The Bible and Christianity—Christ's Divinity—Future
Rewards and Punishments—Freedom of Mind—Fatalism—
Providence—Lines in Copy-book—Parker—Paine—Opposition of
Church—Clerical Officious-ness Rebuked—Irreverent Jokes—
Profanity—Temperance Reform—Indorsement of Lord
Bolingbroke's Writings—Golden Rule.
The testimony of one hundred witnesses will now be supplemented by evidence from the tongue and pen of Lincoln himself. The greater portion of what he wrote and uttered against Christianity has perished; but enough has been preserved to demonstrate, even in the absence of other evidence, that he was not a Christian. From his letters, speeches, and recorded conversations, the following radical sentiments have been extracted.
Notwithstanding the efforts of Holland and Bate-man to prove that Lincoln was a believer in Christianity, it is admitted that in his conversation with Bateman, he said:
"I am not a Christian" (Holland's Life of Lincoln, pp. 236, 237).
When his Christian friends at Petersburg interfered to prevent his proposed duel with Shields, and told him that it was contrary to the teachings of the Bible and Christianity, he remarked:
"The Bible is not my book, nor Christianity my profession" (Letter of W. Perkins). While at Washington, in a letter to his old friend, Judge Wakefield, written in 1862, in answer to inquiries respecting his belief and the expressed hope that he had become convinced of the truth of Christianity, he replied as follows:
"My earlier views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the Scriptures have become clearer and stronger with advancing years and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them."
In a discussion touching upon the paternity of Jesus, he said:
"There must have been sexual intercourse between man and woman, and not between God and his daughter."
The above words were uttered in the presence of Mr. Green Caruthers and Mr. W. A. Browning, of Springfield.