Sermons on a National Day of Prayer<\/p>\n
[1] When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, Lutheran ministers preached about him and the events of the time. Five long-forgotten sermons tell us what people heard from some Lutheran pulpits following his death. Attention to these published sermons is one way to remember Lincoln during this year that marks the 200th anniversary of his birth. These public sermons also give us a glimpse into how certain Lutherans saw their relationship to their society and placed events in the context of Christian meaning. They allow us to view the thinking of some important American Lutherans in the nineteenth century.<\/p>\n
[2] In the first part of this article published in last month\u2019s Journal of Lutheran Ethics, I looked at a sermon by the Rev. G.J. Butler. Butler preached on the day after Lincoln\u2019s death in the same city as the President\u2019s assassination during worship on Easter, the major festival in the Christian calendar. In this second part I focus on four sermons or discourses delivered in Pennsylvania on a national holiday on June 1, nearly seven weeks after Lincoln\u2019s death. These four Lutheran preachers had time to reflect and prepare for their tributes which they gave on a special Day of Humiliation and Prayer called by President Andrew Johnson as the conclusion of public mourning for the slain President.<\/p>\n
[3] Those who lived through the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King in the 1960s will have some sense of the depth and breadth of the public mourning for Lincoln. In his Washington funeral on April 19, in the numerous memorial services in the cities where the train carrying his remains back to Illinois stopped, and at his burial in Springfield on May 4, the North expressed publicly its sorrow and appreciation for a beloved leader. \u201cNever did a national loss assume more thoroughly the character of a private sorrow; in the hearts of a great people there was mourning as if death were in their own homes.\u201d[1] A Lutheran periodical described the events of April 19:<\/p>\n
This day, the 19th of April, presents to the world a spectacle what has no parallel in all the past. Twenty millions of people are simultaneously gathered to the funeral services of our fallen President. Not only are all public buildings displaying the ensigns of sorrow and lamentation; not only are private dwellings and the temples of God draped in mourning; not only are all the bells of the land tolling out their funeral dirge, but at the very hour the weeping crowd is following the remains of the Chief Magistrate to their temporary resting place in Washington, the entire loyal nation, summoned by tolling bells to houses of worship, is simultaneously attending a funeral service of the President. Such a spectacle could not have been exhibited before science had discovered the art of sending intelligence instantaneously into every city and village of the land.[2]<\/p>\n
(Those who experienced the assassinations of the 1960s also marveled at the power of new media.)<\/p>\n
[4] According to David Chesebrough\u2019s research on published religious discourses after Lincoln\u2019s death, Lutherans contributed to them, but in a limited way. Only five of the 340 publications he located were by Lutherans.[3] These Lutherans lived in the North, in the Northeast; they were born in the United States, were part of the General Synod and were somehow connected with Gettysburg Seminary. They were Americanized Lutherans even where they differed in their attitude toward S.S. Schmucker\u2019s \u201cAmerican Lutheranism.\u201d They expressed what Chesebrough found in the sermons he studied. Lutherans at the time too preached public sermons that were in sync with a shared and wide-spread American Protestant ethos.<\/p>\n
[5] Special days of prayer were not uncommon in the United States in the nineteenth century.[4] Only one of the four Lutherans here who spoke on that national day of prayer and fasting commented on the appropriateness of participating in it. The Rev. E.W. Hutter found such a day \u201cright, and wise, and well.\u201d He also thought it correct for there to be \u201csuitable pulpit exhortation to seek the application of the event to purposes of an enlarged public spiritual improvement.\u201d This belonged to the ministry \u201cfor although its strict and stated duty is, to expound and enforce the glorious Gospel of the blessed God, yet to not seize upon great public events\u201d would be delinquent, especially when invoked by the powers God has ordained.[5] Hutter\u2019s remarks assumed a friendly, cooperative relationship of church and state which he understood not to violate the unique calling of the church or ministry.<\/p>\n
[6] In what follows I review sermons by Charles P. Krauth, Joseph A. Seiss, E. S. Johnston, and Hutter. For each, after very briefly describing who the person is, I present the major points of his sermon, injecting at times my own comments. I let the preachers speak for themselves, although my extensive quotations do not capture adequately the ornate language and rhetorical power of these sermons. I conclude with some general comments.<\/p>\n
Krauth\u2014A Wonderful Chasm between Two Pageants<\/p>\n
[7] The Rev. Charles P Krauth, D.D., (1823-1883) is best known for internal Lutheran affairs; he opposed \u201cAmerican Lutheranism\u201d and exerted major influence in the development of confessional Lutheranism in the United States. Here, on the other hand, we have an excellent example of his concern for society, a concern also shown in his participation in a committee that prepared a report for the General Synod in 1862 on the war and slavery.[6] Krauth \u201cwas the most scholarly among the Lutheran theologians in America.\u201d[7] In 1864 he was called to be professor of dogmatics at the newly established seminary in Philadelphia, and in 1868 he also became Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
[8] Though he spoke in a church, Krauth delivered a \u201cdiscourse,\u201d as he called it on the title page; it was not a sermon to proclaim the gospel. His purpose was to honor the fallen President. Krauth\u2019s scholarly credentials shone through his lengthy speech, which was learned, carefully crafted, of high rhetorical and literary quality, with numerous references to historical figures. Krauth\u2019s focus was entirely on Lincoln, his character, his development, his accomplishments, his significance, and not, for example, on slavery or what attitude the North should have toward the South.<\/p>\n
