We do not know whether Abraham Lincoln ever considered the question of the birth of Christ in any personal thought he may have had concerning his own birth. We may not forget, however, that if Herndon is right, Lincoln lived and died without knowing all the facts about his own mother which later research has made certain. The marriage certificate of his parents was recorded in another county than that in which he supposed it would have been recorded, and he appears never to have been certain that he himself was begotten in lawful wedlock. We know that Nancy Hanks and Thomas Lincoln were married a year before the birth of their eldest daughter, who was older than Abraham Lincoln, but he is believed not to have known that. What then? Should a man in 1860 or 1864 refuse to vote for Abraham Lincoln because he did not feel certain when or whether his parents were married? The man who said, "I believe in Abraham Lincoln," did not commonly have in mind any question of his parentage, but believed in his integrity, his patriotism, his moral leadership. Even so the man who believes in Jesus Christ may believe in Him without ever asking, much less ever answering, any dubitable question in metaphysics. Scant as are the references to Jesus in the authentic utterances of Abraham Lincoln, they do not seem to me unimportant. They testify to a faith that was valid as far as it went. They manifest a spirit which is fundamentally Christian. Unable to define his own views in terms that would have been acceptable to those who believed themselves the rightful guardians of orthodoxy in his day, it is not surprising that Lincoln was guarded in his references to a dogma which might have involved him in greater difficulties than he was prepared to meet. It was true in that day unhappily as it was in the days of Paul, "Some indeed preach Christ even of envy and strife; and some also of good-will." It is occasion for profound sorrow that Christ has been so preached as that men have sometimes found it difficult to confess their faith in Him without provoking strife and envy. That Lincoln was unwilling to make his doubt the occasion of dogmatic negation is evident from one or more of the acquaintances of Lincoln, whom Herndon interviewed in an effort to adduce testimony against his faith, and whom Lamon quoted in that part of his book in which he made his attack upon the religion of Lincoln. The following from I. W. Keys, the man who loaned to him _Vestiges of Creation_, is interesting in itself and especially interesting in its relation to the group of testimonies which these two men assembled: