To a committee of the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal church in 1864 he said, "It is no fault in others that the Methodist Church sends more soldiers to the field, more nurses to the hospitals, more prayers to heaven than any other. God bless the Methodist Church! Bless all the churches; blessed be God who in this great trial giveth us the churches." To the Quakers of Iowa, who had sent him an address through Senator Harlan, he wrote, "It is most cheering and encouraging for me to know that, in the efforts which I have made, and am making, for the restoration of a righteous peace to our country, I am upheld and sustained by the good wishes and prayers of God's people. No one is more deeply aware than myself that without His favor our highest wisdom is but as foolishness, and that our most strenuous efforts would avail nothing in the shadow of His displeasure." One of the most significant of the President's letters, in which he expresses himself with less than his usual reserve, was written to Mrs. Gurney, wife of an eminent preacher of the English Society of Friends, in the autumn of 1864: "I am much indebted to the good Christian people of the country for their constant prayers and consolations, and to no one of them more than to yourself. The purposes of the Almighty are perfect, and must prevail, though we erring mortals may fail to accurately perceive them in advance. We hoped for a happy termination of this terrible war long before this; but God knows best, and has ruled otherwise. We shall yet acknowledge His wisdom and our own error therein. Meanwhile we must work earnestly in the best lights He gives us, trusting that so working still conduces to the great ends He ordains." Being requested to preside at a meeting of the Christian Commission held in Washington on February 22, 1863, he wrote, "Whatever shall tend to turn our thoughts from the unreasoning and uncharitable passions, prejudices, and jealousies incident to a great national trouble such as ours, and to fix them on the vast and long-enduring consequences, for weal or for woe, which are to result from the struggle, and especially to strengthen our reliance on the Supreme Being for the final triumph of the right, cannot but be well for us all." Mr. Herndon, his law partner, remembers that he often said that his creed was the same as that of an old man named Glenn, whom he heard speak at an experience meeting in Indiana: "When I do good, I feel good, and when I do bad, I feel bad; and that's my religion."