"Our vast facilities of production, trade, and transportation have filled us with high notions of our superiority, and at the same time degraded us to dispositions of covetousness and cruelty. And from the long period of our tranquility we have come at length to a pitch of wickedness that has culminated in one of the most gigantic and desolating civil wars the world has ever seen.
Our unparalleled liberty has degenerated into dissolute indulgence; we have been so long without the burdens of government as to have almost forgotten the price of our birthright and to have cast away the only safeguards of its continuance; we have proved ourselves unworthy of our inheritance, in our contempt of that virtue which alone affords protection to society, in our blind disregard of the Christian foundations on which alone the great interests of a nation can permanently rest. Thus, at last, a majority of the people have grown wholly unmindful of the authority and prerogative of God, and of the duties we owe to him and to his creatures.
The true life and soul of Christianity have been to a great degree emasculated, and the very titles of Jehovah and the tokens of his awful majesty in the earth have become to multitudes among us as idle and unmeaning as the Grecian myths, used, indeed, to furbish a paragraph with classic elegance or round a period with sonorous emphasis, but completely divested of those great, grand, solemn, and glorious thoughts which never can dwell with vulgarity, profanation, and irreverence. Now, if, under such conditions, Christianity should resume her sway and bring the masses of the nation back to the pure and simple virtues and to the stern and heroic spirit which marked the age of our Revolutionary fathers, it will prove to be a moral miracle equal to her first triumphs in apostolic days. Yet to this object all good men should devote their energies and their prayers. In the firm conviction that virtue must finally be supreme, and that a wise and beneficent Providence has designed this continent to be the theater of the yet more glorious conquests of Christianity, it is the mission and the duty of all friends of evangelical truth to combine in the attempt to hold and appropriate this country, with its resources, monuments, and institutions, for an empire devoted to the spread of God’s kingdom in the earth, and the universal reign of Jesus Christ." ~ Byron Sunderland,Washington, D.C., April 14, 1863
Strange words to fall upon ears of such a strange time as ours. Would it be possible for our current state of affairs to birth such wickedness as theirs to produce something as horrific as that gigantic and desolating civil war? We hear much today about American Exceptionalism, could that be nothing more than "Our vast facilities of production, trade, and transportation [that] have filled us with high notions of our superiority, . . ."?
"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 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 truths announced in the Holy Scriptures, and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord;
And, inasmuch 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 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 in the views of the Senate, I do by this 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 people to abstain 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 blessings, no less than the pardon of our national sins, and 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.
Done at the City of Washington, this thirtieth day of March, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the independence of the United States the eighty-seventh.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
It does appear from all obversence the Senate of the United States, no longer devoutly recognizes the supreme authority and just government of Almighty God, in all the affairs of men and nations. The United States government no longer believes 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 recognize the sublime truths announced in the Holy Scriptures, and that it is proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord.
It does appear we have once again forgotten God, except this time we have no repentence, no desire to return, no remorse for our vulgarity and wickedness. Except the conscience turn us, we will not be turned. Now as then, it behooves us, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness. But I fear, this time, it is not in our power to do so.
May God grace be upon each of you,
David
