Lincoln’s Thanks and Today’s Blame

What a happy surprise to find President Abraham Lincoln’sPortrait Abraham Lincoln, 16th President Thanksgiving  Proclamation 106 of 1863 has NOT been expunged from the University of Santa Barbara .

Question 1:  Is his couplet below about SIN and MERCY ever heard, or allowed from the political dais?  Or in your own  church or synagogue ?
…They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

Question 2:  Addressed to  professing Christians jumping on the bandwagon of “disgracing the American flag”

  • How is the litany of crimes alleged against that symbol of cloth flown over the White House or given a moment’s reflection in our Sports Venues
    • any different than the crimes of which the Lord Jesus and YOU and YOUR congregation are accused of today by those who gleefully associate Him and YOU with the KKK, Crusades, and “bitterly clinging” to time-tested family values?

By contrast, please notice how Abraham Lincoln skipped the opportunity to denigrate his country, arguably  “guilty” of an unparalleled civil war,  and the mud-slinging questionable politics that gave his new party and himself a fatal election:

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, … order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict… …

Population has steadily increased notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

 It’s not enough to quietly censor this from our schools’ history classes,  but now the siren song of media attention has lured ostensibly “Moral Leaders” to join the chorus, broadcasting guilt and shame with the result that censorship is doubled by parody and mockery.

Why not instead take the high road, as even your Bible does … contrasting a long track record of humanity’s  unvarnished foibles alongside God’s unapologetic Judgement and Mercy, and His ultimate very personal intimate solution?


Full transcript of Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity,  which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict, while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they 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 next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans. mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union.

 

This entry was posted in Pioneers. Bookmark the permalink.