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The Practical Mysticism of Abraham Lincoln
The Practical Mysticism of Abraham Lincoln
A knowledge of the influences which ruled the life of Lincoln, the greatest of practical mystics, is essential now that a new form of paganism and slavery threatens humanity. In Lincoln's time the black slaves of America had to be freed; in our time the white slaves of Europe have to be freed. We have returned to the conquest. History is being repeated, but on a far vaster scale. The whole world is groaning under the threats and deeds of tyranny that seeks to become absolute. What Abraham Lincol
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The Divine Will
The Divine Will
September 30th, 1862, when everything looked dark and the future of America was uncertain, Lincoln wrote the following meditation on the Divine Will:— "The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, one must be, wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party; and yet the human instrum
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The Mystical Awakening
The Mystical Awakening
A mystical epoch is upon us, and like all vital movements it has come without systematic propaganda and without organised effort. The world-upheaval did not cause this new movement; it has simply advanced it by stripping materialism of its illusive trappings and showing it naked to the civilised world. It is not the work of one man or any single group, sect, or nation. Its characteristics are Anglo-American, and its development will prove the only antidote to the new pagan Kultur, which opposes
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The Agnostic and the Mystic
The Agnostic and the Mystic
Herndon's agnosticism left no lasting impression on the mind of Lincoln. This is remarkable, because Herndon was a man with a powerful originality and a strong will. Lincoln was more or less influenced by Herndon at the beginning of their acquaintance but such influence did not last long. Another curious thing is that Mr. Herndon, in spite of his probity, his practical ability, and his talent as a lawyer, never became known beyond his own state. He never was put forward as a leader. Perhaps he e
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The Logic of the Supernatural
The Logic of the Supernatural
Judge Henry C. Whitney has asked the following questions:—"By what magic spell was this, the greatest moral transformation in all profane history, wrought? What Genius sought out this roving child of the forest, this obscure flatboatman, and placed him on the lonely heights of immortal fame? Why was this best of men made the chief propitiation for our national sins? Was his progress causative or fortuitous; was it logical or supernatural; was the Unseen Power, or he himself, the architect of his
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The Mystical Mood
The Mystical Mood
"There was to me," says Henry B. Rankin, in his "Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln," "always an unapproachable grandeur in the man when he was in this mood of inner solitude. It isolated and—I always thought—exalted him above his ordinary life. History will discern and reverently disclose the strength in Lincoln's character and the executive foresight for which this mood gave him revealings." And the Reverend Joseph Fort Newton adds to the sentiments of his friend Rankin these words: "Li
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"Going into the Silence"
"Going into the Silence"
During an important criminal trial Amzi McWilliams said: "Lincoln will pitch in heavy now for he has hid." One who knew him declared: "He seemed never to be alone. I have frequently seen him, in the midst of a Court in session, with his mind completely withdrawn from the busy scene before his eyes, as completely abstracted as if he were in absolute solitude." Judge Whitney wrote: "In religion, Lincoln was in essence a mystic, and all his adoration was in accordance with the tenets of that order,
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Invisible Powers
Invisible Powers
We are compelled to look at all sides of Lincoln's political career in order to arrive at a just appreciation of his stupendous achievements, and when that is done we have to dismiss the notion that he succeeded because of his brilliant intellectual gifts. Others possessed great intellects without attaining altitudes of commanding power and enduring fame. Why did the influence of Cæsar, Darius, Alexander, Bonaparte, and Bismarck cease as soon as they passed away? Because the influence they exert
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The Fusion of Spirit and Matter
The Fusion of Spirit and Matter
"The existence of a great man," says Victor Cousin, the French philosopher, "is not the creation of arbitrary choice; he is not a thing that may, or may not, exist; he is not merely an individual; too much, or too little, of individuality are equally destructive to the character of a great man. On the one hand, individuality of itself is an element of what is pitiful and little, because particularity, the contingent and the finite, tends unceasingly to division, to dissolution, and to nothingnes
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His Miraculous Progress
His Miraculous Progress
One of the most searching biographers of Lincoln maintains that between the ages of fourteen and twenty-eight he displayed no sign of embryonic or assured greatness. If this be true, it means that none of Lincoln's early friends were intuitive enough to discover his greatness. Even the best writers who have dealt with this fascinating subject have failed to see all the facts, all the influences, all the correlated powers, in connection with what looks to many like a life of miracle. Intelligence
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A Prophetic Witness
A Prophetic Witness
In his book, "Life on the Circuit with Lincoln," Judge Whitney comments:— "As early as 1856, independent of all contemporary opinion, I conceived the idea that Mr. Lincoln was a prodigy of intellectual and moral force. Others associated with us deemed him superlatively great, but still human. I went farther; my view was definite and pronounced, that Lincoln was ordained for a greater than a merely human mission, and I avowed this belief as early as that time. "His character as a lawyer was contr
