Abraham Lincoln - Ecclesiastes 7:28-29
Sermon by Russell H. Conwell
Sunday Evening, February 13, 1916
Grace Baptist Church
Scripture passages in brackets ([]) added by me.
In the two last verses of the 7th Chapter of Ecclesiastes is the wise observation in which the preacher says:
"That which my soul seeketh I find not; one man among a thousand have I found, but a woman among all those have I found not."Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions."
[Ecclesiastes 7:28-29]
The whole nation, during the last week, has been celebrating the birth of Abraham Lincoln, and it furnishes an excellent opportunity for one to point a moral or to apply a lesson of the Gospel. It is a very interesting thing, and a very profitable thing to read what the great editors and the great authors of the country write concerning that singular character, Abraham Lincoln. But it is very confusing to see how they differ in their estimate of the man, or the reasons they give for the place he holds in the esteem of the American people.
It is an interesting thing to find that such a character, one who never joined the church, who never made what people sometimes call an open profession of religion, should now be a hero of the church, and his principles accepted as principles of genuine Christianity.
It appears to me that the one man in a thousand for whom the preacher was looking is found in Abraham Lincoln but not because he differs from other men. It would be very useless for me to turn your attention again to this great man if it were not for the fact that the lesson can be very helpful.
When a man attempts by poetry or oratory, or song, to put a man like him far up high on a pedestal, as though no man could ever approach him, they do a great deal of harm instead of good, and are disheartening those who might follow his footsteps if they were encouraged to do so. I am not one of those who believe that Abraham Lincoln was so far above all the other men or was so different from other men that he could not be imitated now. I believe he can be followed.
I lived in a day of great excitement in the Civil War, when every side of Abraham Lincoln's character was brought under the microscope of public opinion, and I heard what was said against him, and I heard what people who underestimated him said, and I have lived these fifty years now, and we are finding that the confused mind is becoming more and more clarified with each succeeding year. His influence grows, and his words are stronger now than they were when he died. His great speech at Gettysburg has become now the example of the highest form of oratory, and yet at the time it was delivered it received little applause.
Why is it that his liberation of the slaves, which has become an inspiration to lovers of liberty the world over, at the time it was done, was regarded merely as a military necessity? I have asked this question of myself, thinking that you, with this Spiritual advice, might take a clear view which one should take of such a character, not for the purpose of entertainment or for discussion, but to point a Gospel lesson pure and simple.
Abraham Lincoln did not differ so much from thousands of other men. There are certain circumstances in this life which made him an excellent example of that in which he did differ from common men, and if I were to say to the young men who hear me speak or who may read my words that Abraham Lincoln was a strange, peculiar, God-given genius, and that when his image was cast, "the mould was broken." and that there never could be or never was another like Abraham Lincoln, I am simply saying to the young men, "It is of no use for you to try." But if, on the other hand, we take that reasonable view of the life of Abraham Lincoln that he was like other men, but especially used by the Providence of God, and that there are many things in his life worthy of imitation, we have furnished an incentive to the rising generation. This ought always to be done. There is only one character that was ever on earth, that should be held up above the ambitions of young men and women.
This text that I read confuses people. But it is a statement which I may put in other words—that God made the first perfect man, and that since that day there has not been found a woman who has reached that standard in her attempt to make herself over into the image; and that since that day there has been found one man in all the thousands, and there has not one single woman been found who has been able to imitate that uprightness which God created in man in the first place. It seems to say that men have a right, by their manner of independence, to make themselves over into something else which they desire to be. I am like that preacher, I have never found a man that can build up the ideal figure and imitate the perfect uprightness of the Second Adam. They have all failed, so far as I can see.
Abraham Lincoln felt that he was not a perfect man. Why should we think so, when an age is passed and his enemies are silent, and his friends have become more enthusiastic about him; when we have reached that state as a nation where we can extol him and worship him as the Chinese do their ancestors. The lesson that comes down to us through the years is that he was the nearest to that ideal manhood, perhaps, in his closing years of any known American. There may have been a more perfect character of whom we did not hear, but Abraham Lincoln is an encouragement to every young man in this—that nearly every young man today has more advantageous circumstances in life than Abraham Lincoln ever had.
