"(Next) Under God," Phrasal Idiom
In
my
previous post on "under God," I missed the real meaning of the
expression, as Lincoln and others used it -- and so, by a wide mark,
did the people
who interpolated it in the Pledge.
The OED
gives as one entry for under
the meaning "In
addition
to; besides," as in
"This
woman lovid by wey of synne an other knyght,
vndir hire husbond." That sense was obsolete by the 16th century, but
it seems to have partially survived in the idiom "under God," for which the
dictionary gives a sense, "under
God: as a secondary cause or mediate object of gratitude."
That
definition may be a little hard to understand, but you can
see how
the phrase is used when you search for it in the works collected in the
Library of America, where it's actually rather frequent in works
published before 1860, usually with the meaning "with God's help," or
"after God" (with an implicit "of course") in expressions of indebtedness, gratitude, obligation, and the like:
...their
labors have certainly been the means, under God, of
producing
fruits of moral and social
regeneration. The United States Democratic Review 1843
On
their [Evangelical ministers'] skill, their judgment, their decision,
their energy, their faith,
will
depend under God the glorious result. What
are Ministers to do in the Great Controversy of the Age, 1844
He
then, thanked him very kindly.for his help in our great danger, and
said to him, John, ye have been the means under God to save our natural
life, suffer me to be a means under God to
save your soul, by good information to bring you out of your dangerous
errours. Books Relating to America,
1815.
And
it occurs in this meaning in Parson Weems' biography of Washington, as well:
"Sons
and daughters of Columbia, gather yourselves together around the bed of
your expiring father--around the last bed of him to whom you and your
children owe, under God, many of the best blessings of this life."
The
meaning of the phrase is particularly evident in the variant "next
under God," which occurs several times in the collection:
"The death of William Barents put us in
no small discomfort, as being the chiefe guide and onley pilot to whom
we reposed ourselves next under God." Early English Explorers, 1856
Thereto help me, next under God, the
confidence of my fellow-countrymen! Freiligrath's
Poems, 1845
In short, the phrase "under God" had nothing to do with God's temporal
sovereignity; it was, rather, a way of acknowledging that the efforts
of men are always contingent on His providence. And that is how Lincoln
intended it, as meaning something like "with God's help, of course":
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...
Lincoln would have had trouble making sense of the use of the words in
the Pledge -- to him it would have been an ungrammatical way of saying
something like, "one nation, with God's help (of course), indivisible..." or "one nation, after God, indivisible..." As I
said in my earlier post, a strategic misreading of history.
Posted by Geoff Nunberg at June 20, 2004 03:07 PM