CHAPTER XXVIII. 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{257} 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.”{258}

“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{259} 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{260}-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{261} 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{262} 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{263} 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.