Abraham Lincoln inherited nothing above the trials of life from his parents in body, mind and spirit. Abraham Lincoln's race was that poor white race of Kentucky which has been found there in the years since. You may have read, or may have seen, if you have traveled in the South, those "poor whites," lazy people, that lie around the grocery stores and who drink, who chew tobacco and swear and shoot each other occasionally when they have their family feuds. These poor white people of Kentucky remain, in a measure, something the same as they were in the days of Abraham Lincoln. But those men of the mountains, with valleys deep, with precipices steep, often made characters of a certain rugged, noble kind. Abraham Lincoln inherited nothing from his father and mother for which we need claim praise. Less from his father than from his mother. It reminds me of Henry Ward Beecher saying of his church composed of eighteen members, that seventeen of them were women and the other was nothing. Abraham Lincoln was something. But his father was nothing. Abraham Lincoln inherited no money; he did not come into the world in possession of any funds with which to start himself in life, or with which he could secure an education. I want to say to the young men who hear me, or who read what I am saying, that you have many advantages which Abraham Lincoln did not possess, Abraham Lincoln had no culture; he had no opportunity to go to school, and up to the time he was 19 years of age. As a boy he could not read or write, or scarcely scrawl his name. He had been brought up to hew wood and do odd jobs of various kinds, and lay around the grocery stores up to that time. He had consequently no helps such as men now have to make himself a great man. He therefore lacked that culture and lacked that education; and he had many special misfortunes to hold him back which you do not have.
He lived with his stepmother. His good mother, whom he remembered as a child, died early in life, and the poor boy was left to wander about, and oftentimes he had to live on crusts of bread, and his lazy, useless old father married again, and he had a stepmother. His stepmother was always unusually kind, and was indeed a help to him. But neither was she a cultivated person. While she knew more than his own mother, as far as reading, writing and books were concerned, yet she was of that low intellectual grade of Kentucky poor whites. There are no young men in all my acquaintances that have the disadvantages that he had. I don't believe in this Temple tonight any one can think of a boy 20 years of age that has the disadvantages which characterized Abraham Lincoln. So I say, it is encouraging to boys to find out that one, worse off than they, and having a father of less account than theirs, has risen to this high station and is receiving the encomiums of the world.
He was chastened in his youth—chastened by sorrow—sorrow of the deepest kind. Loss of his mother I have already mentioned and you have read his history and I need not detail it. It was sad. It left that grief over his childhood that went on down through the years. But perhaps the greatest chastening was that he was broken-hearted over the love of a woman. He was of that decisive character, a man who could love with a great heart, but I do not believe that he loved more than other men have loved; I do not believe that his admiration for her whom he intended to marry was more sincere than other men; I do not believe that he would have sacrificed more than you would sacrifice for the one you love. But to that life there came a chill, and he, instead of leading her to the altar, followed her, broken-hearted to the grave, and that first great stroke of sorrow just chastened that boy; broke him down, reduced him to a state of grief and carelessness of life that seemed never to have left him entirely. He never came out of it even in the dignity of the work he had to do.
He lived in poverty all those years—indeed, he lived in poverty until he went to Congress, and even then he gave away so much of his small salary that he was oftentimes reduced to debt. He was always poor.
He was chastened by defeat; by some very bitter defeats—not only defeats concerning marriage in his first and deepest love—not only there, but he was defeated again and again in his attempt to do something for hmiself. He tried to carry on a store, and he was very soon so in debt that he was obliged to go out and split rails to pay up. When he closed up his store, he was elected captain of a military company in the Black Hawk war, and before he saw any service the company was ordered to disband, and he enlisted as a private soldier. It is not often that we find a man is "promoted" from captain to private. But it was the history of Abraham Lincoln, and young men may have had like experiences in other directions, and it may have done them good.
Then he determined to study law. As a lawyer he had no wide education, no wide reading. I do not see how any person could ever engage Abraham Lincoln as a lawyer when he first opened his office in Springfield, Illinois. His office was in a very poor building, the windows were broken, some of the portions of the doors were split, and they said his office was never kept very neat, for not many came to it, and he was obliged to sleep in it himself.
Today we ask the young men of our country to look at this character, which now stands before our country, whose monuments rise in almost every public square and park, and whose life and actions have filled libraries. Look at him, young men! Look! Your chance is far better than his! You have far greater talents than he had. You live in a time when the doors of progress are open, and you live in an hour when men can rise, and rise rapidly to attention and success.