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Lincoln's Simplicity
Lincoln's Simplicity
There are two kinds of simplicity—one is without reason or discrimination, that believes all that is seen and heard if presented under the guise of honesty; the other is the kind that penetrates beneath manner, dress, verbiage, and meets all subterfuge, artifice, and sophistry with statements and facts at once logical and irrefutable. Lincoln was the most simple man in dress, in speech, in manners, in looks, that ever stood before the world in so great a rôle, but his intellect was anything but
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Lincoln's Clairvoyant Wit
Lincoln's Clairvoyant Wit
Lincoln was not deceived by an outward show of religion. A Southern woman begged the President to have her husband released from a Northern prison, "for," she said, "although he is a Rebel he is a very religious man." Lincoln replied: "I am glad to hear that, because any man who wants to disrupt this Union needs all the religion in sight to save him." He treated with indifference people who commandeered. A haughty woman came to Lincoln and demanded a colonel's commission for her son. "I demand i
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A Prophetic Vision of Hades
A Prophetic Vision of Hades
That William Blake was a mystic of the practical kind there can be no question. In art and in poetry he had that illumination which Lincoln had in statesmanship. The New York Times says:— "That a century has failed to heap the dust of oblivion over England's 'Greatest Mystic,' William Blake, is exemplified by the reproduction in a recent issue of Country Life of one of Blake's engravings for Dante's Inferno , in which four fiends with cruel faces are torturing a soul in Hell." The face of the ch
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Shakespeare and Lincoln
Shakespeare and Lincoln
"Lincoln," says Judge Whitney, "was one of the most heterogeneous characters that ever played a part in the great drama of history, and it was for this reason that he was so greatly misjudged and misunderstood; that he was, on the one hand, described as a mere humourist—a sort of Artemus Ward or Mark Twain—that it was thought that, by some 'irony of Fate,' a low comedian had got into the Presidential chair, and that the nation was being delivered over to conflagration, while this modern Nero fid
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A Prophecy Fulfilled
A Prophecy Fulfilled
In a letter written from Springfield, Illinois, August 15th, 1855, to the Hon. George Robertson, of Lexington, Kentucky, Lincoln said:— "The Autocrat of all the Russias will proclaim his subjects free sooner than will our American Masters voluntarily give up their slaves." On the day before Lincoln's first inauguration as President of the United States the "Autocrat of all the Russias," Alexander the Second, by Imperial decree emancipated his serfs, while six weeks after the inauguration the "Am
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The Ordinances of Heaven
The Ordinances of Heaven
"Canst thou bind the sweet influence of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? Or canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons? Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven?"—Job. Phenomena that arrive with the days, months, seasons, centuries, are accompanied by events of corresponding significance in the human world, for everything is related to everything else. In 1858 a new party came into being, headed by the prophet from the wilderness, who was as much a
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Lincoln's Face
Lincoln's Face
Knowledge, conviction, and certainty gave to Lincoln's face that penetrating power which could not have been assumed on occasion even by the most versatile and gifted actor. The two following quotations from "The Valley of Shadows" describe Lincoln's personal appearance and the emotions produced by the expression of his features:— "'The sperrit air more in the eye than it air in the tongue,' said Elihu Gest, rising from his seat; 'if Abe Lincoln looked at the wust slave-driver long enough Satan
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The Great Debate
The Great Debate
The hour had struck for the supreme test between the forces of slavery, on one hand, and the forces of freedom, on the other. A vast throng gathered at Alton from every section of the country to hear the last public discussion between the two antagonists, Lincoln and Douglas, and from the surging sea of faces thousands of anxious eyes gazed upward at the group of politicians on the balcony like wrecked mariners scanning the horizon for the smallest sign of a white sail of hope. "This final debat
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Forecasting and Premonitions
Forecasting and Premonitions
Nothing great comes into the world unattended. Abraham Lincoln was surrounded by men and women who were predestined to their task without being fully aware of what they were doing. One of the most memorable mystical demonstrations ever recorded in any epoch occurred in the little town of Salem, Illinois, in August, 1837, when Lincoln was only twenty-three years of age, long before he had cut any figure in the political world. Accompanied by six lawyers and two doctors, Lincoln went from Springfi
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Illumination of the Spirit
Illumination of the Spirit
When Lincoln, young and unknown, visited New Orleans as a flat-boatman and saw men and women being sold at auction in the public mart, he said to the friend who was with him: "If ever I get a chance to hit that thing I'll hit it hard." Who was this young man, whose clothes were in tatters, who was without patrons, to suggest such a thing as a chance to strike even a feeble blow at the institution of slavery? Dr. Gregg, commenting on this memorable incident, asks: "Why did Lincoln utter these wor
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Tycho Brahe and Lincoln
