One of his biographers says that there is nothing in the life or work of Lincoln which cannot be explained without reference to any supernatural influence or power.That depends on what is meant by supernatural.There were no miracles, no astounding visions nor experiences.But there ran into Lincoln's life from his young manhood onward this steady and strong current of ideas and ideals from the Bible.In his second inaugural address he worded the thought that was the deepest horror of the Civil War-- that on both sides of the strife men were reading the same Bible, praying to the same God, and invoking His aid against each other! In that very brief inaugural Mr.Lincoln quotes in full three Bible verses, and makes reference to two others, and the whole address lasted barely four minutes.There could be no mistaking the solemn importance of the fact to which he referred in the inaugural, the presence on the other side of men who held their Bibles high in regard."Stonewall" Jackson was devout beyond most men.The two books always at his hand were his Bible and theManual of the Rules of War.Robert E.Lee was a cultured, Christian gentleman, as were many others with him, while throughout the South were multitudes who loved and reverenced the Bible as fully as could any in the North.As we look back over half a century, this comes out plainly: that so far as the American civil war was a strife about union pure and simple, having one nation or two here in our part of the continent, it was matter of judgment, not of religion.There grew around that question certain others of national honor and obligation, which were not so clear then as now.But men on opposite sides of the question might read the same Bible without finding authoritative word about it.In so far, however, as the war had at its heart the matter of human slavery, it was possible for men to differ only when one side read the letter of the Bible while the other read its manifest spirit.Written in times when slavery was counted matter of course, its letter dealt with slavery as a fact.It could be read as though it approved slavery.But long before this day men had found its true spirit.England had abolished slavery (1808) under the insistence that it was foreign to all right understanding of God's Word.Lincoln knew its letter well; he cared for its spirit more, and he found his strength not in the familiar saying that God was on his side, but in the more forceful one that he believed himself to be on God's side.So he became a point around which the great fluid idea crystallized into strength--a point made and sustained by the influence of the Bible, which he knew only in the King James version.
We have spoken of some wide movements and of men around whom they crystallized, finding in them the influence of the Bible.It will be well to note two outstanding traits of the Bible which in English or any other tongue would inevitably tend to strong and favorable influence on the history of men.Those two traits are, first, its essential democracy, and, secondly, its persistent moral appeal.
Here must be recalled that century before the King James version, when by slow filtration the fundamental ideas of the Bible were entering English life.Surely it is beyond words that the Bible made Puritanism, though it was in strong swing when James came to the throne.Now John Richard Green is well within the fact when he says that "Puritanism mayfairly claim to be the first political system which recognized the grandeur of the people as a whole."[1] It, was the magnifying of the people as a whole over against some people as having peculiar rights which marked Puritanism, and which is democracy.Shakespeare knew nothing of it, and had no influence on the movement for larger democracy.After we have said our strong word of Shakespeare's powerful influence upon literature it yet must be said that it is difficult to lay finger on one single historical movement except the literary one which Shakespeare even remotely influenced.The Bible, meanwhile, was absolutely creating this movement.Under its influence "the meanest peasant felt himself ennobled as the child of God, the proudest noble recognized a spiritual equality with the meanest saint." That was the inevitable result of a fresh reading of the Bible in every home.It assured each man that he is a son of God, equal in that sonship with all other men.It assured him no man has right to lord it over others, as though his relation to God were peculiar.The Bible constantly impresses men that this relation to God is the essential one.Everything else is incidental.Granted now a people freshly under the influence of that teaching, you have a large explanation of the movement which followed the issuance of this version.
[1] Short History of the English People, chap.vii, sec.vii.
James opened his first parliament (1604) with a speech claiming divine right, a doctrine which had really been raised to meet the claim of the right of the pope to depose kings.James argued that the state of monarchy is the supremest thing on earth, for kings are not only God's lieutenants on earth and set upon God's throne, but even by God Himself are called gods.(He never found that in the Genevan version or its notes!) As to dispute what God may do is blasphemy, so it is sedition in subjects to dispute what the king may do in the height of his power."I will not be content that my power be disputed on." The House of Commons sat by his grace and not of any right.
