PRESIDENT LINCOLN AS A RELIGIOUS MAN.
Soon after the death of Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Noah Brooks published in
_Harper’s Monthly_ an interesting article, devoted to reminiscences of
his dead friend. From this article, I make a few extracts, for which my
readers will thank me:
“Just after the last Presidential election, he said: ‘Being only mortal,
after all, I should have been a little mortified if I had been beaten in
this canvass; but that sting would have been more than compensated by
the thought that the people had notified me that all my official
responsibilities were soon to be lifted off my back.’ In reply to the
remark that in all these cares he was daily remembered by all who
prayed, not to be heard of men, as no man had ever before been
remembered, he caught at the homely phrase, and said, ‘Yes, I like that
phrase, “not to be heard of men,” and, again, it is generally true as
you say; at least I have been told so, and I have been a good deal
helped by just that thought.’ Then he solemnly and slowly added: ‘I
should be the most presumptuous blockhead upon this footstool, if I, for
one day, thought that I could discharge the duties which have come upon
me since I came into this place, without the aid and enlightenment of
One who is stronger and wiser than all others.’”
“At another time he said cheerfully, ‘I am very sure that if I do not go
away from here a wise man, I shall go away a better man, for having
learned here what a very poor sort of man I am.’ Afterward, referring to
what he called a change of heart, he said he did not remember any
precise time when he passed through any special change of purpose or
heart; but he would say, that his own election to office, and the crisis
immediately following, influentially determined him in what he called ‘a
process of crystallization’ then going on in his mind. Reticent as he
was, and shy of discoursing much of his own mental exercises, these few
utterances now have a value with those who knew him, which his dying
words would scarcely have possessed.”
“On Thursday of a certain week, two ladies from Tennessee came before
the President, asking the release of their husbands, held as prisoners
of war at Johnson’s Island. They were put off until Friday, when they
came again, and were again put off until Saturday. At each of the
interviews one of the ladies urged that her husband was a religious man.
On Saturday, when the President ordered the release of the prisoner, he
said to this lady: ‘You say your husband is a religious man: tell him,
when you meet him, that I say I am not much of a judge of religion, but
that, in my opinion, the religion which sets men to rebel and fight
against their Government, because, as they think, that Government does
not sufficiently help _some_ men to eat their bread in the sweat of
other men’s faces, is not the sort of religion upon which people can get
to heaven.’”
“On an occasion I shall never forget,” says the Hon. H. C. Denning, of
Connecticut, “the conversation turned upon religious subjects, and Mr.
Lincoln made this impressive remark: ‘I have never united myself to any
church, because I have found difficulty in giving my assent, without
mental reservation, to the long, complicated statements of Christian
doctrine which characterize their Articles of Belief and Confessions of
Faith. When any church will inscribe over its altar, as its sole
qualification of 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 thy neighbor as thyself,” that
church will I join with all my heart and with all my soul.’”
Though Mr. Lincoln never formally united himself with any church,
doubtless for the reason given above, because he knew of none broad and
tolerant enough for him, it is clear that his mind was much occupied
with matters connected with religion. No one could charge him with
scoffing at sacred things. Had he even been so inclined, the bereavement
which visited him in the death of his son Willie, who died February
20th, 1862, would assuredly have changed him. Devoted as he was to his
children, this loss affected him deeply, and it was not till several
weeks had passed that he was in any measure reconciled.
“Gentlemen,” said one of the guests at a dinner-party in Washington,
during which the President had been freely discussed, “you may talk as
you please about Mr. Lincoln’s capacity. I don’t believe him to be the
ablest statesman in America, by any means, and I voted against him on
both occasions of his candidacy. But I happened to see, or rather to
hear, something the other day that convinced me that, however deficient
he may be in the head, he is all right in the heart. I was up at the
White House, having called to see the President on business. I was shown
into the office of his private secretary, and told that Mr. Lincoln was
busy just then, but would be disengaged in a short time. While waiting,
I heard a very earnest prayer being uttered in a loud female voice in
the adjoining room. I inquired what it meant, and was told that an old
Quaker lady, a friend of the President’s, had called that afternoon and
taken tea at the White House, and that she was then praying with Mr.
Lincoln. After the lapse of a few minutes the prayer ceased, and the
President, accompanied by a Quakeress, not less than eighty years old,
entered the room where I was sitting. I made up my mind then, gentlemen,
that Mr. Lincoln was not a bad man; and I don’t think it will be easy
to efface the impression that the scene I witnessed, and the voice I
heard, made upon my mind!”
To some members of the Christian Commission who were calling upon him,
Mr. Lincoln said: “If it were not for my firm belief in an overruling
Providence, it would be difficult for me, in the midst of such
complications of affairs, to keep my reason on its seat. But I am
confident that the Almighty has His plans, and will work them out; and,
whether we see it or not, they will be the wisest and best for us. I
have always taken counsel of Him, and referred to Him my plans, and have
never adopted a course of proceeding without being assured, as far as I
could be, of His approbation. To be sure, He has not conformed to my
desires, or else we should have been out of our trouble long ago. On the
other hand, His will does not seem to agree with the wish of our enemy
over there (pointing across the Potomac). He stands the Judge between
us, and we ought to be willing to accept His decision. We have reason to
anticipate that it will be favorable to us, for our cause is right.”
It was during this interview, as Dr. Holland tells us, that the fact
was privately communicated to a member of the Commission that Mr.
Lincoln was in the habit of spending an early hour each day in prayer.
It will hardly be necessary, after the reader has read thus far, to
answer the charge made in some quarters that Mr. Lincoln was an infidel.
Few of his critics possess his simple faith in God and his deep
reverence for the Almighty, whose instrument he firmly believed himself
to be. I can not deny myself the satisfaction of reproducing here Dr.
Holland’s remarks upon the life and character of the President:
“Mr. Lincoln’s character was one which will grow. It will become the
basis of an ideal man. It was so pure, and so unselfish, and so rich in
its materials, that fine imaginations will spring from it to blossom and
bear fruit through all the centuries. This element was found in
Washington, whose human weaknesses seem to have faded entirely from
memory, leaving him a demi-god; and it will be found in Mr. Lincoln to a
still more remarkable degree. The black race have already crowned him.
With the black man, and particularly the black freedman, Mr. Lincoln’s
name is the saintliest which he pronounces, and the noblest he can
conceive. To the emancipated he is more than man--a being scarcely
second to the Lord Jesus Christ himself. That old, white-headed negro,
who undertook to tell what ‘Massa Linkum’ was to his dark-minded
brethren, embodied the vague conceptions of his race in the words:
‘Massa Linkum, he ebery whar; he know ebery ting; he walk de earf like
de Lord.’ He was to these men the incarnation of power and goodness; and
his memory will live in the hearts of this unfortunate and oppressed
race while it shall exist upon the earth.”
While the names of Lincoln and Washington are often associated, the
former holds a warmer place in the affections of the American people
than his great predecessor, who, with all his excellence, was far
removed by a certain coldness and reserve from the sympathies of the
common people. Abraham Lincoln, on the other hand, was always
accessible, and his heart overflowed with sympathy for the oppressed and
the lowly. The people loved him, for they felt that he was one of
themselves.