"'As you have asked from me a candid statement of my recollections on this topic, I have thus briefly given them, with the hope that they may be of some service in rightly settling a question about which--as I have good reason to believe--the public mind has been greatly misled. "'Not doubting that they will accord, substantially, with your own recollections, and that of his other intimate and confidential friends, and with the popular verdict after this matter shall have been properly canvassed, I submit them.'"--LAMON: _Life of Lincoln_, pp. 490, 491, 492. Herndon was attempting to collect evidence that Lincoln was an infidel, and what he obtained, and what essentially he was called to certify and did certify in effect, was that Lincoln's views were in essential accord with those of Theodore Parker and William Ellery Channing. Theodore Parker was not an orthodox Christian according to the standards of Dr. Smith's church, or of the church of which the present writer is pastor, but he was a Christian, and a very brave and noble Christian. William Ellery Channing's views were not in full accord with the orthodoxy of his day, but he was a noble friend of God and man, and a true Christian. I have already referred to the very loose and inexact way in which Herndon and others use the term "infidel" as applied to Lincoln. Such inexactness is subversive of all clear thinking. We are told, for instance, that he was an infidel, his views being essentially those of Theodore Parker and William Ellery Channing. I doubt if he ever read very deeply in the writings of these men; but that he read portions of them and approved of some of their noblest and most characteristic utterances, is certain. What were the discourses of these two men which he must almost certainly have read if he read anything of theirs? He would almost certainly have read Parker's discourse on "The Transient and Permanent in Christianity," and that on "Immortal Life," and Channing's Baltimore address and his discourse on the Church. And these are just the sort of utterances which he would have read with approval as he found them in these discourses of Theodore Parker: