57 Sermon Illustrations on Lincoln

General Daniel E. Sickles had been wounded and was sent back to Washington. Lincoln visited him and during the conversation confirmed that the government had been prepared to vacate Washington if Confederates won at Gettysburg. But Lincoln said he was sure the Union would win there. The reason for his confidence (in spite of many Union reverses) was that at the critical point (Lee's crossing of the Potomac and entry into Pennsylvania) he "went to my room and got down on my knees in prayer. Never before had I prayed with so much earnestness. I wish I could repeat my prayer."

Sometimes through seemingly insignificant people, spiritual greatness is sown. This could be true of Abraham Lincoln and Lord Shaftesbury.

In 1819 Parson David Elkin, an itinerant Methodist preacher, stood above a simple grave in the Indiana wilderness. He made a brief, heartfelt statement about the good character of the person buried there - Nancy Hanks Lincoln. Who knows what seeds of faith were sown there, later to sprout in the greatness of Abraham Lincoln? Though never a church member, he was a church attender and faithful to the church's teachings. Something must have been planted in the lonely, hungry heart of that scrawny boy by backwoods preacher Elkin. [Lincoln was the only American president not to be a member of a church - Christian History, #33, page 1]

An English nurse, looked down upon by her lord and lady, sat teaching a small boy the Bible and its truths. His parents were too busy in society to pay him any notice. The only reason we know about this nurse is that she was teaching the future Lord Shaftesbury, England's great nineteenth-century reformer, the man who got the children out of the coal mines. We have no reason to believe he would have been anything but a privileged wastrel had this Christian nurse not planted the right seeds.

#367

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Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president, was a continuous target of the press both in word and picture. Even his Gettysburg Address was lambasted by the experts at the time it was delivered. A Pennsylvania paper called it "silly remarks." A Chicago paper described it as an insult to the memory of the brave men who had fallen in battle. The criticism even spanned the Atlantic and one London paper painted it "dull and commonplace."

No one thinks that today! It is hailed as one of the greatest speeches ever made by a mortal, especially because it said so much in so few words. At any rate, Honest Abe learned early to roll with the punches. Here's how he described his philosophy about criticism:

"If I were to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business. I do the very best I know how, the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, then what is said against me won't matter. If the end brings me out wrong, then 10 angels swearing I was right would make no difference."

A good philosophy, but difficult to follow.

[President Ford quoted this when pardoning Richard Nixon.]

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As used Aug 27, 1989:

A number of years ago one of our Presidents gave a speech at a dedication ceremony for a cemetery. It was not well-received. A Pennsylvania paper called it “silly remarks.” A Chicago paper described it as an insult to the memory of the brave men who were buried there. The criticism even came from across the Atlantic - a London paper called the short speech “dull and commonplace.”

Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address took a while to be appreciated. Now that we know so much about him, we idolize him. But in his own day he faced constant criticism and second-guessing. Here is how he described his philosophy about criticism:

“If I were to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me,

this shop might as well be closed for any other business. I do

the very best I know how, the very best I can; and I mean to keep

on doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right,

then what is said against me won’t matter. If the end brings me

out wrong, then 10 angels swearing I was right would make no

difference.”

Following the Civil War, a dejected confederate soldier was sitting outside the grounds of the White House. A young boy approached him and inquired why he was so sad. The soldier related how he had repeatedly tried to see President Lincoln to tell him he was unjustly deprived of certain lands in the South following the war. On each occasion, as he attempted to enter the White House, the guards crossed their bayoneted guns in front of the door and turned him away. The boy motioned to the soldier to follow him. When they approached the guarded entrance, the soldiers came to attention, stepped back, and opened the door for the boy. He proceeded to the library where the President was resting and introduced the soldier to his father. The boy was Tad Lincoln. The soldier had gained an "introduction" (audience) with the President through the President's son. How much more should we rejoice in our access to the grace of the King of kings.

[Cited by Donald G. Barnhouse, "God's River, Romans 5:1-11," Eerdmans, 1958, p. 39]

(See also similar illustration at #2230)

Most Americans during the Civil War believed God was on their side. After many military defeats Abraham Lincoln wrote down his private thoughts on the matter in "Meditation on the Divine Will."

"The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God can not be for and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party - and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect His purpose. I am almost ready to say this is probably true - that God wills this contest, and wills that is shall not end yet. By His mere quiet power, on the minds of the now contestants, He could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began. And having begun He could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest continues."

