Madison Clinton Peters

“ Lincoln was a Providential man,—of that there can be little question, but every man has it in his power to be Providential also, though not in the same way, by being the deliverer of a race and the saviour of a nation, but by living up to the promptings of his better nature and seizing the opportunities God sends his way. Any man can thus be Providential in the full length and breadth and sweep of his life. ”

“ No higher or better type can be placed before American youth as an exemplar and spur for ambition.
He is not a Christian who, however orthodox in his beliefs, has not love and devotion, self-sacrifice and honesty, truthfulness and manliness.
No power is like character,—this was the power which Abraham Lincoln possessed and which carried with it the blessing of God, gaining for him the attachment of a continent and the personal love and loyalty of the Anglo-Saxon race. ”

“ Let prideful priests do battle about creeds—
The church is mine that does most charitable deeds."
There was not a day, nay, not an hour of Lincoln's life but was devoted to some good work, some act of charity, some message of consolation or comfort or mercy to the miserable and the suffering; in short, Abraham Lincoln carried his religion into daily life; it accompanied him everywhere and on all occasions.
Every phase of his character was a demonstration of the Golden Rule. From boyhood to manhood, from manhood to fame, honesty was his distinguishing trait. ”

“ An orthodox believer Lincoln may not have been, in fact was not, but he was better,—he had the spirit of Christ which manifests itself more peculiarly in actions than in words. Love to God and man was his creed, the world was his church, kindly words and merciful deeds his sermons.
In a certain formal sense the baptized man or woman is a Christian, just as all foreigners who have been naturalized are Americans before the law, but the simple act of naturalization will not make any man a good American. There is a vast difference between naturalizing a man and nationalizing him. ”

“ Europe was in transports of laughter at a country proclaiming human liberty, while clinging to all the traditions of slavery, and her risible faculties were really excusable in face of such a paradox. Lincoln keenly felt the sneers and taunts, and in the indignation of his mighty manhood he arose and freed the nation from its incubus of shame. ”

“ Practically an unknown man when nominated for the Presidency, his election due to factional strife among his opponents, the people of America when approaching the greatest crisis in their history, turned as if by chance, and Providence that chance did guide, to this comparatively obscure man of the prairies, and with one bound he took his place with the world's greatest statesmen, the leader of his party, the real ruler of a mighty nation. ”

“ It is of great importance to rightly believe the truth which relates to Christ and His kingdom, but the most unhesitating assent of the intellect to the most orthodox creeds, catechisms, commentaries, and systems ever framed will make no man a Christian. An upright and down square life is worth more than a whole ton of tall talk.
The grandest profession of religion is a life all devoted to glorifying Christ, by living in obedience to His commands, and thus making the world a little less accursed and more worthy of God. ”

“ Faith in religion as an institution is faith in a machine,—its application is what tells.
When a member of Congress, knowing [Pg 46] Lincoln's religious character, asked him why he did not join some church, he replied: "Because I find difficulty without mental reservation in giving my assent to their long and complicated creeds. When any church inscribes on its altar, as a qualification for membership, the Saviour's statement of the substance of the law and the Gospel,—'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind ... ”

“ A man may be a member of the most orthodox church in Christendom, he may sit at all the communions for a lifetime, [Pg 54] but if he be mean and selfish and careless of the world's condition, he is no Christian. While, on the other hand, a man may, like Abraham Lincoln, have peculiarities of religious beliefs, and yet if he spend his whole life for others, as Lincoln did, then he is so much like Christ, emulating His example so well that he has good claim to be called a Christian. ”

“ He has been contrasted with Napoleon, whose star was just sinking below the horizon as his was ascending above it, but it is rather invidious to contrast two so widely divergent actors on the stage of fame. The difference between them is the difference between the iron heel and the helping hand, between tyranny and freedom, between a man living for self and glory, and a man living for the broadest kind of cosmopolitanism and the widest type of humanitarianism. ”

“ The pure and unblemished character of this man, his integrity of deed, his honesty of purpose, his faith in God have given him an everlasting place in the affections of the people, and the example which he has left behind nerves the heart and strengthens the arm and inspires the courage of others to emulate him and follow in his footsteps. ”

“ The works of Paine and Volney were the only books of an infidel tendency that he ever read, and when he saw his error he tried to disabuse his mind of their teachings as quickly as possible.
To get at a right consideration of his religious beliefs, we must go back to those early days in the life of the future statesman after the family had removed from Kentucky to Indiana. It was a wild place in which his boyhood was spent; the primeval American wood which was only beginning to hear the voice of a crude civilization, and had not, as yet, heard the sound of a church bell. ”

“ His father, Thomas Lincoln, though a good man in a general way, was but an indifferent parent, and consequently a poor guide or mentor for the youth. The poor man had received many hard knocks from the iron hand of misfortune and had become almost wholly disheartened, which led to carelessness and thriftlessness, and besides, he was illiterate and unpolished. It could not be expected that a man thus handicapped himself could give his boy good training, either morally or intellectually. ”

