Christian Commission. His official and personal approval of the workings of this charity was one of the greatest encouragements to those who were actively engaged in it. At a meeting of the Commission held early in 1864, Mr. Lincoln was a deeply interested spectator, and was particularly moved by the remarks of Chaplain C. C. McCabe, afterward Bishop of the Methodist Church, then just released from Libby Prison. The Chaplain gave a graphic description of the scene among the prisoners upon hearing the news of the victory at Gettysburg, when they took up Julia Ward Howe's Battle Hymn of the Republic, beginning with the lines, "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord," and fairly made the old prison walls rock with the stirring melody. After the Chaplain had sung the hymn, Mr. Lincoln sent to the platform a request for its repetition. It was a song he could appreciate and it stirred him like a trumpet blast.

Like the saints and martyrs of earlier Christian history, he seemed to grow increasingly dependent on the consciousness of God. Like Dwight L. Moody and Henry Clay Trumbull he counted no trouble too great to take now and then to get close to some man he thought more richly endowed than he with spiritual gifts. After one public

disaster almost too grievous to be borne, he travelled by gunboat from Washington to West Point. Returning by way of Brooklyn, he called late Sunday evening on Mr. Beecher, and without sending in his name, came muffled in a heavy dark cloak into the room with even his face hidden. Mrs. Beecher was somewhat alarmed, mindful of the many threats which had been made upon her husband's life because of his stout loyalty to Lincoln and the Northern cause. For hours with anxious heart she heard her husband and his mysterious visitor pacing the floor above and talking in low tones. She was relieved when near midnight, still muffled in his cloak, the visitor left the home. Not until twenty years later, just before his death, did Mr. Beecher confide to anyone that his strange visitor was the President of the United States, so bowed with care, so broken by the sorrows of a nation, that he had to have the help of one he regarded as a spiritual expert, whose words and prayers would help him to "carry on" and to understand a little better the discipline of sorrow.'

'Chapman, Latest Light on Abraham Lincoln, p. 535. This story, sometime questioned, has received new confirmation in a letter, dated April 29, 1919, written to the author and certifying that the President was in New York in conference with General Scott the very day he visited Mr. Beecher, as reported by Mrs. Beecher to her grandson, Mr. Samuel Scoville, Jr.

These and many other incidents in the life of Lincoln show that he was ever learning from experience, ever growing under the chastisement of sorrow in spiritual discernment and in personal communion with God. The problems of the war itself assumed increasingly a religious aspect. What at first seemed to Mr. Lincoln in part a utilitarian question became so grave in its farreaching influence, so fundamental in its relation to all civilization, that he made it not only the subject of constant private meditation and prayer, but upon one occasion, his heart became so heavy beneath the crushing burden that he hinted that he felt like Jesus in Gethsemane, and falling on his knees in the presence of his Cabinet, he asked them to join with him in prayer.'

This increased devotion to God was only the completion of the evolution of Mr. Lincoln's character. From the day he wrote to Parson Elkin, urging him to come and conduct the funeral service for his mother, on through his boyhood to manhood, then as a lawyer, as a member of the Illinois Legislature, and of Congress, through the exciting scenes of his political campaigns, while delivering addresses before Bible Societies and Sunday Schools, and in all the rapidly changing 'Carpenter (in Raymond), page 735.

phases of his life, he developed a growing sense of dependence on God, and an ever-enlarging Christian character founded on the Rock of Ages. But never must it be forgotten that it was the discipline of suffering in his home circle and for the millions whom he loved as a father, that stopped at last all tendency to speculate or doubt and armed him with an irresistible and triumphant faith!

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE PROCLAMATIONS OF A CHRISTIAN PRESIDENT

MR. LINCOLN's many proclamations to the people of the Union appointing days for thanksgiving and prayer reveal the absolute integrity of his religious life. For him to live was God. He harked back in each national as well as individual emergency to God. "It is"-as he once saidmy constant prayer that I and this nation should be on the Lord's side." His continuous dependence on God Lincoln revealed in his proclamation, July 12, 1863, for a day of national thanksgiving:

It has pleased Almighty God to hearken to the supplications and prayers of an afflicted people, and to vouchsafe to the Army and Navy of the United States victories on the land and on the sea, so signal and so effective as to furnish reasonable grounds for augmented confidence that the Union of those States will be maintained, their Constitution preserved, and their peace and prosperity permanently restored. It is meet and right to recognize and confess the presence of the Almighty Father and the power of His hand equally in these triumphs and sorrows