"There is no evidence that Mr. Lincoln had become a gnostic, or that he had a comprehensive scheme of the universe, or that he had either wrought out a system of theology for himself or accepted any that had been wrought out by others; but there is abundant evidence that he had learned in the four years of tragedy a lesson of dependence and trust, that he had insensibly put together his belief in a supreme Power and his faith in righteousness, and that thus there had been born in him faith in a supreme righteous Power, whose will we may help to carry out, and on whose wisdom and strength we may rely in achieving it. It is thus that the life of Abraham Lincoln illustrates both how a reverent agnostic may be deeply religious and how the life of service and self-sacrifice leads through doubt to faith.--L. A."--_The Outlook_, November 17, 1906. _Was Abraham Lincoln a Roman Catholic?_ The question is absurd, and worth asking only that it may receive a simple negative answer. Yet, singularly, a report was current and somewhat widely believed in 1860 that Abraham Lincoln had been baptized as a Roman Catholic and was himself a renegade from that faith. The rumor appears to have had two roots. First was the fact that much missionary work was done in early Illinois by Jesuit priests; and it was assumed, not only contrary to every fact but to every element of probability, that Abraham Lincoln had been baptized by one of them. The other was the fact that he acted as attorney for Rev. Charles Chiniquy, who after fifty years in the Church of Rome came out from that communion and became a notable antagonist of the church in which he had been reared. His unsparing criticisms led to various attacks upon him through the courts and otherwise. When Lincoln was elected President much was made of the fact that Lincoln had been Father Chiniquy's attorney, and the rumor that he also was a renegade Catholic gained wide currency. Chiniquy professed to see in these rumors a peril to the life of Mr. Lincoln, and both then and at intervals during his administration warned the President that his life was in danger. The scarcely concealed favor of the Vatican toward the cause of the South did not tend to allay this anxiety. The fact that among those concerned in the plot which finally ended in the assassination of the President were several Roman Catholics, revived these reports immediately after his death, and they are occasionally recalled even now. So far as our present inquiry is concerned, we have only to ask and answer the question. Mr. Lincoln was not in any period of his life affiliated in any way with the Roman Catholic Church. _Was Abraham Lincoln a Spiritualist?_