Part 15 (1/2)

THE RELIGION OF FEELING.

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 pa.s.sage 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 G.o.d.” The example is forthcoming. There is plenty of evidence that the speaker always ”took counsel of G.o.d.” 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 pa.s.sages, 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._)

”If that be true, I shall see my boy again!” He said:

”Colonel, did you ever dream of a lost friend, and feel that you were holding sweet communion with that friend, and yet have a sad consciousness that it was not reality? Just so I dream of my boy Willie!”

(Colonel Lamon, the presidential body-guard-in-chief, was the recipient of this spiritual confidence.)

MORE PRAYING AND LESS SWEARING!