Remembering Lincoln’s unfailing truthfulness, remembering also his restless ambition, only one conclusion can be drawn from this silence.  He could not categorically deny Cartwright’s accusation and at the same time satisfy his own unsparing conception of honesty.  That there was no real truth in the charge of irreligion, the allusions in the Speed letters abundantly prove.  The tone is too sincere to be doubted; nevertheless, they give no clue to his theology.  And for men like Cartwright, religion was tied up hand and foot in theology.  Here was where Lincoln had parted company from his mother’s world, and from its derivatives.  Though he held tenaciously to all that was mystical in her bequest to him, he rejected early its formulations.  The evidence of later years reaffirms this double fact.  The sense of a spiritual world behind, beyond the world of phenomena, grew on him with the years; the power to explain, to formulate that world was denied him.  He had no bent for dogma.  Ethically, mystically, he was always a Christian; dogmatically he knew not what he was.  Therefore, to the challenge to prove himself a Christian on purely dogmatic grounds, he had no reply.  To attempt to explain what separated him from his accusers, to show how from his point of view they were all Christian—­although, remembering their point of view, he hesitated to say so—­to draw the line between mysticism and emotionalism, would have resulted only in a worse confusion.  Lincoln, the tentative mystic, the child of the starlit forest, was as inexplicable to Cartwright with his perfectly downright religion, his creed of heaven or hell—­take your choice and be quick about it!—­as was Lincoln the spiritual sufferer to New Salem, or Lincoln the political scientist to his friends in the Legislature.

But he was not injured by his silence.  The faith in him held by too many people was too well established.  Then, as always thereafter, whatever he said or left unsaid, most thoughtful persons who came close to him sensed him as a religious man.  That was enough for healthy, generous young Springfield.  He and Cartwright might fight out their religious issues when they pleased, Abe should have his term in Congress.  He was elected by a good majority.(14)

VI.  UNSATISFYING RECOGNITION

Lincoln’s career as a Congressman, 1847-1849, was just what might have been expected—­his career in the Illinois Legislature on a larger scale.  It was a pleasant, companionable, unfruitful episode, with no political significance.  The leaders of the party did not take him seriously as a possible initiate to their ranks.  His course was that of a loyal member of the Whig mass.  In the party strategy, during the debates over the Mexican War and the Wilmot Proviso, he did his full party duty, voting just as the others did.  Only once did he attempt anything original—­a bill to emancipate the slaves of the District, which was little more than a restatement of his protest of ten years before—­and on this point Congress was as indifferent as the Legislature had been.  The bill was denied a hearing and never came to a vote before the House.(1)