His attitude was a conviction within. All the influences surrounding him in childhood and young manhood were of a character to induce him to drink. In later years, referring to the drinking customs of that period, he said:

When all such of us as have now reached the age of maturity first opened our eyes upon the stage of existence we found intoxicating liquors recognized by everybody, used by everybody, repudiated by nobody. It commonly entered into the first draught of the infant and the last draught of the dying man. From the sideboard of the parson down to the ragged pocket of the houseless loafer it was constantly found. Physicians prescribed it in this, that, and the other disease; government provided it for soldiers and sailors; and to have a rolling or raising, a husking or "hoe-down" anywhere about, without it, was positively insufferable. So, too, it was everywhere a respectable article of manufacture and of merchandise. The making of it was regarded as an honorable livelihood, and he who could make most was the most enterprising and respectable. Large and small manufactories of it were everywhere erected, in which all the earthly goods of their owners were invested. Wagons drew it from town to town, boats bore it from clime to clime, and the winds wafted it from nation to nation; and merchants bought and sold it by wholesale and retail with precisely the same feelings on the part of the seller, buyer, and bystander as are felt at the selling and buying of plows, beef, bacon, or any other of the real necessaries of life. Universal public opinion not only tolerated, but recognized and adopted, its use.

Whisky was as good as money, and when Mr. Lincoln's father decided to move from Kentucky to Indiana he accepted in payment for his Kentucky farm twenty dollars in money and ten barrels of whisky worth twenty-eight dollars a barrel. Perhaps it was in the ordering of Providence that the raft on which the goods of the Lincoln family were being transported to Indiana was wrecked by the rapid current of the Ohio River and all the whisky lost. Its presence in the wretched open-faced shack which was the home of the Lincolns during their first year in Indiana might have proved a temptation to which young Lincoln would have yielded, with disaster to his own character and with fateful results to the nation.

God's prophets have been men whose characters began to be molded in childhood. When he determined to deliver the children of Israel from slavery he took a young man who had spent the most of his life in the midst of royal pleasures and

sensual dissipations that destroyed rather than developed nobility of character. But Moses was not called to deliver Israel and to be the lawgiver of the world because he was "the son of Pharaoh's daughter," but because during the few years his own mother as a hired servant nursed him she taught him of God and his will, and so molded his character that the after years of royal pleasure and dissipation could not change it. Luther, Wesley, Shaftesbury, and hosts of other great and good men are illustrations of the same truth, that the foundation of the character that made them great was laid in childhood. And usually the instrument used was a godly mother. This was the case with Lincoln. His mother died when he was nine years old. Yet, after he had become President, he said of her, "All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother-blessings on her memory." On Sundays Mrs. Lincoln would gather her children around her and read to them the wonderful stories in the Bible and pray with them. After he had become President Mr. Lincoln said: "I remember her prayers, and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life." The Bible stories not only interested him, but they molded his intellectual, as well as moral, character. He knew the Bible almost by heart, and his political speeches and State papers abound with its words and teachings. Two of his greatest speeches are thus particularly distinguished that delivered at Springfield, Ill., June 16, 1858, accepting the Republican nomination for United States Senator, and known as the "House divided against itself" speech; and the second inaugural speech, delivered March 4, 1865, which the London Spectator declared to be "the noblest political document known to history."

No reader of the Bible ever imbibed its spirit or learned the lessons it taught more fully than did Lincoln. Its truths appealed to his reason, and especially to his experience. Its declarations as to the effects of strong drink were fully confirmed by the condition of those about him who used liquor. Before he had ever tasted liquor he resolved to always totally abstain from its use. This was a courageous decision to make in that day, much more so, indeed, than it would be to-day. He even refused to sell liquor in his store at New Salem, and

when his partner insisted, on the plea that its sale would draw custom, he retired from the business rather than consent. His unfailing practice of his temperance principles attracted attention, and when he was grown some of his associates determined to make him break his resolution. In order to get him to take at least one drink of liquor they declared that he could not lift a full barrel of whisky and take a drink out of the bunghole. Lincoln accepted the challenge, lifted the barrel above his head, took a mouthful of the liquor, and set the barrel down on the ground. At once the shout was raised, "Well, Abe, you've taken a drink of whisky for once in your life and broken your pledge!" But the sentence was scarcely completed before he spit the liquor out of his mouth. and quietly said, "And I have not done so now."

