If you'd like to read Part One, Part Three, or Part Four, click away on the appropriate link.
After Roger Babson in Elder Mark E. Peterson's talk, "Warnings From the Past", comes a quote from the venerable Abraham Lincoln, my sixth cousin four times removed:
The Quote
Abraham Lincoln told the people of his day that America
“need fear no danger from without. …
If danger were ever to threaten the United States,
it will come from within.
‘As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide. …’”
Then the great emancipator added this:
“We have grown in numbers, wealth and power. …
But we have forgotten God. …
It behooves us then to humble ourselves before the offended Power,
to confess our national sins,
and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.”
Would you be interested to know that these two quotes happened about 25 years apart from each other?
The first part comes from Abraham Lincoln's Lyceum Address, which happened in 1838, when he was around 28 years old. The actual text seems a little bit different from Elder Peterson's talk as well - a tiny bit paraphrased.
Lincoln was speaking to the Young Men's Lyceum in Springfield, Illinois. He spoke about a recent mob burning of a black man in Saint Louis, MO. The actual text reads along these lines, with a little explanation from me:
"...At what point shall we expect the approach of danger (to our country)?
By what means shall we fortify against it?--
Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean,
and crush us at a blow?
Never!--
All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted)
in their military chest;
with a (Napoleon) Buonaparte for a commander,
could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge (Mountains), in a trial of a thousand years.
At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected?
I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us.
It cannot come from abroad.
If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.
As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide."
As I read this, I couldn't help but think of other incidents that happened in my own lifetime - the Rodney King incident in Los Angeles, the mobs that burned cities during COVID, and the death of George Floyd and the protests that arose around that and other incidents.
Such problems seem to still be with us, hundreds of years later. Could we destroy ourselves as a nation from within?
I do think we could, if we're not aware the possibility exists.
The second part of the quote comes not from a speech, but from Abraham Lincoln's proclamation that appointed a National Fast Day in 1863, during the Civil War, to encourage Americans to pray for help from God. The actual wording looked more like this:
"...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.
If you've never read Lincoln's speeches or his debates, they're well worth reading. He had such a masterful way with words, from the Gettysburg Address at his peak, all throughout his career. This is a good collection here.
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