“In great contests,” he once said, “each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong.” Another time, in his second Inaugural Address, he observed, “Both [Union and Confederacy] read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes his aid against the other . . . . The prayers of both could not be answered . . . . The Almighty has his own purposes.” Lincoln knew that men should try to do God’s will as well as they could determine what it was for them, but the Almighty has his purposes that go beyond the plans of men.
