In writing to John D. Johnston concerning his father’s illness, he said: “I sincerely hope Father will recover his health, but, at all events, tell him to remember and call upon and confide in our great and good and merciful Maker. He notes the fall of the sparrow and numbers the hairs of our heads, and he will not forget the dying man who puts his trust in him.”
Mr. William S. Speer wrote to Mr. Lincoln asking him to write a letter to give his definite views on the slavery question. Lincoln replied: “I have already done this many, many times, and it is in print and open to all who will read. Those who will not read or heed what I have already publicly said would not read or heed a repetition of it. ‘If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead.’”
In a letter to Reverdy Johnson he wrote: “I am a patient man, always willing to forgive on the Christian terms of repentance, and also to give ample time for repentance.” Lincoln wrote to General J. A. McClernand: “My belief is that the permanent estimate of what a general does in the field is fixed by the ‘cloud of witnesses’ who have been with him in the field.”
Lincoln was ever bringing his knowledge of the Scriptures to the minds of men. When an aged citizen, John Phillips, had done him honor, he wrote him: “The example of such devotion to civic duties in one whose days have been already extended an average lifetime beyond the psalmist’s limit cannot but be valuable and fruitful.”
We find in his speeches and letters the Bible at his tongue’s end. In his reply to Douglas at Alton he said: “He has warred upon them as Satan wars upon the Bible. The Bible says somewhere we are desperately selfish.” And, writing to J. F. Speed, he writes of those who are so interested in slavery, and says: “If, like Haman, they should hang upon the gallows of their own building, I should not be among the mourners for their fate.” Then again he says: “Let us judge not, that we be not judged,” Then the words of the Christ: “Woe unto the world because of offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh!”
In his temperance speech in 1842 he sees the spirit of temperance like the conqueror in the Revelation going forth “conquering and to conquer,” He sees the drunkard reclaimed, and, like the man in the gospel, “clothed and in his right mind”; then, describing the reclaimed, “out of their abundant hearts their tongues give utterance.” Then he speaks of the unpardonable sin for the drunkard as unknown: “As in Christianity it is taught, ‘while the lamp holds out to burn the vilest sinner may return.’” Then he refers to the Scriptures and says: “He ever seems to have gone forth like the Egyptian angel of death, commissioned to slay, if not the first, the fairest born of every family.” Then he takes us over to the prophet: “Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.”
He was very fond of a poem called “Adam and Eve’s Wedding Song”:
“When Adam was created
He dwelt in Eden’s shade.
As Moses has recorded.
And soon a bride was made.”
Some thought that Lincoln was its author, but he said: “I am not the author. I would give all I am worth, and go in debt, to be able to write so fine a piece.” In speaking of the tariff he said: “In the early days of our race the Almighty said to the first of our race, ‘In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.’”
In 1848, when President Polk sent a message to Congress stating that Mexico “had shed American blood upon American soil,” Lincoln made a long speech against war with Mexico, and recalled the death of Abel thus: “That he [President Polk] is deeply conscious of being in the wrong; that he feels the blood of this war, like the blood of Abel, is crying to heaven against him.”