CHAPTER XXIX

LINCOLN ON HIS KNEES

As Paul established an analogy between Christianity and nature, so Abraham Lincoln illustrated in his life the possibility of divine companionship along with the essential religiousness of what men call the ordinary affairs of men and nations. By living Christianity, he made it more than a doctrine. It became a vital force in every day affairs. This is why much of the speculation and even academic discussions as to how far Lincoln was a Christian is beside the mark. He lived increasingly the life of faith and hope, and translated fate into purpose, benevolence into the Fatherhood of God, relationship with others into brotherhood of man. He harmonized the ideals of morals and the essentials of Christianity. He accepted Jesus' estimate of prayer as spiritual communion, as filial trust always necessary to the higher life. spoke of prayer as "talking with God" and counted it so necessary that once he declared: "I have been driven to my knees over and over again because I

He

have nowhere else to go." He would have everybody pray that his own faith might not fail him in the hour of trial and that the Union might be saved. To L. E. Chittenden, one of his closest friends, he said: "It makes me stronger and more confiden: to know that all Christians in the loyal States are working to the same end; thousands of them are fighting for us, and no one will say that an officer or a private is less brave because he is a praying soldier."

A clergyman from New York, during a call at the White House, said: "I have not come to ask any favours of you, Mr. President; I have only come to say that the loyal people of the North are sustaining you and will continue to do so. We are giving you all that we have, the lives of our sons as well as our confidence and our prayers. You must know that no boy's father or mother ever kneels in prayer these days without asking God to give you strength and wisdom." His eyes brimming with tears, Mr. Lincoln replied: "But for those prayers, I should have faltered and perhaps failed long ago. Tell every father and mother you know to keep on praying, and I will keep on fighting, for I know God is on our side." As the clergyman started to leave the room, Mr. Lincoln held him by the hands and said: "I sup

pose I may consider this as a sort of pastoral call?" "Yes," replied the clergyman. "Out in our country," continued Lincoln, "when a parson makes a pastoral call, it was always the custom for the folks to ask him to lead in prayer, and I should like to ask you to pray with me today. Pray that I may have strength and wisdom." The two men knelt side by side, and the clergyman offered the most fervent plea to Almighty God that ever fell from his lips. As they arose, the President clasped his visitor's hand and remarked in a satisfied sort of way: "I feel better."

At another time, when Mr. Lincoln was reminded that he was daily remembered by those who prayed "not to be heard of men" as no man ever had before been remembered, he caught at the homely phrase and said: "Yes, I like that phrase 'not to be heard of men,' and I guess it is generally true as you say; at least I have been told so, and I have been a great deal helped by just that thought."2

As early as 1851 when Mr. Lincoln's father was in his last illness, Lincoln, who could not go to the bedside because of sickness in his own family, wrote to his step-brother, John Johnston:

The True Abraham Lincoln, pp. 383-4.

Noah Brooks, Harper's Magazine, July, 1865, p. 226.

Tell father to remember to call upon and confide in our great and good and merciful Maker, Who will not turn away from him in any extremity. He notes the fall of the sparrow, and numbers the hairs of our heads. He will not forget the dying man who puts his trust in Him. Say to him, if it be his lot to go now, he will soon have a joyous meeting with loved ones gone before, and where the rest of us, through the help of God, hope ere long to join him.

Brigadier-General James F. Rusling in his work: Men and Things I Saw in Civil War Days, throws the following light on Lincoln as a man of prayer in the White House:

Bishop Edmund Janes testified that "many times during the war when I visited Lincoln in his private office in Washington, he said, 'Don't go, Bishop, until you have prayed with me. We need your prayers and the divine direction in these critical hours,' and so, time after time, I knelt with Mr. Lincoln in the White House when we two were alone, and carried the cause of the Union and the needs of the President's anxious heart and our distracted country, to the Lord in prayer."

Akin to this testimony is that of the Rev. Edgar DeWitt Jones in the Homeletic Review for 1909 (p. 156):

To Bishop Simpson who called once when the clouds were thickest, Lincoln said: "Bishop, I feel the need of

prayer as never before; please pray for me." And the two men then fell on their knees in prayer to God for strength and guidance.

Noah Brooks, one of Mr. Lincoln's most trusted friends, who but for the assassination, would have become one of his confidential secretaries, in a letter to the Rev. J. A. Reed, states that Mr. Lincoln informed him "that after he went to the White House he kept up the habit of daily prayer. Sometimes," he said, "it was only ten words, but those ten words he had."

Among the men whom Mr. Lincoln knew intimately, was John Nicolay, one of his private secretaries. Speaking of Mr. Lincoln as a man of prayer, Mr. Nicolay said.

Mr. Lincoln was a praying man. I know that to be a fact and I have heard him request people to pray for him, which he would never have done had he not believed that prayer is answered. Many a time have I heard Mr. Lincoln ask ministers and Christian women to pray for him, and he did not do this for effect. He was no hypocrite; he had such reverence for sacred things that he would not trifle with them. I have heard him say that he prayed.'

Nicolay thus dispels the injustice of Herndon's testimony that as he knew Lincoln in his Spring