Well this would give the ACLU fits today! On November 15, 1862 Lincoln sent out the following general order:
GENERAL ORDER RESPECTING THE OBSERVANCE OF THE SABBATH DAY
IN THE ARMY AND NAVY.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, November 15, 1862.
The President, Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, desires and enjoins the orderly observance of the Sabbath by the officers and men in the military and naval service. The importance for man and beast of the prescribed weekly rest, the sacred rights of Christian soldiers and sailors, a becoming deference to the best sentiment of a Christian people, and a due regard for the divine will demand that Sunday labor in the army and navy be reduced to the measure of strict necessity.
The discipline and character of the national forces should not suffer nor the cause they defend be imperiled by the profanation of the day or name of the Most High. “At this time of public distress,” adopting the words of Washington in 1776, “men may find enough to do in the service of God and their country without abandoning themselves to vice and immorality.” The first general order issued by the Father of his Country after the Declaration of Independence indicates the spirit in which our institutions were founded and should ever be defended:
“The General hopes and trusts that every officer and man will endeavor to live and act as becomes a Christian soldier defending the dearest rights and liberties of his country.”
A. LINCOLN.
Sometimes there is an effort to portray Abraham Lincoln as some sort of unbeliever. That is completely mistaken. Lincoln struggled throughout his life to understand God, and in the agonies of War he achieved a profound faith in the Almighty. Like Saint Augustine, Lincoln could say, “Late have I loved thee!”
In the UK, the First Article of War has always been, “1. All officers in command of Her Majesty’s ships shall cause public worship of Almighty God to be solemnly, orderly and reverently performed in their respective ships, and shall take care that prayers and preaching, by the chaplains of those ships, be performed diligently and that the Lord’s Day be observed.”
Beautiful, timely, and a powerful example of grace given from prayer.
The painting is of an agony in the garden.
Churches would be falling over themselves to claim Abe Lincoln as one of them. This I read was quite revealing:
Connecticut Congressman H. C. Deming recalled that once when “the conversation turned upon religious subjects, and Mr. Lincoln made this impressive remark: ‘I have never united myself to any church, because I have found difficulty in giving my assent, without mental reservation, to the long, complicated statements of Christian doctrine which characterize their Articles of Belief and Confessions of Faith. When any church will inscribe over its altar, as its sole qualification for membership,’ he continued, ‘the Saviour’s condensed statement of the substance of both Law and Gospel, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself,’ that church will I join will all my heart and all my soul.”
In some respects I don’t blame him because if there is anything that maligns the Catholic Church to outside more, it’s the ones who lead it.
In saying this, Abe Lincoln did have a Catholic mindset in many respects – and with the wisdom and deep thinking his personality and character possessed – maybe, just maybe, given the right circumstances he would have been one of our own. 😉