Lincoln and Liberty by A. O. Tait

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Feb 11, 1913

Lincoln and Liberty

By A. O. Tait

By A. O. Tait

On February 12, 1809, one of the greatest characters in all history was born. Abraham Lincoln is one of those great personages that seem from their birth to be destined of Providence for a peculiar and important work for the uplift of humanity.

The one great impulse of Lincoln’s life was liberty. Not liberty for a certain favored few; not the liberty of one class to oppress another, but the liberty of all mankind. Hence he stood for the liberty of the common people, and against the idea of their oppression by the powerful and the wealthy class.

Lincoln’s early life of privation, toil, and hardship fitted him to sympathize with the common man. He knew from personal experience what it meant to endure the inconveniences of poverty; and he was intimately acquainted with the exacting burdens of those in the humbler walks of life. Hence, from the standpoint of environment as well as because of his peculiar sentiments, it is not to be wondered at that his soul rose in revolt against the thought of one race of human beings enslaving another. When he was still a very young man, he formed the resolution of doing all in his power to relieve his nation—as well as the colored people—from the oppressions and the degradations of slavery. And the great hand of Providence seemed to be placed behind him to urge him forward in his destined work.

Divine Providence does not ruthlessly lay hold of certain men and compel them to do a special work; but when men yield themselves to the influences of freedom and righteousness, they are standing on the side of the Divine Father, and hence they have the Infinite One working with them instead of against them. This was the part that Lincoln acted for humanity. He took his stand with the God of freedom, and soon found that the infinite resources of Him who framed the worlds, were back of his important work in emancipating a race of slaves.

In doing the work that was accomplished for the Negro race, Lincoln did even more for his own race. For the enslavement of the Negro was quite as degrading on the white people themselves as it was on the blacks. No human being can reduce another member of the human family to the level of a chattel without dragging himself down along with the one he enslaves. It is alone in the atmosphere of perfect freedom that the true heights of righteousness may be reached, and the essentials of the nobility of perfect manhood may be attained. It is sad to think of being a slave on a par, from the view of ownership, with the horse or the ox; yet it is not only sad, but degrading, to think of descending in our sentiments to the point where we would be willing to be the owner of such a slave. To rid this beloved nation from the blight of slavery, was the burden that Lincoln was called to carry in behalf of humanity. All the noble minds of the South now acquiesce in this.

Lincoln worked, as does every true reformer, under the pressure of an abiding conviction that the thing he was doing was right, and it must be done. He did not spend his time considering who were the mighty and the powerful ones he could count on his side; but his thought and his energies were absorbed in the one great effort to convince the nation of the rightfulness of his cause. The earnest, fervid, convincing logic of his eloquence could not have sprung from the heart of the politician that was seeking merely to win popularity. He sincerely felt the burdens of a great cause, and the interests of humanity were imbedded in his affections.

While in the midst of some of his most earnest labors, he learned that some leading clergymen had taken their stand against him. In the bitterness of anguish, he exclaimed, Can it be that the ministers of the gentle Christ can be against me in this work? He felt this opposition keenly, but it did not swerve him in the least from his course. Perhaps, under such circumstances, he found comfort in the fact that there were others of the clergy of the country that had not been blinded by the fogs that encircle the slave owner, and who were with him in his great work.

Many volumes have been written concerning Lincoln, and no doubt much that has been said has been overdrawn. But after making every allowance for all that, there still remains the monumental fact that he was the great liberator under the mighty hand of Providence of an oppressed race, and he saved the oppressors from the calamities they had prepared for themselves.

It is highly fitting that this nation should take time to consider the work that Lincoln did, and the principles for which he stood. It is very appropriate that we should commemorate the date of his birth as one of the fixed landmarks of the nation.