one another. I would rather there were more than less, if one were to hold all the power.

"Yet sects are right, and should hammer away until they reach the best that is attainable. God intends that men should fight their way to better conditions, and not be lazy or timid, or expect that their passage would be an easy one through the world or beyond in ignorant idleness. We are often confronted with the fear of too many sects, as so many timid people among them so often dread, and wonder which is right and which is best among them. They are all right.

"Think of the sect drilling so many of us have passed through, mostly to our advantage, as responsible beings. Our people came from the good old Quaker stock, through Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Kentucky. Circumstances took us into the Baptist sect in Indiana, in which several of our people have remained. While there, a good Methodist elder rode forty miles through a winter storm out of his way to preach my mother's funeral sermon at Spencer Creek. Here in Illinois we are with the Presbyterians, where the Methodists are as thick as bees all about us.'

Mr. Lincoln believed in

9959

SALVATION BY FAITH IN CHRIST

This was indicated by many and very significant references to the Saviour, and the marked reverence and affection with which that name was always spoken by him. In earlier days he had been closely associated with Major Merwin in the temperance work in Illinois and always manifested deep sympathy with and interest in the gospel features of that work. Because of that interest he afterwards afforded Major Merwin every desirable opportunity to visit the front during the war to induce soldiers to abstain from intoxicants and to become Christians.

In the case of Colonel Loomis, elsewhere referred to, Mr. 59 Abraham Lincoln and the Men of his Time, Vol. II., pp. 427-428.

Lincoln was disinclined to retain him in the position which he held until he learned of the religious work he always had conducted among the men under his command; when he remarked that this was “his highest possible recommendation."

According to the statement of Mrs. Rebecca Pomeroy, who was for fourteen weeks a nurse in the White House, the President frequently accompanied her upon her visitations to the hospitals, and would never permit her to pass over the religious exercises which formed part of her work, but always listened with close and constant attention while she pointed afflicted and suffering soldiers to Jesus Christ as the only one in whom they could find salvation, and from whom there could be administered to them consolation and comfort.

Mrs. Pomeroy in her very interesting and instructive record of the events of those weeks says that Mr. Lincoln, in a conversation with her at the White House, inquired with great diligence and minuteness concerning her methods of communicating to the soldiers the gospel message, and the evidence of their acceptance of the Saviour.

Mr. Lincoln accepted without qualification the doctrine of

PERSONAL REGENERATION.

The work of grace to which the Saviour referred when he said, "Ye must be born anew" (John 3:7), to which the Apostle referred when he said, "If any man is in Christ he is a new creature" (2 Cor. 5:17), that work which Mr. Lincoln designated as "a change of heart," was to his mind clearly taught by reason and Revelation. All that Mr. Lincoln is known to have said respecting his own religious experiences and standing bears witness to his settled conviction that personal regeneration is included in the work of saving grace and is indispensable to salvation. His carefully guarded expressions of uncertainty as to "the precise time" when he was the recipient of that gracious work of the Holy Spirit, and experienced "a change of heart," as he termed it, and his later

more definite declarations relative to the same matter give assurance of his recognition of the necessity for such an experience. His occasional reference to this matter indicates that he supposed his belief in the doctrine of regeneration was understood as a matter of course. This is confirmed by his statements which appear in later pages of this volume.

I

IV

LINCOLN'S FAITH IN PRAYER

N his statement before quoted Mr. Roosevelt employs a

very unusual word when he says, "Lincoln studied the

Bible until he mastered it absolutely." It is not often that any one is credited with having "mastered" a great literary production, yet in a carefully prepared address upon an important occasion, when as chief magistrate of the nation he occupied a position which caused his words to have peculiar weight, Mr. Roosevelt declared that Lincoln had "mastered absolutely" the greatest book in existence.

Mr. Lincoln's methods of study were calculated to accomplish the result here claimed for him by the former President. He was always thorough in his examination of every subject that he deemed worthy of consideration. He carefully read, diligently studied and pondered over volumes which others hastily perused. Thus he became able to repeat verbatim extended passages from books and other publications upon which he had bestowed absorbing attention. By the same painstaking methods he studied the Bible and by so doing he came into that sublime and beautiful faith in prayer which for more than half a century has been the marvel of the world.

When Mr. Lincoln discovered a very skillfully constructed plot to secure by perjury a verdict against his client in the case he was conducting for Father Chiniquy, he said: "The only way to be sure of a favorable verdict tomorrow is that God Almighty will take our part and show your innocence. Go to Him and pray for He alone can save you." At three o'clock, the next morning, Mr. Lincoln came to Father Chiniquy's room, and finding him in agonizing and tearful prayer, merrily exclaimed: "Cheer up, their diabolical plot is all known and if

they do not fly away before the dawn of day they will surely be lynched. Bless the Lord, you are saved."

A little later, while in conversation with Father Chiniquy, he said: "The way you have been saved when, I confess it again, I thought everything was nearly lost, is one of the most extraordinary occurrences I ever saw. It makes me remember what I have too often forgotten and what my mother often told me when young-that our God is a prayer-hearing God. This good thought sown into my young heart by that dear mother's hand was in my mind when I told you to go and pray. But I confess to you that I had not faith enough to believe that your prayer would be so quickly and so marvelously answered."

HE ASKED FOR PRAYERS

A sincere, earnest request to be remembered and mentioned in the prayers which others offer should be regarded as quite as pronounced an expression of faith in the efficacy of prayer as could be stated in human language. With some it means but little to make a request for prayer, but such was not the case with Abraham Lincoln. He was a man of such proportions, so broad and generous in his human sympathies, so profound and earnest in his regard for sacred things, and so absolutely sincere, that for him to express a desire to be remembered in the prayers of others, meant all that was in his power to express. The record of his eventful life is marked by many such requests. Some of these will be stated in this connection, and I must begin by asking the reader to stand with me, in imagination, in the dampness and falling snow of that 11th of February, 1861, when Mr. Lincoln bade adieu to his friends and neighbors as he started on his journey to Washington for his inauguration as President, and hear him say: "To His care commending you, as I trust in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell."

1 Fifty Years in the Church of Rome, pp. 657, 658, 662.