The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party; and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect His purpose. I am almost ready to say that this is probably true; that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By His mere great power on the minds of the now contestants, He could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began. And, having begun, He could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds.--A Meditation on the Divine Will in the handwriting of Mr. Lincoln, formulated about September 30, 1862, and not written for the eye of men but apparently in the effort to define the moral aspects of the subject and to clarify his own spiritual outlook.--_Complete Works_, II, 243-44. 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 proved by all history, that those nations only are blest 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?--Fast Day Proclamation, March 30, 1863. _Complete Works_, II, 319. It is meet and right to recognize and confess the presence of the Almighty Father and the power of His hand equally in these triumphs and in these sorrows.... I invite the people of the United States ... to render the homage due to the Divine Majesty for the wonderful things He has done in the nation's behalf, and invoke the influence of his Holy Spirit to subdue the anger which has produced and so long sustained a needless and cruel rebellion.--Thanksgiving Proclamation, July 15, 1863. _Complete Works_, II, 370. In regard to the Great Book, I have only to say, it is the best gift which God has ever given man. All the good from the Saviour of the world is communicated to us through this book.--Response to Presentation of Bible. _Complete Works_, Nicolay and Hay's new and enlarged edition, twelve volumes, N. Y., 1905, X, 217-18.