Show Lincol ns the forthcoming august number of the century will contain a chapter on lincoln and the churches in the lincoln history by hay and nicolay from which the following is an extract from advance sheets he was a man of profound and intense religious feeling we have BO purpose of attempting to formulate hia creed we question if h himself ever did BO there have been swift witnesses who judging from euprea uttered in his callow youth have called him an athirst athi cst and others who with the most laudable in tont ions have remembered improbable conversations which they bring forward to prove at oace his orthodoxy and their own intimacy with him but leaving aside these apocryphal evidences we have only to look at his authentic public and private utterances to see how deep and strong in all the latter part of his life was the current of his religious thought and emotion he continually invited and appreciated at their highest value the prayers of good people the pressure of the tremendous problems by which he was surrounded the awful marshal significance of the conflict in which he was the chief combat tant the overwhelming sense of personal responsibility adver left him for an hour all contributed to produce in a naturally and predisposed to a spiritual view of life and conduct a sense of reverent acceptance of the guidance of a superior power prom that morning when standing amid the falling on the railway ear at springfield he asked the prayers of his neighbors in those phrases whose echo rose that night in invocations from thousands of family altars to that memorable hour when on the steps of the capitol ha humbled himself before his creator in the sublime words of the second inaugural there is not an expression known to have come from his lips or chiy pen but proves that ho held himself answerable in every act of his careen to a more augusi tribunal than any on earth the fact that he was not a communicant of any church and that he was singularly reserved in regard to his personal religious life gives only the greater force to cheso striking proofs of hia profound reverence and faith |