The truth had begun to dawn to Lincoln that this God was not at the nation's beck and call, but the nation at his. (see also #1847)

Abraham Lincoln on devotion to God, to a delegation of Presbyterians from Baltimore on October 24, 1863:

"I have often wished that I was a more devout man than I am. Nevertheless, amid the greatest difficulties of my Administration, when I could not see any other resort, I would place my whole reliance in God, knowing that all would go well, and that He would decide for the right."

The scene was thick. The clouds were heavy and dark gray. The mood was tense. It was not time to take a walk in the park or stroll down Pennsylvania Avenue. The smell of death was in the air. A decision was essential. With paper and pen in hand, the long, lank frame of a lonely man sat quietly at his desk. The dispatch he wrote was sent immediately. It shaped the destiny of a nation at war with itself.

It was a simple message... a style altogether his. No ribbons of rhetoric were woven through the note. No satin frills, no enigmatic eloquence. It was plain, direct, brief, to the point. A bearded Army officer soon read it and frowned. It said:

Lieut. Gen. Grant,

Gen. Sheridan says, "If the thing is pressed, I think that Lee will surrender."

Let the thing be pressed.

A. Lincoln

Grant nodded in agreement. He did as he was ordered. Exactly two days later at Appomattox Court House, General Robert E. Lee surrendered. "The thing was pressed" and the war was ended.

President Abraham Lincoln developed as an effective stump speaker but spoke little, and often not well, after becoming president. When speaking impromptu he tended to put his foot in his mouth and so he began to limit himself to set speeches. He admitted in Pittsburgh as president-elect: "I am rather inclined to silence, and whether that be wise or not, it is at least more unusual now-a-days to find a man who can hold his tongue that to find one who cannot." One hearer said that, "He sometimes stopped for repairs before finishing a sentence."

In his stump-speaking days he "talked amusing" to the audience and made effective use of dramatic gestures, but as president read stiffly from a manuscript. Often his public remarks were touched up and made more eloquent by his secretaries [see #3328]. He once said of a seamless transcript: "Well, those are my views, and if I said anything on the subject, I must have said substantially that, but not nearly so well as that."

Just before his great speech at Gettysburg, Lincoln was asked by a crowd to speak. He replied, "In my position, it is somewhat important that I should not say any foolish things." Just then a voice in the audience shot back, "If you can help it." Replied Lincoln, "It very often happens that the only way to help it is to say nothing at all."

[for Gettysburg speech see #3365]

Let me tell you about how the providence of God works. On the front porch of his little country store in Illinois, Abraham Lincoln and Berry, his partner, stood. Business was all gone and Berry asked Abraham Lincoln, how much longer can we keep this business going? Lincoln answered, “it looks as if our business has just about winked out.” Then he continued, “You know, I wouldn’t mind so much if I could just do what I want to do. I want to study law. I wouldn’t mind so much if we could sell everything in this business and pay all of our bills and have just enough left over to buy one book ‘Blackstone’s Commentary on English Law;. But I guess I can’t.”

Just then a strange looking wagon came up the road. The driver angled it up close to the store porch, then looked at Lincoln and said “I’m trying to move my family out West and I’m out of money. I’ve got a good barrel here that I could sell for $0.50.” Abraham Lincoln’s eyes went along the wagon and came to the wife looking at him pleadingly, with her face thin and emaciated. Lincoln ran his hand into his pocket and took out, according to him, the last $0.50 I had. And said to the lady, “I reckon I could use a good barrel.”

All day long, that barrel stood on the front porch of the store that Lincoln and Berry owned. Berry kept chiding Lincoln about it. Late in the evening, Lincoln walked out and looked down into the barrel and he saw something in the bottom of it. Papers that he hadn’t noticed before. His long arms went down into the barrel and as he fumbled around, he hit something solid. He pulled out a book and stood petrified. It was “Blackstone’s Commentary on English Law”.

Lincoln later wrote, I stood there holding the book, and looking up toward the heavens, there came a deep impression on me that God had something for me to do. And He was showing me now that I had to get ready for it. Why this miracle otherwise?

Lincoln’s faith evolved through the trial of the Civil War. Unlike some war presidents, he neared victory with a growing sense of humility and an awareness that, however just he believed his own cause, the conflict had clarified some things but not all things. He knew slavery would end, but he knew little else.

Speaking of North and South in his Second Inaugural, he said: “Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.”

Commenting on these passages a century later, Reinhold Niebuhr wrote that Lincoln had successfully articulated a sad but real truth: that “while the drama of history is shot through with moral meaning, the meaning is never exact. Sin and punishment, virtue and reward are never precisely proportioned.”

