GOD IN LINCOLN. LINCOLN IN NEW ORLEANS - ATTENDS A SLAVE AUCTION. BY DAVID GREGG, D.D., PASTOR OF THE LAFAYETTE AVENUE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, BROOKLYN. GOD works through persons. This is his invariable law. He links a man or a woman to his purposes as a co-worker. Moses must superintend the Exodus. Deborah must lead his armies. Cyrus must issue the decree for the return of his captives. The twelve Apostles must act as the witnesses of his Son. Thus it is in the history inside the lids of the sacred Book, and thus it is in the history outside the lids of the sacred Book. Luther must be the head and front of the Reformation in Germany. John Knox must be soul of the Reformation in Scotland. Wesley must break the ecclesiastical shackles in England. Abraham Lincoln must pen the Emancipation Proclamation in the United States of America. If God's truth is to succeed, it must incarnate itself. If God's cause is to win a victory, it must embody himself in a person. There is no substitute for whole-souled consecrated persons. Without them liberty perishes from the earth, and abstract truth is simply principle on paper, a thing of cold type. While God works through persons, yet something is requisite upon the part of those through whom God works. In order to success, it is requisite that those through God's works should be possessed by his purposes, and should be all on fire with his divine principles. Elijah, the Prophet of Fire, succeeded; but he succeeded because the whole man was in his mission. The half of Elijah would have failed. Abraham Lincoln succeeded; but everybody knows that his heart was with the slave. The Emancipation Proclamation was not a sudden growth. It was not an accident. It was evolved from the nature of the man. Some one has taken the Emancipation Proclamation and has deftly arranged its words so that they form an accurate profile of Abraham Lincoln's face. The picture is perfect, and not a letter of the Proclamation is wanting. This rightly represents things as they are. The man and the liberty which he proclaimed are one and inseparable. If we could see into the soul of the man, we should find that the Emancipation Proclamation was but a transcript of that which was deepest and most vital there. Charles Carleton Coffin tells us in his history that when Abraham Lincoln was a young man, he built a raft for his employer and took a cargo of produce down the Mississippi River to the market of New Orleans. After he had sold the cargo, he and a fellow-boatman sauntered through the slave mart, where the Southern planters had gathered to buy and sell slaves. Black men and women and children were arranged in rows against the wall for inspection. The auctioneer proclaimed their good qualities as he would those of a horse or mule. Some of the blacks were Christians, and their Christianity was proclaimed as among their good qualities, which ought to command a higher figure in the market; it made them more conscientious and trust 66 His pov worthy as workers. Again and again the hammer of the auctioneer fell, and husbands and wives were separated forever, and children were, there and then, doomed never again to look into the faces of father and mother. That scene in the auction room set the blood of Lincoln on fire. His lips quivered and his voice choked in his. throat, as he turned to his fellow-boatman, and said: If I ever get a chance to hit that thing, I will hit it hard, by the Eternal God." Who is he to hit the "thing" a blow? He is only a boatman, a splitter of rails, a teamster, a backwoodsman. Nothing more. erty is so deep that his clothes are in tatters. What position of influence or power is he likely to attain to enable him to strike a blow? The "thing" which he would like to hit is incorporated into the framework of society, and legalized in half the States composing the Republic. It is intrenched in Church and State alike. It is a political force, recognized in the Constitution, and it enters into the basis of representation. Is there the remotest probability that he will ever be able to smite such an institution? Why utter these words? Why raise the right hand toward Heaven and swear a solemn oath? Was it some dim vision of what might come to him through divine Providence in the unfolding years? Was it an illumination of the Spirit forecasting for the moment the impending conflict between right and wrong in which he was to take a conspicuous part? Was it a whisper by a divine messenger that he was to be the chosen one to wipe the "thing" from the earth, and give deliverance to millions of his fellow-men? Was it not rather the mind and heart and power of God planted deep in the depths of his very being, and abiding there with a holy impatience, waiting for the clock of destiny to strike? You may answer these questions as you please; but these are the facts of history. The hour of the nation came, and with it the golden moment for the slave. Then it was that the very same hand that was lifted in solemn oath before God in the New Orleans slave mart took up the God-inspired pen of liberty, and dashed off the Emancipation Proclamation which wrote out of existence the American slave, and the American slave mart, and the American slave master. It was the That was an act worthy of Jesus Christ. act of Jesus Christ; for it was the spirit of Jesus Christ that filled the man with power and that found an outlet in American history through the personality and pen of Abraham Lincoln. I remember that day well. It was the most thrilling day I have ever known. It was a day full of magnificent music. I shall never hear music more thrilling than the clink of the links of those four million of slave chains, as link struck link when the chains were snapped into a thousand parts beyond all hope of ever again being welded together. The harps of gold, struck by celestial hands, cannot make sweeter music. LINCOLN'S KINDNESS OF HEART. PLEADING FOR A DESERTER. BY JOHN D. KERNAN, ESQ. A STORY my father, the Hon. Francis Kernan, used to tell illustrates Lincoln's kindness of heart. When my father was a member of Congress, during the War, a woman came to him one day and said that her husband had been captured as a deserter and she wanted my father to go and see the President about the matter. So the next morning he called on Mr. Lincoln. He found him very much occupied, but, sending in word that it was an urgent matter, the President saw him. My father gave the President the facts in the case. It seems that the man had been absent a year from his family and, without leave, had gone home to see them. On his way back to the army he was arrested as a deserter and sentenced to be shot. The sentence was to be carried out that very day. The wife had come on to intercede for her husband. The President listened attentively, becoming more and more interested in the story. Finally he said: "Why, Kernan, of course this man wanted to see his family; and they oughtn't to shoot him for that." So he immediately rang his bell, called his secretary and gave him orders to send off telegrams suspending the sentence and ordering the record of the case to be sent to |