The Papers and Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Complete

by Abraham Lincoln

I do not remember ever seeing the words Jesus or Christ in print, as uttered by Mr. Lincoln. If he has used these words, they can be found. He uses the word God but seldom. I never heard him use the name of Christ or Jesus but to confute the idea that he was the Christ, the only and truly begotten Son of God, as the Christian world understands it. The idea that Mr. Lincoln carried the New Testament or Bible in his bosom or boots, to draw on his opponent in debate, is ridiculous.

My dear sir, I now have given you my knowledge, speaking from my own experience, of Mr. Lincoln's religious views. I speak likewise from the evidences, carefully gathered, of his religious opinions. I likewise speak from the ears and mouths of many in this city; and, after all careful examination, I declare to your numerous readers, that Mr. Lincoln is correctly represented here, so far as I know what truth is, and how it should be investigated.

If ever there was a moment when Mr. Lincoln might have been expected to express his faith in the atonement, his trust in the merits of a living Redeemer, it was when he undertook to send a composing and comforting message to a dying man. He knew, moreover, that his father had been "converted" time and again, and that no exhortation would so effectually console his weak spirit in the hour of dismay and dissolution as one which depicted, in the strongest terms, the perfect sufficiency of Jesus to save the perishing soul. But he omitted it wholly: he did not even mention the name of Jesus, or intimate the most distant suspicion of the existence of a Christ. On the contrary, he is singularly careful to employ the word "One" to qualify the word "Maker." It is the Maker, and not the Saviour, to whom he directs the attention of a sinner in the agony of death.

While it is very clear that Mr. Lincoln was at all times an infidel in the orthodox meaning of the term, it is also very clear that he was not at all times equally willing that everybody should know it. He never offered to purge or recant; but he was a wily politician, and did not disdain to regulate his religious manifestations with some reference to his political interests. As he grew older, he grew more cautious; and as his New Salem associates, and the aggressive deists with whom he originally united at Springfield, gradually dispersed, or fell away from his side, he appreciated more and more keenly the violence and extent of the religious prejudices which freedom in discussion from his standpoint would be sure to arouse against him. He saw the immense and augmenting power of the churches, and in times past had practically felt it. The imputation of infidelity had seriously injured him in several of his earlier political contests; and, sobered by age and experience, he was resolved that that same imputation should injure him no more. Aspiring to lead religious communities, he foresaw that he must not appear as an enemy within their gates; aspiring to public honors under the auspices of a political party which persistently summoned religious people to assist in the extirpation of that which is denounced as the "nation's sin," he foresaw that he could not ask their suffrages whilst aspersing their faith. He perceived no reason for changing his convictions, but he did perceive many good and cogent reasons for not making them public.

