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ABRAHAM LINCOLN.



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Given Through



MRS. CORA L. V. RICHMOND,

Pastor of the Church of the Soul.



* * * *



Synopsis of an Addi'ess Given by the Guide of Mi'S. Cora
I(. V. Richmond, at the Regular Service of the Church
of the Soul, Sunday, February 2, Hall 309, Masonic Tem-
ple, Chicago, 111.



The Church of the Soul holds Services in Hall 309, Masonic Temple.
Every Sunday at 1 1 A. n.; Sunday School at 10 A. a



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SYNOPSIS OF THE ADDRESS GIVEN BY ABRAHAM

LINCOLN THROUGH THE INSTRUMENTALITY

OF MRS. CORA L. V. RICHMOND



At the Regular Services of the Church of the Soul, Sun-
day, Feb. 13, 1910, Hall 309, Masonic
Temple, Chicago.



With, a brief introduction by the President of the
Board of Trustees of that church — Mr. Waldo Dennis.

Introduction.

It was Sunday, Feb. 13, and therefore Lincoln birth-
day-Sunday. The regularly announced subject for the
day, "Apollyon, the Destroyer," had been postponed, as
I supposed, that the opportunity might not be lost of
saying a few of the many things his life and character
would naturally suggest. But suddenly the speaker an-
nounced, "What is to be said to you on this occasion will
not be of Lincoln, but by him." I was thrilled with joy
and expectation.

Even as a boy, at the end of the rebellion, as I
pored over the life of Lincoln a great love went out to
him. And again a® I read what Miss Tarbell has gath-
ered from the four quarters of the earth, my love con-
secrated itself to him anew. Through my adoration
for him, I suffered with him in all his crushing, tortur-
ing load of anxiety he carried as President, and I re-
joiced with him in his relief and gratitude, when came
the final triumph.

And how I enjoyed every personal fact about his boy-
hood, the boyhood that was a prophetic revelation of
the man, boy and man alike, characterized by a kindness
that was angelic, and by an integrity that was as simple
and natural as it was unswerving; the unmistakably di-
vine life that was sent for the crisis needing his sweet
patience and great wisdom.

To me Lincoln was the greatest man of our country,
1



its second savior, commissioned from on high to redeem
it from its sin of chattel slavery. He was my soul's
adoration. And now I was to be vouchsafed this great
blessed privilege, the privilege of hearing Lincoln de-
clare himself. That what he would say would be both
profound and vital, I was very sure.

And dear reader, when you have perused the follow-
ing reproduction of What he said, perhaps you will un-
derstand the satisfaction that was mine. My spirit wait-
ed, expectant, eager to meet his>, in the inspiration which
it was his to give.



In a line written to Mrs. Richmond the day following
the address, Mr. Dennis wrote: "I am full of to-day's
services; the discourse by the dear Lincoln — and my
heart goes out to you for making it possible, and to him
for the inspiration; isn't it wonderful! An instance of
the highest mental phenomena known to the world."

Address.

"With malice toward none, with charity for all"

"My country is the world, my countrymen are all
mankind."

In the larger life of the spirit I would say: My
country is the Universe, my countrymen are all iS'Ouls.

Hero worship has ever been the curse of the past;
people have mistaken the source of power and achieve-
ment; have substituted the human for the divine. One
must not mistake his own part in the great fulfillments
of the Infinite purpose.

The great tide of loving and grateful remembrance
must reach one even in the life of higher realities than
earth can give; but the day of human birth and death
are of small account compared with the life that lies
between and beyond them.

Grateful for all that the human heart hath given, in
the personal and collective remembrance of the day just
past, let us turn from the personal to the national, from
the national to the universal view of what the century
has wrought for humanity.

Those who have followed the history of the nation
that led up to the struggle between the North and the
South, will readily grasp the idea that the signs indicat-
ing the approach of that conflict were portentous and
many; long before the immediate cause was precipi-
tated upon the nation; that the very existence of chat-

2



tel slavery, presumably protected by the constitution,
was a perpetual menace to the existence of a representa-
tive government, and that the extension of slavery into
the then new state® of the southwest meant the imme-
diate forfeiture of the liberty that had been gained.
When, therefore, the struggle in Missouri, Kansas, Ne-
braska, resulted in the admission of those states without
slavery, or with compromise, it meant the approach of the
final truggle of the South to gain supremacy.

A life-long abhorrence of chattel slavery, a few occa-
sions for aiding in the struggle in the southwestern and
border States, a wisih that somehow and sometime in the
near future the great blot would be removed from the
escuitcheon of the nation, this was all the preparation the
one addressing you had for the duties into which he
was ushered by the great swirl of that political crisis;
but others there were who were more perfectly pre-
pared by years of experience and steadfast maintenance
of the rights of all people to "life, liberty and the pur-
suit of happiness."

It was necessary, at that juncture, that one be chosen
to represent the side of the nation that had been newly
awakened to the perils of the hour, who was not known;
whose name had not been so closely identified with the
struggle in the past between the slaveholders and the
advocates of the abolition of slavery. It was thought
that the one so chosen couldi give no offense to either sec-
tion of the country. But the very fact that the newly
awakened Republican party succeeded, the very fact that
the victory was with the non-slaveholding North, made
the South aware that slavery, as a political power, was
doomed. From that time the subsequent results were
inevitable.

Perhaps you are aware into what a great and goodly
company the results of that election irshered the almost
unknown President: The Congress of the United States"
held at that time the flower of American statesmanship;
they were the strong hosts sent on in that hour of the
nation's need ,to upbear the hands of him who might
have faltered, but for their great and wise patriotism:
Sumner, who had already tasted the violence born of
slavery; Wilson, Wade, Howard; but why name them?
Their work bespoke their great insight and wonderful
ability to cope with the rapidly culminating events. Let
no one suppose that any other than that master mind of



statesmanship — William H. Seward — tliat mind who
diared to say that if the Constitution of the United States
made slavery legal there was a "higher law" that made
Freedom under the Constitution the inalienable right of
every man born in this; fair land. The cabinet was
chosen from the intrepid and far-seeing ones who gave
to the one entrusted with executive power the strength
of a mighty people, aroused as never before in the his-
tory of the country.

Not only were there in both houses of Congress the
best minds that the nation could at that time produce,
and in the cabinet the finest ability and the true spirit
of statesmanship, but there was ever the unfailing help
from above — the guidance not born of human councils,
or of earth; the Infinite Helper. There were His mes-
sengers — not dimly recognized as angelis afar off — but
veritable advisors and friends to whom one might turn
with confidence and trust; for one can never seek, with
the highest motive, for guidance, that the guidance does
not come.

It is ever oppression that strilves the first blow —
not only in the act of oppresssion, but when brought
face to face with Truth and Freedom, strikes the first
deadly blow to slay.

Slavery was doomed; and slavery struck the first
blow at the heart of the nation. You know what fol-
lowed, but perhaps you do not know how the human
brain faltered and the human hand hesitated*, and the
human heart was wrung with angiiis'h beoause of the
inability to cope with the mighty problems of that hour.
War! That was the fearful thing that had been thrust
upon us. When you praise overmuch the feeblest man
of that day — the man who would have failed but for
the statesmen whom the people sent to sustain him,
please remember that suecess crowned the Cause of the
nation as the Cause of freedom, and that equal ability
and perhaps equal sincerity in another cause, not of free-
dom, might not have led to victory.

Then, when the war was upon us and there had been
defeat, the army and the people constituted the hosts
that were led to victory — not by the President but by
one of the most modest, unassuming and peace-loving
men whom the world has ever seen — Ulysses S. Grant —
without whom there could have been no day of final
emancipation, no victory for the nation.

4



All this is now past history; yet the one addressing
you remained long enough before being summoned from
the mortal form to realize, in some degree, the dangers
into which the nation had been plunged during that
dread ordeal of war and the almost equally dread ordeal
of victory and peace.

Chattel slavery was removed, but the negro was not
free from the persecutions and abuses of an enslaving
dominant race, nor had he yet overcome the long con-
tinued influence of servitude. There was much — oh, so
much, to do — the problem of reconstruction, the proper
balance between justice and mercy. Have these prob-
lems yet been solved? With all the rapid advancement
of the negro in education and preparation for citizen-
ship, is there equality and protection for that race before
the law throughout this country?

Other slaveries there are, imminent then, precipitate
now. Perhaps you will recall the last message ever sent
to the Congress of your country by the President of that
time: Sounds of war had been silenced by the loud ac-
claim of triumph and peace; your victorious armies had
entered the conquered capital of the erstwhile Southern
Confederacy; the flag of the nation floated over the
entire country; not yet united but ready for recon-
struction. There were other slaveries; in that mei&sage
to the especial Congress, convened to consider the
problems of peace — the new peace — there was one sen-
tence, a warning as well as a prophecy.

