Devotional by Carter Wheelock
What was Abraham Lincoln's religion? He was never heard to say that he was a Christian. When he and his wife Mary lost their little boy Eddie in the early 1850's, Mary joined the Presbyterian church, but Lincoln never joined any. Someone once asked him what his religion was, and he replied that his religion was just like that of an old man he knew, who said, "When I do good, I feel good, and when I do bad, I feel bad, and that's my religion."
Lincoln said that he had never denied the truth of Scripture, and that he didn't believe he could ever vote for a man who scoffed at it. A Congressman once asked him why he didn't join a church, and he said this: "When any church will inscribe over its altars, as its sole qualification for membership, the Savior's condensed statement for the substance of both law and gospel, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself,' that church will I join with all my heart and soul."
Lincoln's beautiful prose bears the unmistakable stamp of Biblical style. Some of his most memorable speeches and letters are full of phrases right out of the Gospels and the Psalms. People used to see him reading a little pocket-size devotional book that somebody had given him. His ability to quote the Bible was often noticed, and people lost count of the times he replied to someone the way he replied to a Senator who wanted him to hang Jeff Davis: he said, "Judge not, that ye be not judged." His law partner told this of him: A friend attended a rally for a political candidate, at which about 400 people showed up. When he told this to Lincoln, Lincoln picked up an office Bible and turned directly to a verse that read: "Everyone that was in distress, and everyone that was discontented, gathered themselves unto him, and he became captain over them, and there were with him about four hundred men." That's pretty good.
A minister named William Barton gathered a few quotations and statements from Lincoln's writings and speeches, put them into paragraphs, and then added at the front only the words "I believe." It reads like this:
I believe in penitential and pious sentiments, in devotional designs and purposes, in homages and confessions, in supplications to the Almighty, solemnly, earnestly, reverently. I believe in blessings and comfort from the Father of Mercies to the sick, the wounded, the prisoners, and the orphans and widows. I believe it pleases Almighty God to prolong our national life, defending us with his guardian care. I believe in His eternal truth and justice. I believe the will of God prevails; without Him all human reliance is vain; without the assistance of that Divine Being I cannot succeed; with that assistance I cannot fail. I believe I am a humble instrument in the hands of our Heavenly Father; I desire that all my works and acts may be according to His will; and that it may be so, I give thanks to the Almighty and seek His aid. I believe in praise to Almighty God, the beneficent Creator and Ruler of the Universe.
Lincoln was talking about the Bible to his friend Joshua Speed in 1864, the year before he died, and he said, "Take all of this book that you can upon reason, and the rest on faith, and you will live and die a better man."
Note: Most of this information is from Carl Sandburg's introduction of Lincoln's Devotional, Channel Press, Greatneck, N.Y., 1957.