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #6925]

Mrs. Pomroy was counted a member of President Lincoln's household. One day when he had grown weary with the affairs of state he suggested to her that she should occupy with him that night the President's box at Ford's theater. She courteously declined. He gave her a subsequent invitation which was again not accepted, and finally, with some degree of irritation, he said to her, “Mrs. Pomroy, it is counted an honor to sit in the President's box; I should like to ask you why you have refused.” Hesitating a moment as if she were afraid that she might hurt the feelings of the President, she said: “Mr. President, I am a Christian, and when I became such I promised my Lord that I would go no place where I could not take him with me or ask his blessing. I could hardly do this at the theater, and for that reason I do not go.” It is said that Abraham Lincoln never again asked her to accompany him to such a place, but it is known that again and again when they were driving together on some mission of mercy in the various hospitals, me would say to his coachman, “Drive a little slower,” and then say to Mrs. Pomroy, “Tell me more of this Christ whom you serve.”

Such a life always has power, and this is simply being consistent, not in any sense fanatical.

________

J. Wilbur Chapan, “Present Day Parables.”

Over 130 years ago, during the darkest hours of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for a national day of thanksgiving. It was in 1863 that he said:

"It is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God; to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations are blessed whose God is the Lord.

We know that by His divine law, nations, like individuals, are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world. May we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war which now desolates the land may be a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown.

But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that God should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November as a day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens."

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At the age of twenty-four, Abraham Lincoln served as the postmaster of New Salem, Illinois, for which he was paid an annual salary of $55.70.

Even then, twenty-four years before he entered the White House, the rail splitter was showing the character that earned him the title of “Honest Abe.”

The New Salem post office was closed in 1836, but it was several years before an agent arrived from Washington to settle accounts with ex-postmaster Lincoln, who was a struggling lawyer not doing very well.

The agent informed him that $17 was due the government. Lincoln crossed the room, opened an old trunk and took out a yellow cotton rag, bound with a string. Untying it, he spread out the cloth and there was the $17. He had been holding it untouched for all these years.

“I never use any man’s money but my own,” he said.

One of the finest descriptions of a magnanimous man is Emerson's brief characterization of Abraham Lincoln: "His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong."

It takes courage to set aside jealousy and rejoice with the achievements of a rival. Would you like an example of someone who did?

Standing before ten thousand eyes is Abraham Lincoln. An uncomfortable Abraham Lincoln. His discomfort comes not from the thought of delivering his first inaugural address but from the ambitious efforts of well-meaning tailors. He is unaccustomed to such attire - formal black dress coat, silk vest, black trousers, and a glossy top hat. He holds a huge ebony cane with a golden head the size of an egg.

He approaches the platform with hat in one hand and cane in the other. He doesn't know what to do with either one. In the nervous silence that comes after the applause and before the speech, he searches for a spot to place them. He finally leans the cane in a corner of the railing, but he still doesn't know what to do with the hat. He could lay it on the podium, but it would take up too much room. Perhaps the floor ... no, too dirty.

Just then, and not a moment too soon, a man steps forward and takes the hat, returns to his seat, and listens intently to Lincoln's speech. Who is he? Lincoln's dearest friend. The president said of him, “He and I are about the best friends in the world.”

He was one of the strongest supporters of the early stages of Lincoln's presidency. He was given the honor of escorting Mrs. Lincoln in the inaugural grand ball. As the storm of the Civil War began to boil, many of Lincoln's friends left, but not this one. He amplified his loyalty by touring the South as Lincoln's peace ambassador. He begged Southerners not to secede and Northerners to rally behind the president.

His efforts were great, but the wave of anger was greater. The country did divide, and civil war bloodied the nation. Lincoln's friend never lived to see it. He died three months after Lincoln's inauguration. Wearied by his travels, he succumbed to a fever, and Lincoln was left to face the war alone.

Upon hearing the news of his friend's death, Lincoln wept openly and ordered the White House flag to be flown at half-staff. Some feel Lincoln's friend would have been chosen as his running mate in 1864 and would thus have become president following the assassination of the Great Emancipator.

No one will ever know about that. But we do know that Lincoln had one true friend. And we can only imagine the number of times the memory of him brought warmth to a cold Oval Office. He was a model of friendship.

He was also a model of forgiveness.

This friend could just as easily have been an enemy. Long before he and Lincoln were allies, they were competitors - politicians pursuing the same office. And unfortunately, their debates are better known than their friendship. The debates between Abraham Lincoln and his dear friend, Stephen A. Douglas.