"I would warn the laboring man against the ever
encroaching power of wealth." Alas, that warning,
justified then, has been more than realized in the years
that have intervened; and you are upon the very verge
— nay, you are in the very midst of the conflict. For
the time labor is silenced, or perhaps deadened in per-
ception, by the newly awakened activity of the govern-
ment in bringing to the bar of justice the greatest of-
fenders against the people — the gigantic trusts and mo-
nopolies.

The secret of all this financial power and combination
is not new; Andrew Jackson met and overcame it once
when the Republic was comparatively new. During the
war between the North and South the one addressing
you wrote to the Senator who was afterward chairman
of the reconstruction committee. "I have more difficulty
with Wall street than ,with the entire Southern Con-
federacy," which meant that Wall street was speculating



upon the needs and misfortunes of the nation. This was
not all: Contractors for the supplies of the army and
navy; "shoddy" productions of all kinds, found their
way into the various departments. While your young
men were fighting the battles for the preservation of the
nation, these cormorants of greed and corruption were
robbing the public treasury; the "sinews of war" were
grudgingly siupplied at usurious rates by Wall street and
"neutral nations" of Europe.

From that time there has been one continuous tide of
ruinous "prosperity" — I do not mean that the legiti-
mate prosperity and increase of the wealth by natural
development is ruinous — the prosperity born of specula-
tion, of gambling in all the natural products of the
country.

The "strike" on the one hand, and the "lockout"
on the other are the unfailing result of a system of cor-
ruption of men in high places who have abused the con-
dence reposed in them and have used their vast influ-
ence to favor these acts and institutions of oppression.

Anything that oppresses is wrong; and when a sys-
tem becomes so oppressive that the government is
obliged to take action against some of the foremost citi-
zens of the country, it proves the existence of a great
wrong.

All the great nations of the past perished because of
corruption; Egypt for a thousand year& led the world
after her conquests, in the arts of peace; Rome, once
the name that Paul quoted, "I too am a Roman citizen,"
became the plaything of a corrupt and dishonorable
"System."

We have the examples of all the nations of the
earth. Wars of conquest may bring temporary victory,
but no nation can permanently exist that expects to gain
by aggrestsdve warfare the fair possessions of other na-
tions.

The days of crude and brutal force as the principal
• factor in the "civilization" of the world are nearly over;
and soon the nation will awaken from its long struggling
dream of material power by "right of conquest" to that
larger dream of the ideal nation whose Supreme Song
is for that Liberty born of Justice."

If your boasted Republic is anything more than a
mere name, if the Liberty you prize so highly Is to be
purified from the enslaving corruptions of partisan poli-

6



tics and financial exploitation, if the ballot is to remain
(aye and be extended to the other half of creation —
woman) if the Dove of Peace now circling over the na-
tions of the earth — not finding a resting place from the
contending floods of war and oppression — ^sihall finally
rest over this fair land it will be when you shall have
arisen to the bright ideals of the greater day, the larger
Republic.

The disarmament born of the federation of nations
— of arbitration.

The world is steadily rising to the ideal Republic of
Plato, and the philosophers; to the Divine Brotherhood
of Jesus and the great teachers. Not always will the
sounds of the preparation for war be heard, not always
will the people pay the terrible tribute of their life blood
to foster the ambitions of kings and rulers.

'Mie Spiritual Baptism that is poured out upon the
world to-day means the onward march of the mental
and moral forces of the people, the moral and spiritual
to keep pace with the mental.

The bondage of ignorance and fear is far greater
than any material slavery; bigotry, fostering ignorance,
has enslaved the spiritual nature and now that the "stone
has been rolled away" from the sepulcher of physical
death, the same Higher Powers are rolling the stones
away from the sepulchers of fear, doubt and ignorance.

There are thousands who hail this dawn of the new
day; hundreds of thousands who gaze with longing eyes
and who work with steadfast faith and courage to bring
the promised dawn; it cannot be far off, for suoh as
are ready in their heart to deal justly and kindly with
their fellow men. No king or ruler of earth can bring
it, no government can declare it, like the ideal Repub-
lic of poets it must be the outgrowth of souls.

Above your nation the great and wise and good of all
past time watch, wait and inspire the daring and the true
to higher deeds of hu/manity, nobler works of truth and
righteousness. Over all the earth the ministering ones
attend to teach siich minds as are ready to strengthen
and uplift the faltering ones.

Happy are they who have arisen from the selfish and
narrow aims of personal ambition and greed and are
working and waiting for the perfect day, the Birthday
of Human Brotherhood. O^^



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