_Give us men! Men who, when the tempest gathers, Grasp the standard of their fathers In the thickest fight. Men who strike for homes and altar, (Let the coward cringe and falter-- God defend the Right). True as truth, though lorn and lonely, Tender as the brave are only-- Men who tread where saints have trod, Men for Country, Right, and God-- Give us men!--I say again, again Give us men!_ --_Bishop of Exeter_ III WHY DID LINCOLN NEVER JOIN A CHURCH? That Lincoln did not join a church is no reason for inferring that he was not a believer in Christianity. It was just the opposite in his case,--as the years passed his convictions and faith became stronger. The warring creeds of Christianity looked to him like so many soldiers of the same army disagreeing among themselves as to the best way to win a battle. Lincoln would win in any way he could, and would look on that way as the best. In his day, even more than in ours, ministers fell out with one another touching the meaning of the Bible, and then, as always, weakened its influence and their own upon the public mind. Preachers and teachers even now devote their time to useless discussions which will never benefit any one, and to the investigation of controverted points in theology, deciding principles of interpretation and attacking chronological difficulties that have no more connection with winning men to right living than the battle of Lexington has with the reformation of drunkards. The precious time that Lincoln saw wasted, the energies misspent, and the intellectual antagonisms begotten, which then, as now, divided the hearts of men, caused him to reject dogmas which were considered essential to salvation by the denominations of his day. They moved, as alas! too many of them still do, in the old rut of orthodox tradition, steeped in human creeds and almost incapable of an original idea. Lincoln preferred new truths to old falsehoods, and, like Christ, was out of sympathy with men who swallowed dogmas whole and produced only pious platitudes. This very thing to-day accounts for the fact that so many brilliant men and interesting women are unconnected with the churches and therefore unreached by the pulpits. Everywhere, in increasingly large numbers, we find men, energetic, learned, and refined, humane, generous, reverent, open to argument and spiritual persuasion, moral men with religious sensibilities, who often set a worthy example to professors themselves, the very choicest spirits in the community, not identified with any church, but whose lives, we all must admit, are as much and often more Christian than those of professed church-goers. Mere water, whether a person is "buried in it," or whether it is applied at the tips of a bishop's fingers, makes no change whatever in character. Faith in religion as an institution is faith in a machine,--its application is what tells.