But we are not sure how much Mr. Nicolay believed Lincoln's views to have been in need of change. He said in another place: "Benevolence and forgiveness were the very basis of his character. His nature was deeply religious, but he belonged to no denomination; he had faith in the eternal justice and boundless mercy of Providence, and made the Golden Rule of Christ his practical creed."--JOHN G. NICOLAY, in article "Abraham Lincoln" in _Encyclopedia Britannica_, ninth edition, XIV, 662. Lincoln believed in divine destiny. He could hardly have believed otherwise. The preaching to which he listened was such as to make it all but impossible for him to hold any other views. He believed so strongly that his own life was under divine guidance that Lamon and Herndon speak of it in a thinly veiled scorn as though it were in Lincoln's mind a mark of conscious superiority. Whether it was such a mark or not does not now concern us. Lincoln believed in divine guidance. He had faith in prayer and his practice of prayer is attested by many and credible witnesses. A man of his temperament and training and sense of responsibility could not well have been kept from praying. Prayer was a necessary part of his life. Lincoln not only had faith in prayer considered as a means of obtaining results from God; he believed in it as establishing a relation with God, a covenant relation, such as Abraham of old established. If such a faith seems inconsistent with any other elements in the faith or doubt of Abraham Lincoln, then the inconsistency must stand, for he did not hold his views in entire consistency. In no respect does this faith in the covenant relation emerge more strongly than in connection with the issue of the Emancipation Proclamation. Fortunately, the evidence here is incontestable. The Proclamation immediately became historic. Lincoln had to autograph many copies to be sold at sanitary fairs--copies which now sell at one thousand dollars each. Every incident relating to the event became of immediate interest; and members of the Cabinet had to group themselves for Carpenter's historic painting, of which he has left so valuable a literary monument in his _Six Months in the White House_. The members of the Cabinet had no time to invent or imagine a set of incidents mythical in character, for each of them had to describe many times, and immediately, the circumstances which attended the reading of the Proclamation to the Cabinet on Monday, September 22, 1862. This is the important and incontestable fact, that Lincoln did not bring the Proclamation to the Cabinet for discussion, except as to minor details. He had already determined to issue it. He had promised God that he would do so. This was the statement which profoundly impressed the members of the Cabinet,--the President told them that he had already promised God that he would free the slaves.