Abraham Lincoln..
Proclaiming days of public fast in 1863
"Insomuch 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 desolate the land, may be but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins, to the need 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 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 imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtues of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the need of redeeming and preserving grace; too proud to pray to the God that made us!"
PLEASE DON'T BE TOO PROUD TO PRAY
IT MAY BE 2004 BUT THE WORDS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN STILL RING TRUE.