American Scripture

154 years ago today Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address.  It is one of the most revered speeches  in our history.  It is easily one of the best speeches by an American President.  The battle had taken place in early July, 1863.  Lincoln had been invited to Gettysburg to participate in a commemoration of the battle and to dedicate the hallowed ground.  He was not even the featured speaker of the day.  But his words ring soundly down through the decades as a rallying cry for our country.  It's only about 260 words.  Not long.  Do yourself a favor and read.  Then go to a quiet place and re-read it.  And take just a few minutes to ponder what it meant then and what we can take from it today.  God knows...we need all the help we can get!

"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."