In this chapter I wish to present some radical thoughts, not from the pen of Lincoln himself, but which in the work from which they are taken bear unmistakable signs of his approval. Mr. D. W. C. Shattuck, an old and respected merchant of Way-land, Mich., has in his possession a book which belonged to Lincoln. Its history is as follows: Shortly after Lincoln's election to the Presidency a young man from Springfield, Ill., and a relative or intimate acquaintance of Lincoln's, came to board with Mr. Shattuck, who then resided in Kalamazoo. Looking over the contents of his trunk one day the young man picked up a book and at the same time remarked: "That book belongs to Abe Lincoln. I forgot to return it to him before leaving Springfield. It is his favorite book, and I must not fail to return it." Mr. Shattuck expressing a desire to peruse the work, it was handed to him, and the young man being soon after unexpectedly called away, it was forgotten. It proved to be a volume of the writings of Lord Bolingbroke, the great English Infidel. On a fly-leaf was the signature of Abraham Lincoln. In the work certain passages which seem to have especially impressed Lincoln are marked with a pencil and in a manner peculiar to him. The following are the passages he marked, which I have copied from the book, and which evidently received his unqualified indorsement:
"Abbadie says in his famous book, that the Gospel of St. Matthew is cited by Clemens Bishop of Borne, a disciple of the Apostles; that Barnabas cites it in his epistle; that Ignatius and Polycarp receive it; and that the same Fathers, that give testimony for Matthew, give it likewise for Mark. Nay, your lordship will find, I believe, that the present Bishop of London, in his third pastoral letter, speaks to the same effect. I will not trouble you nor myself with any more instances of the same kind. Let this, which occurred to me as I was writing, suffice. It may well suffice; for I presume the fact advanced by the minister and the Bishop is a mistake. If the Fathers of the First Century do mention some passages that are agreeable to what we read in our Evangelists, will it follow that these Fathers had the same gospels before them? To say so is a manifest abuse of history, and quite inexcusable in writers that knew, or should have known, that these Fathers made use of other gospels, wherein such passages might be contained, or they might be preserved in unwritten tradition. Besides which I could almost venture to affirm that these Fathers of the First Century do not expressly name the gospels we have of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John." "Writers of the Roman religion have attempted to show, that the text of the Holy Writ is on many accounts insufficient to be the sole criterion of orthodoxy; I apprehend too that they have shown it. Sure I am that experience, from the first promulgation of Christianity to this hour, shows abundantly with how much ease and success the most opposite, the most extravagant, nay the most impious opinions, and the most contradictory faiths, may be founded on the same text; and plausibly defended by the same authority. Writers of the Reformed religion have erected their batteries against tradition; and the only difficulty they had to encounter in this enterprise lay in leveling and pointing their cannon so as to avoid demolishing, in one common ruin, the traditions they retain, and those they reject. Each side has been employed to weaken the cause and explode the system of his adversary; and, whilst they have been so employed, they have jointly laid their axes to the root of Christianity; for thus men will be apt to reason upon what they have advanced. 'If the text has not that authenticity, clearness, and precision which are necessary to establish it as a divine and a certain rule of faith and practice; and if the tradition of the church from the first ages of it till the days of Luther and Calvin, has been corrupted itself, and has served to corrupt the faith and practice of Christians; there remains at this time no standard at all of Christianity. By consequence either this religion was not originally of divine institution, or else God has not provided effectually for preserving the genuine purity of it, and the gates of hell have prevailed, in contradiction to his promise, against the church.'" "I have read somewhere, perhaps in the works of St. Jerome, that this Father justifies the opinion of those who think it impossible to fix any certain chronology on that of the Bible; and this opinion will be justified still better, to the understanding of every man that considers how grossly the Jews blunder whenever they meddle with chronology." "The resurrection of letters was a fatal period; the Christian system has been attacked, and wounded too, very severely since that time."
When interrogated as to why he had never united with any church, Lincoln replied: "When you show me a church based on the Golden Rule as its only creed, then I will unite with it."
He never joined a church, because of all the Christian sects, not one could show such a creed. The Golden Rule—conceding to others the same rights he claimed for himself—was, however, the very cornerstone of Freethought, and hence he remained a Freethinker.
CHAPTER XV. RECAPITULATION AND CONCLUSION
Character of Christian Testimony—Summary of Evidence
Adduced in Proof of Lincoln's Unbelief—Douglas an
Unbeliever—Theodore Parker's Theology—Fallacy of Claims
Respecting Lincoln's Reputed Conversion—His Invocations of
Deity—His Alleged Regard for the Sabbath—The Church and
Hypocrisy—Lincoln's Religion.
In the prosecution of this inquiry, the testimony of one hundred and twenty witnesses has been presented. The testimony of twenty of these witnesses is to the effect that Lincoln was a Christian; the testimony of one hundred is to the effect that he was not.
Of those who have testified in support of the claim that Lincoln was a Christian, ten admit that during a part of his life he was a disbeliever in Christianity, while not one of the remaining ten disputes the fact. If he never changed his belief then he died an unbeliever. Did he change his belief and become a convert to Christianity? It devolves upon those who affirm that he did to prove it. Have they done this? They have not. Their attempts have been in every instance pitiable failures. The unreasonable and conflicting character of the testimony adduced refutes itself. When was he converted? No less than five different dates have been assigned. One witness states that it was in 1848; one, that it was in 1858; another, that it was in 1862; another, that it was in July, 1863; and still another, that it was in November, 1863.
The remarkable character of the statements recorded in Chapter I.—remarkable when compared with the statements given in the preceding ten chapters, and not less remarkable when compared with each other—may be variously accounted for. A part of them are based upon a false premise, an erroneous conception of what the term Christian means; a portion of them are merely the expressions of beliefs unsupported by actual knowledge; while a not inconsiderable share of them are the statements of those who have knowingly and deliberately borne false witness. These witnesses comprise: 1. Those who do not know what constitutes a Christian—who confound Christianity with morality—who affirm that he was a Christian simply because he was a moral man. 2. Those who do not know what his religious views were, but who infer that he was a Christian because others have declared that he was, and because of the frequent allusions to Deity that occur in his speeches and state papers. 3. Those who know that he was not a Christian, but who believe it to be right and proper to lie for the glory of Christianity and the profit of its priests.