Lincoln's lessons

Abraham Lincoln's Feb. 12, 1809, birthday is now rolled into our generic Presidents Day, but some of the comments Lincoln made during the Civil war would creep out many secular reporters today. For example, when reports of fighting at Gettysburg hit Washington in 1863, "everyone seemed panic-stricken," but Lincoln "got down on my knees before Almighty God and prayed.... Soon a sweet comfort crept into my soul that God Almighty had taken the whole business into his hands."

Reporters today might not strenuously object to such talk if a president were to keep his religion personal and removed from public pronouncements or policy-making. Lincoln, though, did not compartmentalize. The faith he developed during the war led him to believe that "by Divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisement in the world." (He called the Civil War "a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people.")

Lincoln (HYPERBOLE ALERT) may or may not have walked thirty miles in a blizzard with two broken legs to return a three-penny overcharge to a customer, but his words were apt long ago and now when he spoke of Americans who had become "too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace." His indictment stands then and now: "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."

It would be hard now for a president to speak with the tragic sensibility of Lincoln. We have progressed so far that we're not ready for him.

For more on Lincoln's beliefs, see "Pilgrim politician" from the Feb. 9 issue of WORLD.