THE REBIRTH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

1 CORINTHIANS 15:14

Birth and Background

      Indians killed the grandfather of Abraham Lincoln in the Kentucky wilderness. Lincoln’s father, Thomas, grew up as a farmer and carpenter, moving often.

      In 1806 Thomas Lincoln married Nancy Hanks. Thomas and Nancy settled in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, and gave birth to Sarah. In 1808 Thomas bought a farm at Sinking Spring near Hodgenville.

      At the birth of Abraham Lincoln on 12 February 1809, Dennis Hanks held the newborn son of Tom and Nancy and said, “He’ll never come to much.” All of this took place in a one room cabin. Betsy Sparrow washed the baby, put a yellow petticoat on him, and covered him in bearskins.

      In the spring of 1811 Thomas Lincoln moved the family to a farm on Knob Creek, about ten miles northeast of Sinking Spring. Then, in December 1816 Thomas took the family across the Ohio River to the backwoods of Indiana.

      In the fall of 1818 Nancy Hanks Lincoln died of the frontier disease called “milk sickness.” Thomas returned to Elizabethtown and married a widow, Sarah Bush Johnston, and brought Sarah with her three children to Indiana.

      Abraham Lincoln said, “She was the best friend I ever had. . . . All that I am, I owe to my angel mother.”

Family

      Lincoln married Mary Todd on 4 November 1842. One week after the marriage, Lincoln wrote to a friend, “Nothing new here, except my marrying, which to me, is matter of profound wonder.” In Springfield, Illinois, Mary gave birth to Robert Todd in 1843. Later, the Lincoln’s welcomed Edward (1846, died in 1850), William (1850), and Thomas (Tad, 1853).

Defeat and Discouragement

      When Lincoln was ten years old, a horse kicked him in the head. Experts believe that a fractured skull caused Lincoln lifelong problems. He suffered fits of depression, excruciating trials, and a miserable marriage.

      Lincoln once said, “I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth. Whether I shall ever be better I cannot tell; I awfully forbode I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible; I must die or be better, it appears to me.”

      Consider Lincoln’s disappointments.

•          Failed in business in 1831

•          Defeated for legislature in 1832

•          Second failure in business in 1833

•          Suffered a nervous breakdown in 1836

•          Defeated for Speaker in 1838

•          Defeated for Elector in 1840

•          Defeated for Congress in 1848

•          Defeated for Senate in 1855

•          Defeated for Vice-President in 1856

•          Defeated for Senate in 1858

•          Elected President in 1860

      During the dark days of the presidency, Abraham Lincoln carried a clipping from a newspaper in his billfold. The reporter had written some kind remarks toward Mr. Lincoln at a time when the President needed a word in season.

Wisdom

      Abraham Lincoln spent less than a year total in school, but Lincoln never stopped studying. By the fire Lincoln often read the Bible, Aesop’s Fables, Robinson Crusoe, or Shakespeare. While the strong six-foot-four-inch, Abraham Lincoln worked as a hired hand, rail-splitter, and eventually an honest clerk at a village store, he always kept a book nearby. Eventually, Lincoln’s thirst for books led the clerk and postmaster to study law. Lincoln’s tales and wisdom grew legendary.

      Abraham Lincoln said, “There is just one way to bring up a child in the way he should go, and that is to travel that way yourself.”

      Abraham Lincoln said, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”

      In July 1863 the Union armies pushed back the Confederate army at Gettysburg, the only battle on Northern soil. On 19 November 1863, the country paused to dedicate a National Soldiers Cemetery at Gettysburg. Edward Everett was chosen as the orator of the day to give the dedication speech (former U.S. Senator, Governor of Massachusetts, Congressman, Secretary of State, professor and President of Harvard). President Lincoln was invited six weeks after Everett and only two weeks before the event “to make a few appropriate remarks.” Lincoln worked and reworked the speech, seeking to make it as perfect as possible. Everett spoke one hour and fifty-seven minutes. After a glee club, Lincoln arose and spoke scarcely three minutes. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address contained only 266 words! The photographer never had time to complete a photograph. Lincoln thought it a failure, as did most of the newspapers. Only a few recognized it as one of the noblest speeches ever made by any man. Yet, Lincoln’s words “Fourscore and seven years ago. . .” live in the annals of history. Afterwards, Everett wrote to Lincoln, “I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes.”

The Bible and Prayer

      Abraham Lincoln’s mother, Nancy Lincoln, and later stepmother, Sarah Bush Lincoln gave him a solid foundation through Bible reading. Abraham Lincoln once said, “This great book [the Bible]. . . is the best gift God has given to man. . . But for it we could not know right from wrong.”

