Preface
Hints dropped long ago by two Christian thinkers started me on the road to the eventual production of this book. One was my teacher, the other my friend, and now both are gone from us. The former was Willard L. Sperry, who was Dean of Harvard Divinity School in my time there, while the latter was Professor Reinhold Niebuhr, of Union Theological Seminary, New York. Both dealt, in conversation as well as in print, with Abraham Lincoln's theological acumen. Dean Sperry referred often to Lincoln as a theologian, saying, "He is one of the few men in history, our own history and all history, whose religion was great enough to bridge the gulfs between the sects, and to encompass us all." Reinhold Niebuhr rated the Civil War President as the most original of American religious thinkers. "Lincoln," he said, "has always been my hero in religion and statecraft." Both of these scholars were convinced that professional theologians could learn much from a man who, while making no claim to theological competence, demonstrated genuine profundity concerning man and his relationship to God.
What I found difficult to resist, and what I did not really desire to resist, was the attraction of undoubted greatness. I noted Lord
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Tweedsmuir's pithy remark, in justification of his producing a biography of Oliver Cromwell, when others already existed. "Every student of the seventeenth century in England," he said, "must desire sooner or later to have his say about its greatest figure." The same holds true for everyone who cares about the American experiment. We know who the greatest figure is and we cannot leave him alone. If the contemporary student can add anything to the understanding of the deeper springs of Lincoln's character, no further justification is required.
One good reason for writing about Lincoln now is that there has been, in the recent past, an effort by some to denigrate his image and even to claim that the Emancipator was really a racist. This effort does not merit much attention, since the only truth in the attack is that which Lincoln scholars knew already, viz., that Lincoln was not simplistic either in his observations or in his conclusions. The critic, whether he be friendly or hostile, who approaches Abraham Lincoln with the assumption that he was a naive idealist is bound to be disappointed.
Professor William J. Wolf of the Episcopal Theological Seminary in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has in his book, Lincoln's Religion, handled his subject so fairly that many difficult points of interpretation do not require further elaboration. "In the tangled forest of conflicting statements about Lincoln's religion or his lack of it," writes Wolf, "there are many pitfalls for the unwary." I am personally grateful to this scholar for pointing out some of the pitfalls which otherwise I might never have seen.
The present volume is devoted not primarily to Lincoln's religion, but to his religious thinking. No single writer can express Lincoln's greatness in its entirety, but when we deal seriously with his religious thinking we are getting close to the central mystery. The resource materials are so complex that the subject is at first bewildering to the student, but finally it is possible to achieve a measure of clarification.
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The contemporary Lincoln student has the good fortune of being able to profit by the patient scholarship of Roy Basler and his colleagues, who made possible the publication, in 1953, of the definitive nine-volume Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, published by Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, new jersey. I have had occasion to refer to this valuable resource so often that in footnotes I have abbreviated the title. In another fashion, every Lincoln student is indebted to John Nicolay and John Hay, Lincoln's devoted private secretaries, who brought out their ten volumes of Abraham Lincoln: A History in 1890. The name of this is abbreviated also, being referred to in notes simply as Nicolay and Hay.
The books about Lincoln are so numerous that few can read them all, but fortunately, this is not required. What is possible is the reading of what Lincoln himself wrote, and this is far more important. This is particularly true in regard to his religious ideas, where the firsthand witness is vastly preferable to the opinions of others, especially when they are speculative. In the man's written words, including both his letters and his speeches, we have the reliable evidence we need. No help in this regard has been greater than that provided by the Lincoln Library, associated with the Lincoln National Life Foundation, Fort Wayne, Indiana, and its librarian, Dr. R. Gerald McMurtry.
Like many Americans, I have honored Lincoln for a long time, but it is only in the last eight years that I have been able to immerse myself in his writings, wherever they could be found. The experience is one for which I am deeply and humbly grateful.
E. T.
Earlham College
Labor Day, 1972
