Monday, June 20, 2022

Abraham Lincoln’s use of Matthew 5:48 during the “Lincoln-Douglas Debates” (1858)

Lincoln at Chicago, July 10, 1858, as reported in the Chicago Daily Democrat, July 13, 1858

 

My friend has said to me that I am a poor hand to quote Scripture. I will try it again, however. It is said in one of the admonitions of the Lord, “As your Father in Heaven is perfect, be ye also perfect.” The Saviour, I suppose, did not expect that any human creature could be perfect as the Father in Heaven; but He said, “As your Father in Heaven, is perfect, be ye also perfect.” He set that up as a standard, and he who did most towards teaching that standard, attained the highest degree of moral perfection. So I say in relation to the principle that all men are created equal, let it be as nearly reached as we can. If we cannot give freedom to every creature, let us do nothing that will impose slavery upon any other creature. [Applause.] Let us then turn this government back into the channel in which the framers of the Constitution originally placed it. Let us stand firmly by each other. If we do not do so we are turning in the contrary direction, that our friend Judge Douglas proposes—not intentionally—as working in the traces tend to make this one universal slave nation. [A voice—“that is so.”] He is one that runs in that direction, and as such I resist him. (The Complete Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858, ed. Paul M. Angle [Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1958, 1991], 42)