More striking still, Lincoln's trust in God and His overruling providence. Mr. Herndon in his biography and Dr. Abbott in an editorial and an oration at Cooper Institute emphasize the agnosticism of Lincoln. The one says that in his youth he wrote an article against Christianity, and the other that he was not a technical Christian. Dr. Abbott thinks all this so important that he places the agnosticism of Lincoln at the forefront. But too much has been made of the schoolboy article of Lincoln on doubt and infidelity. In his youth Gladstone was a Tory, but he outgrew it. In the outset Paul was against Christianity. Tennyson and Wordsworth in their teens wrote puerile verse, just as Lincoln in his teens wrote a foolish paper. But it is cruelly unfair not to allow Abraham Lincoln the full benefit of what he came to be, and not to take the man at his best. It is unfair to say that a man is what he is at his worst and lowest point; a man is what he is at his best and highest point. Stephen A. Douglas said Lincoln was the most honest man he ever knew. Well, if Lincoln was an honest man in his character, he must have been honest in talking about his religion and his faith in God. Was Abraham Lincoln an agnostic in that hour when he spoke his farewell words to his neighbours in Springfield, about starting on the memorable journey to his inauguration? He said: "I feel that I cannot succeed without the same divine aid that sustained Washington, and on the same Almighty Being I place my reliance for support; and I hope you, my friends, will all pray that I may receive that divine assistance without which I cannot succeed, but with which success is certain." Was Abraham Lincoln without faith, and did he play to the gallery, when he set apart a day of fasting and prayer after the defeat at Bull Run? Having said that Abraham Lincoln was an honest man, why not remember it, when these critics read his First Inaugural, in which he declares that "intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favoured land, are still competent to adjust in the best way all our present difficulty." When Abraham Lincoln wrote the mother, Mrs. Bixby, "I pray that the heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement," he meant that he believed in God, in a God who answered prayer, in a God who cared for the mother living, and the five brave boys dead. "The Almighty has His own purposes," said Lincoln, in the Second Inaugural, an address that is steeped in religion, that exhales trust in God. Take God out of that Second Inaugural, and it would be like taking health out of the body, wisdom out of the book, sweetness out of the song, culture out of the intellect, life out of the body. You cannot in one breath say that Lincoln was an agnostic, and then in the next one say that Lincoln was an honest man. I care not one whit what Mr. Herndon says. I care everything about what Abraham Lincoln