t, to be sure,
overcome his melancholy. That was too deeply laid. Furthermore, we fail
to discover in the surviving evidences any certainty that it was a glad
phase of religion. Neither the ecstatic joy of the wild women, which
his mother had; nor the placid joy of the ritualist, which he did not
understand; nor those other variants of the joy of faith, were included
in his portion. It was a lofty but grave religion that matured in his
final stage. Was it due to far-away Puritan ancestors? Had austere,
reticent Iron-sides, sure of the Lord, but taking no liberties with
their souls, at last found out their descendant? It may be. Cromwell,
in some ways, was undeniably his spiritual kinsman. In both, the same
aloofness of soul, the same indifference to the judgments of the world,
the same courage, the same fatalism, the same encompassment by the
shadow of the Most High. Cromwell, in his best mood, had he been
gifted with Lincoln's literary power, could have written the Fast Day
Proclamation of 1863 which is Lincoln's most distinctive religious
fragment.

However, Lincoln's gloom had in it a correcting element which the old
Puritan gloom appears to have lacked. It placed no veto upon mirth.
Rather, it valued mirth as its only redeemer. And Lincoln's growth in
the religious sense was not the cause of any diminution of his
surface hilarity. He saved himself from what otherwise would have
been intolerable melancholy by seizing, regardless of the connection,
anything whatsoever that savored of the comic.

His religious security did not destroy his superstition. He continued
to believe that he would die violently at the end of his career as
President. But he carried that belief almost with gaiety. He refused to
take precautions for his safety. Long lonely rides in the dead of night;
night walks with a single companion, were constant anxieties to his
intimates. To the President, their fears were childish. Although in the
sensibilities he could suffer all he had ever suffered, and more; in
the mind he had attained that high serenity in which there can be no
flagging of effort because of the conviction that God has decreed one's
work; no failure of confidence because of the twin conviction that
somehow, somewhere, all things work together for good. "I am glad
of this interview," he said in reply to a deputation of visitors, in
September, 1862, "and glad to know that I have your sympathy and your
prayers. . I happened to be placed