Chapter VIII: Front Matter (8)

More striking still, Lincoln's trust in God and His overruling providence. Mr. Herndon in his biography and Dr. Abbott in an editorial and an oration at Cooper Institute emphasize the agnosticism of Lincoln. The one says that in his youth he wrote an article against Christianity, and the other that he was not a technical Christian. Dr. Abbott thinks all this so important that he places the agnosticism of Lincoln at the forefront. But too much has been made of the schoolboy article of Lincoln on doubt and infidelity. In his youth Gladstone was a Tory, but he outgrew it. In the outset Paul was against Christianity. Tennyson and Wordsworth in their teens wrote puerile verse, just as Lincoln in his teens wrote a foolish paper. But it is cruelly unfair not to allow Abraham Lincoln the full benefit of what he came to be, and not to take the man at his best. It is unfair to say that a man is what he is at his worst and lowest point; a man is what he is at his best and highest point. Stephen A. Douglas said Lincoln was the most honest man he ever knew. Well, if Lincoln was an honest man in his character, he must have been honest in talking about his religion and his faith in God. Was Abraham Lincoln an agnostic in that hour when he spoke his farewell words to his neighbours in Springfield, about starting on the memorable journey to his inauguration? He said: "I feel that I cannot succeed without the same divine aid that sustained Washington, and on the same Almighty Being I place my reliance for support; and I hope you, my friends, will all pray that I may receive that divine assistance without which I cannot succeed, but with which success is certain." Was Abraham Lincoln without faith, and did he play to the gallery, when he set apart a day of fasting and prayer after the defeat at Bull Run? Having said that Abraham Lincoln was an honest man, why not remember it, when these critics read his First Inaugural, in which he declares that "intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favoured land, are still competent to adjust in the best way all our present difficulty." When Abraham Lincoln wrote the mother, Mrs. Bixby, "I pray that the heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement," he meant that he believed in God, in a God who answered prayer, in a God who cared for the mother living, and the five brave boys dead. "The Almighty has His own purposes," said Lincoln, in the Second Inaugural, an address that is steeped in religion, that exhales trust in God. Take God out of that Second Inaugural, and it would be like taking health out of the body, wisdom out of the book, sweetness out of the song, culture out of the intellect, life out of the body. You cannot in one breath say that Lincoln was an agnostic, and then in the next one say that Lincoln was an honest man. I care not one whit what Mr. Herndon says. I care everything about what Abraham Lincoln says about himself in his greatest speeches, in his noblest hours, when he gave his countrymen his latest, deepest, profoundest thoughts.

In trying to explain the character of Lincoln we therefore make our final appeal unto God, for God alone is equal to the making of this great man. When long time has passed, the name of Lincoln will probably be mentioned with Moses, Julius Cæsar, Paul, Shakespeare. Men will read a few of his paragraphs as a kind of Bible of Patriotism. Washington's name will not be less, but Lincoln's will certainly be more and more, and then still more. God and Sorrow made the man great.

And this is his life story. In the darkest hour of the Republic, when liberty and slavery were struggling to see which should rule the old homestead, it became evident that slavery would turn the garden into a desert, and the house into a ruin. And seeking a deliverer and a saviour, the great God, in His own purpose, passed by the palace with its silken delights. He took a little babe in His arms, and called to His side His favourite angel, the angel of Sorrow. Stooping, he whispered, "Oh, Sorrow, thou well-beloved teacher, take thou this little child of Mine and make him great. Take him to yonder cabin in the wilderness; make his home a poor man's house; plant his narrow path thick with thorns, cut his little feet with sharp and cruel rocks; as he climbs the hills of difficulty, make each footprint red with his own life-blood; load his little back with burdens; give to him days of toil and nights of study and sleeplessness; wrest from his arms whatever he loves; make his heart, through sorrow, as sensitive to the sigh of a slave as a thread of silk in a window is sensitive to the slightest wind that blows; and when you have digged lines of pain in his cheeks, and made his face more marred than the face of any man of his time, bring him back to me, and with him I will free three million slaves." That is how God made Abraham Lincoln great.

And then,--we slew him. For that is the way our ignorant, sinful earth has always rewarded its greatest souls. Ours is a world where we crucify the Saviour in Jerusalem, where we poison Socrates in Athens, where we exile Dante in Italy, and burn Savonarola in Florence, and starve Cervantes in Madrid, and jail Bunyan in Bedford,--for the greatest manhood is always rewarded with martyrdom. And what better thing for Abraham Lincoln than assassination, because he has emancipated three million slaves and saved the Union, as the last, best hope of earth?

But, lo, who are these in bright array, looking over the battlements of heaven, while the forces of liberty and slavery in other forms struggle together on these earthly plains beneath? These with radiant faces unstained by tears, that seem never to have known the mark of pain or sorrow? Ah! these are they who have come out of great tribulation, anguish and martyrdom; Paul from the stones; Homer from his blindness; Socrates from his cup of poison; Milton from his heart-break; Savonarola from his fagots, and Lincoln from his long martyrdom--the least part of which was the shot that freed his spirit in the hour of triumph and joy.

Index

Abolition Societies in the South, 25

Abominations, tariff of, 50, 163

Æsop's Fables, 290, 297,316

"Adam Bede," 148

Adams, Charles F., 54, 243

Adams, John, 83, 121

Alabama, secession, 189

_Alabama_, the, 225, 238, 245

_Albemarle_, the, 245

Albert, Prince Consort, 226

Aldersen, Judge, 107

Alva, Duke of, 15, 264

American Tract Society, 296

Ames, Fisher, 213

Andersonville, 269, 270

Anne, Queen, 18

Anti-Slavery epoch, importance of, 6, 7, 13

Arab slave-hunters, 30

Athens, 14, 41, 212

Atlanta and Sherman, 249

Austin, James T., 81

Bach, John S., 301

Bacon, Lord, 110

Bailey, Kentucky editor, 140

Bancroft, George, 104, 282

Bates, Edward, 184

Beauregard, P. G. T., 192, 244

Beecher, Henry Ward, 49, 69, 91, 181, 204;