[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 112 (Friday, August 12, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]

                                 prayer

  The Chaplain, the Reverend Richard C. Halverson, D.D., offered the 
following prayer:
  Let us pray:
  We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created 
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable 
Rights * * * to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among 
Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed * * 
*.--Declaration of Independence.
  Gracious, loving, patient God, this is our legacy in 1994--a 
political system grounded on faith in a Creator-God from whom comes 
human equality and liberty.
  President Lincoln called the Nation to a day of prayer and fasting 
with these words: ``We have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no 
other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God * * * we have 
vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these 
blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. 
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 
* * * to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and 
forgiveness.''
  Gracious God, give us ears to hear, minds to accept, and wills to 
obey.
  In the name of Him who gave His life for sinners. Amen.

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