“25. I pray thee, let me go over and see the good land that is beyond Jordan, that goodly mountain, and Lebanon.
“26. But God was wroth with me for your sakes, and would not hear me: and the Lord said unto me, let it suffice thee: speak no more unto me of this matter:
“27. Get thee up unto the top of Pisgah, and lift up thine eyes westward and northward, and southward and eastward, and behold it with thine eyes: for thou shalt not go over this Jordan.”
After the President had read these words with great solemnity, he added:
“My Dear Father Chiniquy, let me tell you that I have read these strange and beautiful words several times, these last five or six weeks. The more I read them, the more, it seems to me that God has written them for me as well as for Moses.
“Has he not taken me from my poor log cabin by the hand, as he did of Moses in the reeds of the Nile, to put me at the head of the greatest and the most blessed of modern nations, just as he put that prophet at the head of the most blessed nation of ancient times? Has not God granted me a privilege, which was not granted to any living man, when I broke the fetters of 4,000,000 of men, and made them free? Has not our God given me the most glorious victories over our enemies? Are not the armies of the Confederacy so reduced to a handful of men, when compared to what they were two years ago; that the day is fast approaching when they will have to surrender.
“Now, I see the end of this terrible conflict, with the same joy of Moses, when at the end of his trying forty years in the wilderness; and I pray my God to grant me to see the days of peace and untold prosperity, which will follow this cruel war, as Moses asked God to see the other side of Jordan and enter the Promised Land. But, do you know that I hear in my soul, as the voice of God, giving me the rebuke which was given to Moses?
“Yes! every time that my soul goes to God to ask the favor of seeing the other side of Jordan, and eating the fruits of that peace, after which I am longing with such an unspeakable desire, do you know that there is a still but solemn voice, which tells me that I will see those things only from a long distance, and that I will be among the dead, when the nation, which God granted me to lead through those awful trials, will cross the Jordan, and dwell in that Land of Promise, where peace, industry, happiness and liberty will make everyone happy, and why so? Because he has already given me favors which he never gave, I dare say, to any man in these latter days.
“Why did God Almighty refuse to Moses the favor of crossing the Jordan, and 'entering the Promised Land? It was on account of his own nation’s sins! That law of divine retribution and justice, by which one must suffer for another, is surely a terrible mystery. But it is a fact which no man who has any intelligence and knowledge can deny. Moses, who knew that law, though he probably did not understand it better than we do, calmly says to his people: ‘God was wroth with me for your sakes.’
“But, though we do not understand that mysterious and terrible law, we find it written in letters of tears and blood wherever we go. We do not read a single page of history, without finding undeniable traces of its existence.