[9] Krauth gave historical context to Lincoln\u2019s presidency. He framed his discourse by referring to two pageants, two contrasting events that involved the citizens of Pennsylvania and Lincoln, one at the beginning and the other at the end of his presidency. The first pageant took place after seven states had already seceded from the Union and the second after the North\u2019s victory in the Civil War. On April 21, 1861 Lincoln stopped in Philadelphia on his train trip to Washington to assume the presidency. Four years later, on April 22, 1865, Lincoln\u2019s body was present in Philadelphia as the train carrying his remains made its way back to Springfield. \u201cThe first was a day of joy, when there seemed so much to make us sad.\u201d The second \u201cwas a day of sadness, when there seemed so much to make us glad\u201d (6).<\/p>\n
[10] Krauth identified with the \u201chorror of great darkness that had fallen upon an exultant land\u201d on that second pageant, yet his theological eye saw something amiss. It took a few weeks for the nation to realize that \u201cthe first anguish of an unspeakable loss\u201d (6) demonstrated both a lack of trust in God and the human instinct to make idols. \u201cOh! the first pang of hopelessness was the reaction of an unconscious atheism against an unconscious idolatry\u201d (7). In warning of the danger of making Lincoln an idol by deifying him, Krauth carved out space for properly honoring his human goodness and greatness.[8]<\/p>\n
[11] Krauth asked how did \u201cthis intense national affection\u201d come about for one who came to office \u201cwith less personal devotion, less enthusiasm, clustering around him\u201d than any other President. Lincoln was elected in 1860 because his enemies were divided. \u201cAs every one now sees that the providence of God was the cause of his election, so all have long seen that the political enemies of Abraham Lincoln were the occasion of it\u201d (8). Yet his greatness was \u201cwrought out by himself,\u201d with God\u2019s help. Between the two pageants there was \u201ca wonderful chasm,\u201d in which a lawyer became interpreter and defender of the Constitution and a politician, a statesman (9). \u201cSimple, homely, rugged, self-depreciating, he was to play the first part in the greatest drama of modern history\u201d (10). Among \u201call men thought of for leaders, who would have been to us what Abraham Lincoln has been?\u201d The nation showed its grateful response to his leadership by re-electing him in 1864 with a majority of nearly half a million, a major shift from 1860. Krauth cited the numbers (11).<\/p>\n
[12] There were many reasons for this vast change, but \u201cthe mightiest of them\u201d was Lincoln\u2019s \u201ccharacter\u201d (11). He remained one of the people. His \u201cintegrity, simplicity, openness\u2026 did not forsake him in his august position.\u201d Krauth celebrated his firmness and calmness, and with a light touch remarked that others would have recognized his grandeur sooner if he had had some character flaw. \u201cHe confessed his mistakes with a charming frankness, but had nothing to say of his successes.\u201d In a well-chosen phrase that called attention to his great speeches, Krauth described Lincoln as \u201ca man whose language carried more weight than ancient oracles\u201d (12).<\/p>\n
[13] What Krauth found most important in Lincoln\u2019s character was his moral integrity, his dedication to do what was right. Lincoln\u2019s cause was \u201cthe cause of the negro, and the common cause of the poor white\u201d (12), and like Luther, he was \u201csure because his cause was of God.\u201d He had \u201cbut one fundamental principle\u2014one grand idea, in statesmanship. This was the thread of his life. That principle is, The absolute right of the right. He asked only, What is right?\u201d He opposed the rebellion because it was wrong and upheld the Constitution because it was right (13). \u201cHis motto was: My country, because she is right; freedom, because it is right; The Union, the Constitution, the laws, because they are right.\u201d His conviction of the right brought hopefulness, so that \u201cthere were hours when his lone faith was more to us than all our armies\u201d (14).<\/p>\n
[14] Krauth\u2019s point echoed Lincoln\u2019s call in his Second Inaugural Address for the nation to strive \u201cwith firmness in the right.\u201d What Krauth did not address is the second part of that phrase: \u201cas God gives us to see the right.\u201d Lincoln\u2019s own struggle to know what was right, his skepticism about those who seemed so sure they knew the right and his recognition that his own grasp of what was right stood under God\u2019s judgment were not mentioned by Krauth.<\/p>\n
[15] Krauth compared Lincoln to many others \u201cin the immortal fellowship of the history of the world\u2019s best and greatest sons.\u201d One of these could probably only come from a Lutheran professor: \u201cIn his personal traits, men will think of him with Luther in his playful unbendings amid the loved ones of the home.\u201d Another comparison was and still is expected: \u201cIn the magnitude of his services in the Chair, posterity will place him by the side of Washington.\u201d As an orator, people will compare him to Patrick Henry and Henry Clay (15). \u201cAmong the great of humble origin, who was more thoroughly self-made than he, and yet so absolute in all the grand elements of a rounded, self-poised well-making?\u201d (16)<\/p>\n
[16] Recognizing the risk in making historical judgments so soon after Lincoln\u2019s death, Krauth nonetheless was confident in his judgment: \u201cThat this man was good, is conceded; but we, who belong to early posterity, anticipate and pronounce the verdict of its latest generations, when we say he was great\u201d (16-17). Lincoln\u2019s greatness was \u201ca development\u201d (17). With his capacity to develop, \u201chis views became larger, his grasp broader and tenacious; his style assumed weight and solemnity; the sublimest elements of religion seemed to penetrate it more and more, till his latest words breathed the purest spirit of the higher world.\u201d Even his appearance changed, so that when posterity gazes \u201cupon the mild, thoughtful, earnest, sad lineaments\u201d of his latest best pictures, they will be at a loss to account for his supposed homeliness.<\/p>\n
[17] Among the virtues Krauth praised were Lincoln\u2019s patience and self-control, which he demonstrated when solely tested as no one else by \u201copen warfare\u201d and \u201cby the no less unscrupulous warfare of falsehood and partisanship\u201d (17). He defended at some length Lincoln\u2019s sometimes-criticized \u201cabounding wit, humor and anecdote\u201d (20). In all he was \u201cever his own true self, without evasion, affectation or pretence.\u201d Lincoln was \u201cso firm, yet so forgiving; so true to his land, yet so gentle to its foes; so unconscious, so genial, so childlike\u201d (21).<\/p>\n
[18] Krauth reflected on why in God\u2019s providence Lincoln had been allowed to be killed. \u201cOut of the chaos of disunion and civil war wrought by slavery,\u201d Lincoln \u201chad brought us peace, unity and universal freedom.\u201d He had gained \u201cthe profoundest respect and most devoted love of his whole land.\u201d His work was done, \u201che had reached the very height of all that he could do,\u201d so what was left \u201cfor God to do to crown His own work in him?\u201d (21) \u201cTo preserve the uniqueness of the divine conception of this wonderful history of a child of Providence,\u201d to hallow the principle for which he lived by his blood, to open eyes to his character, to melt away hatred, \u201cthese may have been in the mind of God\u201d (22). Krauth wisely spoke of his grasp of providence in terms of possibility not certainty.<\/p>\n
[19] As a good rhetorician, Krauth concluded his discourse with a flourish. His words recalled Elijah passing on his mantle to Elisha as he was taken up in heaven (2 Kings 2).<\/p>\n
A dark cloud closed for a moment around the object of the fondest gaze; the flash as of a sparkle struck from some wheel of fire, burned for a moment in the eyes of the nation: cloud and sparkle vanished, and on the cold earth there lay only the mantle. He\u2014was gone; but one convulsive sob of a whole land, stricken, astounded, heart-sick, in a loss too great, a grief too deep for comprehension, followed in the cry: \u201cMy father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gone, but not dead. Gone, but not lost. He lives in the life of that for which he lived, and is immortal in the love of those for whom he died; for life cannot die, and love is the life of the heart, most deathless of all deathless things. A living man was the honored one in the first pageant; an immortal man hallowed the second\u2026.If the day shall come it may be truly said that the life of ABRAHAM LINCOLN has vanished from earth, then shall the pulse of Freedom herself lie still and cold beneath the eager fingers which grope, but grope in vain, to find it (22-3).<\/p>\n
[20] Throughout his discourse Krauth spoke of Lincoln as an historical human being, great and good, but not divine; Lincoln clearly belonged to \u201cthis age.\u201d Therefore this concluding reference to Elijah who was taken up in heaven and his language of immortality seems out of place. To interpret him in the best light, however, Krauth was speaking of immortality before humans not before God, of immortality in historical memory. It is this earthly immortality which Krauth must have had principally in mind when he quoted Isaiah 25:8 (KJV; compare 1 Corinthians 15:54) on the title page: \u201cHe will swallow up death in victory.\u201d Yet why he chose this biblical citation may leave one puzzled; his discourse was not a sermon proclaiming Christ\u2019s victory over death.<\/p>\n
Seiss\u2014Our Moses<\/p>\n
[21] The Rev. Joseph A. Seiss, D.D., (1823-1904) was pastor of St. John\u2019s Lutheran Church in Philadephia (1858-1874), where he delivered this sermon. He was a founder of the General Council in 1867 and served as its president for a time. During his lifetime he wrote a great deal on a variety of topics, including unusual ones such as premillennialism, astronomy, and pyramidology. He was a student of liturgies and hymnody and translated \u201cBeautiful Savior\u201d from German.[9]<\/p>\n
[22] Seiss\u2019s sermon was set within a devotional service of prayer and hymns. The service began with a reading of the Ten Commandments from Exodus and the Confession of Sins, in which the congregation \u201cacknowledge[ed] thy righteousness in the sorrowful visitation which has come upon us, and bow[ed] to thy holy will in submission and self-abasement\u201d (3). The Scripture lessons were Isaiah 59, a call to national repentance, and Luke 6:20-38, the Beatitudes and the call to love your enemies.<\/p>\n
[23] A lengthy General Prayer thanked God \u201cthat when dangerous conspiracies arose, thou didst bring them to nought,\u201d \u201cthat no invasions of loyal territory have been permitted to prosper\u201d (7) and for \u201cthe success with which thou hast favored [Lincoln\u2019s] administrations to the preservation of our national unity and the enlargement of human freedom.\u201d The prayer asked God to \u201cgive to the erring and the vanquished the spirit of loyal submission to the rightful authority of the nation. Heal the wounds that have been made in their homes and neighborhoods, in their peace and prosperity. Take away from them and from us all bitterness, wrath, and anger, and make us all kind one toward another. Make us again one people\u2026.Show thy goodness to the sorrowing and afflicted, and give deliverance to the enslaved and oppressed\u201d (8-9). One of the hymns sung was \u201cGod moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform\u201d (10).<\/p>\n
[24] Seiss structured his sermon around a point-by-point comparison between Moses and Lincoln. He recalled an event from Moses\u2019 life and then drew an often ingenuous but forced parallel with Lincoln\u2019s. What this device did do, however, was allow Seiss to place Lincoln within a biblical narrative and to praise him for his leadership and for ending slavery.<\/p>\n
