Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln/Volume 1/Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI
LINCOLN'S RELIGION
Abraham Lincoln, who in the years of his adolescence was extremely latitudinarian in his religious beliefs, when entrusted with the mission of greatest import to humanity ever confided to man since Moses the lawgiver, became fully reconciled to the essential truths of Christianity.
Joshua Fry Speed, the most intimate and unselfish friend that Mr. Lincoln ever had, said: "When I knew him [Lincoln] in early life, he was a sceptic. He had tried hard to be a believer, but his reason could not grasp and solve the great problem of redemption as taught. He was very cautious never to give expression to any thought or sentiment that would grate harshly upon a Christian's ear. For a sincere Christian he had a great respect. He often said that the most ambitious man might live to see every hope fail, but no Christian could live to see his fail because fulfilment could come only when life ended. But this was a subject we never discussed. The only evidence I have of any change was in the summer before he was killed. I was invited out to the Soldiers' Home to spend the night. As I entered the room, near night, he was sitting near a window, intently reading his Bible. Approaching him I said: 'I am glad to see you so profitably engaged.' 'Yes,' said he, 'I am profitably engaged.' 'Well,' said I, 'if you have recovered from your scepticism, I am sorry to say that I have not.' Looking me earnestly in the face, and placing his hand upon my shoulder, he said: 'You are wrong, Speed; take all of this Book upon reason that you can, and the balance on faith, and you will live and die a happier and better man.'"
Judge Gillespie of Edwardsville, Ill. (the same who jumped out of the window of the Legislature with Lincoln), says: "I asked him [Lincoln] once what was to be done with the South after the Rebellion was put down. He said some thought their heads ought to come off; 'but,' said he, 'if it was left to me, I could not tell where to draw the line between those whose heads should come off and those whose heads should stay on.' He said that he had been recently reading the history of the rebellion of Absalom, and that he inclined to adopt the views of David. 'When David was fleeing from Jerusalem, Shimei cursed him. After the Rebellion was put down, Shimei craved a pardon. Abishai, David's nephew, the son of Zeruiah, David's sister, said: "This man ought not to be pardoned, because he cursed the Lord's anointed." David said: "What have I to do with you, ye sons of Zeruiah, that you should this day be adversaries unto me? Know ye that not a man shall be put to death in Israel."'"
Mr. Lincoln's early religious views conformed, not to dogmas and creeds, but to the religion of humanity. Of Sabbaths, when his parents would be at church, he would hold a simple religious service at home, and would enforce upon his small auditory the duty of kindness toward all animate objects. As he grew to manhood, his practical mind discarded all conventional matters appertaining to religion, and boldly took issue with every artificial barrier, mediator, or approach which lay between his Maker and man. Whether he kept his protest within the strict realms of ideal propriety it is needless to inquire; what the great martyr believed in the years of his adolescence can have none but speculative interest. The theories of the untutored mind are prone to fallacies, alike in sacred and secular things. What he believed as the result of maturity of intellect, inquiry, suffering, and experience is all that is valuable as example.
While all men are agents of the Deity to enforce His will, Mr. Lincoln was the especial nuncio and vicegerent of the Deity to execute a supernatural mission. So Mr. Lincoln believed, and he humbly and reverently accepted the mission, and performed it with zeal and fidelity.
Logically and inevitably, therefore, he believed in God; in His superintending Providence; in His intervention in mundane affairs for the weal of the race. To Him he made report; from Him he took counsel; at His hands he implored current aid; he ascribed glory and thanks to Him; he recognized Him as the Supreme Good. God came to him monitorially; with succor; with good cheer; with victory. He confounded the counsels of his accusers; He made the wrath of his enemies to minister to his good; His direct intervention the President experienced in many ways. Lincoln acknowledged all with a grateful heart; he ordered national thanksgivings and praises on every suitable occasion; and for some reason, clear to Omniscience but inscrutable to us, he was stricken down, as his great prototype was at Mount Pisgah, when he came in sight of the promised land. Therefore, he had more proofs to warrant his belief, and believed more implicitly in God, and approached nearer to Him, than any man of the race since Moses the lawgiver.
