In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong. God cannot be for, and against the same thing at the same time.

In regards to this great Book [the Bible], I have but to say it is the best gift God has given to man. All the good the Savior gave to the world was communicated through this Book. But for it we could not know right from wrong. All things most desirable for man's welfare, here and hereafter, are found portrayed in it.

I don't like to hear cut and dried sermons. No—when I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God.

Amid the greatest difficulties of my Administration, when I could not see any other resort, I would place my whole reliance in God, knowing that all would go well, and that He would decide for the right.

We shall yet acknowledge His wisdom and our own error therein.

Now, at the end of three years struggle the nation's condition is not what either party, or any man devised, or expected. God alone can claim it.

We must believe that He permits it [this war] for some wise purpose of his own, mysterious and unknown to us; and though with ourlimited understandings we may not be able to comprehend it, yet we cannot but believe, that he who made the world still governs it.

Surely He intends some great good to follow this mighty convulsion which no mortal could make, and no mortal could stay.