Thanksgiving
Chaplain Morrison (aettch@EMAIL.GRAFENWOEHR.ARMY.MIL)
Tue, 26 Nov 1996 17:03:47 -0500
Thought this might be of interest to some who will be observing Thanksgiving
with their units or personally this week.
YiS,
Charlie Morrison
TCC BSA Troop 261
Grafenwoehr, Germany
NE-IV-90 FOX
>>Abraham Lincoln's 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation
>>
>>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 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 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 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.
>>
>>(signed) A. Lincoln
>>October 3, 1863
>
Terry Howerton Sakima Group, Inc. SCOUTER Magazine Kansas City |
