wonen better setter in

Chicago, of as you say, a good many

XI.

LINCOLN AS A CHRISTIAN.

"I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go; my own wisdom, and that of all about me, seemed insufficient for that day."

-PRESIDENT LINCOLN.

"God bless the Methodist Church! Bless all the Churches, and blessed be God who giveth us the Churches."

*

-PRESIDENT LINCOLN.

"That the Almighty does make use of human agencies, and directly intervenes in human affairs, is one of the plainest statements of the Bible. I have had so many evidences of this, so many instances of being ordered by some supernatural power, that I cannot doubt this power is of God." --PRESIDENT LINCOLN.

"I made a solemn vow before God that

the result by a declaration of freedom to the slaves."

I would crown

-PRESIDENT LINCOLN.

that

Mr. Lincoln was a fatalist; he believed, and often said,

"There's a divinity that shapes our ends
Rough-hew them how we will,"

and, as a corollary from this belief, that the Almighty controlled the affairs of man and made the wrath of man to praise him. In all stages of his administration, and before; commencing with his first public utterance after his election, he declared that, with God's help, he should succeed, and without it he would fail. Likewise, before he was run for the presidency, he made frequent references to God in the same spirit of devoutness and trust; and, therefore, if he was honest: honest with his father on his dying bed, honest in what he feared was (and which proved to be), his last affectionate farewell to his neighbors, honest to the many eminent bands of clergymen and Christian people who visited him, and

honest with his Cabinet in the most important consultation it ever held, then Lincoln, whether as man or President, believed in God as the Ruler of the Universe, in a blessed hereafter, and in the efficacy of prayer. But one of the conceded and uncontroverted facts of history is, that Lincoln was honest, pre-eminently and conspicuously so; that his sterling quality was so emphasized and pronounced as to gain for him the prefix of "Honest," in like manner as Aristides, by virtue of that sterling quality, was termed "the Just;" and this being so, the conclusion is inevitable, that Mr. Lincoln was practically and essentially, though not ritualistically, a Christian. Such asseverations as appear at the caption hereof are impossible to an atheist, infidel or scoffer. Mr. Lincoln believed himself to be an instrument of God; and that, as God willed, so would the contest be. He also believed in prayer and its efficacy, and that God willed the destruction of slavery through his instrumentality, and he believed in the Church of God as an important auxiliary.

By reference to Mr. Lincoln's early political and literary performances it will appear that he was more than usually addicted to a florid style, and to greatly exaggerated figures of speech; that the plain, direct, homely, common sense methods of his later and statesmanlike years were wholly wanting. Rhodomontade was as common in those youthful productions as plain assertion was in his maturity of life.

It is not, therefore, to be wondered at that, in the years of his adolescence, he is credited with very decided opinions, radical views and florid expressions on the subject of religion; but he was forty-five years of age when I first knew him, and his views either underwent a decided change or else he had grown reticent on that great subject. Certain it is that I never heard Lincoln express himself on the subject of religion at all. I recollect very well of spending an entire Sabbath day alone with him when he was holding a term of court at Urbana for Judge Davis, and, at his suggestion, we walked out in the big grove adjacent to town, after breakfast,