Lincoln stated "Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! It behooves us then to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins and to pray for clemency and forgiveness."
Joel Barlow, U.S. Consul to Algiers and France, wrote in Advice to the Privileged Orders in the Several States of Europe, Resulting from the Necessity and Propriety of a General Revolution in the Principle of Government (1792, 1956, p. 46): "The foundation of everything is ... that the people will form an equal representative government ... that the people will be universally armed ... A people that legislate for themselves ought to be in the habit of protecting themselves."
George Washington's tomb is engraved with John 11:25, where Jesus told Martha: "I am the Resurrection and the Life; sayeth the Lord. He that believeth in Me, though he were dead yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die."
On the Jewish Feast of Passover, the 15th day of the Hebrew month of Nisan, around 30-33 AD, Jesus was crucified as the "Lamb of God." The Apostle Paul wrote: "For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us." (I Corinthians 5:7) The lamb is considered the most innocent of animals. The Gospel of John recorded when John the Baptist saw Jesus, he exclaimed: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world!”
