Lincoln's Use of the Bible

by S. Trevena Jackson

We shall speak of what others have said concerning Lincoln’s use of the Bible; what he himself said of it; the use he made of it; and the influence of the Scriptures on his life and literature.

In Herndon’s Life of Lincoln the partner and President is portrayed as a foe rather than a friend of the Bible. This is seen to be erroneous by simply reading his speeches, for they are like the dewdrops on the blades of green in early fall, sparkling everywhere. It is hard to read a great speech of Lincoln’s without seeing the influence of the Bible on his life, works, and style.

Sarah K. Bolton writes: “Mrs. Lincoln possessed but one book in the world, the Bible; and from this she taught her children daily. Abraham had been to school for two or three months, to such a school as the rude country afforded, and had learned to read. Of quick mind and retentive memory, he soon came to know the Bible well-nigh by heart, and to look upon his gentle teacher as the embodiment of all the good precepts in the book.”

Lincoln’s mother died after a lingering illness when he was ten years old. It is said that during her sickness he cared for her as tenderly as a girl, and that he often sat at her side and read the Bible to her for hours. Much of his later life and style was influenced by his early reading of the Bible.

L. E. Chittenden says: “Except the instructions of his mother, the Bible more powerfully controlled the intellectual development of the son than all other causes combined. He memorized many of its chapters and had them perfectly at his command. Early in his professional life he learned that the most useful of all books to the public speaker was the Bible. After 1857 he seldom made a speech which did not contain quotations from the Bible.”

Alexander Williamson, who was engaged as tutor in the Lincoln family in Washington, said: “Mr. Lincoln very frequently studied the Bible with the aid of Cruden’s Concordance, which lay on his table.” The Presbyterian pastor in Springfield, Rev. James Smith, states that Lincoln became a believer in the Bible and Jesus Christ as the Son of God. It is true that Mr. Smith placed before Lincoln the arguments for and against the divine authority of the Scriptures. He looked at it from a lawyer’s viewpoint, and, at the conclusion, declared the argument in favor of divine authority and inspiration of the Bible unanswerable.

Mr. Arnold, in his Life of Lincoln, speaking of the Second Inaugural Address, said: “Since the days of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount, where is the speech of emperor, king, or ruler which can compare with this? May we not without irreverence say that passages of this address are worthy of that holy book which he read daily, and from which, during his long days of trial, he had drawn inspiration and guidance? This paper in its solemn recognition of the justice of the Almighty God reminds us of the words of the old Hebrew prophets.”

Bishop Simpson, in his funeral address, said: “Abraham Lincoln was a good man, a man of noble heart in every way. He read the Bible frequently; he loved it for its great truths; and he tried to be guided by its precepts. He believed in Christ as the Saviour of sinners, and I think he was sincere in trying to bring his life in harmony with the precepts of revealed religion. I doubt if any President has shown such trust in God, or in public document so frequently referred to divine aid.”

In the year 1901 President Roosevelt delivered an address before the American Bible Society on “Reading the Bible,” in which he said: “Lincoln, sad, patient, kindly Lincoln, who, after bearing upon his shoulders for four years a greater burden than that borne by any other man of the nineteenth century, laid down his life for the people whom, living, he had served so well, built up his entire reading upon his study of the Bible. He had mastered it absolutely, mastered it as later he mastered only one or two other books, notably Shakespeare, mastered it so that he became almost a man of one book who knew that book, and who instinctively put into practice what he had been taught therein; and he left his life as part of the crowning work of the century just closed.”

Lincoln often spoke and wrote of the value of the Bible. To Joshua F. Speed, one of his most intimate friends, and at one time his roommate, he wrote: “I am profitably engaged in reading the Bible. Take all of this book upon reason that you can, and the balance on faith, and you will live and die a better man,” Mrs. Speed gave Lincoln a Bible, and, after a visit to that home in 1841, he wrote to the daughter, Mary Speed, and at the close said: “Tell your mother I have not got her present (an Oxford Bible) with me, but I intend to read it regularly when I return home. I doubt not that it is really, as she says, the best cure for the blues, could one but take it according to truth.”