Marriage, long dishonored, put on its
robes of purity, and its ring of perpetual covenant, and answered
_Amen,_ and from above, God's strong angels and six-winged cherubim,
bending earthward, shouted their response to the edict of the Great
Emancipator!
IV. The next controlling idea was
PROFOUND RELIGIOUS DEPENDENCE.
As a public man, he set God before his eyes, and did reverence to
the Most High. It was deeply a touching scene as he stood upon the
platform of the car which was to carry him from his Springfield home,
and tearfully asked his neighbors and old friends that they should
remember him in their prayers. Amid tears and sobs they answered "We
will pray for you." Again and again has he publicly invoked Divine
aid, and asked to be remembered in the prayers of the people. His
second Inaugural seems rather the tender pastoral of a white-haired
bishop than a political manifesto.
What were his person relations to his God, I know not. We are not in
all things able to judge him by our personal standard. How much
etiquette may be demanded, how much may have been yielded to the
tyranny of custom we cannot tell. In public life he was spotless in
integrity and dependent upon Divine aid. He had made no public
consecration to God in church covenant, but we may not enter the
sanctuary of his inner life. He constantly read the holy oracles, and
recognized their claim to be the inspired Scriptures.
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