The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe had enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years, with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people.

I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.

In testimony 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 third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the independence of the United States the eighty-eighth.”

- Proclamation of President Abraham Lincoln, October 3, 1863.

“The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness.”

– Henry David Thoreau

Anger is never without a reason, but seldom with a good one.
–Benjamin Franklin

I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened. ~Mark Twain

 I have always said and always will say that the studious perusal of the Sacred Volume will make better citizens, better fathers, better husbands…. The Bible makes the best people in the world.

–THOMAS JEFFERSON:

I ‘M nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there ‘s a pair of us — don’t tell!
They ‘d banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

–Emily Dickinson

Contrast this bit of verse to Galatians 1:10.  It seems the Apostle Paul and Emily Dickinson had the same distaste for trying to please men.

My custom is to read four or five chapters of the Bible every morning immediately after rising…. It seems to me the most suitable manner of beginning the day…. It is an invaluable and inexhaustible mine of knowledge and virtue.

-John Quincy Adams

I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught 

-Winston Churchill

It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible…. He is worse than an infidel who does not read his Bible and acknowledge his obligation to God.
–George Washington