[25] Seiss spoke extensively on slavery. The Constitution, \u201ccontrary to the convictions and desires of its framers,\u201d embodied and legalized \u201celements of oppression and undoubted wrong\u2026by which millions of human beings, brought hither in their misfortune, were doomed to abject and unqualified servitude\u201d (17). What the founders regarded as a wrong, \u201chad come to be accepted and defended as the sublimest beneficence, the foundation of liberties, and the proper basis of republican government; nay as the very ordination of Almighty Goodness, to touch or question which was considered treason to the country and sin against God\u201d (18). Then God acted. \u201cLong had, the nation submitted and yielded to the ever-multiplying demands of the \u2018peculiar institution,\u2019 until the God of justice said, \u201cIt is too much,\u201d and gave commission to his angels to strike it down, yea, to sweep it from the earth\u201d (19).<\/p>\n
[26] In comparing Moses\u2019 \u201cself-sacrificing devotion to the convictions of justice and right, based upon his religious faith,\u201d Seiss candidly noted that Lincoln \u201cthough not, so far as I am informed, a professed Christian, at least not in all particulars,\u201d and then added that he \u201cwas a man of decided religious turn of mind, who lived and acted in the light and influence of a practical faith. It was from his religious persuasions that all his ideas were shapen, and according to which he honestly sought to settle his judgment and direct his course, whether in matters of private life or of public policy\u201d (20).[10] Among these Lutheran preachers, only Seiss made reference to Lincoln\u2019s ambiguous and disputed relation to Christianity.<\/p>\n
[27] Lincoln \u201chad learned, from the holiest authority, that God \u2018hath made of one blood all nations of men,\u2019 [Acts 17:26] and that the immutable rule of right, as between man and man, is to do unto others as we would that they should do unto us.\u201d Seiss enumerated Lincoln\u2019s early protests against slavery\u2019s expansion and his growing opposition to it (21). He quoted at length a speech from 1858 in which Lincoln took his stand on the Declaration of Independence\u2019s affirmation that all men are created equal, an affirmation growing out of what Lincoln believed the founders found in Genesis 1: \u201c\u2019In their belief, nothing stamped with the Divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on, and degraded and imbruted by its fellows\u2019\u201d (22).[11] More so than the others studied in this article, Seiss captured the centrality of equality for Lincoln while pointing to its biblical roots in Lincoln\u2019s thought.<\/p>\n
[28] Seiss could speak of Lincoln as \u201cuncouth and inexperienced\u2026at the beginning,\u201d but who grew in character and executive capacity \u201cuntil there shone forth from under that ungainly figure a grasp of principle, a directness of judgment, a dignity of manner, a solemnity of purpose, a goodness of heart, and a comprehensive simplicity and justness of policy\u201d (26). He launched a sustained, vigorous counter-attack against the notion that Lincoln was a \u201ctyrant\u201d (26-31). He quoted from \u201cthat organ of our country\u2019s enemies, the London Times\u201d that Lincoln \u201c\u2019was as little of a tyrant as any man who ever lived\u2019\u201d (31). This quotation from the London Times, which had been pro-South, illustrates how Seiss and other Lutheran preachers were conscious of what Europe was saying about the Civil War and Lincoln.<\/p>\n
[29] With all his praise of Lincoln, Seiss insisted that \u201che was but a man.\u201d He felt there was a real danger, especially \u201cas the peculiar snare of the last times, of falling into a spirit of hero-worship, and an apotheotizing of human leaders, which is among the subtlest, easiest, and deadliest of idolatries.\u201d Yet \u201clet us not fail to do justice to the virtues of the dead\u201d (33). Although recognizing that future ages would have to determine Lincoln\u2019s significance, Seiss believed that \u201cwe know enough to warrant the remark, that generations to come will recur with grateful interest and holy reverence to the story of that rugged pioneer\u2026.His administration will mark a new era in the history of this continent, and the time will come when his name shall be cherished by freedom\u2019s children as warmly as that of Washington himself\u201d (34-35).<\/p>\n
[30] Part of Lincoln\u2019s legacy was that he illustrated \u201cthe value of talents which often lie hidden in the humbler walks of life.\u201d His life offered \u201ca foundation of ever fresh inspiration to improvement\u201d and a lesson \u201cto the proud, the high-born, and the wealthy, that their children are by nature no better and no greater than the children of those who serve in their houses, hew their wood, and draw their water\u201d (35). The larger legacy was that Lincoln faced \u201cterrific perils\u201d caused by \u201ctreason and rebellion\u201d to preserve liberty and the Union (36-37). Lincoln was \u201ca martyr to his country and to principles which good men in every age will honor and approve\u201d (39).<\/p>\n
[31] Seiss concluded his sermon by calling his listeners to follow Lincoln\u2019s example, \u201calways to conform your course to the same Divine standard, and live to truth and right and God, in business and in politics, the same as your charities and in your church.\u201d \u201cWe may be humble, feeble, and unnoticed in the great crowd of men; but we are each God\u2019s workmanship\u2026.\u201d and \u201cwe each have spheres of importance in which we operate.\u201d He ended by quoting Henry Wadsworth Longfellow\u2019s \u201cA Psalm of Life,\u201d: \u2018\u201cLives of great men all remind us\u2026Footprints on the sands of time\u2019\u201d (42-43). Seiss claimed Lincoln as an inspiration for others to lead a moral life.<\/p>\n
Johnston\u2014God Decreed: Slavery Must Perish<\/p>\n
[32] The Rev. E.S. Johnston, D.D., (1834-1926) had been at Second English Evangelical Lutheran Church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania for four years when President Lincoln was assassinated. This was his first pastorate in what would be a long ministry.[12] What stands out in his sermon was the prominence of providence, his forceful condemnation of slavery and his recognition of the North\u2019s involvement with it, and his stern attitude toward the South. Like the other sermons Johnston called the fallen President a great and good man, yet in comparison with the sermons by Butler, Krauth and Seiss, he spoke much less about Lincoln.<\/p>\n
