Lincoln's Thanksgiving Proclamation
~ ~ ~ President Abraham Lincoln, October 3, 1863 . . . .
"It is the duty of
nations as well as 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 Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations
are blessed whose God is the Lord.
"We know that by His divine law, nations, like individuals, are
subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world. May we
not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now
desolates the land, may be 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 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 has seemed to me fit and proper that God should be solemnly,
reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one
voice, by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my
fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those
who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set
apart and observe the last Thursday of November as a day of
Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the
heavens."
[ President Abraham Lincoln -- from 'Inspired Buffalo' (InspiredBuffalo@lighthouse.net) ]
Inspirational Stories
SkyWriting.Net
All Rights Reserved.
|