issue a proclamation as though he were an agent of God, authorized to tell all his loving subjects to fast on a certain day, or to enter their churches and pray for the accomplishment of a certain object. It is none of his business. When they called on Thomas Jefferson to issue a proclamation, he said he had no right to do it, that religion was a personal, individual matter, and that the state had no right, no power, to interfere. I now have the pleasure of introducing Mr. Courtlandt Palmer, who will speak to you on the "Aristocracy of Freethought," in my judgment the aristocracy not only of the present, but the aristocracy of the future. THE RELIGIOUS BELIEF OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. New York, May 28, 1896. MY DEAR MR. SEIP: I have carefully read your article on the religious belief of Abraham Lincoln, and in accordance with your request I will not only give you my opinion of the evidence upon which you rely, as set out in your article, but my belief as to the religious opinions of Mr. Lincoln, and the facts on which my belief rests. You speak of a controversy between myself and General Collis upon this subject. A few years ago I delivered a lecture on Mr. Lincoln, in this city, and in that lecture said that Lincoln, so far as his religious opinions were concerned, substantially agreed with Franklin, Jefferson, Paine and Voltaire. Thereupon General Collis wrote me a note contradicting what I had said and asserting that "Lincoln invoked the power of Almighty God, not the Deist God, but the God whom he worshiped under the forms of the Christian church of which he was a member." To this I replied saying that Voltaire and Paine both believed in God, and that Lincoln was never a member of any Christian church. General Collis wrote another letter to which, I think, I made no reply, for the reason that the General had demonstrated that he knew nothing whatever on the subject. It was evident that he had never read the life of Lincoln, because if he had, he would not have said that he was a member of a church. It was also evident that he knew nothing about the religious opinions of Franklin, Voltaire or Paine, or he would have known that they were believers in the existence of a Supreme Being. It did not seem to me that his letter was worthy of a reply.