[33] The text heading his sermon was \u201cThe Most High ruleth in the Kingdom of Men\u201d from Daniel 4:25. The other preachers dealt with here assumed a strong notion of providence, but only Johnston put it front and center. \u201cGod is the Sovereign Lord and Governor of all things,\u201d he stated in his first sentence. (3) God\u2019s ways, that may lead through Calvary, \u201cseem mysterious, but God rules. There is a purpose and a Providence in them all.\u201d He quoted the same verse from Psalms (19:9) that Lincoln had in his Second Inaugural Address: \u2018\u201cThe judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
[34] When Lincoln, Johnston and others spoke of providence, they gave meaning and comfort to people baffled and crushed by inexplicable events. Johnston assured his congregation that the \u201ccalamity\u201d of the President\u2019s murder \u201cwas no blind chance.\u201d As in the calamities of the last four years, so now \u201cGod\u2019s hand is unmistakably manifest,\u201d spurring the government in the direction of justice and teaching \u201cthe people to sustain the Government while they crush the remains of the rebellion with an iron hand, and inflict upon its prime movers the punishment they deserve\u201d (4). The affliction of \u201cthe terrible catastrophe which deprived the Republic of its chief\u201d tells us \u201cthat the Demon Spirit that prompted and sustained [the rebellion]\u2026must be driven wholly from the land.\u201d<\/p>\n
[35] Johnston viewed Lincoln\u2019s as a life well completed. \u201cHis work was done; his duty fulfilled, and his fame imperishably inscribed on the hearts of his countrymen.\u201d He succinctly summarized Lincoln\u2019s significance: \u201cHis name will remain forever associated with the emancipation of the slaves, the reduction of the rebellion, the preservation of civil liberty, and the vindication of popular Government\u201d (5). Johnston praised Lincoln\u2019s Second Inaugural Address \u2014\u201chow truthful, penitential and christian\u2026.like a requiem\u2014sad, sacred, solemn and sweet\u201d\u2014and quoted from its last two paragraphs (6-7). Lincoln \u201csealed his life with his death, and now his spirit works more mightily in the nation, since his bodily presence is withdrawn. Why then should we mourn?\u201d (7) Rather Johnston encouraged people \u201cto rejoice\u2026that it was given him to die gloriously amid the consummation of a grand mission nobly performed, and to shed tears for ourselves and our country!\u201d<\/p>\n
[36] On that special day of humiliation and prayer, when we \u201chumble ourselves before Almighty God\u201d because of the wickedness, injustice and oppression that \u201crequired such a terrible mark of God\u2019s displeasure,\u201d Johnston asked, \u201cHow far then are we responsible for this crime?\u201d This was a national chastisement to which his listeners were personally connected. He called on them to confess their guilt for not resisting the evil spirit that brought discord and now to strive against it (8).<\/p>\n
[37] \u201cThe evil spirit is slavery. It has been the cause of all our four long years of suffering. It is a terrible source of evil. It destroys all human rights. It desecrates all the sanctities of heart and home. It wastes the slave. It destroys the master. It corrupts the public morals. It is an enemy both to God and man.\u201d Although \u201cthe spirit of the Bible is manifestly against slavery,\u201d stated Johnston, \u201cyet, because the national law legalized it, and we loved it on account of the power it controlled; we stood by it and sustained it in opposition to right and to God\u2026.Thus through all the past we clung to slavery and sympathized with it, sharing its profits and its guilt\u201d (9). Then God\u2019s decree went forth, \u201cand it must perish.\u201d Johnston was alone among the Lutheran preachers to mention Northern complicity in slavery.<\/p>\n
[38] The great majority in the North found \u201cin the fact of its death a grand consolation in this day of sadness.\u201d Johnston quoted the governor of South Carolina describing the devastation in his state as testimony to \u201cthe terrible retribution that must come upon all who take the sword to assist them in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men\u2019s faces.\u201d The last phrase of that sentence comes from Lincoln\u2019s Second Inaugural Address:<\/p>\n
\u201cIt may seem strange that any man should dare to ask a just God\u2019s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men\u2019s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged.\u201d The phrase was the same but the change in meaning between the two sentences was important: The preacher pronounced God\u2019s judgment on the South, and the President withheld final judgment and then placed both North and South under God\u2019s righteous judgment.<\/p>\n
[39] In view of this retribution on the South, continued Johnston, \u201chow great the folly, and how extreme the madness of those who sympathize with and wish to perpetuate the institution of slavery\u201d (10). The \u201cmonster\u201d of slavery must \u201cfire our souls with an invincible determination, that both it and all the unholy prejudices it has engendered against a certain class of our fellow-men shall be destroyed forever.\u201d Was Johnston speaking of racial prejudice? If so, and it appears most probable that he was, he once again stands out as unique. While the Northern church had by this point become clear about the evil of slavery, they had not even begun to identify and to address the evil of racism. In such a context, his words were remarkable.<\/p>\n
[40] Although Johnston had quoted Lincoln\u2019s \u201cwith malice toward none; with charity for all,\u201d his tone became different when he spoke of the instigators of the rebellion. He admonished his congregation \u201cto estimate aright the crime of treason, and permit no false magnanimity to lead you to attempt to ward off the vengeance which God has plainly indicated shall be poured out upon the leaders of the rebellion\u2026.Crime must be punished.\u201d Johnston concluded his sermon by asking people to pledge themselves to be faithful to the country, hate slavery, and, echoing Lincoln, \u201cto stand firm in the right, as God gives us to see the right.\u201d Through the new leader whom Providence has raised up \u201cGod will lead us safely into the promised land\u201d (11).<\/p>\n
