Land of Lincoln

I live in the land of Lincoln and I love the man who bore that name.

 I think he was a remarkable man, raised up by the hand of God to carry our nation through one of its darkest chapters. I wish we had a President like him today. Technically, our President is like him--a lawyer from Illinois turned politician that has a way with words, but aside from those details they are night and day. One builds and unites--the other divides and devises.  One an unflinchingly honest character, the other--well, I will leave that up to your judgement.  How very ironic that one lawyer from Illinois healed a nation of its wounds with his words whilst the other destroys it with his, creating turmoil and strife and bringing us to the brink of yet another civil war which I fear we may see soon, and all in the name of color, equality, and enslavement. Oh how true that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. A portion of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address moved me. It applies in every sense to the current state of affairs in our nation,

“Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh."

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” (Delivered on Saturday, March 4, 1865)

Obviously, his line of thought was toward the African American slave trade but I thought about the Savior's scourging and the Jews scattering. 'Every drop of blood drawn with the lash'. Very poetic.  I also thought about the fact that an unprecedented number of Americans are on food stamps, and that the government welfare system is manipulating one man’s labor for another’s leisure.  This is wrong.  Our current president is advocating for measures that further increase the dependency of our citizens upon the government, rather than the free enterprise system. Let me quote a few authorities on the evil of this practice:

From President David O. McKay

“Recent disturbing events in our country–such as an alarming increase in nearly all categories of crime, divorce, juvenile and adult delinquency, riots at colleges, strikes of school teachers, civil disorders which go far beyond “peaceable assemblies,” the resurrection of a pagan philosophy that God is dead, demoralizing movies, television programs which encourage lewd and lascivious conduct, and now a report of a national committee on law enforcement which, instead of recommending the enforcement of our criminal laws, would surrender to the forces of evil by eliminating from the category of crime nearly all sex offenses–have given me great concern and prompt me to write you. . .”

Sound familiar anyone?

“I cannot help but think that there is a direct relationship between the present evil trends which I have above indicated, and the very marked tendency of the people of our country to pass on to the state the responsibility for their moral and economic welfare. This trend to a welfare state in which people look to and worship government more than their God, is certain to sap the individual ambitions and moral fiber of our youth unless they are warned and rewarned of the consequences. History, of course, is replete with the downfall of nations who, instead of assuming their own responsibility for their religious and economic welfare, mistakenly attempted to shift their individual responsibility to the government.” (Letter from President David O. McKay to Ernest L. Wilkinson and the BYU Faculty.)

From President Ezra Taft Benson,

“The ethic of today seems calculated to indoctrinate our citizenry toward a dependency on the state. Our Founding Fathers recognized that certain rights were inalienable, that is, God-given; today, the state is being looked to as the guarantor of human rights—life, liberty, and property. Our forebears practiced the biblical ethic that man should earn his bread by the sweat of his own brow; today’s ethic seems to be that it is right to be supported by the sweat of another’s brow.” (Source: Ezra Taft Benson, This Nation Shall Endure, published 1977)

From President Howard W. Hunter,

“What is the real cause of this trend toward the welfare state, toward more socialism? In the last analysis, in my judgment, it is personal unrighteousness. When people do not use their freedoms responsibly and righteously, they will gradually lose these freedoms. . . .If man will not recognize the inequalities around him and voluntarily, through the gospel plan, come to the aid of his brother, he will find that through “a democratic process” he will be forced to come to the aid of his brother. The government will take from the “haves” and give to the “have nots.” Both have last their freedom. Those who “have,” lost their freedom to give voluntarily of their own free will and in the way they desire. Those who “have not,” lost their freedom because they did not earn what they received. They got “something for nothing,” and they will neither appreciate the gift nor the giver of the gift.

Under this climate, people gradually become blind to what has happened and to the vital freedoms which they have lost.” ( Source: Speeches of the Year 1965-1966, pp. 1-11, “The Law of the Harvest”, Devotional Address, Brigham Young University, 8 March 1966 )

Let me end with this, another quote from Lincoln that I think sums up our problem and points us to the answer:

“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.”

(President Abraham Lincoln's Proclamation:A Day Of National Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer in the The United States Of America on April 30, 1863)