But on Lincoln's finest day, Douglas set aside their differences and held the hat of the president. Douglas heard a higher call.

Wise are we if we do the same. Wise are we if we rise above our hurts. For if we do, we'll be present at the Father's final celebration. A party to end all parties. A party where no pouters will be permitted.

For the past few weeks, it seems that every time you watched a cable news program or a convention commentary, there was former New York governor Mario Cuomo, talking about his new book, WHY LINCOLN MATTERS: TODAY MORE THAN EVER.

Cuomo urges “conservatives and liberals alike” to “resist the impulse to make Lincoln over in their own image.” Yet, in matters of religion and public life, Cuomo's Lincoln bears an uncanny resemblance to Cuomo himself.

Cuomo told CNN's Larry King that Lincoln “was not a particularly religious person.” I disagree, as do many scholars — but we'll leave that to historians. What I will take issue with is how Cuomo defines FAITH: as a suspension of intellect.

For Cuomo, the lack of absolute proof disqualifies a religiously informed position as a basis of public policy. That's why, according to Cuomo, Lincoln “would never have built a public policy on a purely religious premise.” Instead, Lincoln would have insisted on a “premise that everybody, religious or not religious ... would accept,” one with a “rationale that goes beyond your religious faith.”

Cuomo makes it clear that he's referring to President Bush. The former governor claims that when Bush announced his policy on embryonic stem-cell research, he was saying, in effect: “This is what I believe, because I'm a religious person. And you must believe it, too.” Of course, President Bush said no such thing.

The idea that opposition to embryonic stem-cell research is purely religiously-driven is fatuous. Many opponents, like Dr. Leon Kass, chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics, are not moved by religion. Their opposition proceeds from what science tells us about the humanity of the fetus. Their ethical concerns are grounded in natural law and where experimentation on humans leads us.

Cuomo's arguments are best understood as a sequel to his 1984 speech at Notre Dame, in which he argued that deeply held convictions, especially religiously informed ones, must await “a consensus view of right and wrong” before they can become the basis for public policy. To do otherwise, he claimed, is to suspend reason in policy debates.

Wrong. Faith guides and often transcends intellect and reason, but it does not require its suspension. Is the governor really suggesting that St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, and John Paul II suspended their intellect? Has he forgotten that the university system was created by the church?

The greatest irony of the governor's invocation of Lincoln is that there was no “consensus view of right and wrong” regarding slavery. Slavery ended DESPITE the lack a consensus because people whose faith taught them that the STATUS QUO was wrong set out to change it. They learned to express their convictions in terms that people of different faiths, or no faith, could understand. What they did not do was wait until everyone agreed with them.

Much the same can be said of the Civil Rights movement. When Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote his LETTER FROM BIRMINGHAM JAIL, he invoked Augustine and Aquinas in support of defying an unjust law.

So why should contemporary religiously inspired concerns be held to a different standard, as people are trying to do today? Our sixteenth president, for one, would have found the idea astonishing.

FOR FURTHER READING AND INFORMATION:

• Governor Mario Cuomo, “Religious Belief and Public Morality: A Catholic Governor's Perspective,” Remarks delivered at Notre Dame University, 13 September 1984. (Courtesy of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.)

• See also the transcript of the Pew Forum event, “Religion on the Stump: Politics and Faith in America,” 2 October 2002.

• Roberto Rivera y Carlo, “First Things First: Voting and the Sanctity of Life,” Boundless, 2 September 2004.

• See the “Worldview for Parents” pages, “America's Religious Roots“ and “The First Liberty.”

• BreakPoint Commentary No. 030212, “Strength for Anxious Days: Lincoln's Spiritual Leadership.”

• BreakPoint Commentary No. 030922, “Sorely Needed Wisdom: Wrestling with Genesis.”

• Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter From A Birmingham Jail, 16 April 1963.

• Arthur F. Holmes, “Wanted: Christian Scholars!“ BreakPoint Worldview, July/August 2003.

• Nigel M. de S. Cameron, God and Caesar: The Logic of Christian Political Responsibility, The Wilberforce Forum.

• Ted Olsen, “Weblog: Is the Republican Convention More Secular Than the Democratic One Was?“ Christianity Today, 1 September 2004.

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Copyright (c) 2004 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

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A political enemy once accused Abraham Lincoln of being two-faced. Abe laughed and said, “Now, do you think that if I had another face I’d be wearing this one?”