Hutter\u2014The Cry of Death<\/p>\n
[41] The Rev. Edwin W. Hutter, D.D., (1814-1873) was pastor of St. Matthew\u2019s Lutheran Church in Philadephia his entire ministry, from 1850 until his death. Before entering the ministry he was a newspaper editor, Private Secretary to President James Buchanan and Assistant Secretary of State. When a child of his died, his religious views changed and he began to prepare for the ministry.[13]<\/p>\n
[42] Hutter\u2019s tribute to Lincoln, \u201cthe wise Magistrate,\u201d was relatively brief in comparison to other sermons studied here, perhaps because, as he mentioned, he had already spoken on his assassination.. His words of praise focused on Lincoln the person: \u201cEndowed by nature and by his early allotments, with a most felicitous combination of personal qualities, our institutions have rarely produced a character, so original, so amiable, so gentle, so sweet-tempered, of such noble simplicity, and so perfectly unspoiled by public honors and rewards.\u201d People from all over the world \u201cto the end of time\u201d will come to his grave \u201cand mourn him as one of a class of men, very rare indeed, upon this earth.\u201d<\/p>\n
[43] The thrust of Hutter\u2019s sermon, however, was not in eulogizing Lincoln. Instead Lincoln\u2019s death became the occasion for Hutter to confront his listeners with the reality of death, their own death, and to call them to turn to God. His narrative placed mortal human beings before the eternal God. One might say, although Hutter does not say it, that he preached the law, the futility of life in the face of death, to drive people to the gospel. In this sense his sermon was the most evangelical of the five.<\/p>\n
[44] Hutter\u2019s sermon text came from the Exodus story after the death of the first-born in every Egyptian house: \u201cThere was a great cry in Egypt\u201d (Exodus 12:30). Just as it was death that caused the great cry in Egypt, so it was also death that caused his country\u2019s \u201cwail of woe.\u201d Beyond that one point of comparison, the analogy hardly works, for it would mean comparing the North to Pharaoh\u2019s regime. Yet that difficulty did not keep Hutter from using the text effectively to speak of death.<\/p>\n
[45] Like other Protestant preachers, Hutter viewed Lincoln\u2019s death in terms of providence, an inscrutable providence. \u201cBefore the providence, that permitted his assassination, we bow in humble submission. Seeing in it a mystery we cannot comprehend, we await the development of the Eternal Wisdom. We discern in it one of \u2018secret things that belong unto God\u2019\u2014one of those inexplicable dispensations, whose deep profundities no human reason can fathom.\u201d Hutter nevertheless understood something about it. The assassination was not a judgment on the departed, just as the death of Stephen and other martyrs was not a judgment on them. Nor was Lincoln\u2019s death a divine judgment on the nation, for all were appointed to die. Yet his death was \u201ca deep affliction,\u201d for his family, for \u201cthe four millions of long oppressed and degraded bondmen of the South, whose Emancipator\u201d he was, and for \u201cmankind itself.\u201d His assassination was \u201ca most painful and trying bereavement,\u201d a \u201cgreat cry in Egypt,\u201d in which \u201cwe have participated.\u201d<\/p>\n
[46] This affliction \u201cdoes, indeed, seem part and parcel of the Divine method of conducting the affairs of the world.\u201d As God\u2019s dealings with his chosen people showed, \u201cafflictions are among God\u2019s chosen instrumentalities\u201d to bring repentance. So \u201clet this event serve anew to impress us all with the importance of religion and the grandeur of Eternity.\u201d No matter the manner of death, \u201chow short is life!\u201d Hutter spoke passionately about how \u201cour months and our years, like billows of the ocean, roll away,\u201d and in which \u201cthere is no pause.\u201d He described at length people\u2019s \u201cinfatuation\u201d with \u201cthe world\u2019s vanities and vices,\u201d forgetting \u201cThe One Thing Needful.\u201d<\/p>\n
[47] God \u201chas again addressed a most solemn and impressive warning. The \u2018great cry in Egypt\u2019 speaks to us the doings of Death\u2014tells us, that from his inexorable shaft, there is no one exempt, no matter how high in authority, or how much soever encircled with renown.\u201d All \u201care marching to the tomb.\u201d Hutter asked if \u201cwe will continue to reject the great salvation\u201d found in \u201cthe suffering of [the world\u2019s] expiring God.\u201d He implored his listeners \u201cto number your days\u201d and to \u201chusband time with a miser\u2019s care!\u201d<\/p>\n
[48] Lincoln was permitted to fall \u2018\u201cthat the works of God might be manifested.\u2019\u201d His works are power, wisdom and mercy and \u201ca Warning, A Lesson, A Trial, for a great disciplinarian is our God. This is the meaning of the \u2018great cry\u2019 that is now heard throughout our land. It is to remind men of DEATH, of the JUDGMENT, of ETERNITY.\u201d It is to awaken confidence and repentance. Hutter implored that these works of God \u201cmay urge us\u2026to a closer familiarity with Christ\u201d so that we may wait with patience for the time when we \u201cnever more give way to any \u2018cry in Egypt\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
[49] In distinction from the other sermons, Hutter did not use this national holiday to speak about the war, slavery or the nation\u2019s future, but to address the mortal individual in his or her relationship with God.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe Belongs to the Ages\u201d<\/p>\n
[50] Abraham Lincoln\u2019s impact on his contemporaries was extraordinary. As the sermons in this article illustrate, many who lived during his presidency and experienced his sudden death gave him soaring praise and echoed one another in calling him good and great. In often elegant ways these five sermons expressed the belief that Lincoln was a remarkable person. They rightly prognosticated that Lincoln\u2019s character, words and deeds would be remembered and honored by future generations and by people in other parts of the world.<\/p>\n
