From the book
Religious Beliefs
of Our Presidents
by Franklin Steiner (1936) Chapter VIII
Abraham Lincoln, Deist,
and Admirer of Thomas Paine
Born, February 12, 1809. Died, April 15, 1865.
President, March 4, 1861 April 15, 1865. In 1865, following the assassination of Lincoln, a number of histories of his career were published. From a literary standpoint, the best of these was written by Dr. Josiah G. Holland, then a widely read American author, and afterwards, and until his death, the editor of Scribner's Monthly. Concerning Lincoln's religious views, Dr. Holland made the following comments: "Moderate, frank, truthful, gentle, forgiving, loving, just, Mr. Lincoln will always be remembered as a Christian President; and the almost immeasurably great results which he had the privilege of achieving, were due to the fact that he was a Christian President." (Page 542.) "It was one of the peculiarities of Mr. Lincoln to hide these religious experiences from the world. In the same State House where this conversation occurred, there were men who imagined who really believed who freely said that Mr. Lincoln had probably revealed himself with less restraint to them than to others men who thought they knew him as they knew their bosom companions who had never in their whole lives heard from his own lips one word of all these religious convictions and experiences. They did not regard him as a religious man. All this department of his life he had kept carefully hidden from them. Why he should say that he was obliged to appear differently to others does not appear; but the fact is a matter of history that he never exposed his own religious life to those who had no sympathy with it. It is doubtful whether the clergymen of Springfield knew anything of these experiences." | |
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