Had Lincoln's death sacred significance ?

[loetar44]

Abraham Lincoln was shot on Good Friday, the day that commemorates Christ’s crucifixion. I wonder, did Lincoln's untimely death on such a holy occasion elevate him (more than he was shot on another day) to American martyrdom? My answer is "yes". It's my humble opinion that the Good Friday assassination earned Lincoln sacred significance. What are your thoughts?

[STS Lincolnite]

(12-11-2014 10:28 AM)loetar44 Wrote:  Abraham Lincoln was shot on Good Friday, the day that commemorates Christ’s crucifixion. I wonder, did Lincoln's untimely death on such a holy occasion elevate him (more than he was shot on another day) to American martyrdom? My answer is "yes". It's my humble opinion that the Good Friday assassination earned Lincoln sacred significance. What are your thoughts?

I would agree that in the eyes of many people there was likely an almost divine significance attached to the President's death that can be ascribed to the religious significance of the day on which he was shot. A - with his work being done, he was commended to heaven - sort of impression leading to, in the eye of some, an analogy to Christ.

I would be interested to see if the topic is addressed in this upcoming book that Susan posted in another thread.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/030019580X/ref=...Hub1CG8PP8

[L Verge]

I agree completely, and the sermons that were preached in so many pulpits just a day later on Easter Sunday made it even more dramatic.

[LincolnMan]

Agree with all. There are three churches that I know of in Michigan that have stained-glass windows featuring Lincoln. One church has a statue of Lincoln as part of it's external decor. This all speaks to the elevation that Lincoln has taken historically in religious-like considerations.

[RJNorton]

(12-11-2014 10:28 AM)loetar44 Wrote:  I wonder, did Lincoln's untimely death on such a holy occasion elevate him (more than he was shot on another day) to American martyrdom? My answer is "yes". It's my humble opinion that the Good Friday assassination earned Lincoln sacred significance.

(12-11-2014 10:46 AM)STS Lincolnite Wrote:  I would agree that in the eyes of many people there was likely an almost divine significance attached to the President's death that can be ascribed to the religious significance of the day on which he was shot. A - with his work being done, he was commended to heaven - sort of impression leading to, in the eye of some, an analogy to Christ.

An example: quoting from the Sermon on the Occasion of the Death of President Lincoln., Rev. C. B. Crane., Sunday, April 16th, 1865., South Baptist Church, Hartford, Conn.

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"The terrible tragedy is consummated, its heartrending denoument has transpired, there can be no revision of it, it stands the blackest page save one in the history of the world. It is the after-type of the tragedy which was accomplished on the first Good Friday, more than eighteen centuries ago, upon the eminence of Calvary in Judea.

Yes, it was meet that the martyrdom should occur on Good Friday. It is no blasphemy against the Son of God and the Savior of men that we declare the fitness of the slaying of the Second Father of our Republic on the anniversary of the day on which he was slain. Jesus Christ died for the world; Abraham Lincoln died for his country. The consecration of Jesus to humanity began in the antiquity of eternity, and found its culmination when he cried with white, yet triumphant, lips, on the cross, "it is finished." The consecration of Abraham Lincoln to the American people had its phenomenal and most manifest beginning in the summer of 1858, when he entered upon that memorable Senatorial Campaign in which, while he sustained a technical defeat, he gained a substantial victory; it found its culmination on the evening of the fourteenth day of April, 1865, when the sharp pistol report announced with terrible inarticulateness, "it is finished."