"I wish to say a few short words to the public and private ear. About the year 1870 I wrote a letter to Mr. F. E. Abbott, then of Ohio, touching Mr. Lincoln's religion.[39] In that letter I stated that Mr. Lincoln was an infidel, sometimes bordering on atheism, and I now repeat the same. In the year 1873, the Right Rev. James A. Reed, pastor and liar of this city, gave a lecture on Mr. Lincoln's religion, in which he tried to answer me,--" and more to the same purport. While Herndon and Lamon were men of quite different, mind and ability, the two men used essentially the same body of material for the making of their books about Lincoln, Herndon having sold copies of all his Lincoln manuscripts to Lamon. * * * * * Herndon delivered at least three lectures on Lincoln. The first, and most popular and valuable, was on the "Life and Character of Lincoln." It was first delivered to a Springfield audience in 1866, was repeated many times, and it forms the substance of the twentieth chapter of his book, as it appeared in the first edition, and the eleventh chapter in the second. It contains the incomparable description of Lincoln's personal appearance which must stand to all time as the best and final pen-picture of the man. The second was entitled "Abraham Lincoln; Miss Ann Rutledge; New Salem; the Poem." It was delivered in the old Sangamon County court house in Springfield in November, 1866, and was based on notes which Herndon had recently made on a visit to New Salem, Sunday and Monday, October 14-15, 1866. It contains the material out of which all subsequent romantic works about Lincoln and Ann Rutledge have been woven. It was heard by a small audience, greeted with manifest disapproval, and came near to being hopelessly lost; but is preserved in a limited edition published by H. E. Barker, Springfield. This edition is quoted in part in the foregoing pages, with special reference to Herndon's personal touch with New Salem. The third was on "The Religion of Abraham Lincoln," and was called out by the Holland biography and the Bateman interview. Of this and the first, Mr. Barker says in his preface to the Ann Rutledge lecture, that they "were allowed to perish for lack of permanence in printed form. Their subject-matter, however, was embodied in the extended Life of Lincoln published in 1872 by Ward H. Lamon, and in the still later Life of Lincoln written and published by Mr. Herndon in 1889." This material is quoted practically _in extenso_ in the pages of this volume, no important statement having been omitted.