If another book is justified, it should be one that does more than compile that part of the evidence which appears to support a particular theory. The compilation should be as nearly complete as is humanely possible. But it must do more than plunge the reader into this swamp of conflicting testimony. It must somehow seek to evaluate the evidence and present a reasonable conclusion.
Moreover, in the judgment of the present writer, religion is more than opinion, and cannot be considered as a detachable entity. Lincoln's religion was more than his belief, his conjecture, his logical conclusion concerning particular doctrines. It can only be properly appraised in connection with his life. While, therefore, the writer does not now undertake a complete biography of Lincoln, though cherishing some hope that he may eventually write a book of that character, this present work endeavors to study the religion of Lincoln not in detachment, but as part and parcel of his life.
A word may be said concerning the author's point of view and the experience which lies behind it. In his early manhood he had an experience of several years which he considers of value as affording a background for the interpretation of the Lincoln material. For several years the author taught school and afterward preached in the mountain region of Kentucky and Tennessee amid social conditions essentially parallel to those in which Mr. Lincoln was born and amid which he spent his manhood up to the time of his going to Washington. The same kind of preaching that Lincoln heard, not only in Kentucky but in the backwoods of Indiana and the pioneer villages of central and southern Illinois, the present author heard in his own young manhood as a teacher in district schools far back beyond the sound of the locomotive's whistle or the inroads of modern civilization. How that kind of preaching affected the inquiring mind of the young Lincoln, the author is sure he knows better than most of Lincoln's biographers have known. The fierce theological controversies that waged between the old-time Baptists and the itinerant Methodists, together with the emphatic dogmatism of the Southern type of Presbyterianism as it was held and preached in the Kentucky mountains forty years ago and in southern Illinois and Indiana eighty years ago are part of the vivid memory of the present writer. A young man who refused to accept this kind of teaching might be charged with being an infidel, and might easily suppose himself to be one; but whether that would be a just or fair classification depends upon conditions which some of the controversialists appear not to have known or to have been capable of appreciating through lack of experience of their own.