Sir Leslie Stephen: "Paine's book announced a startling fact, against which all the flimsy collections of conclusive proofs were powerless. It amounted to a proclamation that the creed no longer satisfied the instincts of cultivated scholars. When the defenders of the old orders tried to conjure with the old charms, the magic had gone out of them. In Paine's rough tones they recognized not the mere echo of coffee-house gossip, but the voice of deep popular passion. Once and forever, it was announced that, for the average mass of mankind, the old creed was dead." Elbert Hubbard: "As Paine's book 'Common Sense,' broke the power of Great Britain in America, and the 'Rights of Man' gave free speech and a free press to England, so did the 'Age of Reason' give pause to the juggernaut of orthodoxy. Thomas Paine was the legitimate ancestor of Hosea Ballou who founded the Universalist church, and of Theodore Parker who made Unitarianism in America an intellectual torch. Channing, Ripley,' Bartol, Martineau, Frothingham, Hale, Curtis, Collyer, Swing, Thomas, Conway, Leonard, Savage, Crapsey, yes--even Emerson, and Thoreau, were spiritual children, all, of Thomas Paine. He blazed the way and made it possible, for men to preach the sweet reasonableness of reason. He was the pioneer in a jungle of superstition." Abraham Lincoln became and remained a disciple of Thomas Paine. Chicago Herald (Feb., 1892): "In 1834, at New Salem, Ill., Lincoln read and circulated Vol-ney's 'Ruins' and Paine's 'Age of Reason,' giving to both books the sincere recommendation of his unqualified approval." Col. Ward H. Lamon (biographer of Lincoln): "He [Lincoln] had made himself familiar with the writings of Paine and Volney--the 'Ruins' of the one, and the 'Age of Reason' of the other,... and then wrote a deliberate essay wherein he reached conclusions similar to theirs." "In this work he intended to demonstrate: "'First, that the Bible was not God's revelation; "'Secondly, that Jesus was not the Son of God.'" (Lincoln's work was never published.) "You insist on knowing something which you know I possess, and got as a secret, and that is, about Lincoln's little book on Infidelity. Mr. Lincoln did tell me that he _did write a little book on Infidelity_"--_Col. James H. Matheny, Lincoln's political manager in Illinois._ James Ford Rhodes, LL.D.: "When Lincoln entered upon political life he became reticent regarding his religious opinions, for at the age of twenty-five, influenced by Thomas Paine,... he had written an extended essay against Christianity." Hon. W. H. Herndon (law partner of Lincoln): "Paine became a part of Mr. Lincoln from 1834 to the end of his life."