"He did not nor could not believe in the endless punishment of any one of the human race. He understood punishment for sin to be a Bible doctrine; that punishment was parental in its object, aim and design, and intended for the good of the offender; hence it must cease when justice was satisfied. He added that all that was lost by the transgression of Adam was made good by the atonement; all that was lost by the fall was made good by the sacrifice; and he added this remark, that punishment being a 'provision of the gospel system, he was not sure but the world would be better off if a little more punishment was preached by our ministers, and not so much of pardon of sin.'" I need only add, that to me these letters carry the conviction of reality. Lincoln had been rooted and grounded in the kind of dogma that began with Adam and related to his fall in vital sort the atonement of Christ. That Lincoln had some doubts concerning the person of Christ is not in point. He believed in God, and he knew the fact of sin, and he was dyed in the wool in arguments concerning the fall of the race in Adam and its redemption in Christ. But he did not dwell as did the preachers on individual forgiveness, which he sometimes doubted, but sought to evolve a legal and moral scheme with a final restoration. I regard these testimonies as essentially true. CHAPTER XI THE HERNDON LECTURES, LETTERS, AND BIOGRAPHY THE name of William H. Herndon finds frequent mention in these pages, as it must in any study of Abraham Lincoln. With all his faults as a biographer, his astigmatism, his anti-religious prejudice, his intolerance, his bad taste, he is an invaluable source of information concerning his partner and friend, Abraham Lincoln. The publication of the Lamon biography and the Reed lecture brought him into a conflict from which no power on earth could probably have kept him out, and in it he did and said many things which for his own sake and Lincoln's he might better not have said. But Herndon was no liar. Biased as he was, and himself a free-thinker or perhaps worse, he told the truth in such fashion as to throw it out of perspective, and sometimes told what he believed to be the truth in a passion which compels us to discount some of his testimony. But he did not lie nor intentionally misrepresent. For twenty years Lincoln and Herndon were law partners, and their partnership was never formally dissolved. Lincoln liked Herndon, but there was no loss of love between Herndon and Mrs. Lincoln. She, if tradition about Springfield is to be believed, disliked him personally for his habits, and possibly also for his politics, for he was an Abolitionist before Lincoln, and a very ardent one at that. Had she known what Herndon was to say about her in later years she might have been more gracious to her husband's junior partner, who had learned some habits at the bar of his father's tavern which he might better not have learned.