The American people will either become the godliest nation on earth, and be a great tool in the hand of God to be used for the salvation of the nations, or become horribly immoral, losing our wisdom and turning ourselves over once again to slavery.
And that is what we as a nation have proceeded to do. Bit by bit, court ruling by court ruling, new law by new law, we are losing our freedom to the ever-increasing government. If we do not turn back soon to God who gives wisdom, then we will lose our chance at advancing and giving freedom to the world and become like every other great nation that has already fallen.
Another favorite quote of mine is Lincoln’s Proclamation Appointing a National Fast Day, March 30, 1863:
“Whereas, the Senate of the United States devoutly recognizing the Supreme Authority and just Government of Almighty God in all the affairs of men and of nations, has, by a resolution, requested the President to designate and set apart a day for national prayer and humiliation:
And whereas, it is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon, and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scripture and proven by all history: that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord:
And, insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisement in the world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolated the land may be but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people?
We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown.
But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious Hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.
Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!
It behooves us then to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.
Now, therefore, in compliance with the request and fully concurring with the view of the Senate, I do, by this my proclamation, designate and set apart Thursday, the 30th day of April, 1863, as a day of national humiliation, fasting and prayer.
And I do hereby request all the people to abstain on that day from their ordinary secular pursuits, and to unite, at their several places of public worship and their respective homes, in keeping the day holy to the Lord and devoted to the humble discharge of the religious duties proper to that solemn occasion.
All this being done, in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope authorized by the Divine teachings, that the united cry of the nation will be heard on high and answered with blessing no less than the pardon of our national sins and the restoration of our now divided and suffering country to its former happy condition or unity and peace.
In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. By the President: Abraham Lincoln.”
Doesn’t this proclamation sound like it could be talking about the state of America today? God has blessed us so immensely, but we have forgotten all about him. We have come to think that we alone have been the cause of this wealth and greatness, and we have not remembered to be humble.
It is interesting to note that it was the Senate, by a general consensus, that asked Lincoln to issue this proclamation; this was not something that Lincoln thought up on his own. That shows what the state of the nation was at the time and how far we have fallen. The senate asked him to do it! That means that most of the senators believed in God and believed that America needed to humble itself before Him to plead for mercy. Something like that would be impossible today.
Lincoln was one of the greatest leaders, if not the greatest, that our nation has ever known. What he had to say was always thought provoking and inspiring, profound yet to-the-point. It would be a shame and a disgrace to let his birthday pass by without remembering his character and his devotion to God while leading this country through one of the hardest periods in its history.
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