What was it that made Abraham Lincoln great? He was great; his influence was great. We must all admit that. But what was it that made him great—without special intelligence, or money, without education, culture or friends! What was it that led him to become the central figure in our history, where he did certain deeds that impressed the ages? It is reasonable for us to discuss, in view of the Scriptural illustration, what it was that made him one great man.
Many a disciple of Christ has tried to find in Abraham Lincoln a proof of the truth of his own creed, and maybe prove the tenets of his own church. But nevertheless, the great fact remains, that Abraham Lincoln, while he was in the habit of attending church, and while he read the Bible, and while he read religious books, and while he gave religious advice, never allied himself in any close way with any one denomination of Christians. He kept himself aloof for the time. It does not seem to have been because of any choice on his part. It seems to have been a kind of modest under-estimation of himself, or a sense of his weakness, or lack of culture or money, that kept him from uniting with any Christian church. Yet as a Christian he was one of God's ideal men. He was nearer to it than any American ever known. He was an upright man; uprightness was the peculiar characteristic of Abraham Lincoln.
Now, a man may praise other men who have great gifts—men who have wrought with wonderful imagination in poetry; we may praise great scientific men, great inventors—men who have read the stars, the great statesmen who steer the government through perilous waters, we may praise those men because of some one individual invention or achievement, all of them prominent, and all of them deserving a great place. But in Abraham Lincoln there was that ideal aggregation of all the best traits of human character, making him one, great, round and noble figure, to which the world could look and give its praise; because it lacked the inventions that make up the character of many men.
A man may be a great inventor in words, or a great inventor in machinery, and because of that invention receive great praise. Why is it that Mr. Edison is not holding the same position in the estimate of the world that Abraham Lincoln held? It is not because Edison has less opportunities than Abraham Lincoln had, many helpful inventions and opportunities have aided him; but Abraham Lincoln had no inventions to aid him. Some may write books. There may be Whittiers and Longfellows, and they may write books that attract the attention of men and women, and the admiration and love of the world, but that invention might be an outside invention, something outside of themselves which they have done. But in the life of Abraham Lincoln there does not seem to be any one special thing which brought him to the place he occupies. He issued the Emancipation Proclamation and gave freedom to the slaves, and that's about all you emphasize of him. If you study his history and try to find some mighty, gigantic outside thing, or invention, which he did to attract attention to himself you do not find it. He was too modest and lacked money to do it. There are no great issues in his life to which he ever could or did go. He was an ideal man, such as the great writer of Ecclesiastes is trying to suggest to us.
He also tries here to suggest the ideal woman. I wonder what that ideal of his was ? It does not seem to appear on the surface, although there are many places where he speaks of woman's characteristics. The last Chapter of Ecclesiastes presents a most wonderful picture of a certain woman of a certain race, in a certain place, with certain traits, and that is a wonderful ideal.
The ideal man, as God made him is upright, and the word uprightness, when we get back to the Hebrew, covers quite an extensive vocabulary. "Uprightness" means a man of a good heart. O, that's the foundation of human greatness, a great, loving, good heart. And that made Abraham Lincoln a great man, with the help of prayer to God. Abraham Lincoln was a man of prayer. Whether he went to church or not; or read often the Bible or not; whether he believed in this creed, or that or the other, one thing is sure that continually, like Washington, he was a man of prayer. He believed in prayer and felt that his prayers would be answered as well as other people's who went to church more than he did. He was a "good-hearted" man. O that means so much!
Milton could write the most wonderful poetry that was ever penned by man. But he had a weak character. Nelson could say, "England expects every man to do his duty," and that phrase rang all over the world, and yet he could be a libertine, and when we look at many of our great men, even our own Franklin, we see some things that we mention under our breath. We find in every great man who has done some great thing or invented some great thing, some great defect of character. It is said that every great man has some peculiar weakness, and that is true very largely. If you find any man prominent in one way he always has some weakness. But Abraham Lincoln's character was an all-around good character. You do not find any man to assault his motives for moral uprightness. You could not expect to find in the time that Abraham Lincoln lived any man who declared him to be dishonest. He was "Honest Old Abe," and he was a great man because he had a good heart, and he was strictly honest and honorable. He was an ideal man, then, in his heart, and being an ideal, Christian hearted man, believing in the teachings of Jesus and praying unto God for help in times of distress, he developed that all-around character, so that you may put up the moral statue of Abraham Lincoln upon the pedestal of City Hall and go around it and examine it with every kind of microscopic instrument, and you will not find a flaw in that great, living, moral character, and that is the character that the Bible is ever endeavoring to build up. God seems to show His hand in His determination to build up mankind into this perfect uprightness, of which the prophets had found only one in a thousand. It is to make men like Abraham Lincoln that the Scripture itself is intended. It is for that that we are ever to preach and teach and insist. He was a thoroughly honest good man.
