Lincoln told a friend that he heard a man named Glenn say at an Indiana church-meeting:
"When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad; that is my religion!"
THE TWO PRAYERS.
In Lincoln's inaugural address will be found the passage about the sad singularity of the two contendants in the fratricidal combat being Christians alike: "Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God." The example is forthcoming. There is plenty of evidence that the speaker always "took counsel of God." His words are: "I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I have nowhere else to go." [Footnote: No longer was Lincoln's piety held as hypocrisy, as in 1860, when a campaign song sneers at
How each night he seeks the closet,
There, alone, to kneel and pray.]
(Connect with the Confederate commander, Robert E. Lee's avowal: "I have never seen the day when I did not pray for the people of the North.")
"Everybody thinks better than anybody."--(Lincoln.) (This is also ascribed to Talleyrand. "It is only the rich who are robbed.")
"WE SHALL SEE OUR FRIENDS IN HEAVEN!"
For weeks after the death of his son Willie the inconsolable father mourned in particular on that day in each week, and even the military sights at Fortress Monroe to court a change failed to distract him. He was studying Shakespeare. Calling his private secretary to him, he read several passages, and finally that of Queen Constance's lament over her lost child:
And, father cardinal, I have heard you say
That we shall see, and know, our friends in heaven.
(King John, III., 4.)