Lincoln, who rose from a Kentucky log cabin to the White House, showed the world what humility really means. In spite of his great power as President, he never lost touch with the people he grew up with, or claimed to be something he wasn’t. He never tried to impress people.

One of Lincoln’s last acts before he left Springfield, Illinois, to go as President to Washington, D.C., was to visit his old law office and say goodbye to his partner, William Herndon. After they finished discussing business, he lay down on the office sofa and stared at the ceiling.

“Billy,” he asked, “how long have we been together?”

“More than sixteen years.”

“We’ve never had a cross word, have we?”

They talked about the many funny things that had happened through the years, and then, as Abe picked up his books to leave, he pointed to the signboard swinging on its rusty hinges at the foot of the stairway.

“Let it hang there,” he said. “I want the people to know that the election of a President makes no change in the firm of Lincoln and Herndon. If I live, I’m coming back some time, and we’ll go right on practicing law as if nothing had happened.”

Most politicians from the East thought of Lincoln as an ignorant frontier lawyer. They were sure he could never handle the problems of a President. They knew he could never fit in with the educated, polished people of Washington.

Abe never argued about that. He didn’t change his homely way of speaking. He kept right on telling his funny stories and didn’t worry about whether people admired him or not. “My course,” he said, “is as plain as a turnpike road. It is marked out by the Constitution. I am in no doubt which way to go.”

Although many people didn’t like having this long, lean rail-splitter for President, they couldn’t help but see honesty and a natural dignity in his face. He never tried to pretend to be what he wasn’t and he never forgot the humble background from which the Lord had brought him.

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Source: CLIMBING JACOB’S LADDER, by Jeanne Larson and Ruth McLin, Copyright 1979 by the Review and Herald Publishing Association

An unusual tribute was paid to Abraham Lincoln by Carl Sandburg. The poet wrote, “Not often in the story of mankind does a man arrive on earth who is both steel and velvet, who is as hard as rock and soft as drifting fog, who holds in his heart and mind the paradox of terrible storm and peace unspeakable and perfect.”

Lincoln demonstrated then and now how a person can possess both a will of iron and a heart of tenderness. Nothing deterred the president during the American Civil War from his “noble” cause, and few persons have ever endured more criticism and detractors than Lincoln. Yet he was no more a man of steel than one of velvet.

When General Robert E. Lee surrendered his army, Lincoln sent an unexpected message to the enemy commander. “Tell your men they may keep their horses; they’ll need them for plowing,” said the president. Then this: “Tell your men they may keep their rifles; they’ll need them for hunting.” When Lee read those words he wept.

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Steve Goodier is the editor of The Life Support System

While some opponents of “same-sex marriage” argue that this is a state issue, I believe at its heart it is a national issue. In fact, I believe events in American history support this position.

I suspect that Abraham Lincoln was a staunch Federalist. While he believed most issues should be decided at the state level, there are some issues that are so compelling and basic (“first principles”) that they have to be decided at the federal level. Lincoln understood the moral dilemma that would unfold if each state was able to decide for itself whether it would be “slave” or “free.”

In a speech delivered June 17, 1858 -- before he became president -- Lincoln said the issue of slavery was a “crisis” that the nation could not ignore.

Quoting the Bible, he said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand” (Matt. 12:25).

“I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free,” Lincoln continued. “I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South.”

I have ancestors who fought for the Confederacy as well as ancestors who fought for the Union, and I appreciate the fact that the Civil War was more complicated than just the issue of slavery. There are people who assert the war was about states’ rights and not about slavery. What do you think was the precipitating cause that made people talk about states’ rights? It was some people’s belief that it was a state’s right to allow some people to own other people. The fact is, without the issue of slavery, there never would have been a Civil War.

The slavery analogy is apt when it comes to the marriage issue. America’s families -- and the culture at large -- cannot survive as a union of states with half embracing “same-sex marriage” and half accepting only traditional marriage. The U.S. government will not disintegrate, but eventually the nation will have one definition of marriage binding us all.

Lincoln gave his speech in the same year of the infamous Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court. The sensibilities of many Americans of that day were outraged by this immoral decision that said, for the purposes of law, that slaves were not people, but property.

The Dred Scott decision was not what you would call a close decision. The 7-2 verdict said the right to own slaves was a fundamentally guaranteed constitutional right that could not be limited by the states.

Lincoln, in an 1860 address, pointed out that the slaveholders would not be content to continue owning slaves in the states where they held them. They wanted to force everyone in the country to acknowledge their right to have slaves anywhere in the United States. In other words, they wanted to make slavery legal in every state of the union.

