Daily Story
Perfect Jesus
Among several “good things,” the President told of a Southern Illinois preacher who, in the course of his sermon, asserted that the Savior was the only perfect man who had ever appeared in this world; also, that there was no record in the Bible, or elsewhere, of any perfect woman having lived on earth. Whereupon there arose in the rear of the church a persecuted-looking personage who, the parson having stopped speaking, said: “I know a perfect woman, and I’ve heard of her about every day for the last six years.” “Who was she?” asked the minister. “My husband’s first wife,” replied the afflicted female.
James Grant Wilson, “Recollections of Lincoln,” Putnam’s Monthly and the Reader, February, March 1909, p. 673.