CHAPTER III. REVIEW OF CHRISTIAN TESTIMONY—REED AND HIS WITNESSES.
Reed—Smith—Edwards—Lewis—Brooks—Statements of Edwards,
Smith, and Brooks Compared—Sunderland—Miner—Gurley—
Failure of Reed to Establish his Claims.
Of the twenty Christian witnesses whose testimony is given in Chapter I., ten admit that, during a part of his life, Lincoln was an unbeliever, or Infidel. Of the remaining ten, not one denies the fact. It is conceded, then, that he was once an Infidel. Now, it is a rule of law that when a certain state or condition of things is once proven to exist, that state or condition is presumed to continue to exist until the contrary is proven. If Lincoln was, at one time, an Infidel, it is fair to assume that he remained an Infidel, unless it can be shown that he changed his belief and became a Christian. This Dr. Reed attempts to do.
His lecture, under the caption of "The Later Life and Religious Sentiments of Abraham Lincoln," will be found in Scribner's Monthly for July, 1873. The evidence presented by Lamon had placed Dr. Holland in a most unenviable light. As Reed's lecture reaffirmed the claim made by Holland, and brought forward fresh evidence to substantiate the claim, it was naturally regarded by many Christians as a vindication of Holland's position, especially by those who had not read Lamon's work. Holland was particularly pleased at its opportune appearance, and cheerfully gave it a place in his magazine.
Reed's individual testimony proves nothing. He does not profess to know, from personal knowledge, what Lincoln's religious views were. The object of his lecture was to invalidate, if possible, the testimony of those who affirmed that he died an Infidel, and to present, in addition to what had already been presented by Holland, the testimony of those who affirmed that during the last years of his life he was a Christian. To answer his witnesses is to answer his lecture.
The Rev. Dr. Smith affirms that he converted Lincoln to a belief in "the divine authority and inspiration of the Scriptures." It was imperative that he should, for, said he, "It was my honor to place before Mr. Lincoln arguments designed to prove the divine authority and inspiration of the Scriptures." As a matter of course, "the result was the announcement by himself that the arguments in favor of the divine authority and inspiration of the Scriptures were unanswerable." Consequently, "Mr. Lincoln did avow his belief in the divine authority and inspiration of the Scriptures."
Impressed with a deep sense of the gravity and importance of his work, he declares that "It is a matter of the last importance not only to the present but to all future generations of the great Republic, and to all advocates of civil and religious liberty throughout the world that this avowal on his part,... should be made known to the public," coupled with the more important fact, of course, that it was Dr. Smith who did it. It is to be regretted that his waiting until after Lincoln's death to announce it, prevented the convert's Christian friends from tendering their congratulations and extending the hand of fellowship. It is possible that he counseled Dr. Smith not to divulge the secret for fear it might injure his political prospects. Certain it is, his neighbors were ignorant of this remarkable change. When Holland canvassed Springfield, in 1865, eager to obtain a morsel of evidence upon which to base his claim that Lincoln was a Christian, he failed to catch even the faintest whisper regarding this alleged conversion.
When Dr. Smith's letter was made public, the Christians of Springfield generally smiled, but said nothing, while unbelievers laughed outright and pronounced it the acme of absurdity. Dr. Reed read it to his audience and tried to look serious.
Concerning this claim, Lincoln's biographer, Colonel Lamon, says:
"The abilities of this gentleman to discuss such a topic to the edification of a man like Mr. Lincoln seem to have been rather slender; but the chance of converting so distinguished a person inspired him with a zeal which he might not have felt for the salvation of an obscurer soul. Mr. Lincoln listened to his exhortations in silence, apparently respectful, and occasionally sat out his sermons in church with as much patience as other people. Finding these oral appeals unavailing, Mr. Smith composed a heavy tract out of his own head to suit the particular case. 'The preparation of that work,' says he, 'cost me long and arduous labor;' but it does not appear to have been read. Mr. Lincoln took the 'work' to his office, laid it down without writing his name on it, and never took it up again to the knowledge of a man who inhabited the office with him, and who saw it lying on the same spot every day for months. Subsequently Mr. Smith drew from Mr. Lincoln an acknowledgment that his argument was unanswerable—not a very high compliment under the circumstances" (Life of Lincoln, p. 498).
The gentleman whom Colonel Lamon refers to as testifying that Lincoln did not read Dr. Smith's book was Lincoln's partner, Mr. Herndon. In his lecture on "Lincoln's Religion," Mr. Herndon says:
"Mr. Lincoln received a book from Dr. Smith on Infidelity. He placed it on our law table. He never opened it—never read it to my knowledge."
