understand it at all."

Here Mr. Lincoln paused--paused for long minutes, his features
surcharged with emotion. Then he rose and walked up and down the
reception-room in the effort to retain or regain his self-possession.
Stopping at last, he said, with a trembling voice and cheeks wet with
tears:

"I know there is a God, and that He hates injustice and slavery. I see
the storm coming, and I know that His hand is in it. If He has a place
and work for me, and I think He has, I believe I am ready. I am nothing,
but Truth is everything. I know I am right, because I know that liberty
is right, for Christ teaches it, and Christ is God. I have told them
that a house divided against itself cannot stand; and Christ and Reason
say the same, and they will find it so.

"Douglas doesn't care whether slavery is voted up or down, but God
cares, and humanity cares, and I care; and with God's help I shall
not fail. I may not see the end, but it will come, and I shall be
vindicated; and these men will find they have not read their Bible
right."

Much of this was uttered as if he were speaking to himself, and with
a sad, earnest solemnity of manner impossible to be described. After a
pause he resumed:

"Doesn't it seem strange that men can ignore the moral aspect of this
contest? No revelation could make it plainer to me that slavery or the
Government must be destroyed. The future would be something awful, as
I look at it, but for this rock on which I stand" (alluding to the
Testament which he still held in his hand), "especially with the
knowledge of how these ministers are going to vote. It seems as if God
had borne with this thing (slavery) until the teachers of religion have
come to defend it from the Bible, and to claim for it a divine character
and sanction; and now the cup of iniquity is full, and the vials of
wrath will be poured out."

Everything he said was of a peculiarly deep, tender, and religious tone,
and all was tinged with a touching melancholy. He repeatedly referred to
his conviction that the day of wrath was at hand, and that he was to be
an actor in the terrible struggle which would issue in the overthrow of
slavery, although he might not live to see the end.

After further reference to a belief in the Divine Providence and the
fact of God in history, the conversation turned upon prayer. He freely
stated his belief in the duty, privilege, and efficacy of prayer, and
intimated, in no unmistakable terms, that