IF GOD BE FOR US, WHO CAN BE AGAINST US?
(Taken from The Evangelical Christian and Missionary Witness of Canada.)
THE following interesting article, with President Lincoln’s Proclamation, has been sent us by a friend in Toronto:—The Proclamation (which is subjoined) was issued by President Lincoln after two years of bitter and costly fighting had failed to give any striking advantage to the Northern armies, and they had experienced many humiliating defeats.
The President was also harassed by disloyalty in the North, and the conscription law was received with such antagonism that New York itself was thrown into the hands of the anti-draft mob. Several hundred officials who tried to enforce it were murdered in New York City by the mob.
Two years of the best effort of the North, two years of fighting in a cause that the South itself admits to-day was just, and the South was not only unbeaten and unbroken, but, totalling up results, regarded her cause as the more hopeful. Flushed with many victories she had no fear of the issue.
And then the Senate of the United States began to realize that they needed something more than a righteous cause in order to victory, and at their request Abraham Lincoln issued his celebrated Proclamation.
That day of prayer was not only the chronological centre of the four years of war, but it was the pivotal point.
In less than a week Stonewall Jackson, the Southern General who had never known a defeat, fell, accidentally shot by his own men. Many of the Southerners regard his death as the turning point of the war, believing that had he lived they would have triumphed, for while he lived, as his right-hand man, Lee was more than a match for all the Federal Generals.
1 Gniomh iii. 21.
2 Colos. i. 13.
From that point the cause of the North steadily rose while that of the South declined until Lee surrendered.
We have had three years of a far more costly war and still no one can foresee or foretell the end. And yet, while our armies far exceed the highest demand of Kitchener we still talk of more men, munitions and money as the factors for winning the War.
Britain still fights against the use of the word “humiliation” in any public appeal for prayer, and yet almost every word of confession in Lincoln’s proclamation could be used by the Empire to-day without taking as humble ground then as our sins would warrant.
But we do not want our sins brought home to us. In Canada, instead of confessing national sin, and appealing for prayer and humiliation, the effort is put forth by those in high places to hush up the truth concerning our corruptions.
How much longer must we go on sacrificing the flower of our manhood ere we acknowledge that we cannot win without God, and we cannot appeal to God with hands defiled and hearts that refuse to be humbled before Him?
BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. A PROCLAMATION.
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 of 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 truth, 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 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.
Now, therefore, in compliance with the request, and fully concurring in the views of the Senate, I do by this my 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 the people to abstain on that day 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 the 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 30th day of March
A.D. 1863. (Signed) ABRAHAM LINCOLN.