In a sermon on "Washington and Lincoln," the most eminent and popular divine of Chicago, Dr. Swing, said:
"It is often lamented by the churchmen that Washington and Lincoln possessed little religion except that found in the word 'God.' All that can here be affirmed is that what the religion of those two men lacked in theological details it made up in greatness. Their minds were born with a love of great principles.... There are few instances in which a mind great enough to reach great principles in politics has been satisfied with a fanatical religion.... It must not be asked for Washington and Lincoln that, having reached greatness in political principles, they should have loved littleness in piety."
REV. JENKIN LLOYD JONES.
The Rev. J. Lloyd Jones, one of Chicago's most eloquent divines, in a sermon preached in All Souls Church, Dec. 9, 1888, gave utterance to the following:
"Are there not thousands who have loved virtue who did not accept Jesus Christ in any supernatural or miraculous fashion, who if they knew of him at all knew of him only as the Nazarine peasant—the man Jesus? Such was Abraham Lincoln, the tender prophet of the gospel of good will upon earth; Charles Sumner, the great apostle of human liberty; Gerrit Smith, the St. John of political reform; William Ellery Channing, our sainted preacher; Theodore Parker, the American Luther, hurling his defiance at the devils of bigotry; John Stuart Mill and Harriet Martineau—yes, to take an extreme case, the genial and over-satirical Robert G. Ingersoll, are among those who love goodness and foster nobility, though they have no clear vision into futurity and confess no other lordship in him of Nazareth save the dignity of aim and tenderness of life."
REV. JOHN W. CHADWICK.
In an address delivered in Tremont Temple, Boston, May 30, 1872, the Rev. John W. Chadwick, of Brooklyn, N. Y., referring to the proposed religious amendment to the Constitution of the United States, said: "Of the six men who have done most to make America the wonder and the joy she is to all of us, not one could be the citizen of a government so constituted; for Washington and Franklin and Jefferson, certainly the three mightiest leaders in our early history, were heretics in their day, Deists, as men called them; and Garrison and Lincoln and Sumner, certainly the three mightiest in these later times, would all be disfranchised by the proposed amendment.
"Lincoln could not have taken the oath of office had such a clause been in the Constitution."