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[Congressional Bills 106th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 597 Introduced in House (IH)]

106th CONGRESS
  2d Session
H. RES. 597

  Reaffirming the proclamation signed by President Abraham Lincoln on 
    March 30, 1863, in which President Lincoln called for national 
         humility, fasting, and prayer, and for other purposes.

_______________________________________________________________________

                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                           September 27, 2000

   Mrs. Chenoweth-Hage submitted the following resolution; which was 
             referred to the Committee on Government Reform

_______________________________________________________________________

                               RESOLUTION

 
  Reaffirming the proclamation signed by President Abraham Lincoln on 
    March 30, 1863, in which President Lincoln called for national 
         humility, fasting, and prayer, and for other purposes.

Whereas in a proclamation dated March 30, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln stated 
        as follows:

   ``[W]hereas it is the duty of nations, as well as of men, to owe 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 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.''; and

Whereas although the United States is now at peace, civil unrest divides the 
        Nation and its people: Now, therefore, be it
    Resolved, That--
            (1) the House of Representatives reaffirms the proclamation 
        signed by President Abraham Lincoln on March 30, 1863, in which 
        President Lincoln called for national humility, fasting, and 
        prayer;
            (2) it is the sense of the House of Representatives that 
        all normal business of the Congress should be set aside on a 
        Day of Repentance and Reconciliation for the United States, so 
        that Members of the Congress may join with all Americans in a 
        solemn assembly--
                    (A) to humble themselves with prayer and fasting;
                    (B) to repent individual and corporate sins; and
                    (C) to seek God's healing, reconciliation, and 
                favor for the Nation and its future; and
            (3) the House of Representatives encourages people of faith 
        throughout the Nation to join in solemn assembly for such a 
        day.
                                 <all>
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