From: jburrill@boi.hp.com (Jim Burrill)
Subject: Re: The Health of a Great Nation....
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 14:24:54 GMT
Organization: Hewlett-Packard / Boise, Idaho
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1.8 PL6]


I quoted "Honest Abe":
|>- Abraham Lincoln: "It is the duty of nations, as well as of men, to own
|>-their
|>dependence upon the overruling power of God and to recognize the sublime
|>truth announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those
|>nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord"

A comment made:

|This is a suprising line from the guy who said "the Bible is not my
|book; Christianity is not my religion". But otherwise its the same
|stuff as the above. says nothign about government.

Perhaps some others with more objective viewpoints would be interested in the
entire context of the speech Lincoln gave:

From Abraham 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 Scriptures 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 chastisements in this world, may we not justly 
fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates 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.      [. . . ]

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 blessings no less than the pardon of
our national sins and the restoration of our now divided and suffering
country to its former happy condition of 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.