So less than six months after the end of the Civil War, what did the people of the United States do? They adopted the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which said once and for all that “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

Slavery was outlawed in the federal Constitution. It was not going to be an issue decided by each state.

I respect the Constitution, and I don’t believe it should be amended unless it is absolutely necessary. We have reached the point regarding marriage that we once reached regarding slavery. Rulings like this one in Iowa reveal the urgent need for a federal Marriage Protection Amendment.

At least one person has said to me that while banning slavery expanded personal liberty, prohibiting “same-sex marriage” would contract or limit personal liberty. Yet while the ban on slavery expanded liberty for the slaves, it inhibited and constricted liberty for the slaveholders.

In fact, the emancipation of the 3 million African Americans held in involuntary servitude until the end of the Civil War was the largest property expropriation without any kind of indemnity or compensation to the slaveholders that has taken place anywhere in the Western world in modern history.

No longer was an American free to own another human being. Liberty was secured for the slaves and constricted for slaveholders. Never has justice been better served.

Forbidding same-sex couples from marrying may be a constriction of their liberty, but more importantly, it is an expansion of the people’s liberty to define what constitutes marriage.

Whether or not the “same-sex marriage” issue becomes a topic of discussion among those running for president depends on all of us. If we make the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman an issue, it will become an issue among the crowd of candidates reaching for the golden ring.

I have had a lifelong interest in the 16th president of the United States. Like Abraham Lincoln, I was born in Kentucky, but I was named for his opponent in the 1860 election.

Lincoln lived a life of many contrasts, but the biggest paradox was his complex views concerning his faith. Never did an American President quote the sacred Scripture more than Lincoln, yet he was never baptized. He never joined a church and he always declined requests to publicly explain his views on faith.

Surprising even to many 21st-century Baptists, Lincoln had Baptist roots. Samuel Lincoln, who reached these shores from England in the 1600s, was a Puritan/Congregationalist. The Lincoln family migrated westward and crossed the Appalachian Mountains, where they were exposed to Baptist teaching. Thomas Lincoln, Abraham’s father, joined Baptist churches in Kentucky and later in Indiana. His entire immediate family, with the exception of Abraham, joined the Little Pigeon Baptist Church in Indiana.

Nevertheless, many of the Baptist churches of that era in rural Kentucky and Indiana were extremely Calvinistic and Lincoln was exposed to a theology that focused on predestination and the sovereignty of God. Lincoln never forgot those teachings. For the rest of his adult life, he maintained the “doctrine of necessity” -- a very strong view of predestination. Lincoln himself said, “The human mind is impelled to action, or held in rest by some power, over which the mind itself has no control.” Well into the Civil War, he stated: “I claim not to have controlled events, but plainly confess that events have controlled me ... God alone can claim it.”

Reflecting his strong sense of the sovereignty of God, Lincoln usually addressed God with formal titles. A favorite title was “The Almighty;” other titles included “Almighty Being” and “Father of Mercies.” Although he rarely invoked the name of Jesus in public, Lincoln’s speeches, such as his “House Divided” speech, frequently quoted sayings of Jesus from the Gospels.

One other legacy of Lincoln’s early Baptist background would be a deep, abiding respect for other people as created in the image of God. Contrary to the thinking of some Baptists in the South on the eve of the Civil War, frontier Baptists in the early 1800s largely rejected slave-owning. When Lincoln was 7, his father moved the family from Kentucky to Indiana, reportedly to live in a free state. Furthermore, these frontier Baptists recognized an egalitarian view of man that dismissed stations in life. Even their clergy refused titles and believers were addressed as “brother” or “sister.” Such sentiments influenced Lincoln to later utter his famous statement that “God must have loved the common people, for he made so many of them.”

As Lincoln grew to manhood, other varied influences crept into his life. The adult Lincoln read widely and admired the writings of 18th-century philosophers. His thinking about formal denominations and religion mirrored the opinions of the Enlightenment philosophers, who rejected them. When running for office, he intimated some sympathy for Christian universalism, but stated that he was not a member of any particular church or denomination.

Lincoln developed some other beliefs and practices that certainly were contrary to his Baptist roots and his background Christian worldview. His rough frontier humor included telling off-color jokes -- even during cabinet meetings at the White House. In times of national and personal crisis during the Civil War, he accompanied his wife to visit spiritualists. Although he deeply loved his children, he was an over-indulgent parent. Visitors to the White House thought he exercised little parental discipline over them. Lincoln was not known for public acts of piety, and a woman he once met chided him for “not being a praying man.”

