CHAPTER XXXVIII.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN THE MAN FULL OF FAITH AND POWER.

It remains to speak of the most attractive and altogether the grandest quality in the noble character of Abraham Lincoln: his simple, constant, undoubting Christian faith. To those who are familiar with his history or his words, any discussion of this trait will seem unnecessary. But there is a necessity for it which may as well be dealt with now as at any future time.

Only bold, bad men assert that there is no God-no future life. The statement is so shocking that most men hesitate to make it. The free-thinkers, as they call themselves, compromise with their sensibilities by admitting that there is a God, to whom they deny all useful attributes, and a future life, which they say is free from all responsibility.

Shades of professed belief among these people are unimportant. To all intents and purposes they are infidels and the world so regards them. They believe that they have no souls to be saved, but are laid in the grave like sheep. They are, as Paul declares, of all men most miserable. They love to insist that those whom the world delights to honor are as destitute of faith as themselves. It seems to comfort them to show that others are as miserable as themselves. They persist in the claim that Abraham

Lincon was an infidel. They know that faith in the God of the Bible has been comforting to millions; that it has always made men better as well as happier; that where that belief is not, there are the dark places of the earth. They know that men love the memory of Lincoln because of his faith in God. Yet they would drag him down to their own level, although it should distress and shock the world.

Except the proprietors of this calumny of his disbelief in the Bible and revealed religion, no man has sought to stain the memory of Lincoln. His revilers are few; they can be counted on the fingers of a single hand. They are all infidels of course; coarsegrained men, in whom the animal strongly predominates. With a strange perversity they profess to admire the man while they wound his friends and cover his name with obloquy. One of them, who is harmless because he is so vile, is a common scold. Others, whose association he admitted out of his kindness of heart, are moved by the habit of the guest who publishes what he imperfectly gathered at the table of his host, will be remembered only for their scandals and be forgotten with them; and another defies the opinions of good men and finds great satisfaction in the misuse of his intellect by extolling infidel writers and (to use his own expression) in "pitching into" Moses, our Saviour, and the religious faith of our greatest American.

Abraham Lincoln an infidel? It is time that this foul libel, which crawls in dark places like a noisome reptile, had the life stamped out of it by the steel-clad heel of God's eternal truth. Whether in that furnace of affliction through which he passed when pure Ann Rutledge died, when his friends feared for his reason,

there were not hours of despondency when he cried out, "There is no God! no future, no justice," I neither know nor care. What I do know, what any one may know, is that he was afterward clothed and in his right mind, and then and ever afterward there was no more doubt of his sublime faith in an all-wise, omnipotent God and in the Bible than there was of his honesty or his existence.

There were men, and some of them still live, to whom his own expressions of his firm, undoubting faith are among their dearest memories of Abraham Lincoln. But they would despise themselves if they should oppose their personal testimony to the hearsay brain-dribble of these infidels and their witnesses. Nor would it be quite dignified to follow the example of Mr. Greeley, who commenced his refutation of a libel by remarking to the libeller: "You lie! You know you lie!" The witness I shall call will be unimpeachable; the world will accept his evidence against all the infidels who have been of all men most miserable since Nebuchadnezzar did eat grass as oxen and his nails were grown as bird's claws. My witness is Abraham Lincoln! Although it may involve some repetition, I shall bring togther his own statements of his views of the Deity, Christianity, and the Bible.

On the 11th of February, 1861, Abraham Lincoln left his home and private life on his way to the capital to undertake a great public trust, under circumstances of appalling difficulty. He knew and said that the duty was greater than had been imposed upon Washington or any man since his time. He said: "He [Washington] never could have succeeded except for the aid of Divine Providence. I feel that

I cannot succeed without the same divine aid which sustained him, 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 a pretender? No traitor, copperhead, or infidel ever made that accusation. Then he believed in and trusted Almighty God and in the efficacy of the prayers of his neighbors.

At Cincinnati on the same journey he said: “I cannot but turn and look for the support without which it will be impossible for me to perform that great task. I turn, then, and look to the great American people, and to that God who has never forsaken them."

At Albany he said that he still had "confidence that the Almighty, the Maker of the Universe, will bring us through this as he has through all the other difficulties of our country."

At Newark, N. J., on the 21st of February, he said to the mayor: "With regard to the great work of which you speak, I will say that I bring to it a heart filled with love for my country and an honest desire to do what is right. I am sure, however, that I have not the ability to do anything unaided of God, and that without his support and that of this free, happy, and intelligent people, no man can succeed in doing that, the importance of which we all comprehend."

In Independence Hall, after a patriotic reference to the memories of the place and the statement that he would be assassinated sooner than give up the promise of liberty to all men comprised in the great

Declaration there signed, he concluded thus: "I have said nothing but what I am willing to live by and, if it be the pleasure of Almighty God, to die by."

So much before he became President. But the Pickthanks of infidelity will say that these extracts do not prove that he had any faith in the Christian religion or in organized systems of Christianity. The doubting Thomases on that subject may be referred to the sentence in his first inaugural address in which he said that "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 our present difficulty."

His first message to Congress, on the 5th of July, 1861, after a complete statement of his views of the national duty, closes with these words:

"And having thus chosen our course, without guile and with pure purpose, let us renew our trust in God and go forward without fear and with manly hearts."

His message to the first regular session of Congress in December closed with this paragraph:

"The struggle of to-day is not altogether for today it is for a vast future also. With a reliance on Providence, all the more firm and earnest, let us proceed in the great task which events have devolved upon us."

On the 13th of September, 1862, a deputation representing the religious denominations of Chicago presented a memorial requesting him to issue the proclamation of emancipation at once. To this memorial he made a very temperate reply, and arguments pro and con followed. If he entertained the contempt of the infidel for Christian organization and work,