"You know my Religion, my Philosophy: That the highest thought and acts of the human soul and its religious sphere are to think, love, obey, and worship God, by thinking freely, by loving, teaching, doing good to, and elevating mankind. My first duty is to God, then to mankind, and then to the individual man or woman."--_Lecture on Ann Rutledge_, pp. 9-10. One cannot help regretting that the man who had thus defined his own religion should ever have been led to think himself or any other man whom he supposed to be like-minded an infidel. CHAPTER XII LINCOLN'S BURNT BOOK IN the chapter on the "Conditions of Lincoln's Young Manhood at New Salem" mention was made of the "book" which Lincoln is said to have written, opposed to the Christian religion, a book which his employer, Samuel Hill, is said to have snatched from his hand and thrown into the fire lest Lincoln's infidelity should ruin his political career. To have treated this subject at length would have thrown that chapter out of focus, and it is time that we should learn the truth about it. Colonel Lamon tells us about this book thus: "He had made himself thoroughly familiar with the writings of Paine and Volney,--the _Ruins_ by one and the _Age of Reason_ by the other. His mind was full of the subject, and he felt an itching to write. He did write, and the result was a 'little book.' It was probably merely an extended essay,[40] but it was ambitiously spoken of as a 'book' by himself and by the persons who were made acquainted with its contents. In this book he intended to demonstrate,-- "First, that the Bible was not God's revelation; and "Secondly, that Jesus was not the Son of God." --LAMON, _Life of Lincoln_, pp. 157-58. Lamon wrote this in 1872 of a book supposed to have been written by Lincoln and burned by Hill in 1834. We have already quoted from Herndon's account, but it is brief and for convenience will bear reading here in full: