Touching evidence of this is in his habitual tone of speech when

addressing soldiers returning from the field to their homes. Over and

over again he would remind the men of the vital principle at stake,

alike in war and in peace. "That you may all have equal privileges in

the race of life;" that there may be "an open field and a fair chance

for your industry, enterprise, and intelligence--this is 'our

birthright,' our 'inestimable pearl.' Nowhere in the world is

presented a government of so much liberty and equality." "To the

humblest and the poorest among us are held out the highest privileges

and positions." It is hard to say, when he was voicing his

satisfaction and his gratitude to these returning regiments, to which

his words were most directly addressed, to the soldier in the uniform,

or to the citizen. All those veteran soldiers were to his discerning

eyes the precious sterling units of the Nation's lasting wealth. In

their service as defenders of the Union they had saved the most

precious human heritage that human history ever knew or human hope

conceived. And of that heritage and hope they were themselves the

exponent. Their service under arms and their civilian life in coming

days of peace were one. And with a deep and fond solicitude he would

charge them to shield and guard, to champion and defend with ballot as

with sword their dear-bought liberty and right. These peaceable

precious fruits of the deadly terrible war he well foresaw and greeted

eagerly. The verdict of the ballots in his re-election in 1864

proclaimed afar a word the world had never heard before. It

"demonstrated that a people's government can sustain a national

election in the midst of a great civil war." That verdict declared

authoritatively that government by the people was "sound and strong."

And it also showed by actual count that after four terrible years of

war the government had more supporting men than when the war began.

This abounding victory filled and satisfied his heart. And in the

presence of that unexampled proof that equal liberty for all was safe

within the guardianship of common men, he exclaimed with a prophet's

vision of the living unison of civic and economic weal:--"Gold is good

in its place, but living, brave, patriotic men are better than gold."

Such were Lincoln's principles as he defined a Nation's true

prosperity and wealth. A Nation's strength, a Nation's honor, a

Nation's truest treasure is in her men. Men of freedom and men of

hope, men intolerant of tyranny, men resolved to be worthy of

themselves and conscious of kinship with their Maker, men jealous

equally of their own and their brother's liberty, men who welcome all

the bonds involved in a friendly league of equal duties and equal

rights, men in whom the amelioration of all is a ruling desire, these

are the chief and best achievement in the proudest Nation's wealth. To

undervalue men, preferring any other good, is to cherish in a Nation's

heart the source of its undoing. More to be prized than finest gold

is every citizen. However weak and humble any man may be, his honor is

sacredly above offense. To leave the burden of the feeble unrelieved,

or to clog the progress of the slow is in any Nation's history a

primal sin, and is sure to be abundantly revenged. For such a sin no

store of wealth has power to atone. A sin like that a sinner himself

must bear. This is the central thought of the last inaugural. These

were the human sentiments lying underneath all Lincoln's economic

faith. To these firm verities he held devotedly, whether counseling

the Nation as its president, projecting negro colonies as the negro's

friend, or offering to an idling, impecunious brother a dollar gratis

for every dollar earned.

Men are equal; men are free. Men are royal; men are kin. Men are

hopeful; men aspire. Men are feeble; men have need. Men may prosper;

men may rise. Melioration is for all. Men have duties; men have

rights. Rights are mutual; duties bind. Every man resents offense.

Only despots can offend. Human tyranny is doomed. Vengeance waits on

every wrong. God is sovereign, kind and just. These are Lincoln's

sentiments. These he nobly illustrates. These are laws which he

defends. These are truths he vindicates.

These few fundamental principles, applied anywhere in the industrial

field, would soon and certainly put in force wholesome, everlasting,

all-embracing laws. If, like Lincoln himself, men start in penury with

never a favor and never a friend, then, like him, they must hire

themselves to other men for the going wage. But every such a contract

must be forever subject to a fair and orderly recall. The humblest

earner of a daily wage must be forever free, free to continue or to

withdraw. To his freedom and improvement, to his enheartenment and

hope all industrial regulations must conduce. This is basic. This

alone is generous and fair. And only here can any government win

permanence and peace.

Here are Lincoln's primal postulates in social economics. Moral

imperatives are over every man. Moral freedom is in every breast.

Within the nethermost foundations of any mortal's share in any social

fellowship must rest his own self-wrought integrity and self-respect.

