The writer has in his possession, among others of Lincoln's papers, a leaf from his copybook, tattered and yellow from age, on which, seventy years ago, Lincoln, a school-boy of fourteen, wrote the following characteristic lines: "Abraham Lincoln, his hand and pen; He will be good, but God knows when." If by _good_ he meant _pious_, the prophecy was never fulfilled. But a short time before he was elected President, he said to Dr. Ray: "I think that I stand about where that man [Theodore Parker] stands" (Statement of Rev. Eobert Collyer). The author whose writings exerted the greatest influence upon Lincoln's mind, in a theological way, was Thomas Paine. Ah! that potential "Age of Reason!" Criticise it as you may, no one ever yet carefully perused its pages and then honestly affirmed that the Bible is the infallible word of God. Hern-don and others declare that Paine was a part of Lincoln from 1834 till his death. To a friend he said: "I never tire of reading Paine" (Statement of James Tuttle). In the later years of his life, when the subject of religion was mentioned, with a knowing smile, he was wont to remark: "It will not do to investigate the subject of religion too closely, as it is apt to lead to Infidelity" (_Manford's Magazine_). It has been stated that Lincoln was opposed in his political campaigns on account of his disbelief. This is confirmed by a letter he wrote to Martin M. Morris, of Petersburg, Ill., March 26,1843. In this letter, he says: "There was, too, the strangest combination of church influence against me. Baker is a Campbellite; and therefore, as I suppose, with few exceptions, got all that church. My wife has some relatives in the Presbyterian churches, and some with the Episcopal churches; and therefore, wherever it would tell, I was set down as either the one or the other, while it was everywhere contended that no Christian ought to go for me, because I belonged to no church--was suspected of being a Deist.... Those influences levied a tax of a considerable per cent upon my strength throughout the religious controversy" (Lamon's Life of Lincoln, p. 271). He never changed his opinions, and the church never ceased to oppose him. In the Bateman interview, seventeen years later, he was compelled to note its relentless intolerance: "Here are twenty-three ministers of different denominations, and all of them are against me but three; and here are a great many prominent members of the churches, a very large majority of whom are against me" (Holland's Life of Lincoln, p. 236). For thirty years the church endeavored to crush Lincoln, but when, in spite of her malignant opposition, he achieved a glorious immortality, this same church, to hide the mediocrity of her devotees, attempts to steal his deathless name.