[51] For these preachers to have said something negative about Lincoln would have been unpopular and perhaps even dangerous. They spoke entirely in a positive vein, most surely not from fear, but out of affection and respect for Lincoln. Their sermons or discourses were, of course, tributes or eulogies, a genre that lends itself to recall what is good about a person, which they did in sometimes exaggerated and flowery language, as was common in nineteenth-century rhetoric.<\/p>\n
[52] \u201cApotheosis\u201d and \u201cdeification\u201d are words sometimes used to describe what preachers and others were saying about Lincoln at the time. Whatever may be true of others, this was not the intention of these Lutheran preachers. Krauth and Seiss, for example, recognized the danger of making Lincoln into an idol and criticized the tendency. What they claimed explicitly or implicitly was that it was possible and proper to honor human greatness without deifying the person. While they idealized him, they did not deify him.<\/p>\n
[53] Their homage included what Peterson calls the five \u201cbuilding blocks of the Lincoln image.\u201d Most prominent were Lincoln as the Great Emancipator and Lincoln as the Savior of the Union. They spoke of Lincoln\u2019s contribution in terms of peace, union and freedom. Some of them emphasized Lincoln\u2019s humble origins (Self-Made Man) and his humble manner (Man of the People). Less often some called attention to what he said and did for equality and democracy (First American).<\/p>\n
[54] These sermons represent Lutheranism in an \u201cAmericanized\u201d version. These preachers took for granted the compatibility of Christianity and republicanism, which characterized nineteenth-century American Protestantism.[14] Like other American Protestant preachers they interpreted events in light of a benevolent providence providing special care for their country. As partisans in what had been a devastating war, they identified completely with North\u2019s \u201crighteous\u201d cause.<\/p>\n
[55] Was there a distinctive Lutheran voice in these sermons? No, not if one is looking for a consistent pattern to be found in all the sermons. Perhaps such themes as the warning against idolatry, calls for obedience to civil authority, modesty (by some) in interpreting providence and restraint in what some said theologically about their country carry a Lutheran accent. Hutter\u2019s sermon on death had a Lutheran tone. Disappointingly, these sermons for the most part tended to blur the distinction between Christ and country. Common American Protestant themes are more evident than distinctive Lutheran themes.<\/p>\n
[56] These Lutheran preachers shared with others in their context two serious omissions. One, they were selective when they spoke about wartime atrocities. When speaking of the conduct of the war, they condemned the South\u2019s atrocities but said nothing about the North\u2019s. They did not apply existing just war standards such as non-discrimination or proportionality to their own side, as they did implicitly to their enemies. In their public view, only the South acted inhumanely on the battle field.[15] Two, although they spoke passionately against slavery, they did not address the reality that it was racial slavery, \u201cblack-slavery.\u201d[16] These preachers did not prepare their listeners and readers to face their country\u2019s racism.<\/p>\n
[57] When Lincoln died in the home of a Lutheran family, Edwin Stanton, the Secretary of War, remarked, \u201cNow he belongs to the Ages.\u201d[17] These five Lutheran preachers send to us the same message: \u201cAbraham Lincoln belongs to the ages\u2014in this age.\u201d They did so by placing the Lincoln narrative in the context of a certain Christian narrative.<\/p>\n
Endnotes<\/p>\n
[1] Krauth, Charles P. \u201cThe Two Pageants: A Discourse.\u201d Delivered at the First Eng. Evan. Lutheran Church, Pittsburgh, PA., Thursday, June 1st, 1865, 21. (Pittsburgh: W.S. Haven, 1865; www.archive.org\/details\/twopageantsdisco00krau).<\/p>\n
[2] \u201cRemarks on the Character and Assassination of President Lincoln,\u201d The Lutheran Observer (April 28, 1865). I thank Joel Thoreson in the ELCA Archives for his friendly assistance in locating this source and other material for this article.<\/p>\n
[3] \u201cNo Sorrow like Our Sorrow\u201d: Northern Protestant Ministers and the Assassination of Lincoln (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1994). See my summary of Chesebrough\u2019s book in \u201cLutheran Sermons on Lincoln\u2019s Assassination: Part 1,\u201d paragraph 4, in the April issue of Journal of Lutheran Ethics. See also endnote #8 in \u201cPart I\u201d for further information on Lutheran sermons. It should be noted that The Evangelical Review Quarterly, a Lutheran scholarly journal, published a major unsigned article on Lincoln in its July 1865 issue (LXIII), 404-425.<\/p>\n
[4] Mark A. Noll, \u201cThe Election Sermon: Situating Religion and the Constitution in the 18th Century (with Implications for Interpreting the Constitution in the 21st Century),\u201d Unpublished lecture given at the Center for Church State Studies, DePaul University College of Law, Chicago, March 12, 2009. Noll traced the election or political sermon from its beginning in 1633 to its virtual demise around 1870. During the Civil War the political sermon was at one of its peaks. He noted that when Washington died, there were around 100 published sermons. In a private conversation, he commented on how many more sermons there were at Lincoln\u2019s death and how in contrast to sermons at the time of Washington\u2019s death, many of those at the time of Lincoln\u2019s also made reference to the New Testament, due in large part because he was assassinated, martyred, on Good Friday. Noll also made the point that in contemporary United States religious voices make their impact on public life in other ways than by the political sermon.<\/p>\n
[5] Rev. E. W. Hutter, \u201cThe Nation\u2019s Wail of Sorrow.\u201d \u201cFast Day Sermon. Preached in St. Matthew\u2019s Lutheran Church, New Street, Philadelphia, Thursday, June 1st, 1865.\u201d The Lutheran Observer (June 16, 1865). Italics in quoted material belong to the original text. ELCA Archives.<\/p>\n
