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CHAPTER NINETEEN

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

“We wait in hope for the LORD; he is our help and our shield,” Psalms 33:2.

During the Civil War, Lincoln was seen many times praying. We know that sometimes he prayed all night long. One of his prayers was, “O God, I cannot lead these people. O God, unless Thou doest help us, we shall have no victory. O God, help me. Thou, Lord must help.” Schuyler Colfax, who would eventually become a Vice-President of the United States, said Lincoln would often get up as early as four o’clock in the morning in order to have time to read his Bible and pray before visitors would begin to arrive at the White House. Lincoln once told his intimate friend, Noah Brooks, “I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go.”⁸⁴ (⁸⁴Noah Brooks in Harper’s Monthly, July, 1965, as quoted by Wolf, p.125.) One evening, his friends left him sitting by the fireplace, his elbows on his knees, and his face in his hands. They came back the following morning to find him still in the same position.

As they stepped quietly into the room, they could hear him praying in agonizing tones over and over again, “O God, O God, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.”⁸⁵(⁸⁵Norman Childs Sr., What Made America Great? Childs’ Family Publications, Olney, IL., 2001, p. 75.)

During the Civil War, Lincoln devised and orchestrated a gigantic plan called “The Sanitary Commission” to care for the sick and wounded soldiers. It was very successful. When Dr. John D. Hill, a prominent physician from Buffalo, New York, later complimented the President for conceiving such an idea, Lincoln replied, “You must carry your thanks to a Higher Being. One stormy night, I tossed on my bed, unable to sleep as I thought of the terrible sufferings of our soldiers and sailors. I spent an hour in agonizing prayer to God for some method of relief. He put the Sanitary Commission in my mind, with all its details, as distinctly as though the instructions had been written out by pen and handed to me. Hereafter, always thank your heavenly Father, and not me, for His organization which has eased so much pain and saved so many lives.”⁸⁶ (⁸⁶Norman Childs Sr., What Made America Great? Childs” Family Publications, Olney, IL., 2001, p. 74.)

Lincoln designated April 30, 1863, as a national day of “fasting, humiliation and prayer.” In his speech he said, “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. 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!^{87
(87}William J. Wolf, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, The Almost Chosen People, Garden City, NY., Double-day, 1959, p. 163.) It behooves us then to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray clemency for forgiveness upon us.⁸⁸ (⁸⁸Robert Flood, Men Who Shaped America, The Moody Bible Institute of Chicago, IL., p. 73.) It is the duty of nations, as well as of men, to owe their dependence upon the overruling power of God...⁸⁹ and to recognize the sublime truth announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven byall history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord.”^{90
(89}William J. Wolf, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, The Almost Chosen People, Garden City, NY., Doubleday, 1959, pp. 162-163. ⁹⁰Norman Childs Sr., What Made America Great? Childs’ Family Publications, Olney, IL., 2001, p. 73.)