In view of all these paradoxes, was Abraham Lincoln a Christian? Some have thought he made a profession of faith, but those accounts cannot be verified. Certainly, Lincoln’s public utterances became deeply spiritual as the Civil War weighed on him. One month before his death, at his second inauguration, Lincoln formulated the theme that the war was a form of judgment for the United States. He invoked the psalms and the Gospel of Matthew, cited the deity by name seven times and exclaimed, “The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” Such insights and sentiments may not have definitively labeled him as a Christian, but he at least conveyed much of the civil Christianity found in many of the public figures of his era. If his faith was not deep, it appeared to be wide.

Today, we can only speculate about Lincoln’s eternal destiny, but Lincoln maintained a Christian worldview his entire life. Although he never became a Baptist, he reflected aspects of his Baptist upbringing to the very end. He was well read in the world’s literature, but always returned to the Bible in his public speeches. As he himself once said, “I have never denied the truth of the Scriptures.” In terms of Lincoln’s Christian worldview, his affinity for quoting and paraphrasing the Scripture and his incredible spiritual insights, few professing Christians today could have matched him.

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Stephen Douglas Wilson is vice-president for academic affairs at Mid-Continent University and a member of the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptists. For important primary sources for the life of Abraham Lincoln in his own words see: Basler, Roy P. (1946), ABRAHAM LINCOLN: HIS SPEECHES AND WRITINGS and Basler, Roy P. (1955), COLLECTED WORKS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. One of the better biographies of Lincoln is: Donald, David H. (1995), LINCOLN.

As the Civil War dragged on and Americans died in previously-unimaginable numbers, preserving the Union became a weak justification for what historian Drew Faust Gilpin called “the Republic of Suffering.”

Making sense of the carnage required moving beyond politics and putting the war in its proper moral context, a context derived from a biblical understanding of God and His purposes.

That’s what Abraham Lincoln did.

Lincoln was an unlikely prophet: At the beginning of the war saving the Union had been his “paramount concern.” He once said: “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it.”

In addition, while his parents were devout Baptists, Lincoln, at least prior to becoming president, could rightly be called a skeptic. In 1846, a political opponent even called him an “infidel.”

Both things began to change during the war, and the catalyst was the death that surrounded him. The death of so many soldiers weighed heavily on Lincoln, a gentle man who felt things deeply.

Even worse was the devastating death of his beloved son, Willie, in 1862. While Mrs. Lincoln never recovered from the blow of Willie’s death, it transformed the president. The sermon at Willie’s funeral was delivered by Phineas Gurley, the pastor at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, which Lincoln had begun to attend.

Gurley’s sermon, which exhorted the president to “trust in biblical Providence,” prompted Lincoln to consider the possibility that the war and the suffering it caused, was part of a divine plan.

In what posthumously came to be called “Meditations on the Divine Will,” Lincoln wrote that “God could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began.” God could have given either side victory, Lincoln pondered, but He hadn’t. Why?

Because, Lincoln wrote, “it may be that God’s purpose is different from the purpose of either party.” What was that purpose? Ending slavery.

It was a sin in which the entire nation was complicit -- a nation overwhelmingly comprised of Christians who believed that they were a “chosen people” favored by God. Thus a terrible lesson had to be learned by both sides.

That lesson was the subject of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. In it, he expressed the hope that the “scourge of war” might finally pass. Then he added “if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’”

It was a lesson his audience didn’t care to learn. Six weeks later, Lincoln was dead. And it would be another century before the bondsman’s descendants would be truly free. Once again, Christians were divided: some behaved heroically, others behaved shamefully, and many pretended not to see what was happening.

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Copyright (c) 2011 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

General Daniel E. Sickles had been wounded and was sent back to Washington. Lincoln visited him and during the conversation confirmed that the government had been prepared to vacate Washington if Confederates won at Gettysburg. But Lincoln said he was sure the Union would win there. The reason for his confidence (in spite of many Union reverses) was that at the critical point (Lee's crossing of the Potomac and entry into Pennsylvania) he "went to my room and got down on my knees in prayer. Never before had I prayed with so much earnestness. I wish I could repeat my prayer."