If Dr. Smith had converted Lincoln, as claimed, is it not reasonable to suppose that he would have joined Dr. Smith's church? Had he been converted would the clergymen of Springfield have denounced him as an Infidel in 1860? Again, if Dr. Smith's book was so effective as to convert from Infidelity to Christianity as great a mind as Lincoln, why have we not heard more of it? Why has it not been used to convert other Infidels? Was its vitality as an evangelizer exhausted in converting Lincoln?
Mr. Reed was a trifle more successful than Dr. Holland in obtaining witnesses; for while Holland was able to secure but one witness in Illinois, Reed was able to summon two—Ninian Edwards and Thomas Lewis.
The testimony of Mr. Edwards, providing that he was the author of the letter accredited to him, can only be accounted for on the following supposition. Being a believer in Christianity himself, he considered Lincoln's Infidelity a grave defect in his character, and was vexed to see that this controversy had given it such wide publicity. To assist in removing this stain, as he regarded it, from his kinsman's name, he allowed to be published over his signature a statement which, unless his memory was very treacherous, he must have known was untrue.
It may be that Lincoln did change his views in regard to some historical or doctrinal point connected with Christianity, and informed Mr. Edwards and other friends at the time of the fact. He might have changed his opinions on a hundred theological questions without having in the least changed his views in relation to the main or fundamental doctrines of Christianity. An admission concerning some trivial question connected with Christianity has been tortured to convey the idea that he accepted the whole system.
A prominent and respected citizen of Springfield, a gentleman whose name has, as yet, not been mentioned in connection with this controversy, had a conversation with Mr. Edwards relative to this subject, soon after Reed's lecture was published, and, as the result of that conversation, he writes as follows: "Mr. Edwards was not as good a witness on oral examination as he was in print."
The letter of Mr. Edwards is dated Dec. 24, 1872. On Jan. 6, 1873, the letter of Thomas Lewis was written. After two weeks of arduous labor, Reed, it seems, succeeded in finding one witness in Springfield who was prepared to corroborate the testimony of Edwards—Thomas Lewis.
In a lecture on Lincoln which appeared in the State Register, of Springfield, Mr. Herndon disposed of this witness as follows:
"Mr. Lewis's veracity and integrity in this community need no comment. I have heard good men say they would not believe his word under any circumstances, especially if he were interested. I hate to state this of Tom, but if he will obtrude himself in this discussion, I cannot help but say a word in self-defense. Mr. Lincoln detested this man, I know. The idea that Mr. Lincoln would go to Tom Lewis and reveal to him his religious convictions, is to me, and to all who know Mr. Lincoln and Tom Lewis, too absurd."
The introduction of this Lewis as a witness demonstrates the paucity of evidence to be obtained on this side of the question among Lincoln's neighbors. Reed, living in a city of twenty thousand inhabitants, many of them the personal friends of Abraham Lincoln, after a vigorous search for evidence, is able only to present this pitiable apology.
I have reason to believe that the letters of Edwards and Lewis were drafted, not by the persons whose signatures they bear, but by the Rev. J. A. Reed.
We come next to the testimony of Noah Brooks. Mr. Edwards, supported by Mr. Lewis, states that Lincoln was converted soon after Dr. Smith located at Springfield, and about the time of his son Eddie's death. Dr. Smith came to Springfield in 1848, and Eddie died toward the close of the same year. Dr. Smith, in his letter, does not state when Lincoln's conversion took place, but it is understood from other sources that he claimed that it occurred about the year 1858. Mr. Brooks, in his letter to Dr. Reed, says: "Speaking to me of the change which had come upon him, he said, while he could not fix any definite time, yet it was after he came here [Washington], and I am very positive that in his own mind he identified it with about the time of Willie's death."
Willie's death occurred in February, 1862, nearly fourteen years after the death of Eddie, and four years after Smith claimed to have converted Lincoln. Thus it will be seen that these witnesses nullify each other. The testimony of each is contradicted and refuted by the testimony of the other two. Mr. Edwards says that Lincoln was converted in 1848. This is contradicted by the testimony of both Smith and Brooks. According to Dr. Smith his conversion happened about 1858. This is contradicted by the testimony of both Edwards and Brooks. Mr. Brooks is quite positive that it took place about the time of Willie's death, in 1862. This, in turn, is contradicted by the testimony of both Edwards and Smith. If Mr. Edwards is right, both Dr. Smith and Mr. Brooks are wrong. If Dr. Smith is correct, both Mr. Edwards and Mr. Brooks are incorrect. If Mr. Brooks has stated the truth both Mr. Edwards and Dr. Smith have stated falsehoods.
The testimony of these witnesses does not strengthen Reed's case, but weakens it. The testimony of two of them is self-evidently false, and this is a sufficient reason for doubting the truthfulness of the third. Had the evidence of neither Edwards nor Smith been invalidated by the evidence of the others, the fact that Lincoln is so generally conceded to have been an unbeliever up to the time that he became President, would render it unworthy of consideration. The testimony of Brooks alone demands notice. Did Lincoln change his belief after he left Springfield and went to Washington? The evidence upon this point is decisive.