In my "Life on the Circuit with Lincoln," in an elaborate chapter, I make, as I believe, a conclusive argument in favor of Mr. Lincoln's claims to be called a Christian, but the proofs are so ample and conclusive, unless Mr. Lincoln be a trickster in speech, as to leave no excuse for any contrary opinion.
In a brief letter of acceptance of the first Presidential nomination, Mr. Lincoln implores "the assistance of Divine Providence." Again, in his farewell address to his neighbors, he also gratefully and reverently placed his reliance on Providence, and invoked the prayers of his neighbors upon his mission, and in several of his speeches en route to the Capitol, he recognized the power and mercy of God.
In his Inaugural Address, he says: "Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust, in the best way, all our present difficulty." The closing sentence of his first Message to Congress was thus: "And . . . without guile and with pure purpose, let us renew our trust in God, and go forward without fear, and with manly hearts."
He opens his first regular message to Congress by expressing gratitude to God, and closes by expressing reliance on Him. And in a special message to Congress on March 6, 1862, he says: "In view of my great responsibility to my God and my country," etc.
His fourth and last regular Message bestows the profoundest gratitude to Almighty God.
The second Inaugural is an almost unbroken invocation to God for His assistance and succor in behalf of our bleeding nation. It contains passages (I say it without irreverence) which approach the Divine Sermon on the Mount for moral sublimity and supreme elevation of thought as closely as a merely human document can do it. It is, in my judgment, the most sublime of Mr. Lincoln's utterances. I think it exceeds even the Gettysburg speech. It is, and will ever remain, a sacred classic.
In the general exultation which followed the surrender of Lee, the President said: "He from whom all blessings flow must not be forgotten."
And a call for a National Thanksgiving was being prepared when he was stricken down.
I have thus presented but a small part of the documents and sayings in which Mr. Lincoln recognized, praised, and relied on the Almighty. He seemed to act as if He was present, exercising a personal supervision over our affairs, and in every way, and upon all proper occasions, he recognizes and attests his gratitude to Him for mercies and providences, and humbly receives blows from His chastening hand.
The proper Christianity of such a man cannot be questioned. The President once said: "When any church will inscribe over its altar as its sole qualification for membership, the Saviour's condensed statement of the substance of both law and gospel, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind and thy neighbor as thyself,' that church will I join with all my heart and all my soul."
Then his absolute morality, purity of life, beneficence of conduct, abounding charity, and the catholicity of his love of his kind, must inure to his infinite credit. No ruler of a republic ever had so much power; none ever employed it so tenderly, so benevolently, so mercifully. No man ever saved so many human lives by the pulsations of his kindly heart; no power save the Almighty ever used the power of pardon so graciously and benignly; no man ever dried the mourners' tears, assuaged grief of stricken ones, restored the condemned to life and hope, to such an extent, and with such a sympathetic soul as he. His succor was almost Divine in essence, and gracious and gentle as the dews of Heaven in manner.
More than any other man in modern life, he completely fulfilled the requirement, and justified the asseveration, of James, the brother of our Lord, that "pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world."
Mr. Lincoln was an extremely sad and melancholy man; at times this sadness was laid aside for an hour, and he felt really blithe and jocund; but his feelings gravitated and tended to the sombre, mystical, and melancholy. In the realms of his diseased fancy, the heavens were always hung in funereal black. He was prone to fits of weird abstraction, and enveloped in an atmosphere of morbid reverie; he lived largely in unseen realms, communed often with invisible spirits, and talked with a personal God. Although in apparent opposition to his tendencies to fatalism, he yet believed in the direct intervention of God in our national affairs, and he frequently used to ask Him in a direct, manly way to grant this boon, avert that disaster, or advise him what to do in a given contingency. "The Mystics," says Murdock, "profess a pure, sublime, and perfect devotion, wholly disinterested, and maintain that in calm and holy contemplation, they have direct intelligence with the Divine Spirit, and acquire a knowledge of Divine things which is unattainable by the reasoning faculty." In religion, Lincoln was in essence a mystic, and all his adoration was in accordance with the tenets of that order.