Dr. C. H. Ray—Wm. H. Hannah, Esq.—James W. Keys—Hon.
Jesse W. Fell—Col. John G. Nicolay—Hon. David Davis—Mrs.
Mary Lincoln—Injustice to Mrs. Lincoln—Answer to Reed's
Pretended Refutation of the Testimony of Lamon's Witnesses.
Seven of Lamon's witnesses—Ray, Hannah, Keys, Fell, Nicolay, Davis, and Mrs. Lincoln—remain to testify. The testimony of these witnesses will now be presented.
DR. C. H. RAY.
Dr. Kay, editor of the Chicago Tribune, a prominent figure in Illinois politics thirty years ago, and a personal friend and admirer of Lincoln, testifies as follows:
"You knew Mr. Lincoln far better than I did, though I knew him well; and you have served up his leading characteristics in a way that I should despair of doing, if I should try. I have only one thing to ask: that you do not give Calvinistic theology a chance to claim him as one of its saints and martyrs. He went to the Old School Church; but, in spite of that outward assent to the horrible dogmas of the sect, I have reason from himself to know that his 'vital purity.' if that means belief in the impossible, was of a negative sort" (Lamon's Life of Lincoln, pp. 489, 490).
Dr. Kay states that Lincoln held substantially the same theological opinions as those held by Theodore Parker.
WILLIAM H. HANNAH.
A leading member of the Bloomington bar, when Lincoln practiced there, was Wm. H. Hannah. He was an honest, truthful man, and knew Lincoln well. Concerning Lincoln's views on the doctrine of endless punishment, Mr. Hannah says:
"Since 1856 Mr. Lincoln told me that he was a kind of immortalist; but that he never could bring himself to believe in eternal punishment; that man lived but a little while here, and that, if eternal punishment were man's doom, he should spend that little life in vigilant and ceaseless preparation by never-ending prayer" (Life of Lincoln, p. 489).
JAMES W. KEYS.