would be prudent to consult a few other friends in the matter, and about a dozen were called in.  “After seating them at the round table,” says John Armstrong, one of the number, “he read that clause or section of his speech which reads, ‘a house divided against itself cannot stand,’ etc.  He read it slowly and cautiously, so as to let each man fully understand it.  After he had finished the reading, he asked the opinions of his friends as to the wisdom or policy of it.  Every man among them condemned the speech in substance and spirit, especially that section quoted above, as unwise and impolitic if not untrue.  They unanimously declared that the whole speech was too far in advance of the times.  Herndon sat still while they were giving their respective opinions of its unwisdom and impolicy; then he sprang to his feet and said, ’Lincoln, deliver it just as it reads.  If it is in advance of the times, let us lift the people to its level.  The speech is true, wise, and politic, and will succeed now or in the future.  Nay, it will aid you, if it will not make you President of the United States.’  Mr. Lincoln sat still a moment, then rose from his chair, walked backwards and forwards in the hall, stopped, and said:  ’Friends, I have thought about this matter a great deal, have weighed the questions from all corners, and am thoroughly convinced the time has come when this speech should be uttered; and if it be that I must go down because of it, then let me go down linked to truth—­die in the advocacy of what is right and just.  This nation cannot live on injustice; “a house divided against itself cannot stand,” I say again and again.’  This was spoken with emotion—­the effects of his love of truth, and sorrow from the disagreement of his friends.”

On the next evening the speech was delivered to an immense audience in the hall of the House of Representatives at Springfield.  “The hall and lobbies and galleries were even more densely crowded and packed than at any time during the day,” says the official report; and as Lincoln “approached the speaker’s stand, he was greeted with shouts and hurrahs, and prolonged cheers.”  The prophetic sentences which dropped first from the lips of the speaker were freighted with a solemn import which even he could scarcely have divined in full.  The seers of old were not more inspired than he who now, out of the irresistible conviction of his heart, said to his surprised and unbelieving listeners: 

If we could first know where we are and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do and how to do it.  We are now far on in the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation.  Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented.  In my opinion it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed.  ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand.’