The man who stood nearest to President Lincoln at Washington—nearer than any clergyman or newspaper correspondent—was his private secretary, Col. John G. Nicolay. In a letter dated May 27, 1865, Colonel Nicolay says:
"Mr. Lincoln did not, to my knowledge, in any way change his religious ideas, opinions, or beliefs from the time he left Springfield to the day of his death."
In a letter to his old friend, Judge Wakefield, written after Willie's death, he declared that his earlier views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation, and the human origin of the Scriptures, had become clearer and stronger with advancing years, and he did not think he should ever change them.
After his assassination Mrs. Lincoln said: "Mr. Lincoln had no hope and no faith in the usual acceptance of these words." His lifelong friend and executor, Judge David Davis, affirmed the same: "He had no faith in the Christian sense of the term." His biographer, Colonel Lamon, intimately acquainted with him in Illinois, and with him during all the years that he lived in Washington, says: "Never in all that time did he let fall from his lips or his pen an expression which remotely implied the slightest faith in Jesus as the son of God and the Savior of men."
Why do the statements of these witnesses, Smith, Edwards, and Brooks, not agree respecting the date of Lincoln's conversion? When their testimony was given, Smith was in Scotland, Edwards was in Illinois, and Brooks was in New York.
If he was converted, why was the fact not revealed before his death? Why did these men wait until he died to make these statements to the world? Simply because the dead can make no reply.
Had Lincoln been converted, the news would have been wafted on the wings of lightning from one end of the continent to the other. It would have been published in every newspaper; it would have been proclaimed from every pulpit; it would have been a topic of conversation at every fireside. When Henry Wilson, a man of far less note than Lincoln, was converted to Christianity, the fact was heralded all over the land.
Lincoln's home was twice visited by death during his lifetime, and both occasions have been seized upon to assert that he experienced a change of heart. The death of a beloved child is no common sorrow, and the womanly tenderness of Lincoln's heart made it doubly poignant to him. "When death entered his household," says his friend, George W. Julian, "his sorrow was so consuming that it could only be measured by the singular depth and intensity of his love." That Mr. Edwards and Mr. Brooks did each observe a change in the demeanor of the grief-stricken father, following the sad events referred to, is not improbable. But a manifestation of sorrow is no proof of a theological change.
Three of Reed's witnesses remain—three clergymen—Dr. Sunderland, Dr. Miner, and Dr. Gurley. Dr. Sunderland is a man of distinction. He has had the honor of praying for the United States Senate and officiating at the marriage of a President. Yet, distinction is not always the badge of honesty. W. H. Burr, a literary gentleman, of Washington, writing to a Boston paper in 1880, paid the following tribute to Dr. Sunderland's veracity: "He can probably put more falsehood and calumny in a page of foolscap than any priest out of prison."
Mr. Sunderland called upon the President in 1862. In his letter to Reed he says: "For one half hour [he] poured forth a volume of the deepest Christian philosophy I ever heard." Notwithstanding ten years had elapsed since that visit, he proceeded to give from memory a verbatim report of Lincoln's remarks. The report is too long to reproduce in this work, and even if correct, would add but little to the weight of Christian evidence already presented. It is merely an ethical discourse, and aside from a few indirect admissions in favor of Christianity for which Sunderland doubtless drew upon his imagination, there is nothing that Paine or any other Deist might not with propriety have uttered. Those who wish to peruse Mr. Sunderland's letter will find it in Scribner's Monthly for July, 1873.
Dr. Miner, like Dr. Sunderland, had a quiet chat with the President, and what was said he assures us is too deeply engraved on his memory ever to be effaced. But, unlike Dr. Sunderland, he does not favor us with a transcript of it. He does not repeat a word that was uttered. He states, however, that, "If Mr. Lincoln was not really an experimental Christian, he was acting like one." But how does an experimental Christian act? If he behaves himself, if he is intelligent and honest, his actions are not materially different from those of a good Freethinker. Dr. Miner did not believe that Lincoln was an experimental Christian, and in his article there is an implied admission that he knew nothing about his religion.
He says that, "Like the immortal Washington, he believed in the efficacy of prayer." The comparison is happily drawn. Lincoln probably did believe as much in the efficacy of prayer as Washington; that is to say, he did not believe in it at all, in the evangelical sense. There is no evidence that Washington believed in prayer, no proof that he ever uttered a prayer. That story about his praying at Valley Forge is as truly a myth as the story about the hatchet. The Rev. E. D. Neill, an eminent Episcopal minister, and a relative of the person who is reported to have seen Washington engaged in prayer, pronounces it a fiction.
