"Did Mr. Lincoln believe in prayer as a means of moving God? It is said to me by Christians, touching his religion: 'Did not he, in his parting speech in Springfield, in 1861, say, "I hope you, my friends, will pray that I may receive," etc.?' and to which I say, yes. In his last Inaugural he said: 'Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray.' These expressions are merely conventional. They do not prove that Mr. Lincoln believed that prayer is a means of moving God.... He believed, as I understood him, that human prayer did the prayer good; that prayer was but a drum beat—the taps of the spirit on the living human soul, arousing it to acts of repentance for bad deeds done, or to inspire it to a loftier and a higher effort for a nobler and a grander life."
"Did Mr. Lincoln, in his said Inaugural, say: 'Both read the same Word of God?' No, because that would be admitting revelation. He said: 'Both read the same Bible' Did Mr. Lincoln say: 'Yet if God wills that it [the war] continue till all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be paid with another drawn by the sword, as was said by God three thousand years ago?' He did not; he was cautious, and said: 'As was said three thousand years ago.' Jove never nods."
A little later Mr. Herndon wrote an article entitled, "Abraham Lincoln's Religious Belief," which appeared in the Truth Seeker of New York. From this article I quote the following passages:
"In 1842 I heard Mr. Lincoln deliver a speech before the Washingtonian Temperance Society, of this city.... He scored the Christians for the position they had taken. He said in that lecture this: 'If they [the Christians] believe, as they profess—that Omnipotence condescended to take on himself the form of sinful man,' etc. This was spoken with energy. He scornfully and contemptuously emphasized the words as they profess. The rebuke was as much in the manner of utterance as in the substance of what was said. I heard the criticisms of some of the Christians that night. They said the speech was an insult and an outrage."
"It is my opinion that no man ever heard Mr. Lincoln pray, in the true evangelical sense of that word. His philosophy is against all human prayer, as a means of reversing God's decrees."
"He has told me often that there was no freedom in the human will, and no punishment beyond this world. He denied God's higher law, and wrote on the margin of a newspaper to his friends in the Chicago convention in 1860, this: 'Lincoln agrees with Seward in his irrepressible-conflict idea; but he is opposed to Seward's higher law' This paper was handed to Judge Davis, Judge Logan, and other friends."
"Mr. Lincoln and a minister, whose name is kept in the dark, had a conversation about religion. It appears that Mr. Lincoln said that when his son—bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, and blood of his own heart—died, though a severe affliction, it did not arouse him to think of Christ; but when he saw the graves of so many soldiers—strangers to him—... that sad sight aroused him to love Jesus.... It is a fine thing for the reputation of the 'Illinois Clergyman' that his name is to the world unknown. It is a most heartless thing, this supposed conversation of Lincoln with the Illinois clergyman. What! Lincoln feel more for the graves of strangers than for the death of his once living, loving, and lovable son, now dead, moldering to ashes in the silent tomb! The charge is barbarous. To make Lincoln a lover of Jesus, whom he once ridiculed, this minister makes him a savage." "I wish to give an illustration of the uncertainty and unreliability of those loose things that float around in the newspapers of the day, and how liable things are to be inaccurate—so made even by the best of men. Mr. Lincoln on the morning he started for Washington to take the oath of office, and be inaugurated President of this great Republic, gave a short farewell address to his old friends. It was eloquent and touching. That speech is copied in Holland's 'Life of Lincoln,' in Arnold's 'Lincoln and Slavery,' and in Lamon's 'Life of Lincoln,' and no two are exactly alike. If it is hard to get the exact truth on such an occasion as this, how impossible is it to get at Mr. Lincoln's sayings which have been written out by men weeks and months after what he did say have passed by! All these loose and foolish things that Mr. Lincoln is supposed to have said are like the cords of driftwood, floating on the bosom of the great Mississippi, down to the great gulf of—Forgetfulness. Let them go."
Herndon's "Life of Lincoln," is a most important contribution to biographical literature. It will enable the present and future generations to become better acquainted with Lincoln the man than with any other prominent American. The author has performed substantially the same work for Lincoln that Boswell performed for Johnson; only he has performed it more faithfully. Political partisans and religious bigots may condemn the work, but impartial critics are almost unanimous in their praise of it.
The metropolitan journals of Lincoln's and Hern-don's own state commend the work. The Chicago Tribune says: "All these loving adherents [of Lincoln] will hail Herndon's 'Lincoln' with unmixed, unbounded joy." The Chicago Times says: "Herndon's 'Life' is the best yet written." The Inter Ocean says that Herndon "knew more of Lincoln's inner life than any living man." The Chicago Herald says: "It enables one to approach more closely to the great President." The Chicago Evening Journal says: "It presents a truthful and living picture of the greatest of Americans."
The Nation thus refers to it: "The sincerity and honesty of the biographer appear on every page." The New York Sun says: "The marks of unflinching veracity are patent in every line." The Washington Capital says that it places "Lincoln before the world as he really was." The Commercial Gazette, of Cincinnati, says: "He describes the life of his friend Lincoln just as he saw it." The Morning Call, of San Francisco, affirms that it "contains the only true history of the lamented President." The St. Louis Republic says: "It will do more to shape the judgment of posterity on Mr. Lincoln's character than all that has been written or will be hereafter written."