The Soul of Abraham Lincoln

by William E. Barton

It is, therefore, a wholly unwarranted dogmatism which grounds the divinity of Jesus in a question of the domestic relations of Joseph and Mary. Jesus Christ is to be accepted for what He was and is, not for some opinion as to how He became what He was.

We do not know whether Abraham Lincoln ever considered the question of the birth of Christ in any personal thought he may have had concerning his own birth. We may not forget, however, that if Herndon is right, Lincoln lived and died without knowing all the facts about his own mother which later research has made certain. The marriage certificate of his parents was recorded in another county than that in which he supposed it would have been recorded, and he appears never to have been certain that he himself was begotten in lawful wedlock. We know that Nancy Hanks and Thomas Lincoln were married a year before the birth of their eldest daughter, who was older than Abraham Lincoln, but he is believed not to have known that.

What then? Should a man in 1860 or 1864 refuse to vote for Abraham Lincoln because he did not feel certain when or whether his parents were married?

The man who said, "I believe in Abraham Lincoln," did not commonly have in mind any question of his parentage, but believed in his integrity, his patriotism, his moral leadership. Even so the man who believes in Jesus Christ may believe in Him without ever asking, much less ever answering, any dubitable question in metaphysics.

Scant as are the references to Jesus in the authentic utterances of Abraham Lincoln, they do not seem to me unimportant. They testify to a faith that was valid as far as it went. They manifest a spirit which is fundamentally Christian.

Unable to define his own views in terms that would have been acceptable to those who believed themselves the rightful guardians of orthodoxy in his day, it is not surprising that Lincoln was guarded in his references to a dogma which might have involved him in greater difficulties than he was prepared to meet. It was true in that day unhappily as it was in the days of Paul, "Some indeed preach Christ even of envy and strife; and some also of good-will." It is occasion for profound sorrow that Christ has been so preached as that men have sometimes found it difficult to confess their faith in Him without provoking strife and envy.

That Lincoln was unwilling to make his doubt the occasion of dogmatic negation is evident from one or more of the acquaintances of Lincoln, whom Herndon interviewed in an effort to adduce testimony against his faith, and whom Lamon quoted in that part of his book in which he made his attack upon the religion of Lincoln. The following from I. W. Keys, the man who loaned to him Vestiges of Creation, is interesting in itself and especially interesting in its relation to the group of testimonies which these two men assembled:

"In my intercourse with Mr. Lincoln, I learned that he believed in a Creator of all things, who had neither beginning nor end, and, possessing all power and wisdom, established a principle, in obedience to which worlds move, and are upheld, and animal and vegetable life come into existence. A reason he gave for his belief was that, in view of the order and harmony of all nature which we behold, it would have been created and arranged by some great thinking power. As to the Christian theory, that Christ is God, or equal to the Creator, he said that it had better be taken for granted; for, by the test of reason, we might become infidels on that subject, for evidence of Christ's divinity came to us in a somewhat doubtful shape; but that the system of Christianity was an ingenious one at least, and perhaps was calculated to do good."—Lamon: Life of Lincoln, p. 490.

Emphatic proof of Mr. Lincoln's faith is to be found in the positive declaration of the two men who have done most to destroy the world's confidence in it, Lamon and Herndon. In Lamon's later book of Reminiscences, he did much to counteract the harsh and to my mind incorrect impression given in his earlier book. But even in that book he affirmed that while Lincoln rejected the New Testament as a book of divine authority, he accepted its precepts as binding upon him and was a believer in the supernatural even to credulity (p. 503, 504).

In that same work Herndon set forth that Lincoln was a firm believer in God and attempted, as he said, "to put at rest forever the charge that Mr. Lincoln was an atheist." He declared, however, that Lincoln did not believe in a special creation, but in an "evolution under law"; not in special revelation, "but in miracles under law"; and that "all things both matter and mind were governed by laws universal, absolute, and eternal" (p. 494).