Abraham Lincoln's Religion

by Madison Clinton Peters

Reared in gripping, grinding, pinching penury and pallid poverty, amid the most squalid destitution possible to conceive, successively a choreboy, common laborer, rail-splitter, river pilot, and country storekeeper, he made his way through trials and difficulties that would have overwhelmed the bravest spirit; broke down every barrier, turned all obstacles into stepping-stones to progress, until he entered the arena of public life as a lawyer, commanding the confidence and respect of all who knew him and the terrible odds he had to fight against to win out in the battle of life.

Practically an unknown man when nominated for the Presidency, his election due to factional strife among his opponents, the people of America when approaching the greatest crisis in their history, turned as if by chance, and Providence that chance did guide, to this comparatively obscure man of the prairies, and with one bound he took his place with the world's greatest statesmen, the leader of his party, the real ruler of a mighty nation.

Led as it were by an Unseen Hand to the front, he solved problems that staggered the wisest minds of the nation, directed military campaigns, and conducted diplomatic relations with such skill as to astonish the most astute statesmen, cabinet ministers, and army generals. The rail-splitter of the Sangamon had become at the supreme moment the man of destiny to whom the nation looked in the most crucial period it had yet encountered.

Such a man is not an accident,—he is more than a circumstance. He is sent upon a mission and bears his credentials from a Higher Power than that of earth,—there is a purpose and a plan in his existence, the latter is mapped out, the former must be fulfilled.

In view of the fact that Lincoln had barely a year's schooling, where and how did he acquire his profound wisdom and his depth of knowledge?

That he was a God-ordained man, raised up to accomplish a divine design, few, who have closely studied the character and work of the man, will gainsay.

As the early prophets were inspired by God to utter golden words of divine wisdom, so Lincoln was inspired from the same source to speak, and act in conformity to divine intention. The keynote of this idea is forcibly struck by Henry Watterson, when he writes: "And a thousand years hence, no tragedy, no drama, no epic poem will be filled with greater wonder, or be followed by mankind with deeper feelings, than that which tells the story of his life and death."

Lincoln was a Providential man,—of that there can be little question, but every man has it in his power to be Providential also, though not in the same way, by being the deliverer of a race and the saviour of a nation, but by living up to the promptings of his better nature and seizing the opportunities God sends his way. Any man can thus be Providential in the full length and breadth and sweep of his life.

Next to Washington, Lincoln stands out the most colossal figure in American history, and is pre-eminent to Washington in the affection with which his memory is enshrined in the hearts of his countrymen; though Washington, as the Father of his Country, must always be given the more exalted place.

Washington gave us a country; Lincoln preserved it; Washington wrote the first page of our history; Lincoln was called upon to write another, and at a period which covers the most momentous crisis the country had witnessed since Liberty Bell proclaimed the birth of a separate and independent nation. He wrote the page and he kept it clean, though to do so he had to wash it in rivers of human blood, the warm heart's blood too of the countrymen he loved, but he would have willingly washed it in his own also, had the sacrifice been necessary. Alas! Lincoln's blood was shed in the end, not on the altar of his country, but by the hand of an assassin; not for the glory of the flag, but for the sorrow of the nation.