Pages 130-134

MR. LINCOLN’S RELIGIOUS BELIEF.

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Since I commenced writing these sketches of the earlier life of Mr. Lincoln I have sometimes been asked if I knew anything about his religious belief and how he stood with the orthodox world on that subject. I have never heard him express himself on that question, and I do not believe that he ever made a public profession of religion or connected himself with any church. But I know that he was looked upon as a moral and exemplary young man. I have understood that a minister remarked to him one day that he believed that he was a Christian man, and asked why it was that he did not join some church; and Mr. Lincoln is said to have replied that if he could find a church whose creed and requirements could be simmered down to the Savior’s condensed statement, "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 he would join that church with all his heart and soul.

William H. Herndon in his Life of Lincoln has this to say of him:

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"In 1834, while he lived in New Salem, and before he became a lawyer, he was surrounded by a class of people exceedingly liberal in matters of religion. Volney’s Ruins and Paine’s Age of Reason, and other infidel literature passed from hand to hand and furnished food for the evening in the tavern and village stores, and Lincoln read those books and thus assimilated them into his own being. He prepared an extensive essay, called by many a book, in which he made an argument against Christianity, striving to prove that the Bible was not inspired, and therefore not God’s revelation, and that Jesus Christ was not the Son of God. The manuscript containing these audacious and comprehensive propositions he intended to have published or give a wide circulation in some other way. He carried it to the store where it was read and freely discussed. His friend and employer, Samuel Hill, was among the listeners, and seriously questioning the propriety of a promising young man like Lincoln fathering such unpopular notions, he snatched the manuscript from his hands and thrust it into the stove. The book went up in flames, and Lincoln’s political future was secured."

Now I have good reason to believe that Mr. Herndon drew largely on his imagination for this story. I believe it to be without foundation. As I have before stated, my business as mail carrier required me to be in Lincoln’s store and postoffice a part of four days in each week to have the mail changed, and at the same time stopped at the same tavern with Mr. Lincoln. I generally kept my eyes and ears open and knew pretty well what was going on. If there had been any discussion or writing of the sort alluded to by Mr. Herndon I certainly would have known it. Mr. Herndon was then sixteen years old and lived at Springfield, twenty miles away. His father kept the hotel where I put up two nights out of each week, and I generally found Bill on hand either at the hotel or the stable. If he had been away from his business to visit New Salem to look up Mr. Lincoln’s religious

record, I think that I would have known something about it. It will be noticed that Mr. Herndon says that Mr. Hill threw the

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infidel document into the stove. Now I know very well that in 1834 Mr. Hill never had a stove in his store. I remember that in the Rutledge tavern, where Mr. Lincoln boarded, they had a shelf put up in the sitting room, and on this shelf the library was kept. There were some twenty-five or thirty books—law books, histories and miscellaneous works—but none of those books referred to by Mr. Herndon.

I have always believed that from the first that I knew of Mr. Lincoln that he was a Christian and one of the best men that I ever knew. I think that all his acts, letters and public documents will show that Mr. Herndon was mistaken in regard to his infidelity.

In 1851 Mr. Lincoln learned that his father was not expected to live, and as he had sickness in his own family and could not go to see him, he wrote the following letter to his half-brother:

"I sincerely hope that father may yet recover his health; but at all events tell him to remember and call upon and confide in our great and good and merciful Maker who will not turn away from him in any extremity. He notices the fall of a sparrow, and numbers the hairs of our head, and he will not forget the dying man who puts his trust in him. Say to him that if we could meet now it is doubtful whether it would be more painful than pleasant; but if it be his lot to go now he will soon have a joyful meeting with the many loved ones gone before, and where the rest of us, through the help of God, hope ere long to join them."

It will be remembered that on his trip from Springfield to Washington to be inaugurated he addressed a multitude from the cars as he was leaving his old home and that among others things he spoke as follows:

"A duty devolves upon me which perhaps is greater than has devolved upon any other man since the days of Washington. He would have never succeeded except for the aid of Divine Providence upon which he had all times relied. I feel that I

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cannot succeed without the same divine aid which sustained him, and in the same Almighty being I place my reliance and support, and I hope you, my friends, will all pray that I may receive that divine assistance without which I cannot succeed, but with which success is certain."

At another time when our armies were meeting reverses and the destiny of the nation seemed to be hanging in the balance, President Lincoln appointed a day for prayer for the success of the army in the following words:

"And, whereas, when our beloved country, once by the blessing of God united, prosperous and happy, is now afflicted with factions and civil wars, it is peculiarly fit for us to recognized the hand of God in this terrible visitation, and in sorrowful remembrance of our own faults and crimes as a nation and as individuals, to humble ourselves before Him and to pray for His mercy—to pray that we may be spared further punishment, though most justly deserved; that our armies may be blessed and made effectual for the re-establishment of law and order and peace throughout the wide extent of our country, and that the inestimable boon of civil and religious liberty, earned under His guidance and blessing by the labors and suffering of our fathers, may be restored in all its original excellence. Therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do appoint the last Thursday in September next as a day of humiliation, prayer and fasting for all the people of the nation. And I do earnestly recommend to all the people, and especially to all ministers and teachers of religion of all denominations, and to all heads of families, to observe and keep that day according to their several creeds and modes of worship, in all humility, and with all religious solemnity, to the end that united prayers of the nation may ascend to the throne of grace and bring down plentiful blessings upon our country."

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Now there is not much skeptical doctrines in these letters and utterances. So I think that we can claim that Mr. Lincoln was a pretty good orthodox Christian.

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