The Soul of Abraham Lincoln

by William E. Barton

It is not necessary that we formally ask these and only these questions; but these are the kinds of sieve through which oral testimony must be passed if we are to learn the truth.

Particular care needs to be exercised in the application of these tests, and especially in the employment of all a priori methods. The author of this volume is a Christian minister, and would be heartily glad to find in Mr. Lincoln's authentic utterances indubitable evidence that Mr. Lincoln was essentially a Christian; there is need that he take especial care not to apply these discriminating tests in such fashion as to sustain his own prejudices. Nor must he magnify his caution until it becomes an inverted prejudice.

On the other hand, the a priori method must on no account be ruled out. Mr. Lincoln left a great quantity of authentic material. His speeches, letters, and state papers fill twelve volumes, and even these do not contain all of his signed material. We are compelled to judge alleged utterances of his somewhat in the light of our certain knowledge of what he wrote and said. Let us illustrate the application of this principle:

If an aged man living in central Illinois were now to arise and say: "I knew Abraham Lincoln, and he said to me one day in private conversation, 'There is no God,'" we should be justified in discrediting that man's testimony, even though he bore a good reputation for veracity. The antecedent improbability of such a declaration on the part of Mr. Lincoln is too great for us to accept it on the basis of one man's recollection of a private and unwitnessed conversation fifty years after Mr. Lincoln's death.

We should be equally justified in rejecting the testimony at this late date of one of Mr. Lincoln's old-time neighbors who would say that Mr. Lincoln told him that he believed the whole of the Athanasian Creed.

Especial care is necessary in dealing with the alleged utterances of deceased persons in matters of religion. The author of this book has conducted a thousand funerals, and has been told every conceivable kind of story concerning some of the persons deceased. To the credit of our frail humanity be it recorded that nine-tenths of this testimony was favorable. There are few finer traits in human nature than those which prompt us to speak only good of the dead. The eagerness of those who have known not only the virtues but the faults of living men to pass lightly over the faults and emphasize the virtues of these same men when they are dead is not only a manifestation of the finest sort of love of fair play in refusing to accuse those who cannot make answer, but is also an exhibition of one of the noblest impulses of the human spirit.

Even the tendency of ministers to lie like gentlemen on funeral occasions is not to be too unsparingly condemned. It springs from a belief that the better part of a man's life is the truer part of him, and that a man has a right to be judged by the best that is in him not only of achievement but even of defeated aspiration.

William Allen White is fond of relating a story concerning a funeral in Kansas. The minister was in the midst of his eulogy when a man who had come in late and had not heard the beginning of the discourse tiptoed down the aisle, took a long look into the coffin, and returned to his seat. The minister, somewhat disconcerted by this proceeding, addressed him, saying, "The opportunity to view the remains will be given later." "I know that," replied the man, "but I had begun to suspect that I had gotten into the wrong funeral."

One who has had much experience with funerals and with attempts to make dead men appear better than the same men living actually were or appeared to be, knows that these efforts are not usually the result of deliberate falsehood. They grow out of generous impulses and an easy tendency to exaggeration. But some people do actually lie, and this fact also is not wholly to be forgotten.

With these reminders of human frailty and human generosity and of the uncertainty of all things human, we proceed to examine in some detail the vast and contradictory mass of evidence which after the death of Abraham Lincoln was published concerning his faith or the lack of it.