“ He is an American who is an American at heart, who [Pg 52] owes but one allegiance, is loyal to but one country, and is true to but one flag, whose sympathies and choices, whose heroic labors and sacrifices in behalf of his country make him deserve the peerless name of American.
So the mere act of baptism or church membership gives a man but a poor title to the Christian name. Paul said, the man was not a Jew who was only one outwardly, that the mere rite of circumcision was nothing, that the true Jew was one inwardly and at heart. ”

“ Faith has its fundamental place in the plan of salvation, but faith, according to [Pg 53] some people's understanding of it, is a vivid perception of, or rather a subscription to truth as the church fathers, or, more likely the church grandmothers, defined it. Faith, in this sense of the word, makes nobody a Christian. The devils believe and tremble. ”

“ Everywhere, in increasingly large numbers, we find men, energetic, learned, and refined, humane, generous, reverent, open to argument and spiritual persuasion, moral men with religious sensibilities, who often set a worthy example to professors themselves, the very choicest spirits in the community, not identified with any church, but whose lives, we all must admit, are as much and often more Christian than those of professed church-goers. ”

“ The precious time that Lincoln saw wasted, the energies misspent, and the intellectual antagonisms begotten, which then, as now, divided the hearts of men, caused him to reject dogmas which were considered essential to salvation by the denominations of his day. They moved, as alas! too many of them still do, in the old rut of orthodox tradition, steeped in human creeds and almost incapable of an original idea.
Lincoln preferred new truths to old falsehoods, and, like Christ, was out of sympathy with men who swallowed dogmas whole and produced only pious [Pg 45] platitudes. ”

“ Next to Washington, Lincoln stands out the most colossal figure in American history, and is pre-eminent to Washington in the affection with which his memory is enshrined in the hearts of his countrymen; though Washington, as the Father [Pg 7] of his Country, must always be given the more exalted place. ”

“ No character in American history or, perhaps, in the world's history stands out so clearly silhouetted against the background of time as Lincoln; none so free from defect or flaw, with no irregularities to mar its outlines, no inequalities to detract from its perfect formation ”

“ Despite the great abolition preachers and those who followed their example, some of the churches in Lincoln's time made a choice of public favor and sided with slavery, though, as has been stated, the majority of the ministers were strongly moved to follow in the lead of their distinguished brethren who had unfurled the flag of freedom, yet withal the church did not exert sufficient force to make herself a power in determining the issue. ”

“ That he attended church merely for the sake of appearance is not tenable, for his nature was too open and honest to do that which was not based upon sincere conviction. [Pg 30]
His reply to the negroes of Baltimore who, in 1864, presented him with a beautiful Bible, confirms his belief in the divine inspiration of God's word as revealed in the Holy Scriptures. On the occasion of this Bible presentation he said: "This great Book is the best gift God has given to man; all the good from the Saviour of the world is communicated through this Book." ”

“ As it is, he towers so majestically above our horizon, that in his great and commanding national role, we are apt to quite forget his character as an individual, his personality as a man and what it represented in the domain of private life. ”

“ In his day, even more than in ours, ministers fell out with one another touching the meaning of the Bible, and then, as always, weakened its influence and their own upon the public mind. Preachers and teachers even now devote their [Pg 44] time to useless discussions which will never benefit any one, and to the investigation of controverted points in theology, deciding principles of interpretation and attacking chronological difficulties that have no more connection with winning men to right living than the battle of Lexington has with the reformation of drunkards. ”

“ I should be the most presumptuous blockhead upon this footstool, if I for one day thought that I could discharge the duties which have come upon me since I came into this place without the aid and enlightenment of One who is stronger and wiser than all others. ”

“ Many preachers in the past have been strong factors in the march of civilization, but courageous preachers have always been scarce. As a rule, they have been more conservators of the past than moulders of the future, clinging with grim tenacity to the traditions and teachings of the early fathers. ”

“ At the same time he did not believe in some of the dogmas of the orthodox churches. I have heard him argue against the doctrine of atonement, for instance. He considered it illogical and unjust and a premium upon evil-doing if a man who had been wicked all his life could make up for it by a few words or prayers at the hour of death; and he had no faith in death-bed repentances. He did not believe in several other articles of the creeds of the orthodox churches. He believed in the Bible, however.... ”

“ His feet are never slow—
He views through Mercy's melting eye
A brother in a foe."
Abraham Lincoln never joined a church, because the creeds of his day and [Pg 55] of his community were too inclusive of detail in doctrine and exacting in their ritual and terminology. He had no sympathy with theologians. He frequently declared that it was blasphemy for a preacher to "twist the words of Christ around, so as to sustain his own doctrine and confirm his own private views," and he often remarked that "the more a man knew of theology, the further he got away from the spirit of Christ." ”

“ I can set a whole neighborhood at loggerheads, I can distress a widowed mother and her six fatherless children, and thereby get you $600, which rightly belongs, as it appears to me, as much to them as it does to you. ”

“ The story of his thirst for knowledge and the limited means at his disposal for assuaging it need scarcely be repeated, for it is a pathetic story familiar to almost all, and becomes hackneyed with repetition. ”

“ His accomplishments surely prove beyond question that this obscure, lowly born man was the chosen instrument of [Pg 28] a Divine Wisdom, raised up to fulfill the designs of an all-wise Providence in freeing a race from bondage, just as Moses was raised up to lead 'the chosen people' from the land of their captivity. ”