Abraham Lincoln: Was He a Christian?. John E. Remsburg
there can be but one reason advanced for his desiring to keep it a secret—he was ashamed of it.
Holland, in trying to explain away the inconsistencies of this fabrication, repeatedly blunders. In one of his attempts he makes use of the following remarkable language:
"It was one of the peculiarities of Mr. Lincoln to hide these religious experiences from the eyes of the world. … They [his friends] did not regard him as a religious man. They had never seen anything but the active lawyer, the keen politician, the jovial, fun-loving companion in Mr. Lincoln. 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" (Life of Lincoln, pp. 239, 240).
What! had the clergymen of Springfield no sympathy with a religious life? A person can utter one falsehood with some degree of plausibility; but when he attempts to verify it by uttering another, he usually trips and falls. The above passage is mere hypocritical cant. It carries with it not only its own refutation, but that of the rest of Holland's testimony also. It is the language of the man who is conscious of having stated a falsehood; conscious that there are others who believe it to be a falsehood. He knew that the personal friends of Lincoln all understood him to be a disbeliever. He knew that the church-members of Springfield all entertained the same opinion. He virtually says to these people: "It is true that Lincoln professed to be an Infidel, but he was not; he was a Christian. The fact has been kept a profound secret. Bateman and I have been the sole custodians of this secret, and we now give it to the world."
A Christian writer, apologizing for the absurd and contradictory statements of Holland and Bateman, says, "They aimed at the truth." I do not believe it. It is clearly evident that they aimed at a plausible lie. But in either case they made a bad shot.
In his "Life of Lincoln," Holland endeavors to convey the impression that Lincoln was always a devout Christian. He declares that even during the years of his early manhood at New Salem, "he was a religious man;" that "he had a deep religious life." When Herndon and Lamon exposed his shameful misrepresentations he retreated from his first position, and in Scribner's Monthly wrote as follows:
"What Abraham Lincoln was when he lived at New Salem and wrote an anti-Christian tract (which the friend to whom he showed it somewhat violently but most judiciously put in the fire) is one thing, and it may be necessary for an impartial historian to record it. What he was when he died at Washington with those most Christian words of the Second Inaugural upon his lips, and that most Christian record of five years of patient tenderness and charity behind him, is quite another thing."
He admits that Lincoln was an Infidel in Illinois, but would have us believe that he was a Christian in Washington. He refers to "those most Christian words of the Second Inaugural," and "that most Christian record of five years of patient tenderness and charity." In the Second Inaugural there is not a word affirming a belief in Christianity—not a word in reference to Christianity. He mentions God, and quotes from the Bible, but does not intimate that the Bible is God's word. That Christians have a monopoly of "patient tenderness and charity," can hardly be accepted. The history of the church does not confirm this assumption. Many Christians have possessed these virtues. So have the votaries of other religions. These attributes belong to good men everywhere, but they are the distinguishing features of no particular creed.
Smarting under his exposure, with that whining cant so peculiar to the vanquished religionist, Holland finally sent forth this parting wail and virtually abandoned the whole case:
"The question is, not whether Abraham Lincoln was a subscriber to the creeds of orthodoxy, but whether he was a believing—that is to say, a truthful Christian man; not whether he was accustomed to call Jesus Christ 'Lord, Lord,' but whether he was used to do those things which Jesus Christ exemplified and enforced. He was accustomed, as we know well enough, to speak of an Almighty Father, of whom justice and mercy and sympathy with weak and suffering humanity were characteristic attributes. Who was it that revealed to man a God like this? Who was it that once 'showed us the Father and it sufficed us?' Whoever it was that made this revelation to mankind it was of him that this man, even though he knew it not, had learned, and it was in his spirit that he acted" (Scribner's Monthly).
The concluding words of Dr. Holland's testimony, as quoted from his "Life of Lincoln," are as follows:
"Moderate, frank, truthful, gentle, forgiving, loving, just, Mr. Lincoln will always be remembered as eminently 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."
This prediction and this assumption are false, change one word and make them grandly true.
"Moderate, frank, truthful, gentle, forgiving, loving, just, Mr. Lincoln will always be remembered as eminently a Liberal President; and the almost immeasurably great results which he had the privilege of achieving were due to the fact that he was a Liberal President."
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