      Every day during the Civil War, secretaries brought Abraham Lincoln word from the battlefields. Often the President sat at his desk before seven o’clock in the morning, working till Tad awakened. Tad would come down to Lincoln’s office and they would read the Bible together–Tad sitting in his father’s lap.

      Upon leaving Springfield, Lincoln noted, “Without the assistance of that Divine Being who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance, I cannot fail.”

      Abraham Lincoln said, “I have been driven to my knees many times by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that of all those about me seemed insufficient for that day.”

Presidency

      In 1856 Lincoln helped organize the new Republican party with those who wanted to stop the spread of slavery. He narrowly lost the nomination for vice-presidential candidate. In 1858 Lincoln rose to national prominence as the Republican senate candidate against Stephen A. Douglas. By 1860 the Democratic party split, with the North nominating Douglas, and the South nominating John C. Breckinridge. During the presidential campaign, Lincoln stayed in Springfield and did not make a single speech. Lincoln never met the Vice-President, Hannibal Hamlin, until after the election. Though not appearing on the Southern ballot, Lincoln won the election to become the sixteenth president. Abraham Lincoln went to Washington under the threat of assassination as the crisis of Southern secession unfolded.

      Abraham Lincoln, President-elect, spent Sunday, 25 November 1860 in Chicago. At the invitation of J. V. Farwell, Lincoln agreed to visit the Sunday School of D. L. Moody on the condition that he not speak. W. R. Moody wrote of Mr. Lincoln’s visit, “President Lincoln’s visit to the school when on his way to Washington to enter on his first term of office was a memorable occasion. His popularity in Chicago assured him of a demonstrative welcome, and when, a few months later, the war broke out, the North Market Sunday School contributed over fifty soldiers in answer to the President’s first call for troops.” When Mr. Lincoln rose to go following the opening hymns and prayers, Moody quickly asked for a word. Abraham Lincoln went to the front and said, “I was once as poor as any boy in the school, but I am now President of the United States, and if you attend to what is taught you here, some one of you may yet be President of the United States.”

Civil War

      Earlier, the President stated, “‘A house divided against itself cannot stand.’ I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.” Lincoln wrote, “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or to destroy slavery.” On 22 September 1862, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.

      President Lincoln often appealed for prayer, repentance, and fasting during the great conflict.

Proclamation of a National Fast Day, 12 August 1861

“It is fit and becoming in all people, at all times, to acknowledge and revere the supreme government of God; to bow in humble submission to his chastisements; to confess and deplore their sins and transgressions, in the full conviction that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; and to pray with all fervency and contrition for the pardon of their past offenses . . .”

Proclamation of a National Fast Day, 30 March 1863

“And insomuch as 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 but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins. . . . 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 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.”

      In 1863 Lincoln began the tradition of proclaiming the last Thursday of November as a national Thanksgiving Day.

The year that is drawing towards its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.⁸

Capacity to Forgive

      President Lincoln gave young Tad a special code for entering the presidential office. Even in crucial meetings, Tad would burst into his affectionate father.

      Once a delegation arrived from Kentucky to see the President. Lincoln held them off for a week until Tad met them and asked, “Do you want to see Old Abe?” Tad ushered them in to see the President introducing them as friends from Kentucky. Lincoln said to Tad, “That’s right, my son, I would have the whole human race your friends and mine, if it were possible.”

      During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln developed the reputation of the pardoner. General Sherman would execute deserters before appeals could reach Lincoln. On one occasion when Lincoln heard the gunfire from a Virginia camp that shot deserters, he stepped to an open window with tears running down the cheeks. Another time a sobbing old man told the President of his son’s sentence to be shot. Even the General protested against Lincoln’s interference. As the President witnessed the old man’s grief, he signed an order, “not to be shot until further orders from me.” The old man still grieved and questioned if Lincoln’s order kept the door open for execution. Lincoln smiled and said, “Well, my old friend, I see you are not very well acquainted with me. If your son never looks on death till further orders come from me to shoot him, he will live to be a great deal older than Methuselah.”

      One of President Abraham Lincoln’s associates scolded him rather severely for being soft on his enemies. “Why do you insist on trying to make friends of them?” he chided. “ You should be trying to destroy them.” To which Lincoln replied gently, “Am I not destroying my enemies when I make them my friends?”

      Emerson said of Lincoln: “His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong.”

      In April 1865 when Richmond’s fall appeared certain, Abraham Lincoln determined to go there. He visited the hospital tents and to shake hands with Union and Confederate soldiers alike. Col. Harry L. Benboe lay in a cot, wounded in both hips. Lincoln stopped and offered the Confederate commander his hand. Benboe said, “Mr. President, do you know to whom you offer your hand?” Lincoln said, “I do not.” Benboe said, “You offer it to a Confederate colonel who has fought you as hard as he could for four years.” Lincoln replied, “Well, I hope a Confederate colonel will not refuse me his hand.” The colonel clasped the President’s hand with both of his.

      On the day of his death, Abraham Lincoln pardoned a deserter named Patrick Murphy. Lincoln heard and honored the mother’s plea in the soldier’s behalf.

      When Abraham Lincoln gave the inaugural address 4 March 1865, the end of the Civil War drew near. The President looked forward to welcoming the Southern states back into the Union and to making their readjustment as easy as possible. Lincoln spoke these words: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Rebirth

      In the Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln spoke of a “new birth of freedom.” Lincoln journeyed through three stages in his rebirth.

Revivalism

      Tom and Nancy Lincoln raised Abraham in the midst of a frontier revival that swept Kentucky. The Ten Commandments shaped the moral foundation of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln filled his memory with Scripture.

      Lincoln did not understand the doctrines preached at the Creek Hardshell Baptist Church that he and Sarah attended as children. Lincoln learned about the sovereignty of God, but he never learned the simple gospel of salvation.

Skepticism

      While a young man in Illinois, Lincoln read free thinkers like Tom Paine. Lincoln fell in with those who questioned the Scriptures and went through a period of doubt. The controversies of the clergy did not interest Lincoln.

Realism

      The reality of death haunted Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln experienced the death of a mother, sister, two sons, and a host of friends on the battlefields. Willie’s death crushed Lincoln. He mourned hopelessly for his son until a minister from New York spoke to him of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The character of Lincoln’s religion began to change.

      Shortly before his death Abraham Lincoln told a friend, “When I left Springfield I asked the people to pray for me. I was not a Christian. When I buried my son, the severest trial of my life (1862), I was not a Christian. But when I went to Gettysburg and saw the graves of thousands of our soldiers, I then and there consecrated myself to Christ. Yes, I do love Jesus.” (Recorded in “Words of Lincoln” by O. H. Oldroyd)

      After this Christian salvation experience, Lincoln deepened in his understanding of God and His ways. Consider the theology expressed in the second inaugural address in 1865.

“Each [side] looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. 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. ‘Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!’ If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bondman’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.’ “

      Lincoln finally found the inner peace he longed for all his life. Lincoln worshiped regularly at the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington D.C. Dr. Gurley, the pastor, stated that Lincoln wanted to make a public profession of faith on Easter Sunday morning 1865.

      On Palm Sunday, 9 April 1865, General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Confederate army to General U.S. Grant. Lincoln gave thanks to God for bringing an end to the war and turned attention toward the reconciliation and reconstruction of the nation. To celebrate the end of the war, Lincoln took Mary and two guests to Ford’s Theater on the night of April 14, Good Friday.

      Within the last two weeks, the President had related a dreadful dream. Lincoln dreamed that he heard mourners weeping at the White House. In the dream Lincoln asked a soldier, “Who is dead in the White House?” The soldier in front of the veiled corpse answered, “The President.” Often, Lincoln had been the subject of plots to kidnap or kill. Soon, the President’s premonitions would come true.

      During the third act of the play, John Wilkes Booth, an intoxicated young actor, crept into the presidential box while the guard drank at a tavern across the street. At that moment Lincoln was saying to Mary, “Mary, do you know what I would like to do now? Now that the war is over, we could go to the Near East. We could go to Bethlehem where He was born. We could visit Bethany where those hallowed steps were so often heard. And we could go to Jeru. . . .” Booth shot Lincoln, then leaped onto the stage carrying a dagger and escaped.

      Soldiers carried the unconscious president across the street to the nearest residence, a boardinghouse. There, stretched diagonally on a bed too small for the long body, Abraham Lincoln died without regaining consciousness at 7:22 A.M., 15 April 1865. As the President died, Secretary of War Stanton said softly, “Now he belongs to the ages.”

      Abraham Lincoln lives immortality only in that eternal life that comes through faith in Jesus Christ, the Resurrection and the Life.

1 Cor. 15:14. And if Christ be not risen, then [is] our preaching vain, and your faith [is] also vain.