"In my intercourse with Mr. Lincoln, I learned that he believed in a Creator of all things, who had neither beginning nor end, and, possessing all power and wisdom, established a principle, in obedience to which worlds move, and are upheld, and animal and vegetable life come into existence. A reason he gave for his belief was that, in view of the order and harmony of all nature which we behold, it would have been created and arranged by some great thinking power. As to the Christian theory, that Christ is God, or equal to the Creator, he said that it had better be taken for granted; for, by the test of reason, we might become infidels on that subject, for evidence of Christ's divinity came to us in a somewhat doubtful shape; but that the system of Christianity was an ingenious one at least, and perhaps was calculated to do good."--LAMON: _Life of Lincoln_, p. 490. Emphatic proof of Mr. Lincoln's faith is to be found in the positive declaration of the two men who have done most to destroy the world's confidence in it, Lamon and Herndon. In Lamon's later book of _Reminiscences_, he did much to counteract the harsh and to my mind incorrect impression given in his earlier book. But even in that book he affirmed that while Lincoln rejected the New Testament as a book of divine authority, he accepted its precepts as binding upon him and was a believer in the supernatural even to credulity (p. 503, 504). In that same work Herndon set forth that Lincoln was a firm believer in God and attempted, as he said, "to put at rest forever the charge that Mr. Lincoln was an atheist." He declared, however, that Lincoln did not believe in a special creation, but in an "evolution under law"; not in special revelation, "but in miracles under law"; and that "all things both matter and mind were governed by laws universal, absolute, and eternal" (p. 494). To this Herndon gives even more emphatic testimony in his own book. It must then be remembered that while in the loose nomenclature of these authors Mr. Lincoln was an "infidel" it is these same authors that assure us, as Lamon does, that "his theological opinions were substantially those expounded by Theodore Parker."--LAMON: _Life of Lincoln_, p. 486. The question whether Lincoln's views underwent any substantial change after leaving Springfield, has been answered in the negative by John G. Nicolay, his private secretary at the White House; who affirmed that "Mr. Lincoln did not, to my knowledge, in any way change his religious views, opinions, or beliefs, from the time he left Springfield to the day of his death." This probably is correct. Mr. Lincoln was not conscious of any radical change; but Mrs. Lincoln noticed a change in him after Willie's death, which grew more pronounced after his visit to Gettysburg, and his own faith, while undergoing no sudden and radical transformation, manifests a consistent evolution.