The Religion of Abraham Lincoln

[David Lockmiller]

(11-06-2020 08:02 AM)Amy L. Wrote:  Not related to this book, but perhaps not worth a new post heading -
Here's a good, compact article with poignant insights on the time Elizabeth Keckly found Lincoln picking up a bible.

What Abraham Lincoln found reading the Book of Job - Finding Comfort in an Unlikely Place

"There is more indirect evidence beyond the episode Ms. Keckley recounts that Mr. Lincoln took the Book of Job to heart. Consider this passage from his Second Inaugural Address—one of his greatest speeches, given in March of 1865, toward the end of his life. Of the two sides in the war, Lincoln said, 'one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.' In his lament before God, Job says, 'neither had I rest, neither was I quiet: Yet trouble came.' The two sentences have remarkably similar structure and phrasing; the Second Inaugural rings out with the rich cadence of the King James Bible."

“These were sad, anxious days to Mr. Lincoln,” Ms. Keckley wrote, “and those who saw the man in privacy only could tell how much he suffered.”