[6] Gerhard E. Lenski, \u201cKrauth, Charles Porterfield,\u201d The Encyclopedia of the Lutheran Church, Julius Bodensieck, Editor (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Augsburg Publishing House, 1965), 1228. For his participation in the General Synod\u2019s resolution, see \u201cHistorical Documents: A Lutheran Response on the Civil War and President Abraham Lincoln\u2019s Response to a Lutheran Delegation,\u201d Journal of Lutheran Ethics (March 2009).<\/p>\n
[7] Abdel Ross Wentz, A Basic History of Lutheranism in America, Revised Edition (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1964), 144. The number in parenthesis in the text refers to the page from which the quote comes.<\/p>\n
[8] In his one line summary of the sermons, Chesebrough writes the following about Krauth: \u201cKrauth emphasized that Lincoln had to die in order that people would understand that God was their only true leader.\u201d Page 171. I do not find that idea in Krauth\u2019s discourse, either here or later when he asks about why Lincoln was allowed to be killed.<\/p>\n
[9] Gerhard E. Lenski, \u201cSeiss, Joseph Augustus,\u201d The Encyclopedia of the Lutheran Church, Julius Bodensieck, Editor (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Augsburg Publishing House, 1965), 2152. \u201cThe Rev. Joseph A. Seiss, D.D., L.L. D,\u201d Lutheran Standard (July 9, 1904), 441. \u201cPyramidology\u201d was the belief that the Great Pyramid encoded advanced knowledge of the physical universe and the course of human history. One of Seiss\u2019 books was called \u201cA Miracle in Stone, or The Great Pyramid of Egypt.\u201d His sermon is: \u201cThe Assassinated President, June 1st, 1865 St. John\u2019s (Lutheran) Church, Philadelphia, Seiss, Joseph A. Philadelphia, 1865 (NA). (http:\/\/beck.library.emory.edu\/lincoln\/sermon.php?id=seiss.001&term[]=seiss)<\/p>\n
[10] Seiss was the only Lutheran preacher to refer to Lincoln being shot in a theater, after which he assures his congregation that Lincoln was a Christian. \u201cNeither do I conceive of the surroundings in which the assassin found him, as good, pious, or becoming a Christian\u2019s dying-place. He was but a man, lacking in experience in public affairs, and of that meek and generous nature which was, perhaps, too willing, in smaller matters, to acquiesce in the tastes and wishes of people less conscientious than himself. But, in the great elements of his character, he was just, devout, Christian, and of a moral make and stamen, to which few in politics have ever attained. He believed in God, in Revelation, in Christ, in prayer, in the necessity of virtue, in providence, and in the habit of settled dependence upon the precepts and administrations of Heaven\u201d (38).<\/p>\n
[11] Seiss was referring to a speech Lincoln had given in Lewistown, Illinois, on August 17, 1858 and reported on by the Chicago Press and Tribune on August 21, 1858. Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Volume 2 (http:\/\/quod.lib.umich.edu\/l\/lincoln).<\/p>\n
[12] \u201cIn Memoriam Rev. E.S. Johnston, D.D.,\u201d \u201cEighty-seventh Convention of the Alleghany Synod\u201d (May 1927), 79-81. Sermon delivered on Thursday, June 1st, 1865, \u201cAbraham Lincoln,\u201d at the Second English Evangelical Lutheran Church, Harrisburg, Pa., by Rev. E. S. Johnston (Theo. F. Scheffer, Printer, 1865). (http:\/\/www.archive.org\/details\/speechofmrjsjohn00john)<\/p>\n
[13] \u201cSketches of the Lives of Rev. Drs. Hutter and Stork,\u201d Thirty-fourth Annual Convention of the East Pennsylvania Synod (1874). \u201cObituary Elizabeth E. Hutter\u201d (June 20, 1895). \u201cThe husband of deceased was in his days one of the best known citizens of Pennsylvania\u2026. During the War of the Rebellion, Mrs. Hutter frequently went to the front, rendering valuable service to the wounded and suffering. She was
\nthe first woman to go to Gettysburg after the great fight, receiving permission from President Lincoln and going in a special car.\u201d (http:\/\/archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com\/th\/read\/PALEHIGH\/2004-07\/1090163038)<\/p>\n
[14] Mark A. Noll, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006). See especially \u201cChapter 1, Historical Contexts,\u201d 17-29. After the War of Independence, Protestants reversed European judgments that considered republicanism \u201cas tantamount to religious heresy, and embraced a republic vision of politics\u2026.The American denominations that expanded most rapidly were the ones that most successfully presented themselves as both traditionally Christian and faithfully republican,\u201d p. 23.<\/p>\n
[15] Harry S. Stout, \u201cBaptism in Blood,\u201d Books & Culture (July 1, 2003). \u201cIn what would become characteristic of Civil War reporting and clerical preaching, the cause of patriotism effectively stifled any moral inquiry into acceptable losses or just conduct.\u201d Page 8. (www.christianitytoday.com). This is one of the themes in Stout\u2019s major book Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War (New York: Viking, 2006).<\/p>\n
[16] See Noll\u2019s book, endnote 14. Noll demonstrates that in the debate in the United States on slavery neither proponents nor opponents noted that the reality they were talking about was black slavery. For example, he commends Philip Schaff for writing in 1861, \u201cThe negro question lies far deeper than the slavery question\u201d (italics in Schaff). Yet Schaff \u201cdid not even raise the question whether the general sanction for slavery he found in the Bible could be applied unambiguously to the black-only form of slavery that existed in the United States,\u201d page 51. Stout writes, \u201cIf the Civil War had the salutary effect of abolishing chattel slavery once and for all, it failed to counter racism at all.\u201d \u201cBaptism in Blood, 3.<\/p>\n
[17] David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (London: Jonathan Cape, 1995), 599.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sermons on a National Day of Prayer [1] When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, Lutheran ministers preached about him and the events of the time. Five long-forgotten sermons tell us what people heard from some Lutheran pulpits following his death. Attention to these published sermons is one way to remember Lincoln during this year that marks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-civil"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n