Whittier, Lincoln, Webster

In his lecture last Sunday evening, Dr. Cobern took occasion to answer with denial and what he considers proof, the recent statement of another clergyman that Whittier, Lincoln and Webster were Unitarians. In the cases of Whittier and Webster, Mr. Cobern brings forward the claims of intimate friends of the poet and of the statesman that each had by word or act or both shown that whatever of liberality of religious belief he had at any time during his life manifested, he died a good, sound orthodox. In the case of Lincoln, Mr. Cobern asserts that the only foundation for the claim that he was a Unitarian rested on his utterance that "if he could find a church that had no other creed than love to God and love to man, he would join that church." This he regarded as rather dubious evidence of Mr. Lincoln's Unitarianism. To the Argus this contention over what may or may not have been the precise doctrinal or sectarian views of either of the distinguished persons who are made the subjects, matters not at all, except as to mere curiosity, Whether Whittier was a Methodist, a Unitarian, a Catholic or a no-creedist, cuts no figure, we apprehend, with the Almighty, and the same may be said of Lincoln and Webster. Will the wise and good God punish for an honest though possibly erroneous religious belief, or bless for a lip profession that proceeds not from theheart? We think not so. The lives of Whittier, Lincoln and Webster still speak in history, and the judgment of their countrymen exalts their virtues and criticises their faults, regardless of their creeds.