The Gettysburg Challenge

The Gettysburg Challenge

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From

19^th of November

Seven Score and Fourteen years ago   

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Abraham Lincoln spoke of the USA’s great remaining task in his “Gettysburg Address.”  The unfinished work is governing the people, by the people, and for the people under God.  The question is; can, a nation “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” survive when the liberties of equals oppose each other?
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Keeping this form of government from “perishing from the earth” will take more than fearless optimism because accommodating the liberty of others as equals is inconsistent with human nature.  Our great remaining task demands a prayer that this nation of equals will unit as “the people.”  I believe, even this impossible task is still possible, with God…so join me and pray.
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ABRAHAM LINCOLN, “GETTYSBURG ADDRESS” (19 NOVEMBER 1863)
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[1] 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.
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[2] 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 battle-field 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.
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[3] But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate-we can not consecrate-we can not 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