[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 2]
[House]
[Page 2177]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

                                 PRAYER

  The Chaplain, the Reverend Daniel P. Coughlin, offered the following 
prayer:
  Lord God, eternal and ever present, You have blessed the history of 
the United States with the birth, leadership and lasting genius of 
Abraham Lincoln.
  Lincoln's mystic dream of the union of States was bought at a great 
price.
  Lord, his second inaugural address as President, wept over the cost 
of doing by violence what might have been done by reason.
  Human lives, irregardless of color, and property values had gone up 
in smoke as this country engaged in a civil war ultimately over civil 
rights.
  Lincoln witnessed the terrific human cost it took to redefine the 
human species no longer as property.
  Lord, may this profound reverence for the human dimension remain for 
this Nation and its people our measuring tape of policy's success or 
failure, our true bottom line, the most lasting of values for today's 
world and forever. Amen.

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