We frequently turn to Abraham Lincoln for examples of the virtues Paul commends. When General Robert E. Lee's surrender was announced in Washington, the city exploded in celebration. On April 10, 1865, delirious crowds stormed the White House, demanding a speech from the President. He told them it was a serious moment and that he had no speech ready for them. But he added, I have always thought "Dixie" one of the best tunes I ever heard. I insisted yesterday that we had fairly captured it. I presented the question to the Attorney General and he gave his opinion that it is our lawful prize. I ask the band to give us a good turn upon it. That was it. He claimed a song. When you think what a more vindictive President Lincoln could have wrung out of the helpless South, you have to praise his generosity. "With malice toward none," he had promised in his second inaugural address; "with charity toward all."

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Version by Rev. Brett Blair:

Love Does Not Compound Guilt

A few years ago I was in Washington, D.C., and I went on a tour of all the traditional sites like the White House, the Smithsonian, the halls of Congress and the Lincoln Memorial. There is something about standing in the Lincoln Memorial and reading the Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural Address which gives you goosebumps. One line in the Second Inaugural reminds you what a caring and compassionate man Lincoln was. He was speaking about the coming end of the War and he said: "With malice toward none; With charity for all."

Lincoln put this idea into practice on the day that news arrived in Washington that the war was over. A crowd gathered at the White House and a military band was playing some festive music. Lincoln stood on the balcony of the White House and spoke. Instead of lashing out against the South, he spoke of the horrors of war being over. He spoke of families getting back together. He spoke of a time of peace. Then he said, "In a few moments I want the band to play and I'm going to tell them what I want them to play." Of course, the band started getting the "Battle Hymn of The Republic" ready to play. This had been the theme song of the North throughout the Civil War. But Lincoln crossed them up. He stood there and said: "The band will now play the theme song of the people we have called our enemy. They are not our enemies any more! We are one people again. I want the band to play 'Dixie.' "

Historians say there was a long, awkward pause. The band didn't have the music to "Dixie," but they finally got together and played, "Dixie." Lincoln knew that the South was not only hurting because of the horrors of the war, but also because of the shame which accompanies defeat. Lincoln was sending a clear signal to the South. Lincoln was telling everyone that there would be no punishment upon the South. Lincoln was saying that the South would be treated with love and compassion.

When you love, after the patterns of Jesus, caring and compassion become the cornerstone of your love. Love is not vicious or hostile. Love does not try to compound the guilt. Love doesn't try to rub salt in the wounds of shame.

Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president, was a continuous target of the press both in word and picture. Even his Gettysburg Address was lambasted by the experts at the time it was delivered. A Pennsylvania paper called it "silly remarks." A Chicago paper described it as an insult to the memory of the brave men who had fallen in battle. The criticism even spanned the Atlantic and one London paper painted it "dull and commonplace."

No one thinks that today! It is hailed as one of the greatest speeches ever made by a mortal, especially because it said so much in so few words. At any rate, Honest Abe learned early to roll with the punches. Here's how he described his philosophy about criticism:

"If I were to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business. I do the very best I know how, the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, then what is said against me won't matter. If the end brings me out wrong, then 10 angels swearing I was right would make no difference."

A good philosophy, but difficult to follow.

[President Ford quoted this when pardoning Richard Nixon.]

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As used Aug 27, 1989:

A number of years ago one of our Presidents gave a speech at a dedication ceremony for a cemetery. It was not well-received. A Pennsylvania paper called it “silly remarks.” A Chicago paper described it as an insult to the memory of the brave men who were buried there. The criticism even came from across the Atlantic - a London paper called the short speech “dull and commonplace.”

Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address took a while to be appreciated. Now that we know so much about him, we idolize him. But in his own day he faced constant criticism and second-guessing. Here is how he described his philosophy about criticism:

“If I were to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me,

this shop might as well be closed for any other business. I do

the very best I know how, the very best I can; and I mean to keep

on doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right,

then what is said against me won’t matter. If the end brings me

out wrong, then 10 angels swearing I was right would make no

difference.”

At the age of twenty-four, Abraham Lincoln served as the postmaster of New Salem, Illinois, for which he was paid an annual salary of $55.70.

Even then, twenty-four years before he entered the White House, the rail splitter was showing the character that earned him the title of “Honest Abe.”

The New Salem post office was closed in 1836, but it was several years before an agent arrived from Washington to settle accounts with ex-postmaster Lincoln, who was a struggling lawyer not doing very well.

The agent informed him that $17 was due the government. Lincoln crossed the room, opened an old trunk and took out a yellow cotton rag, bound with a string. Untying it, he spread out the cloth and there was the $17. He had been holding it untouched for all these years.

“I never use any man’s money but my own,” he said.