In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached, and passed.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.â€
I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.
I do not expect the Union to be dissolved - I do not expect the house to fall - but I do expect it will cease to be divided.
It will become all one thing or all the other.
I probably have too much time to think. The above deserves much reflection. The essence of his message was:
There is going to be a fight, there are going to be winners and losers, but after, we are going to be united again.
From a Biblical perspective, Jesus came to divide, separate his sheep. He foretold there world be division and he would be the center of the division, the cause and the issue that would divide people. Our tender ears don’t like to hear that. How can He speech of dividing and also peace?
Luk_12:51 Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I have come to divide people against each other!
As we approach the Christmas season, Many will quote the “peace on earth”. But all the other translation state it slightly differently which changes the meaning.
Luk 2:14 “Glory to God in highest heaven, and peace on earth to those with whom God is pleased.”
So, what is the takeaway? would it be first you have division and then peace, or first peace and then division?
I think Lincoln was very well grounded in his faith (not perfect like us/s) He saw a truth here and didn’t back away from it or change it. He was Honest Abe, said what he meant and meant what he said (how rare today)
Maybe we should be saying the same today. When we encounter liberals, we might say there is going to be a fight this, a house divided cannot stand.
I think so.
The abolitionists understood well that there must be division before their could ever be justice and peace.
“Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.”
“This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. In the light of these ideas, Negroes will be hunted at the North, and held and flogged at the South so long as they submit to those devilish outrages, and make no resistance, either moral or physical. Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must certainly pay for all they get. If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others.”
Frederick Douglass, 1857
Again, for the sake of anyone reading, I highly recommend that they read and study Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech very, very carefully. He presents an amazingly clear synopsis of the political, judicial, and governmental history of the years leading up to the war that is, in my opinion, unequaled anywhere else.