He was characterized by one other faculty and that was wisdom; the wisdom that is mentioned in Proverbs; the wisdom that is mentioned by Jesus Christ; that broad, every day application of common sense. That is real wisdom. Man may search into philosophy and go deep into all kinds of experiments; he may discover some; he may invent something and call the attention of men to himself, but real wisdom is wisdom like that of Abraham Lincoln, that sees every day some good in every man. He was a man who could recognize good in his enemies as well as in his friends; who ever exercised his every day common sense; who showed us that we ought to be forgiving to those who despitefully use us. The ideal man is the man who makes no unnecessary enemies, and who, if he has enemies, tries to look upon that man in the same way as he would upon a friend. Abraham Lincoln's life was a special exposition of that disposition of forgiveness and brotherly kindness. The kind position he took with reference to the people of the South was stich as to bring down upon him the condemnation of those who supported Wendell Phillips. I knew him personally, and he often privately said bitter things against Abraham Lincoln because Mr. Lincoln spoke kindly of the South, and spoke of the people of the South as friends and never as enemies. In one of his great speeches he said, "They are not our enemies; they are our friends," and because he approached the slavery question with common sense he had both sides and both extremes often opposed to him. He proposed, before the war began, that the government should raise money and buy the slaves and set them free. The North considered that the greatest possible foolishness and oppression, forgetting how many millions might be spent in the war, how many would go to death, and how great would be the depression in all the after years. They did not exercise common sense. But Abraham Lincoln looked out upon the whole field, and regarded the Southern people as mistaken friends, and as friends who were mistaken, he proceeded with his whole heart, and with a kindly spirit and determination, to do precisely right, in bringing about the triumph of the cause of the Union, and when he was assassinated by a foolish fanatic, there was put a martyr's crown upon his life, that called attention to it so distinctly that it impressed its mark upon the ages as nothing else could do. So martyrs are ever honored, almost worshipped. When Abraham Lincoln was murdered, with his good heart, his excellent intentions, his broad common sense, his statesmanship, his death put God's seal upon those characteristics of the man who brought about the return of the South to the Union, through a teachiing which has made them a solid glorious and permanent part of this great nation.
Abraham Lincoln was an upright man such as cannot be made by clothing; such as cannot be made by money, but which is made only by building upon the foundation of Christian faith, upon a large and loving heart. That heart had been broken, and having been broken it is fair to assume that God made him sufifer, in order that he might be a better instrument for bringing about peace and prosperity to this great nation, and the setting up of a great people whose ideal he should be. Abraham Lincoln's faith and broad common sense showed him that this nation should lead all the nations of the earth in bringing them all up to that standard of Christian tellowship and brotherly love, where each should do unto the other as he would have the other do to him.
These, then, are the great characteristics in the life of Abraham Lincoln, his every day sound judgment; his great, loving soul; his prayers to God and his faith in the ultimate triumph of right. With malice toward none, but with love for all, Abraham Lincoln set his faith in God, believing that righteousness would prevail, and that at last truth would triumph. That makes a great character. A small character that lives within its own narrow limits, thinks that all is going to the bad; that evil is everywhere extant, that the good are ever crushed and the wicked are ever prosperous, takes a small, uncommonsense view of life. But Abraham Lincoln was a broad character, who, having faith that all things were working together for good in the sight of God, and that somehow evil would be crushed and righteousness would prevail, became the giant man that he was, and his great influence came, not from the fact that he was a great statesman or a great soldier, or a great scientist, or a great scholar, or great in any one invention, but because of that all-pervading, permanent good character and broad common sense, that sublime purpose in life which goes with sincere faith in God.
BENEDICTION
O Lord! We read that Thy kingdom shall be found on earth with the men and women whose hearts are pure, and who love their fellowmen and reverence Thee. O Lord! we thank Thee for Abraham Lincoln's great life, in that his heart was full of sympathy for the suffering and the needy, full of sweet humanity. We thank Thee for his broad wisdom, guiding him into channels of usefulness. Lord, raise up thousands more of men like Abraham Liricoln. We ask that benediction, and ask it in Christ's name. Amen.