To do and say that which he believed to be right was so much the habit of Mr. Lincoln's life that he was not conscious of temptations which with many others would require great moral courage to resist, with perhaps weakness that would result in a fall. A more astute politician than Mr. Lincoln America has not produced, and a greater temptation never came to any mere politician than came to Mr. Lincoln the day after his nomination for the presidency by the Republican National Convention, which met in the "Wigwam" in Chicago, in 1860. It occurred in connection with the visit of the committee appointed by the convention to notify Mr. Lincoln of his nomination. A number of the citizens of Springfield, knowing Mr. Lincoln's total abstinence habits and believing that he would in all probability have no liquors in the house, called upon him and suggested that perhaps some members of the committee would be in need of some refreshment, wine or other liquors. "I haven't any in the house," said Mr. Lincoln. "We will furnish them," said the visitors. "Gentlemen," replied Mr. Lincoln, "I cannot allow you to do what I will not do myself." Some Democratic citizens, however, who felt that Springfield had been honored by the nomination, sent several baskets of wine to Mr. Lincoln's house, but he returned them, thanking the senders for their intended kindAfter the formal ceremonies connected with the business of the Committee of Notification had passed Mr. Lincoln

ness.

remarked that, as an appropriate conclusion to an interview so important and interesting he supposed good manners would require that he should furnish the committee something to drink; and opening a door he called out, "Mary! Mary!" A girl responded to the call, to whom Mr. Lincoln spoke in an undertone. In a few minutes the maid entered bearing a large tray containing several glass tumblers and a large pitcher and placed it upon the center table. Mr. Lincoln then arose and, gravely addressing the distinguished gentlemen, said, "Gentlemen, we must pledge our mutual healths in the most healthy beverage God has given to man. It is the only beverage I have ever used or allowed in my family, and I cannot conscientiously depart from it on the present occasion; it is pure Adam's ale from the spring." And, taking a tumbler,

he touched it to his lips and pledged them his highest respects in a cup of cold water. A few months later he started on his journey to Washington to take his seat as President of the United States. In a number of cities his visit was honored with grand banquets, at which wine was served, but of which he never partook. On one occasion, being urged to drink a glass of wine, he replied, " For thirty years I have been a temperance man, and I am too old to change." It is declared that actions speak louder than words. The cause of temperance would possibly have been victorious had the action of all temperance men been as consistent and as persistent against the liquor traffic as their utterances have been. But when men's acts and words are in accord great is their power. Such were Abraham Lincoln's. He not only abstained from the use of intoxicating liquors, but he was bold in publicly advocating total abstinence.

The first composition Lincoln ever wrote, at least his first production to be published, was on the foolishness of liquordrinking and the evils that come from the habit. He became very much interested in the Washingtonian movement which swept over the country in the early part of the century, and frequently addressed temperance meetings. On Washington's birthday, February 22, 1842, he delivered a memorable address before the Springfield Washingtonian Temperance Society, at the Second Presbyterian Church in Springfield, Ill. This

address should be repeatedly read in our churches, Epworth Leagues, Sunday schools, and all gatherings of Christian young people. It contains these sentences, which close with a remarkable prophecy of the overthrow of intemperance:

The demon of intemperance ever seems to have delighted in sucking the blood of genius and generosity. What one of us but can call to mind some relative more promising in youth than all his fellows who has fallen a sacrifice to his rapacity? He ever seems to have gone forth like the Egyptian angel of death, commissioned to slay, if not the first, the fairest born, of every family. Shall he now be arrested in his desolating career? In that arrest all can give aid that will, and who shall be excused that can and will not? Far around as human breath has ever blown he keeps our fathers, our brothers, our sons, and our friends prostrate in the chains of moral death. To all the living everywhere we cry: "Come, sound the moral trump, that these may rise and stand up an exceeding great army." "Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live." If the relative grandeur of revolutions shall be estimated by the great amount of human misery they alleviate, and the small amount they inflict, then, indeed, will this be the grandest the world shall ever have seen.

Of our political revolution of 1776 we are all justly proud. It has given us a degree of political freedom far exceeding that of any other nations of the earth. In it the world has found a solution of the longmooted problem as to the capability of man to govern himself. In it was the germ which has vegetated, and still is to grow and expand into the universal liberty of mankind. But with all these glorious results, past, present, and to come, it had its evils, too. It breathed forth famine, swam in blood, and rode in fire; and long, long after, the orphans' cry and the widows' wail continued to break the sad silence that ensued. These were the price, the inevitable price, paid for the blessings it bought.

Turn now to the temperance revolution. In it we shall find a stronger bondage broken, a viler slavery manumitted, a greater tyrant deposedin it, more of want supplied, more disease healed, more sorrow assuaged. By it, no orphans starving, no widows weeping; by it, none wounded in feeling, none injured in interest. Even the drammaker and dramseller will have glided into other occupations so gradually as never to have felt the change, and will stand ready to join all others in the universal song of gladness. And what a noble ally this to the cause of political freedom! With such an aid its march cannot fail to be on and on, till every son of earth shall drink in rich fruition the sorrow-quenching draughts of perfect liberty! Happy day, when--all appetites controlled, all passions subdued, all matter subjugated-mina, all-conquering mind, shall live and move, the monarch of the world! Gloriou consummation! Hail, fall of fury! Reign of reason, all hail: