kely to come from the North no less than the
South. Tentative proposals which he had once or twice made suggest the
spirit in which he would have felt his way along this new path. In the
Inaugural address which he now delivered that spirit is none the less
perceptible because he spoke of the past. The little speech at
Gettysburg, with its singular perfection of form, and the "Second
Inaugural" are the chief outstanding examples of his peculiar
oratorical power. The comparative rank of his oratory need not be
discussed, for at any rate it was individual and unlike that of most
other great speakers in history, though perhaps more like that of some
great speeches in drama.

But there is a point of some moment in which the Second Inaugural does
invite a comment, and a comment which should be quite explicit.
Probably no other speech of a modern statesman uses so unreservedly the
language of intense religious feeling. The occasion made it natural;
neither the thought nor the words are in any way conventional; no
sensible reader now could entertain a suspicion that the orator spoke
to the heart of the people but did not speak from his own heart. But
an old Illinois attorney, who thought he knew the real Lincoln behind
the President, might have wondered whether the real Lincoln spoke here.
For Lincoln's religion, like everything else in his character, became,
when he was famous, a stock subject of discussion among his old
associates. Many said "he was a Christian but did not know it." Some
hinted, with an air of great sagacity, that "so far from his being a
Christian or a religious man, the less said about it the better." In
early manhood he broke away for ever from the scheme of Christian
theology which was probably more or less common to the very various
Churches which surrounded him. He had avowed this sweeping denial with
a freedom which pained some friends, perhaps rather by its rashness
than by its impiety, and he was apt to regard the procedure of
theologians as a blasphemous twisting of the words of Christ. He
rejected that belief in miracles and in the literally inspired accuracy
of the Bible narrative which was no doubt held as fundamental by all
these Churches. He rejected no less any attempt to substitute for this
foundation the belief in any priestly authority or in the authority of
any formal and earthly society called the Church. With this total
independence of the expressed creeds of his neighbours