"'My dear Dr. Abbott: You are quoted in the New York _Press_ of October 15 as having referred in your Yale sermon to Abraham Lincoln in the following terms: "Agnostic though he was." Are you correct in the implication? If so, I should greatly like to know, as it is a subject in which I am much interested. J. G. Holland says, in his _Life of Lincoln_, page 61 ff., "He believed in God, and in His personal supervision of the affairs of men.... This unwavering faith in a divine Providence began at his mother's knee, and ran like a thread of gold through all the inner experiences of his life"; and much more to the same purpose. You are doubtless familiar with his words on leaving Springfield for Washington: "He [Washington] would never have succeeded except for the aid of divine Providence upon which he at all times relied. On that same Almighty Being I place my reliance. Pray that I may receive that divine assistance without which I cannot succeed, but with which success is certain." The first inaugural would seem to indicate a most pronounced Christian sentiment. Not to consume too much of your time, I might refer further to Nicolay and Hay's _Life_, the following passages: Vol. VI, p. 539, which contains a statement of Lincoln's religious principles; also, same volume, pp. 323, 324, 327, 328, 341, 342.
"The life of Abraham Lincoln appears to me to furnish a very striking illustration both of the difference between theology and religion and of the way in which religious experience is often developed in the life of a true man, and is accompanied by a real though generally quite unconscious change in theological opinion. Mr. Herndon, in his _Life of Lincoln_, portrays the earlier religious faith of Mr. Lincoln, Nicolay and Hay his later religious faith: neither biographer is able to find that he ever formulated his own creed, neither is able to formulate one for him. Yet between the religious convictions of the period when he wrote an essay against Christianity, which, fortunately for his reputation, a wise friend threw into the fire, and the period when he wrote his second inaugural address, there is a difference which cannot be measured by the mere lapse of years.
"Agnostic? What is an agnostic? Huxley invented the phrase to define his own position in contrast with that of his friends whom he called gnostics because they had each a theory of the universe and he had none. He more specifically defines the basis of his no-theory of the universe in a pathetic letter to Charles Kingsley (_Life and Letters_, Vol. II, pp. 233-239): 'It is no use to talk to me of analogies and probabilities. I know what I mean when I say I believe in the law of the inverse squares, and I will not rest my lifelong hopes upon weaker convictions. I dare not, if I would.' Compare with this Mr. Herndon's measure of Mr. Lincoln's earlier habit of thought: 'As already expressed, Mr. Lincoln had no faith. In order to believe, he must see and feel, and thrust his hand into the place. He must taste, smell, or handle before he had faith or even belief.' Or compare Mrs. Lincoln's expression concerning her husband's religious opinions, as quoted by Mr. Herndon: 'Mr. Lincoln had no faith and no hope, in the usual acceptance of those words. He never joined a church; but still, as I believe, he was a religious man by nature. He first seemed to think about the subject when our Willie died, and then more than ever about the time he went to Gettysburg; but it was a kind of poetry in his nature; and he was never a technical Christian.'