Church for Lincoln

"I step into this pulpit dedicated to the memories of two Christian mothers,* with a deep desire to prove worthy of the high trust. I, too, have a mother in the unseen world. The last time I ever saw her, and the last time she ever saw me with earthly eyes, was here in New York on the night that I was ordained to the Christian ministry. May she, too, join the group that looks down from the battlements of Heaven to bless us here."

These were almost the first words spoken last Sunday by Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick after he had been inducted into the pastorate of the Park Avenue Baptist Church, Manhattan.

His sermon was based on the scene recorded in the Gospel of Mark wherein Jesus rebukes the teasing scribes by bidding them simply to "love the Lord thy God with all thy heart."

Dr. Fosdick stated his program as a desire to make his church one which Abraham Lincoln would have joined. He quoted Lincoln: "When any Church will inscribe over its altars, as its sole qualification for membership, the Saviour's condensed statement of the substance of both law and gospel: 'Thou shalt love the Lord Thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself,' that Church will I join with all my heart and all my soul."

Then the divine challenged his hearers :

"That was Lincoln's reason. What do you think Jesus would have done? Do you really think that he would have kept Lincoln out?"

* To the mothers of Dr. Cornelius Woelfkin, retiring pastor, and of his wife, Lillie Distler Woelfkin.