Tycho Brahe and Lincoln
When Hugh Miller, the noted geologist, faced the inexplicable he committed suicide. But Tycho Brahe, the Danish astronomer, the greatest practical mystic the world of science has known, experienced a sense of joy and exhilaration every time he viewed the starry heavens through his telescope. He considered astronomy something "divine." His was the joyful pride of the seer who revels in the unexplained mysteries of the universe, and from time to time obtained clairvoyant glimpses of the working of
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Herndon's Analysis and Testimony
Herndon's Analysis and Testimony
W. H. Herndon, for more than twenty years the law partner of Mr. Lincoln, delivered an address in Springfield, Illinois, upon the life and character of the lamented President, which for subtle analysis has few equals in biographical literature. The following are excerpts: "Mr. Lincoln's perceptions were slow, cold, and exact. Everything came to him in its precise shape and colour. To some men the world of matter and of man comes ornamented with beauty, life, and action, and hence more or less fa
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An Original Mind
An Original Mind
"Mr. Lincoln saw philosophy in a story and a schoolmaster in a joke. No man saw nature, fact, thing, from his standpoint. His was a new and original position, which was always suggesting, hinting something to him. Nature, insinuations, hints, and suggestions were new, fresh, original, and odd to him. The world, fact, man, principle, all had their powers of suggestion to his susceptible soul. They continually put him in mind of something known or unknown. Hence his power and tenacity of what is c
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The Great Books
The Great Books
"The truth about the whole matter is that Mr. Lincoln read less and thought more than any man in his sphere in America. When young he read the Bible, and when of age he read Shakespeare. The latter book was scarcely ever out of his mind. Mr. Lincoln is acknowledged to have been a great man, but the question is, what made him great? I repeat, that he read less and thought more than any man of his standing in America, if not in the world. He possessed originality and power of thought in an eminent
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Veneration and Truth
Veneration and Truth
"The predominating elements of Mr. Lincoln's peculiar character, were: firstly, his great capacity and powers of reason; secondly, his excellent understanding; thirdly, an exalted idea of the sense of right and equity; and fourthly, his intense veneration of what was true and good. His reason ruled all other faculties of his mind. "His pursuit of truth was indefatigable, terrible. He reasoned from his well-chosen principles with such clearness, force, and compactness that the tallest intellects
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The Great Puzzle
The Great Puzzle
"One day, at Washington, he made this remark to me: 'If ever this free people, if this Government itself is ever utterly demoralised, it will come from this human wriggle and struggle for office—a way to live without work.' "It puzzled him at Washington to know and to get at the root of this dread desire, this contagious disease of national robbery in the nation's death-struggle. "This man, this long, bony, wiry, sad man, floated into our country in 1831, in a frail canoe, down the north fork of
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Lincoln's Energy and Will
Lincoln's Energy and Will
Energy is usually a blind force in the conduct of human affairs and the greatest with which we have to deal. History is made up of the deeds of individuals with a surplus of energy, which overflows and damages governments as floods damage lands. Will, energy, and ambition are, in most cases, synonymous terms. Without energy the will breaks down, and without ambition energy and will would prove innocuous. No one can doubt that misdirected energy was at the bottom of much that moved the Prussians
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Nature and Prophecy
Nature and Prophecy
Herndon says:— "I cannot refrain from noting the views Lincoln held in reference to the great questions of moral and social reforms under which he classed suffrage for women, temperance, and slavery. 'All such questions, he observed one day, as we were discussing temperance in the office, 'must find lodgment with the most enlightened souls who stamp them with their approval. In God's own time they will be organised into law and woven into the fabric of all our institutions.'" As the Divine princ
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The Seal of Nature
The Seal of Nature
Herndon was right when he said that Lincoln's features were stamped with the seal of nature. This is the only seal that is beyond imitation. All else can be mimicked. We have seen how ghastly one or two persons appeared when they attempted to look like Lincoln. The imitation took on the appearance of pale, dull putty. The notion that Lincoln's personality could be imitated with success was quite in keeping with that other notion that the great President was, in spite of everything, just one of t
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Law and Authority
Law and Authority
We are beginning to feel the reality of that power that lies above appearance and formula, that power manifested in Job and Isaiah, which we accept as inspiration in religion, intuition in philosophy, and illumination in art, producing saints in one age and mystical scientists in another. We float through the ether on a revolving miracle called the earth, returning again and again to attain the same figure on the dial of time. The things done by human automatons count for nothing in the course o
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Lincoln as Critic
Lincoln as Critic
Nothing escaped Lincoln's powers of philosophical and metaphysical analysis. He did not read the Bible and Shakespeare merely for pleasure, as people read novels. He could give excellent reasons for everything he did. Even in his most listless moods he never lost his firm grip on affairs, both general and individual. When he read a book it was because there was something in it which helped him to penetrate deeper into the recesses of life and character. He would study a passage or a chapter unti
