"The unfair efforts that Christians have been putting forth to drag Lincoln into their waning faith betray a pitiable imbecility. Were it possible for them to get the world to believe that Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln, all prayed, had faith, and were washed in the blood of the Lamb, would that prove the inspiration of their Bible, harmonize its contradictions, put a ray of reason in its gross absurdities, or humanize the first one of its numerous bloody barbarities? I knew Mr. Lincoln from the spring of 1838 till his death. Like Archibald Williams, our contemporary, an able Lord Coke lawyer, he no more believed in the inspiration of the Bible than Hume, Paine, or Ingersoll. Less inclined openly to denounce its absurdities and cruelties, or to antagonize the well-meaning credulous professors, than was Williams. Mr. Lincoln had no faith whatever in the first miracle of the Bible, or the scheme of bloody redemption it teaches. To attribute such sentiments to him, is to tarnish his well-earned reputation for common sense, and to impair the estimation of his countrymen and the world of his high sense of humanity, justice, and honor. Two of my Presbyterian friends at Indian Point, near Petersburg, told me that they had interviewed Mr. Lincoln to prevent his impending duel with Shields—claiming that it was contrary to the Bible and Christianity. He admitted that the dueling code was barbarous and regretted much to find himself in its toils, but said he, 'The Bible is not my book, nor Christianity my profession.'"
In some reminiscences of Lincoln, recently published, referring to a celebrated murder case in which they were counsel for the defendant, Mr. Perkins says: "I reminded him that from the first I had seen, and to him said, the case is hopeless, and that he must have expected to work a miracle to save the accused. He answered that I did him injustice, since he had no faith in miracles."
Alluding to Lincoln's alleged change of heart, he writes:
"He never changed a sentiment on the subject up to his final sleep."
JAMES GORLEY.
Mr. Gorley, who was the confidential friend of Lincoln, and who spent much time with him, both at home and abroad, made the following statement:
"Lincoln belonged to no religious sect. He was religious in his own way—not as others generally. I do not think he ever had a change of heart, religiously speaking. Had he ever had a change of heart he would have told me. He could not have neglected it."
WILLIAM JAYNE, M.D.
Dr. Jayne, who was appointed Governor of Dakota by Lincoln, is one of the most prominent citizens of Springfield, and was one of Lincoln's ablest and most faithful political friends. He secured Lincoln's nomination for the Legislature once, and was one of the first to pit him against Douglas. In a letter to me, dated August 18, 1887, Dr. Jayne says:
"His general reputation among his neighbors and friends of twenty-five years' standing was that of a disbeliever in the accepted faith of orthodox Christians. His mind was purely logical in its construction and action. He believed nothing except what was susceptible of demonstration.... His most intimate friends here, and close to him in the confidential relations of life, assert, in regard to those who claim for Lincoln a faith in the orthodox Christian belief, that the claim is a fraud and utter nonsense."