Col. Matheny alleges, that, from 1854 to 1860, Mr. Lincoln "played a sharp game" upon the Christians of Springfield, "treading their toes," and saying, "Come and convert me." Mr. Herndon is inclined to coincide with Matheny; and both give the obvious explanation of such conduct; that is to say, his morbid ambition; coupled with a mortal fear that his popularity would suffer by an open avowal of his deistic convictions. At any rate, Mr. Lincoln permitted himself to be misunderstood and misrepresented by some enthusiastic ministers and exhorters with whom he came in contact. Among these was the Rev. Mr. Smith, then pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Springfield, and afterwards Consul at Dundee, in Scotland, under Mr. Lincoln's appointment. 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 that 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, but one to which Mr. Smith often referred afterwards with great delight. He never asserted, as some have supposed, that Mr. Lincoln was converted from the error of his ways; that he abandoned his infidel opinions, or that he united himself with any Christian church. On the contrary, when specially interrogated on these points by Mr. Herndon, he refused to answer, on the ground that Mr. Herndon was not a proper person to receive such a communication from Mr. Newton Bateman is reported to have said that a few days before the Presidential election of 1860, Mr. Lincoln came into his office, closed the door against intrusion, and proposed to examine a book which had been furnished him, at his own request, "containing a careful canvass of the city of Springfield, showing the candidate for whom each citizen had declared his intention to vote at the approaching election. He ascertained that only three ministers of the gospel, out of twenty-three, would vote for him, and that, of the prominent church-members, a very large majority were against him." Mr. Bateman does not say so directly, but the inference is plain that Mr. Lincoln had not previously known what were the sentiments of the Christian people who lived with him in Springfield: he had never before taken the trouble to inquire whether they were for him or against him. At all events, when he made the discovery out of the book, he wept, and declared that he "did not understand it at all." He drew from his bosom a pocket New Testament, and, "with a trembling voice and his cheeks wet with tears," quoted it against his political opponents generally, and especially against Douglas. He professed to believe that the opinions adopted by him and his party were derived from the teachings of Christ; averred that Christ was God; and, speaking of the Testament which he carried in his bosom, called it "this rock, on which him I stand." When Mr. Bateman expressed surprise, and told him that his friends generally were ignorant that he entertained such sentiments, he gave this answer quickly: "I know they are: I am obliged to appear different to them." Mr. Bateman is a respectable citizen, whose general reputation for truth and veracity is not to be impeached; but his story, as reported in Holland's Life, is so inconsistent with Mr. Lincoln's whole character, that it must be rejected as altogether incredible. From the time of the Democratic split in the Baltimore Convention, Mr. Lincoln, as well as every other politician of the smallest sagacity, knew that his success was as certain as any future event could be. At the end of October, most of the States had clearly voted in a way which left no lingering doubts of the final result of November. If there ever was a time in his life when ambition charmed his whole heart,—if it could ever be said of him that "hope elevated and joy brightened his crest," it was on the eve of that election which he saw was to lift him at last to the high place for which he had sighed and struggled so long. It was not then that he would mourn and weep because he was in danger of not getting the votes of the ministers and members of the churches he had known during many years for his steadfast opponents: he did not need them, and had not expected them. Those who understood him best are very sure that he never, under any circumstances, could have fallen into such weakness—not even when his fortunes were at the lowest point of depression—as to play the part of a hypocrite for their support. Neither is it possible that he was at any loss about the reasons which religious men had for refusing him their support; and, if he said that he could not understand it at all, he must have spoken falsely. But the worst part of the tale is Mr. Lincoln's acknowledgment that his "friends generally were deceived concerning his religious sentiments, and that he was obliged to appear different to them."

According to this version, which has had considerable currency, he carried a Testament in his bosom, carefully hidden from his intimate associates: he believed that Christ was God; yet his friends understood him to deny the verity of the gospel: he based his political doctrines on the teachings of the Bible; yet before all men, except Mr. Bateman, he habitually acted the part of an unbeliever and reprobate, because he was "obliged to appear different to them." How obliged? What compulsion required him to deny that Christ was God if he really believed him to be divine? Or did he put his political necessities above the obligations of truth, and oppose Christianity against his convictions, that he might win the favor of its enemies? It may be that his mere silence was sometimes misunderstood; but he never made an express avowal of any religious opinion which he did not entertain. He did not "appear different" at one time from what he was at another, and certainly he never put on infidelity as a mere mask to conceal his Christian character from the world. There is no dealing with Mr. Bateman, except by a flat contradiction. Perhaps his memory was treacherous, or his imagination led him astray, or, peradventure, he thought a fraud no harm if it gratified the strong desire of the public for proofs of Mr. Lincoln's orthodoxy. It is nothing to the purpose that Mr. Lincoln said once or twice that he thought this or that portion of the Scripture was the product of divine inspiration; for he was one of the class who hold that all truth is inspired, and that every human being with a mind and a conscience is a prophet. He would have agreed much more readily with one who taught that Newton's discoveries, or Bacon's philosophy, or one of his own speeches, were the works of men divinely inspired above their fellows.1

