Abraham Lincoln: Was He a Christian?

by John E. Remsburg

When Lincoln went to New York in the winter of 1860, to deliver his Cooper Institute address, he had occasion to remain over Sunday in that city. At the suggestion of a friend, he visited the famous Five Points, and attended a Sunday-school where the spawn of New York's worst inhabitants to the number of several hundred were assembled. Importuned for a speech, he made a few remarks to the children, and the fact was published in the papers. The idea of this Infidel politician addressing a Sunday-school was so ludicrous that it caused much merriment among his friends at Springfield. When he returned home one of them, probably Colonel Matheny, called on him to learn what it all meant. The conversation that followed, including Lincoln's explanation of the affair, is thus related by the noted preacher and author, Edward Eggleston: "He started for 'Old Abe's' office; but bursting open the door impulsively, found a stranger in conversation with Mr. Lincoln. He turned to retrace his steps, when Lincoln called out, 'Jim! What do you want?' 'Nothing.' 'Yes, you do; come back.'

"After some entreaty Jim approached Mr. Lincoln, and remarked, with a twinkle in his eye, 'Well, Abe, I see you have been making a speech to Sunday-school children. What's the matter?' 'Sit down, Jim, and I'll tell you all about it.' And with that Lincoln put his feet on the stove and began: 'When Sunday morning came, I didn't know exactly what to do. Washburne asked me where I was going. I told him I had nowhere to go; and he proposed to take me down to the Five Points Sunday-school, to show me something worth seeing. I was very much interested by what I saw. Presently, Mr. Pease came up and spoke to Mr. Washburne, who introduced me. Mr. Pease wanted us to speak. Washburne spoke, and then I was urged to speak. I told them I did not know anything about talking to Sunday-schools, but Mr. Pease said many of the children were friendless and homeless, and that a few words would do them good. Washburne said I must talk. And so I rose to speak; but I tell you, Jim, I didn't know what to say. I remembered that Mr. Pease said that they were homeless and friendless, and I thought of the time when I had been pinched by terrible poverty. And so I told them that I had been poor; that I remembered when my toes stuck out through my broken shoes in winter; when my arms were out at the elbows; when I shivered with the cold. And I told them there was only one rule.

"That was, always do the very best you can. I told them that I had always tried to do the very best I could; and that, if they would follow that rule, they would get along somehow. That was about what I said'" (Every-Day Life of Lincoln, pp. 322, 323).

The foregoing is significant. Lincoln was not an advocate of Sunday-schools. He had probably never visited one before. As generally conducted, he regarded them as simply nurseries of superstition. He could not indorse the religious ideas taught in them, and he was not there that day to antagonize them. As a consequence, this ready talker—this man who had been making speeches all his life—was, for the first time, at a loss to know what to say. He could not talk to them about the Bible—he could not tell them that "it is the best gift which God has given to man"—that "all the good from the Savior of the world is communicated to us through this book"—that "but for this book we could not know right from wrong"—he could not tell them how Jesus had died for little children, and all this, because he did not believe it. But he obeyed his own life-long rule, did the best he could under the embarrassing circumstances, and gave them a little wholesome advice entirely free from the usual Sunday-school cant.

REV. ROBERT COLLYER.

Robert Collyer states that Lincoln, just before he was elected President, visited the office of the Chicago Tribune, and picking up a volume of Theodore Parker's writings, turned to Dr. Ray and remarked: "I think that I stand about where that man stands."

ALLEN THORNDIKE RICE.

The lamented Allen Thorndike Rice, whose brilliant editorial management of the North American Review has placed this periodical in the front rank of American magazines, in his Introduction to the "Reminiscences of Lincoln," says: "The Western settlers had no respect for English traditions, whether of Church or of State. Accustomed all their lives to grapple with nature face to face, they thought and they spoke, with all the boldness of unrestrained sincerity, on every topic of human interest or of sacred memory, without the slightest recognition of any right of external authority to impose restrictions, or even to be heard in protest against their intellectual independence. As their life developed the utmost independence of creed and individuality, he whose originality was the most fearless and self-contained was chief among them. Among such a people, blood of their blood and bone of their bone, differing from them only in stature, Abraham Lincoln arose to rule the American people with a more than kingly power, and received from them a more than feudal loyalty."

So eager is the church for proofs of Lincoln's piety that the most incredible anonymous story in support of this claim is readily accepted and published by the religious press as authentic history. By this means the masses have gradually come to regard Lincoln as a devout Christian. It is evident that Mr. Rice had these fabulous tales in mind when he wrote the following: "Story after story and trait after trait, as varying in value as in authenticity, has been added to the Lincolniana, until at last the name of the great war President has come to be a biographic lodestone, attracting without distinction or discrimination both the true and the false."

ROBERT C. ADAMS.