Page:United States Statutes at Large Volume 102 Part 5.djvu/948

 la^ STAT. 4954

PROCLAMATION 5767—FEB. 3, 1988

women by observing that week with appropriate ceremonies and activities. IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this second day of February, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-eight, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and twelfth... RONALD REAGAN

Proclamation 5767 of February 3, 1988

National Day of Prayer, 1988 By the President of the United States of America A Proclamation Americans in every generation have turned to their Maker in prayer. In adoration and in thanksgiving, in contrition and in supphcation, we have acknowledged both our dependence on Almighty God and the help He offers us as individuals and as a Nation. In every circumstance, whether peril or plenty, whether war or peace, whether gladness or mourning, we have searched for and sought God's presence and His power. His blessings and His protection. His freedom and His peace, for ourselves, for our children, and for our beloved land. That was surely so at the very beginning of our Nation, in the earliest days of our quest for independence and liberty. It could only be thus, for a people who recognized God as the Author of freedom; who cherished the ancient but ever new words of Leviticus, "Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof and who cast those words where they would ring out forever, on the Liberty Bell; who affirmed along with Thomas Jefferson that the God Who gave us life gave us liberty as well. So did they believe, those who gathered in Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia in 1774, the members of the First Continental Congress. They had come together, in times that tried men's souls, to deliberate in the united interests of America and for our "civil and religious liberties." John Adams later wrote his wife Abigail about what followed: "When Congress first met, Mr. Gushing made a motion that it should be opened with prayer." Some delegates opposed the motion, citing differences in belief among the members; but Sam Adams, that bold lover of liberty and our country, arose to utter words of healing and unity. "I can hear the prayer," he said, of anyone "of piety and virtue who is ... a friend to his country." He went on to suggest that a clergyman of a persuasion other than his own open the First Continental Congress with prayer. And so it happened. Because Sam Adams gave voice to all the goodness, the genius, and the generosity that make up the American spirit, the First Continental Congress made its first act a prayer—the^ beginning of a great tradition. We have, then, a lesson from the Founders of om* land, those giants of soul and intellect whose courageous pledge of life and fortune and

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