Two Journeys

Two Journeys
 
    February 12th, 1809 was a momentous day, for on it were born two men whose lives continue to affect us two centuries later.
 
    In Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England on that winter's day, Charles Robert Darwin was born to Christian parents.  Baptized as an infant, young Charles was raised in an atmosphere steeped in Christian influences.  He recalled later that as a youth "... I prayed earnestly to God to help me, and I well remember that I attributed my success to the prayers and not to my [efforts], and marveled how generally I was aided."  As a young man he believed himself called to the Ministry, for which he began to prepare.  Called upon to comfort a grief-stricken friend during his three years of pre-seminary training, Charles wrote of "so pure and holy a comfort as the Bible affords, compared with how useless the sympathy of all friends must appear."  Graduating tenth in his class of 178 from Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1831,  Darwin then joined a research voyage aboard the HMS Beagle as a friend of the devoutly Christian Captain Robert FitzRoy, for what was to have been a two-year study along the coast of South America.
 
    On the same day as Charles Darwin entered the world, Abraham Lincoln was born in rural Hardin County, Kentucky.  His parents were members of the local Baptist church, but young Abraham found no attraction there and never joined; in fact, there is evidence of his having ridiculed religion in general and Christianity in particular.  His mother may have had some influence on young Abraham, but she died when he was nine years old.  By the age of 22 Lincoln left his family and struck out on his own, eventually teaching himself law and becoming a lawyer in 1837.  The same year he met Joshua Speed, who was to become his closest friend.  Lincoln remained staunchly opposed to religion.
 
    While Abraham Lincoln was launching his legal career, Charles Darwin had returned from what had become a five year voyage on the HMS Beagle with his Christianity in a shambles.  Having slowly replaced his study of the Bible with literature bitterly opposed to the very concepts of God and Creation, Darwin had gradually come to reject his faith.  By 1837, he had given lectures and published papers promoting the view called "uniformitarianism," which professes that "... all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation." [2 Peter 3:4]  Having rejected first Genesis, then the entire Old Testament, and soon the concept of the miraculous, Darwin finally abandoned the Gospels and the hope of salvation.  Darwin married in 1839 and in 1841 his beloved daughter Annie was born.
 
    Meanwhile, Abraham Lincoln had become engaged to Mary Todd, a young lady to whom he was introduced by his friend Joshua Speed.  On January 1, 1841, the home of Ninian Edwards was gaily decorated for what was expected to be a grand wedding.  The guests were assembled, the bride waiting, the tables set ... but the groom was absent  As the hours passed, guests began to leave until finally the heartbroken bride was left alone with a few friends.  Joshua Speed, feeling both embarrassment and concern for his friend, searched the town until he found Abraham in the throes of deepest depression.  Lincoln wrote to another associate, "I am the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be a cheerful face on earth. Whether I shall ever be better I cannot tell; I awfully forbode I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible. I must die or be better."  It was at this point, as Charles Darwin, acclaimed as a great success, was confirming his loss of faith, that Abraham Lincoln, considering himself a failure, appears to have found his.
 
    Taken by his friend to the Speed's family home in Louisville, Lincoln was attended by his friend's mother, a devout Christian who read to him daily from the Gospels, who, biographers say, "spoke of God as Father, of Jesus Christ as brother," and witnessed to Lincoln of the hope and salvation he had once ridiculed.  A historian later said "The late but splendid maturity of Lincoln’s mind and character dates from this time; and although he grew in strength and knowledge to the end, from this year we observe a steadiness and sobriety of thought and purpose discernible in his life."  In 1842, after encouraging Joshua's courtship with and eventual marriage to Miss Fanny Henning, Lincoln wrote his friend "I believe God made me one of the instruments of bringing your Fanny and you together, which union, I have no doubt He had fore-ordained. Whatever he designs, he will do for me yet."
 
    From 1841 onward, Darwin's health and outlook both deteriorated.  When his daughter Annie died in 1851 he was thrown into a deep depression, writing that "Our only consolation is that she passed a short, though joyous life."  A few years later the now thoroughly bitter Darwin wrote "I can hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so, the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother, and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine."  Surrounded by and steeped in animosity toward Christianity, Darwin had rejected not only the Bible but all hope of comfort.  In 1880, not long before his death, Darwin wrote to a correspondent that "I am sorry to have to inform you that I do not believe in the Bible as a divine revelation, & therefore not in Jesus Christ as the Son of God."  Though stories occasionally surface which claim Darwin returned to faith on his deathbed, his family and others who were with him during his final months and hours firmly deny any such thing.
 
    Abraham Lincoln, a changed man, rewon the love of Mary Todd, whom he married in November of 1842.  Over the ensuing years, both his actions and his words convey a sense of a growing faith.  The death of his young son -- within months of that of Annie Darwin -- led not to despair but to a recommitment to the Means of Grace as Lincoln continued to attend regularly the services at a conservative Calvinist church in Springfield and then in Washington D.C.  His biographer, Charles Carlton Coffin, writes "As this biography of Lincoln unfolds, there will be seen, as the years go by and the responsibilities of life roll upon him, a reverent recognition of Divine Providence, an increasing faith and childlike trust in God."  Indeed, no other US President and perhaps no other political leader came to be known more in speeches, writing and decisions for quotations from the Christian Scriptures and reliance on a Providential and Sovereign God.  His Second Inaugural Address is cited as the most openly Christian public statement by any American President.  Throughout his years as a member of Congress and finally as President, Lincoln acted in a way which seems to demonstrate a Christian faith, though he never formally joined a church.
 
    Charles Darwin began life with what seemed to be a solid faith but ended mocking God.  His theories have not only continued to do so, but led directly to movements, including Eugenics, Communism, Nazism, abortion and euthanasia which have cost hundreds of millions of lives.  Abraham Lincoln began his life ridiculing God but ended seeming to live by faith.  His actions ended the bondage of millions and set an example even political hypocrites seek to emulate and which has affected history not only in the US but around the world.
 
    Lincoln and Darwin, born on the same day into the same world, undertook two very different journeys, and bore two very different harvests of fruit, both of which remain before us after two centuries.

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Gary Fisher