What made Abraham Lincoln the extraordinary man that he was? I believe there is an easy answer. He read the Bible. He not only read the Bible, he immersed himself in it, reading it over and over again, until his whole mentality, perspective on life, and language mirrored that of the Bible. His friend and biographer Isaac Arnold recalled that Lincoln just about “knew the whole Bible by heart. There was not a clergyman to be found so familiar with it as he.”
Lincoln’s education in the Bible started early in life. Elton Trueblood wrote: “Lincoln heard many passages from the Bible both in his cabin home and in the Baptist meeting house. He also encountered it in his fragmentary schooling (his total time spent in any kind of school was no more than 18 months). One day in the White House, when speaking to Senator John Henderson, Lincoln was suddenly reminded of his early education. ‘Henderson,’ he asked, ‘did you ever attend an old blab school? Yes? Well, so did I, and what little schooling I got in early life was in that way. I attended such a school in a log schoolhouse in Indiana where we had no reading books or grammars, and all our reading was done from the Bible. We stood in a long line and read in turn from it.’ Thus, Lincoln read the Bible and heard it read before his father could afford to own a copy. According to his kinsman, Dennis Hanks, a family Bible was not purchased until 1819, when Abraham was ten years old.” With very few other books available, the young Lincoln then spent countless hours reading that Bible. (pictured above)
Lincoln scholar Paul Angle noted: “There was one book which left its mark on much of what he wrote. That was the Bible. He could always depend upon a familiarity which extended back to his youth.” Historian Michael Nelson wrote: “For all his mockery (in his younger years), Lincoln was consumed by religion as a subject; and, by the Bible, a book that all of his biographers agree he had read and studied assiduously since his youth. Although disdainful of Christianity in its cruder, frontier forms, Lincoln seems to have been open to, even seeking, an account of the faith that rang true on grounds of reason and justice.”
Religious scholar Earl Schwartz wrote: “Lincoln’s legacy, far more than any other president, has, over time, become inextricably bound up with the words and themes of the Bible. He has been repeatedly been compared with Biblical characters: sometimes cast as Moses, on other occasions as Father Abraham, and yet again as a fiery prophet or a martyred savior. There is an aura of prophetic authority in his words, heightened by his skillful use of literary devices that are characteristic of Biblical texts.”
In 1864 President Lincoln said: “In regard to this Great Book, I say it is the best gift God has given to man. All the good the Savior gave to the world was communicated through this book. Without it, we could not know right from wrong. All things most desirable for man’s welfare, here and hereafter, are to be found portrayed in it.” He also said, “Nothing short of infinite wisdom could have devised and given to man this excellent and perfect moral code.”
Lincoln argued for the truth of the Bible, saying: “Let us treat the Bible fairly. If we had a witness on the stand whose general story we knew was true, we would believe him when he asserted facts of which we had no other evidence. We ought to treat the Bible with equal fairness. I decided a long time ago that it was less difficult to believe that the Bible was what it claimed to be than to disbelieve it. It is a good book for us to obey. It contains the Ten Commandments, the Golden Rule, and many other rules which ought to be followed. No man was ever the worse for living according to the directions of the Bible.”
Paraphrased Biblical quotes filled Lincoln’s private and public speech. He said, “The Bible is the richest source of pertinent quotations;” and it was said that his “ordinary daily speech was salted with timely and apt words from the Bible,” referring to verses “in a very reverent and devout way.”
His opponent in the 1858 election for the Senate from Illinois was Stephen Douglas. Douglas complained that Lincoln quoted the Bible too often. Lincoln replied: “My friend has said to me that I am a poor one to quote Scripture. I will try it again, however. It is said in one of the admonitions of the Lord, ‘As your Father in Heaven is perfect, be ye also perfect.’ The Savior, I suppose, did not expect that any human creature could be perfect as the Father in Heaven; but still He said, ‘As your Father in Heaven is perfect, be ye also perfect.’ He set that up as a standard; therefore, I say, let it be as nearly reached as we can.’”
One time Lincoln was criticized for appointing to judge one that had zealously opposed his second term. He replied: “Well, I suppose Judge E. did behave pretty ugly, but that wouldn’t make him any less fit for the place; and I think I have Scriptural authority for appointing him. You remember when the Lord was on Mount Sinai giving out a commission for Aaron; well, that same Aaron was at the foot of the mountain making a false god for the people to worship. Yet Aaron got his commission anyway, you know.”
Lincoln’s most famous works are filled with biblical quotations or references, including the “house divided” analogy from his 1858 Republican nomination speech for the Senate; his reference in his First Inaugural Address to “a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land;” his invocation in his First Annual Message to Congress that, “With a reliance on Providence all the more firm and earnest, let us proceed in the great task which events have devolved upon us;” the quotation in his Second Inaugural Address that “judgements of the Lord are true and righteous altogether;” and the reference in the Gettysburg Address that this “nation shall under God have a new birth of freedom.”
Lifelong friend Joshua F. Speed tells the story of a visit with President Lincoln: “As I entered the room, near night, he was sitting near a window intently reading his Bible. Approaching him I said: ‘I am glad to see you so profitably engaged.’ ‘Yes,’ said he, “I am profitably engaged.’ ‘Well,’ said I, ‘if you have recovered from your skepticism, I am sorry to say that I have not.’ Looking me earnestly in the face and placing his hand on my shoulder, he said: ‘You are wrong, Speed. Take all of this book upon reason that you can and the balance on faith, and you will live and die a happier and better man.’” Lincoln scholar Wayne Temple wrote: “Lincoln had greatly modified his religious beliefs since Speed knew him best in the 1840’s. It appears that the longer Lincoln lived, the closer he felt to God and the more he relied upon God for sustenance.”
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I am over my usual limit of words. If you are interested in more, here are several other examples of how the words of the Bible were, for Lincoln, always at the tip of his tongue.
In an 1862 speech to Congress, Lincoln said a nation consists of territory, people, and laws, of which only territory endures. Saying laws change, people die, yet the land remains, Lincoln quoted, “One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth forever.” (Ecclesiastes 1:4)
Congressman Kellogg of New York asked Lincoln to pardon a Union soldier who had been wounded in battle, but was later accused of desertion. Lincoln, referring to the soldier’s wounds, said the lad had shed his blood for his country, and added, “Kellogg, isn’t there something in Scripture about the shedding of blood being the remission of sins? It is a good point.” With that, the President wrote out a pardon. (Matthew 26:28)
“Fourscore and seven years ago,” one of Lincoln’s most memorable phrases, seems to be drawn from the wording in Psalm 90:10: “The days of our years are threescore years and ten, and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years.”
Near the end of the war, Lincoln was adamantly told Jefferson Davis must be hanged. The President replied, “Let us judge not, that we be not judged.” (Matthew 7:1)
Depression was an illness Lincoln fought his whole life. After one of his worst bouts of depression, Lincoln wrote he had recovered his self-confidence by applying to himself the words of Moses to Israel, “Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord” (Exodus 14:13).
To a Pennsylvania delegation that congratulated him after the inauguration Lincoln said, urging forbearance and respect for differences of opinion between the states, “I would inculcate this idea, so that we may not, like Pharisees, set ourselves up to be better than other people.”
–Much of the above is from William Wolf’s 1959 classic, The Almost Chosen People: A Study of the Religion of Abraham Lincoln, but several other sources were also used.
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In 1864 a black delegation presented President Lincoln with a Bible in appreciation for all he had done for them. Along with the Bible, they gave him this blessing:
May the King Eternal, an all-wise, Providence protect and keep you, and when you pass from this world to that of eternity, may you be borne to the bosom of your Savior and your God.
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