In a conversation with his friend, Mr. E. H. Wood, of Springfield, concerning the doctrine of endless punishment, he said: "There is no hell." In regard to this subject, he often observed: "If God be a just God, all will be saved or none" (_Manford's Magazine_). The orthodox idea of God--a God that creates poor, fallible beings, and then forever damns them for failing to believe what it is impossible for them to believe--he abhorred. The Golden Rule was his moral standard, and by this standard he measured not only the conduct of man, but of God himself. Like the irrepressible Dr. T. L. Brown, he wanted God to "damn others as he would be damned himself." He delighted to repeat the epitaph of the old Kickapoo Indian, Johnnie Kongapod: "Here lies poor Johnnie Kongapod; Have mercy on him, gracious God, As he would do if he were God And you were Johnnie Kongapod." Lincoln thought that God ought at least to be as merciful as a respectable savage. Many contend that the doctrine of future rewards and punishments, even if untrue, has a restraining influence upon the masses of mankind. That Lincoln did not share this fallacious opinion, is shown by the following extract from an address delivered in Springfield in 1842: "Pleasures to be enjoyed, or pains to be endured, after we shall be dead and gone, are but little regarded.... There is something so ludicrous, in promises of good, or threats of evil, a great way off, as to render the whole subject with which they are connected, easily turned into ridicule. 'Better lay down that spade you're stealing, Paddy--if you don't, you'll pay for it at the Day of Judgment.' 'Be the powers, if ye'll credit me so long I'll take another'" (Lincoln Memorial Album, p. 91). Commenting upon the question of one's returning and communicating with his friends after death, he observed: "It is a doubtful question whether we ever get anywhere to get back" (Statement of E. H. Wood). He did not believe in the freedom of the will. An observation which he repeatedly made was the following: "No man has a freedom of mind" (Testimony of W. H. Herndon). His fatalistic notions are confirmed by his own words: "I have all my life been a fatalist. What is to be will be; or, rather, I have found all my life, as Hamlet says: 'There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will.'" (Every-Day Life of Lincoln, p. 198). The following was a favorite maxim with him: "What is to be will be, and no prayers of ours can arrest the decree" (Statement of Mrs. Lincoln). In a speech on Kansas, delivered in 1856, he used the following words in regard to Providence: "Friends, I agree with you in Providence; but I believe in the Providence of the most men, the largest purse, and the longest cannon" (Lincoln's Speeches, p. 140).