SERVICE OF COMMEMORATION
V. HOLD HIGH THE TORCH
Leader:
Because you live, though out of sight and reach,
I will, so help me God, live bravely, too,
Taking the road with laughter and gay speech,
Alert, intent to give life all its due. Winifred Letts
Lincoln's Speech at Gettsyburg
Leader:
Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Assembly:
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether- that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.
Leader:
We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live.
Assembly:
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground.
Leader:
The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.
Assembly:
The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
Leader:
It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
Assembly:
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us : that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion:
That we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
prayer
Hymn, 153 Beautiful for Spacious Skies
1 O beautiful for spacious skies,
For purple mountain majesties
America! America!
And crown thy good with brotherhood,
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2 O beautiful for pilgrim feet,
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
America! America!
Confirm thy soul in self-control.
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