When a member of Congress, knowing Lincoln's religious character, asked him why he did not join some church, he replied: "Because I find difficulty without mental reservation in giving my assent to their long and complicated creeds. When any church inscribes on its altar, as a qualification for membership, the Saviour's statement of the substance of the law and the Gospel,--'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind ... and thy neighbor as thyself'--that church will I join with all my heart and soul." John G. Nicolay, who probably was better acquainted with Lincoln and more closely attached to him than any one outside his own family and near relatives, writes: "I do not remember ever having discussed religion with Mr. Lincoln, nor do I know of any authorized statement of his views in existence. He sometimes talked freely, and never made any concealment of his belief or unbelief in any dogma or doctrine, but never provoked religious controversies. I speak more from his disposition and habits than from any positive declaration on his part. He frequently made remarks about sermons he had heard, books he had read, or doctrines that had been advanced, and my opinion as to his religious belief is based upon such casual evidence. There is not the slightest doubt that he believed in a Supreme Being of omnipotent power and omniscient watchfulness over the children of men, and that this great Being could be reached by prayer. Mr. Lincoln, was a praying man; I know that to be a fact. And I have heard him request people to pray for him, which he would not have done had he not believed that prayer is answered. Many a time have I heard Mr. Lincoln ask ministers and Christian women to pray for him, and he did not do this for effect. He was no hypocrite, and had such reverence for sacred things that he would not trifle with them. I have heard him say that he prayed for this or that, and remember one occasion on which he remarked that if a certain thing did not occur he would lose his faith in prayer. "It is a matter of history that he told the Cabinet he had promised his Maker to issue an Emancipation Proclamation, and it was not an idle remark. At the same time he did not believe in some of the dogmas of the orthodox churches. I have heard him argue against the doctrine of atonement, for instance. He considered it illogical and unjust and a premium upon evil-doing if a man who had been wicked all his life could make up for it by a few words or prayers at the hour of death; and he had no faith in death-bed repentances. He did not believe in several other articles of the creeds of the orthodox churches. He believed in the Bible, however.... He used to consider it the greatest of all text-books of morals and ethics and that there was nothing to compare with it in literature....