Excerpt from President Lincoln: From the Princetown Review, July, 1865

Every great event therefore is to be viewed in two different aspects: first, as the effect of natural causes; and, secondly, as a design and result of God's providence. The interpretation of Divine providence is indeed. Often a matter of great difficulty and responsibility. It requires humility and caution. Some of his dispensations are, as to their design, perfectly clear, others are doubtful, and others to us and for the present inscru table. In one thing however we are safe; we have a right to infer that the actual consequences of any event, whether great or small, are its designed consequences; whether intended in judgment or mercy to those affected by them must be deter mined partly by their nature, partly by their attendant circum stances, and partly by the course of subsequent events. Why the Reformation was suppressed in Italy and Spain, and allowed to succeed in Northern Germany and Great Britain, we cannot even now determine; but it is none the less our duty to recog nize these events as due to the ordering providence of God, and to study them as such.

No Christian can look upon the events of the last four years without being deeply impressed with the conviction that they have been ordered by God to produce great and lasting changes in the state of the country, and probably of the world. Few periods of equal extent in the history of our race are likely to prove more influential in controlling the destinies of men. Standing, as we now do, at the close of one stage at least of this great epoch, it becomes us to look back and to look around us, that we may in some measure understand what God has wrought.

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