Dr. Gurley is represented as saying: "I considered him sound not only on the truth of the Christian religion, but on all its fundamental doctrines and teachings." This, remember, is from a Calvinistic standpoint. Lincoln, then, not only accepted Christianity, but its most ultra variety—Calvinism. He believed in original sin, predestination (including infant damnation), particular redemption, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints. Because he sometimes went with his wife to the Presbyterian church, of which she was an adherent, the priests of this denomination have the contemptible assurance to assert that he was a rigid Calvinist!
When he died Dr. Gurley, being Mrs. Lincoln's pastor, delivered the funeral oration in Washington. In that oration Dr. Gurley did not affirm that Lincoln was a Christian, a thing he would not have failed to do had it been true. Long after Lincoln's death, Dr. Gurley, if Reed has correctly reported him, makes a statement that he had not the courage to make over his dead body.
A reputable Christian gentleman, of Springfield, who desires to have his name withheld from the public, declares that Dr. Gurley knew and admitted that Lincoln was a disbeliever in Christianity.
It is quite probable that Gurley did not state in full what Reed reports him to have stated. A man who can take up his pen and at one sitting indite a score of falsehoods and misrepresentations, as Reed, on a subsequent occasion, is shown to have done, can not be relied upon for accuracy as a reporter.
The reader has doubtless not failed to notice the introduction of a claim by Reed to the effect that Lincoln at the time of his assassination was intending to unite with the church. That the idea was suggested by Reed is shown by the fact that no less than three of these witnesses, including Reed, allude to it. Reed says: "While it is to be regretted that Mr. Lincoln was not spared to indicate his religious sentiments by a profession of his faith in accordance with the institutions of the Christian religion, yet it is very clear that he had this step in view." Dr. Gurley is made to say: "It was his intention soon to make a profession of religion." Mr. Brooks says: "I absorbed [the porosity of some of these witnesses is remarkable] the firm conviction that Mr. Lincoln... was seriously considering the step which would formally connect him with the visible church on earth."
This dernier resort of an argument has been repeated respecting nearly every notable person who has died outside of the church. Soon after the publication of Reed's lecture, the New York World contained the following pertinent answer to this stale fabrication:
"It is admitted by Mr. Reed and everybody else that Mr. Lincoln was a working Infidel up to a very late period of his life, that he wrote a book and labored earnestly to make proselytes to his own views, that he never publicly recanted, and that he never joined the church. Upon those who, in the face of these tremendous facts, allege that he was nevertheless a Christian lies the burden of proof. Let them produce it or forever hold their peace. In the mean time it is a sad and puerile subterfuge to argue that he would have been a Christian if he had lived long enough, and to lament that he was not 'spared' for that purpose. He had been spared fifty-six years and surrounded by every circumstance that might soften his heart and every influence that might elevate his faith. If he was at that late, that fatal hour standing thus gloomily without the pale, what reason have we to suppose that he intended ever to enter?"
Reed speaks of "the poverty of his early religious instruction," apparently forgetting that he was raised by Christian parents. His father was a church-member, his mother was a church-member, and his stepmother was a church-member. Reed states, also, that the books he read were all of an anti-religious character. Holland, on the contrary, declares that better books than those he read could not have been chosen from the richest library. The fact is, Abraham Lincoln did not become an Infidel to Christianity from a lack of knowledge respecting its claims. He thoroughly examined its claims, and rejected them because he found them untenable.
One important feature of this subject Reed has either inadvertently omitted or purposely ignored, and that is in regard to the validity of the Bateman story. As the result of previous controversy this evidence had been rendered valueless. Lincoln's partner had declared it to be false, had asserted that Mr. Bateman in private conversations acknowledged it to be in part untrue, and announced his readiness to substantiate his assertions if Mr. Bateman could be prevailed upon to permit the publication of his notes of these conversations taken at the time. If Mr. Herndon's affirmations were true, it destroyed the testimony of Holland and Bateman; if untrue, it challenged Mr. Bateman to reaffirm the statements recorded by Holland, and allow the seal of privacy to be removed from his conversations on the subject. Why did Mr. Reed not rehabilitate this damaged evidence? Did he forget it? No, it is plainly evident that he did not dare to attempt it.
In reviewing this Calvinistic coterie of witnesses (they are all Calvinists, and nearly all Presbyterians), one is struck with the formidable display of theological appendages. What an imposing array of D.D.'s! Rev. J. A. Reed, D.D.! Rev. James Smith, D.D.! Rev. Byron Sunderland, D.D.! Rev. Mr. Miner, D.D.! Rev. Mr. Gurley, D.D.! It was a desperate case—divinity was sick and needed doctoring. The doctors of divinity were accordingly called in, and prescribed "The Later Life and Religious Sentiments of Abraham Lincoln," after which it was supposed that divinity would recover. He may be better, but it is painfully apparent that some of these D.D.'s are themselves sadly in need of a doctor.