1 "As we have bodily senses to lay hold on matter, and supply bodily wants, through which we obtain, naturally, all needed material things; so we have spiritual faculties to lay hold on God and supply spiritual wants: through them we obtain all needed spiritual things. As we observe the conditions of the body, we have nature on our side: as we observe the law of the soul, we have God on our side. He imparts truth to all men who observe these conditions: we have direct access to him through reason, conscience, and the religious faculty, just as we have direct access to nature through the eye, the ear, or the hand. Through these channels, and by means of a law, certain, regular, and universal as gravitation, God inspires men, makes revelation of truth; for is not truth as much a phenomenon of God as motion of matter? Therefore, if God be omnipresent and omniactive, this inspiration is no miracle, but a regular mode of God's action on conscious spirit, as gravitation on unconscious matter. It is not a rare condescension of God, but a universal uplifting of man. To obtain a knowledge of duty, a man is not sent away, outside of himself, to ancient documents: for the only rule of faith and practice, the Word, is very nigh him, even in his heart, and by this Word he is to try all documents whatsoever. Inspiration, like God's omnipresence, is not limited to the few writers claimed by the Jews, Christians, or Mohammedans, but is co- extensive with the race. As God fills all space, so all spirit; as he influences and constrains unconscious and necessitated matter, so he inspires and helps free, unconscious man. "This theory does not make God limited, partial, or capricious: it exalts man. While it honors the excellence of a religious genius of a Moses or a Jesus, it does not pronounce their character monstrous, as the supernatural, nor fanatical, as the rationalistic theory; but natural, human, and beautiful, revealing the possibility of mankind. Prayer—whether voluntative or spontaneous, a word or a feeling, felt in gratitude, or penitence, or joy, or resignation—is not a soliloquy of the man, not a physiological function, nor an address to a deceased man, but a sally into the infinite spiritual world, whence we bring back light and truth. There are windows towards God, as towards the world. There is no intercessor, angel, mediator, between man and God; for man can speak, and God hear, each for himself. He requires no advocate to plead for men, who need not pray by attorney. Each man stands close to the omnipresent God; may feel his beautiful presence, and have familiar access to the All-Father; get truth at first hand from its Author. Wisdom, righteousness, and love are the Spirit of God in the soul of man: wherever these are, and just in proportion to their power, there is inspiration from God. Thus God is not the author of confusion, but concord. Faith and knowledge and revelation and reason tell the same tale, and so legitimate and confirm each one another. "God's action on matter and on man is, perhaps, the same thing to him, though it appear differently modified to us. But it is plain, from the nature of things, that there can be but one kind of inspiration, as of truth, faith, or love: it is the direct and intuitive perception of some truth, either of thought or of sentiment. There can be but one mode of inspiration: it is the action of the Highest within the soul, the divine presence imparting light; this presence, as truth, justice, holiness, love, infusing itself into the soul, giving it new life; the breathing-in of the Deity; the in-come of God to the soul, in the form of truth through the reason, of right through the conscience, of love and faith through the affections and religious element. Is inspiration confined to theological matter alone? Most certainly not."— —Parker's Discourse pertaining to Religion.

But he never told any one that he accepted Jesus as the Christ, or performed a single one of the acts which necessarily follow upon such a conviction. At Springfield and at Washington he was beset on the one hand by political priests, and on the other by honest and prayerful Christians. He despised the former, respected the latter, and had use for both. He said with characteristic irreverence, that he would not undertake to "run the churches by military authority;" but he was, nevertheless, alive to the importance of letting the churches "run" themselves in the interest of his party. Indefinite expressions about "Divine Providence," the "justice of God," "the favor of the Most High," were easy, and not inconsistent with his religious notions. In this, accordingly, he indulged freely; but 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 Saviour of men.

The effect of Mr. Lincoln's unbelief did not affect his constitutional love of justice. Though he rejected the New Testament as a book of divine authority, he accepted the practical part of its precepts as binding upon him by virtue of the natural law. The benevolence of his impulses served to keep him, for the most part, within the limits to which a Christian is confined by the fear of God. It is also true beyond doubt that he was greatly influenced by the reflected force of Christianity. If he did not believe it, the masses of the "plain people" did; and no one ever was more anxious to do "whatsoever was of good report among men." To qualify himself as a witness or an officer it was frequently necessary that he should take oaths; and he always appealed to the Christian's God either by laying his hand upon the Gospels, or by some other form of invocation common among believers. Of course the ceremony was superfluous, for it imposed no religious obligation upon him; but his strong innate sense of right was sufficient to make him truthful without that high and awful sanction which faith in divine revelation would have carried with it.

Mr. Lincoln was by no means free from a kind of belief in the supernatural. While he rejected the great facts of Christianity, as wanting the support of authentic evidence, his mind was readily impressed with the most absurd superstitions.1 He lived constantly in the serious conviction that he was himself the subject of a special decree, made by some unknown and mysterious power, for which he had no name. The birth and death of Christ, his wonderful works, and his resurrection as "the first-fruits of them that slept," Mr. Lincoln denied, because they seemed naturally improbable, or inconsistent with his "philosophy so called;" but his perverted credulity terrified him when he saw two images of himself in a mirror.