"In the Presidential campaign of 1864 there were sullen whisperings that Mr. Lincoln had no religious opinions nor any interest in churches or Christian institutions. They faded away with other libels, never to be renewed until after his death. One of his biographers, who calls himself the 'friend and partner for twenty years' of the deceased President, has since published what he calls a history of his life, in which he revives the worst of these rumors, with additions which, if true, would destroy much of the world's respect for Mr. Lincoln. He asserts that his 'friend and partner' was 'an infidel verging towards atheism.' Others have disseminated these charges in lectures and fugitive sketches so industriously that they have produced upon strangers some impression of their truth. The excuse alleged is, their desire to present Mr. Lincoln to the world 'just as he was.' Their real purpose is to present him just as they would have him to be, as much as possible like themselves. "It is a trait of the infidel to parade his unbelief before the public, and he thinks something gained to himself when he can show that others are equally deficient in moral qualities. But these writers have attempted too much. Their principal charge of infidelity, tinged with atheism, is so completely at variance with all our knowledge of his opinions that its origin must be attributed to malice or to a defective mental constitution. "His sincerity and candor were conspicuous qualities of Mr. Lincoln's mind. Deception was a vice in which he had neither experience nor skill. All who were admitted to his intimacy will agree that he was incapable of professing opinions which he did not entertain. When we find him at the moment of leaving his home for Washington, surrounded by his neighbors of a quarter of a century, taking Washington for his exemplar, whose success he ascribed 'to the aid of that Divine Providence upon which he at all times relied,' and publicly declaring that he, himself, 'placed his whole trust in the same Almighty Being, and the prayers of Christian men and women'; when, not once or twice, but on all proper, and more than a score of subsequent occasions, he avowed his faith in an Omnipotent Ruler, who will judge the world in righteousness--in the Bible as the inspired record of His history and His law; when with equal constancy he thanked Almighty God for, and declared his interest in, Christian institutions and influences as the appointed means for his effective service, we may assert that we know that he was neither an atheist nor an infidel, but, on the contrary, a sincere believer in the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith. In fact, he believed so confidently that the Almighty was making use of the war, of himself, and other instrumentalities in working out some great design for the benefit of humanity, and his belief that he himself was directed by the same Omniscient Power was expressed with