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His Style
His Style
"No criticism of Mr. Lincoln," says the Spectator , "can be in any sense adequate which does not deal with his astonishing power over words. It is not too much to say of him that he is among the greatest masters of prose ever produced by the English race. Self-educated, or rather not educated at all in the ordinary sense, he contrived to obtain an insight and power in the handling and mechanism of letters such as has been given to but few men in his, or, indeed, in any age. That the gift of orat
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Lincoln's Serenity
Lincoln's Serenity
"Lincoln," says the same writer in the Spectator , "saw things as a disillusioned man sees them, and yet, in the bad sense, he never suffered any disillusionment. For suffusing and combining his other qualities was a serenity of mind which affected the whole man. He viewed the world too much as a whole to be greatly troubled or perplexed over its accidents. To this serenity of mind was due an almost total absence of indignation in the ordinary sense." This is true, because, as Walt Whitman says,
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The Romance of His Character
The Romance of His Character
There is a "romance of character" that accompanies people of exceptional achievements, as Emerson has so justly said, and Lincoln possessed it without being in the slightest degree conscious of the fact. This is one reason why his life surpasses in interest any book of fiction ever written. He united all the realism of pioneer life with the romance of the inexplicable and the fascination of the unexpected. Those who come to Lincoln in search of the shifting romance of bohemianism will be disappo
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President by the Grace of God
President by the Grace of God
Lincoln lived long enough to become convinced that everything exists for a purpose. He saw that the Rebellion had to be, and that in the seeming confusion of sentiments and interests the Divine ruled over all persons and parties. Events had to follow as ordained by the spiritual Power that lies behind appearance. Lincoln worked in the light; Czar Nicholas of Russia lived in the dark. He could not tell why he occupied the Russian throne. Lincoln knew why he occupied the White House. The Kaiser wa
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Science and the Mystical
Science and the Mystical
Quintilian said:— "No man can become a perfect orator without a knowledge of geometry. It is not without reason that the greatest men have bestowed extreme attention on this science." Locke, the philosopher, gives the reason:— "Geometry develops the habit of pursuing long trains of ideas which will remain with the student who will be enabled to pierce through the mazes of sophism and discover a latent truth, when persons who have not this habit will never find it." Lincoln was passionately fond
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The Old and the New
The Old and the New
How old yet new are nature's moods and manifestations! How mysteriously the souvenirs of the past are revived and quickened in new forms, faces, and phenomena! The seasons come and go with varying moods and seem new, but they are older than the formulas of civilisation; strangers bring with them new influences, but we discover in them something familiar from the vague and shadowy past. Every single thing is related to every other thing, and illuminated minds are the periods that separate the cyc
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Destiny versus Will
Destiny versus Will
Great men float into power on mystical waves moved by the force of destiny. The greater the mind the greater the fixture of force behind it. Between George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, Presidents came and went as figureheads of parties or props to some ephemeral political scaffold. The majority were stopgaps. They, like the majority of politicians and many others, put their trust in Will and Desire. They could not understand that a man is not great because of his will, but because of his inna
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James Jacquess Practical Mystic
James Jacquess Practical Mystic
In the hubbub and confusion created by the upheaval which began in 1914 it is of vital importance for thinking people of the English-speaking countries to know what went on in the inner circles at Washington during that year of trial, 1864, when the destiny of the Union seemed to be hanging in the balance. It is time to know the truth about Lincoln's supernaturalism. Your favourite historian avoids the subject. He will not touch on a matter so dangerous to his neutral agnosticism. He avoids the
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Images and Dreams
Images and Dreams
Noah Brooks, in his Life of Lincoln, gives the following account of a vision which the President described to him:— "It was just after my nomination in 1860 when the news was coming thick and fast all day, and there had been a great Hurrah Boys, so that I was well tired out, and went home to rest and threw myself on a lounge in my chamber. Opposite where I lay was a bureau with a swinging glass, and looking in the glass I saw myself reflected, nearly at full length, but my face, I noticed, had t
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The New Era
The New Era
The principles enunciated by Abraham Lincoln are abiding examples, not only for the English-speaking peoples but for the whole world. Out of what seems universal confusion, tending towards chaos, there arises a new era. A material transformation had to occur before the uprising of the spiritual, and the truth is beginning to dawn in the minds of thousands that behind all material phenomena there dwells the divine idea. Before the gates of oblivion closed on civilisation we were plucked from the
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