Lincoln frequently and humbly expressed that God was guiding him in his vital Presidential role and his only purpose would be God’s purpose. In a letter to the Reverend Byron Sunderland toward the end of 1862, Lincoln wrote, “I hold myself in the present position and with the authority vested in me, as an instrument of Providence. I am conscious every moment that all I am and all I have is subject to the control of a Higher Power and that Power can use me or not use me in any manner and at any time…as may be pleasing to Him.”
Much has been said of errors of the Southern politicians and slave owners that led up to the Civil War, but it is important to remember, as Lincoln frequently pointed out, that Americans on both sides, North and South were victims of the terrible war. Reinhold Niebuhr, a leading American theologian wrote in 1965, “Lincoln’s religious convictions were superior in depth and purity to those held by the religious as well as by the political leaders of his day.” Niebuhr was struck by Lincoln’s ability to resist “the natural temptation” to do what most other politicians did by asserting that God was on the side to which that politician was committed. He said, “Lincoln had a sense of historical meaning so high as to cast doubt on the intentions of both sides."
With the war going badly for the Union in the late summer of 1862, Abraham Lincoln seemed to have gone through some unknown spiritual transformation. His administering of the country-in-crisis changed. He began relying less and less on his cabinet and congress and more and more on his own personal impressions and inclinations as reflected in his open response to Horace Greeley’s public reprimand cited above. It was sometime in September of that year that Lincoln wrote a note that apparently was shared with no one. After Lincoln’s tragic death John Hay, Lincoln’s private secretary, discovered this private notation among a number of other such notes and kept it. In 1872, Hay gave it a title:
Meditation on the Divine Will. He included it in the biography of Lincoln that he and Nicolay published in 1890, with the description, “This meditation was not meant to be seen of men.” Lincoln wrote:
"The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong. God cannot be for, and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God’s purpose is something different from the purpose of either party—and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect His purpose. I am almost ready to say this is probably true—that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By His mere quiet power, on the minds of the now contestants, He could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began. And having begun He could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds."
Abraham Lincoln-God's Humble Instrument
Order today