A. J. Grover, a life-long reformer, an old-time Abolitionist, an able advocate of human liberty, and a personal friend and admirer of Lincoln, in a letter written April 13, 1888, sends me the following as his testimony:
"Mr. Lincoln was not a religious man in the church sense. He was an Agnostic. He did not believe in the Bible as the infallible word of God. He believed that Nature is God's word, given to all men in a universal language which is equally accessible to all, if all are equally intelligent. That this great lesson, God's word in his works, is infinite, and that men have only learned a very little of it, and have yet the most to learn. That the religions of all ages and peoples are only very feeble and imperfect attempts to solve the great problems involved in nature and her laws. Mr. Lincoln heartily disliked the narrow and silly pretensions of the church and priesthood who now falsely claim him, as they do Washington, Franklin and others.
"I knew Mr. Lincoln from the Douglas campaign in Illinois in 1858 until his death, and I never heard him on any occasion use a single pious expression in the sense of the church—not a word that indicated that he believed in the church theology. But I have heard him use many expressions that indicated that he did not know much, or pretend to know much, and had no settled convictions concerning the great questions that theology deals so flippantly with, and pretends to know all about. And I know to my own knowledge that the claim the church now sets up that he was a Christian is false—as false as it is in regard to Washington."
Writing to me again under date of Jan. 12, 1889, Mr. Grover says: "I knew Mr. Lincoln in Illinois and in Washington. I was in the War office, for a time, in a department which had charge of the President's books, so-called. I met him in passing between the White House and the buildings then occupied by the War Department, almost every day. I often had to go to Mr. Stanton's office, and have often seen Mr. Lincoln there. I frequently had to go to the White House to see him. It was known to all of his acquaintances that he was a Liberal or nationalist."
JUDGE JAMES M. NELSON.
The last, and in some respects the most important, of our Washington witnesses is Judge James M. Nelson. Judge Nelson for many years has been a resident of New York, but he formerly lived in Kentucky and Illinois, Lincoln's native and adopted states. He is a son of Thomas Pope Nelson, a distinguished member of Congress from Kentucky, and the first United States Minister to Turkey. His great grandfather was Thomas Nelson, Jr., a signer of the Declaration of Independence from Virginia. He was long and intimately acquainted with Lincoln both in Illinois and Washington. About the close of 1886, or early in 1887, Judge Nelson published his "Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln" in the Louisville, Ky., Times. In reference to Lincoln's religious opinions he says: "In religion, Mr. Lincoln was about of the same belief as Bob Ingersoll, and there is no account of his ever having changed. He went to church a few times with his family while he was President, but so far as I have been able to find out he remained an unbeliever." "Mr. Lincoln in his younger days wrote a book," says Judge Nelson, "in which he endeavored to prove the fallacy of the plan of salvation and the divinity of Christ."
I have yet another passage from Judge Nelson's "Reminiscences" to present, a passage which, more than anything else in this volume, perhaps, is calculated to provoke the wrath of Christian claimants. To lend an air of plausibility to their claims these claimants are continually citing expressions of a seemingly semi-pious character occasionally to be met with in his speeches and state papers. These expressions, in a measure accounted for by Mr. Herndon, Colonel Lamon, and others, are still further explained by a revelation from his own lips. Judge Nelson says: "I asked him once about his fervent Thanksgiving Message and twitted him with being an unbeliever in what was published. 'Oh,' said he, 'that is some of Seward's nonsense, and it pleases the fools.'"
CHAPTER XIII. OTHER TESTIMONY AND OPINIONS
New York World—Boston Globe—Chicago Herald—Manford's
Magazine—Herald and Review—Chambers's Encyclopedia—
Encyclopedia Britannica—People's Library of Information—
The World's Sages—Every-Day Life of Lincoln—Hon. Jesse W.
Weik—Chas. W. French—Cyrus O. Poole—A Citizen of
Springfield—Henry Walker—Win. Bissett—Frederick Heath—
Rev. Edward Eggleston—Rev. Robert Collyer—Allen Thorndike
Rice—Robert C. Adams—Theodore Stanton-Geo. M. McCrie—Gen.
M. M. Trumbull—Rev. David Swing, D.D.—Rev. J. Lloyd Jones—
Rev. John W. Chadwick.