Abraham Lincoln's Birthday

On the back of our church bulletin our pastor put an excerpt from a proclamation that was so good I wanted to find and read the whole thing. Lincoln believed that the Civil War was God's judgment on the nation for it's sinfulness, and made a proclamation appointing a national day of humiliation, fasting and prayer on March 30, 1863. To read the whole proclamation, which will give you goose bumps, go here. But if not, here are a couple of excerpts.

....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....