“And he just dropped his head and groaned, seemed as if I could hear him prayin’, ‘Oh, my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me!’
“Think he prayed? Think Abraham Lincoln prayed?” Billy’s eyes were stern, and his voice full of reproachful surprise.
“I know he did. You wouldn’t ask that question if you could have heard him that night he left here for Washington sayin’ good-by to us in the rain, tellin’ us that without God’s help he could not succeed in what he was goin’ into—that with it, he could not fail; tellin’ us he was turnin’ us over to God, and askin’ us to remember him in our prayers. Why, a man can’t talk like that that don’t pray, leastwise an honest man like Abraham Lincoln.
“And he couldn’t have stood it without God, sufferin’ as he did, abused as he was, defeated again and again, and yet always hangin’ on, always believin’. Don’t you see from what I’ve been tellin’ you that Abraham Lincoln all through the war was seekin’ to work with God, strugglin’ to find out His purpose, and make it prevail on earth. A man can’t do that unless he gets close to God, talks with Him.
“How do you suppose a man—just a common man, like Abraham Lincoln, could ever have risen up to say anything like he did in ’65 in his Inaugural if he hadn’t known God:
“‘With malice toward none, with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan—to do which may achieve a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.’
“That ain’t ordinary human nature—particularly when it’s fightin’ a war—that’s God’s nature. If that ain’t what Christ had in mind, then I don’t read the Bible right.
“Yes, sir, he prayed—that’s what carried him on—and, God heard him and helped him. Fact is I never knew a man I felt so sure God approved of as Abraham Lincoln.”