It must be remembered that Paine and Volney, whose works he read, were far from being atheists. Thomas Paine, whatever he denied, believed as strongly as Peter Cartwright or James Smith in a personal God. So far as we know, Lincoln was never under any strong influence that might have made him an atheist, his doubts and questionings were all within the sphere of an expressed or implicit theism.
The names by which Lincoln referred to God are many and suggestive. The following is a partial list:[68]
Almighty, Almighty Architect, Almighty Arm, Almighty Father, Almighty God, Almighty Hand, Almighty Power, Almighty Ruler of Nations, Creator, Disposer, Divine Author, Divine Being, Divine Majesty, Divine Providence, Divine Will, Eternal God, Father, Father in Heaven, Father of Mercies, God, God Almighty, God of Battles, God of Hosts, God of Nations, Governor, Heavenly Father, Higher Being, Higher Power, Holy Spirit, Judge, Lord, Maker, Maker of the Universe, Master, Most High, Most High God, Omniscient Mind, Power, Providence, Ruler of the Universe, Supreme Being.
Lincoln believed in the Bible. I am not sure that he accepted the whole content of the positive arguments set forth so cogently by his pastor, Dr. Smith. When he called this argument "unanswerable," it need not imply that his every doubt was satisfied, his every misgiving reassured. It is entirely possible that there lingered in his mind some vestiges of what he had read in writers opposed to the doctrine of the inspiration of the Scriptures as it was then taught; indeed, that doctrine in the form in which it was currently stated was not one by which a modern man's orthodoxy ought to be tested. But he read the Bible, honored it, quoted it freely, and it became so much a part of him as visibly and permanently to give shape to his literary style and to his habits of thought. When Mrs. Speed presented him an Oxford Bible in 1841, he declared his intention to read it regularly, believing it to be "the best cure for the blues"; and he kept and loved and constantly used his mother's Bible. How he would have defined his theory of its transmission and of the relation of its divine and human elements we do not know, and we need not be too curious to inquire. It is more than possible that Mr. Lincoln never made this definition in his own mind. His attitude toward the Bible was a thoroughly practical one. We do not know that he ever heard Coleridge's pragmatic affirmation, but we have every reason to believe that he would have accepted it, namely, that he valued the Bible because "it finds me as no other book."