To make that social fellowship in any form perpetually secure each man

must seek with all his heart and with continual willing sacrifice the

lasting welfare of every party and of every part. That this be safely

guaranteed each man must learn to estimate his brother-man, not by

epaulets and coins, but by immortal standards, such as only living

persons can achieve. To make this social league invincible within,

each member in the fellowship must show a true humility, abjuring all

temptation or desire to be a despot or a grandee. And through it all

this social compact must be cherished and revered as ordained by a God

of pure and sovereign truth and love. Thus by friendly ministry, in

unpretending honesty, in brother-kindliness, as sharing in a common

immortality, under the favor and in the fear of God, may fellowmen in

multitudes be fellow citizens in a civic order that may hope for

perpetual prosperity. This is the resounding message that Lincoln's

life transmuted into speech through his pathetic and inspiring rise

from poverty.

HIS PHILOSOPHY--THE PROBLEM OF REALITY

The study of Lincoln's moral versatility, examined in a former

chapter, ranging as it does through all the measure of the moral

realm, verges all along its border on the domain of philosophy.

Lincoln has scant familiarity, it is true, with the rubrics and the

problems, the theories and the methods of the schools. His boyhood was

in the wilderness; locusts and wild honey were his food. Such

education as he achieved was in pathetic isolation. It was a naked

earth, unfurnished with any aids or guides, from which his homely

hard-earned wisdom was laboriously wrung. But his Maker dowered him

with a mind attempered to defiance of every difficulty. And, however

stern the face of his life's fortune might become, his sterner will

and diligence found in her solitudes her choicest treasures. To minds

that nimbly traverse many books, thinking to have gained the substance

of great truths, when they have only gained vain forms, this may seem

to be impossible. But Lincoln's mind had traversed severest

discipline. He found rare substance of intellectual wealth. And he

knew its solid worth. Of this, as has been shown, his first inaugural

yields shining proof. Almost every sentence is as the oracle of a

sage.

But his second inaugural, too, is a gem of wisdom, clear and pure, fit

ornament for any man to wear in any place where wisest men convene.

Let keenest eyes examine narrowly the aspiration with which this

second inaugural concludes. There shines a wish as bright as any human

hope that ever shone in human breast--a wish that all the earth might

gain to just and lasting peace. That yearning plea was voiced upon the

very breath that spoke of the battles and wounds, the dead and the

bereft, of a mighty Nation in fratricidal war. The peace he sought for

within all the land, and through all the earth, was to be the national

consummation of a conflict in which multitudes of men and millions of

treasure had been offered up under God in the name of charity and

right. Such was the wording and the setting of this wish.

Comprehend its girth. It encircled all the earth. This cannot be said

to be nothing but the ill-considered aspiration of an inexperienced

underling. It is the prayer of one who for four terrific years had

held the chief position in conducting the executive affairs of one of

the major empires of the world. During all that time, among the

bewildering and imperious problems of an era of unexampled civil

convulsion, hardly any complications had been more obstinate or more

disturbing than those bound up in the relation of the United States to

the other major Nations of the world. Within those international

complications were infolded problems and principles as profoundly

fundamental as any within any Nation's single life, or within all the

reach of international law. In such a situation and out of such a

career Lincoln culminates the declaration of his policy for a second

presidential term with an invocation of just and lasting peace among

ourselves and with all Nations.

Again let it be said, and be it not forgotten, that it is from the

lips of Lincoln that this appeal ascends. He is not a novice. He is a

seasoned veteran. Coming from that heart, and spoken in that hour,

those words cannot be lightly flung aside. They are the longing of a

man who, through almost unparalleled discipline, has attained an

almost peerless sobriety, sincerity, and clear-sightedness. Too honest

to utter hollow words, too deliberate to accept an ill-judged phrase,

too discerning to recommend a futile and unlikely proposition, and

sobered far beyond any power or inclination to play the hypocrite, we

must concede that Lincoln meant and measured what he said. In simple

fairness, and in all sobriety, we must allow that Lincoln understood

that the principles which guided him as national chief magistrate, and

the goal towards which he was driving everything in his conduct of the

war, contained all needed light and power for winning all the world

to perpetual harmony. This is nothing less than to allow in Lincoln's

deeds and words the sweep and insight of a philosopher. And it is but

simple justice, though of vast significance, to append just here that

it was in the office and person of John Hay, Lincoln's private

secretary, when later he was our Secretary of State, that there dawned

and brightened the new era in international diplomacy, now in our day

so widely inaugurated, and so well advanced. It can be truly added

that in this vast arena, where mighty Nations are the actors, and in

very fact all the world is the stage, those cardinal moral traits of

Lincoln, and his transparent and commanding personality, so steadfast

and vivid and gentle and meek, have no need to borrow from other and

ancient theories and illustrations of world-wide statesmanship either

light or power. That each individual retain unsmirched and

undiminished his pristine self-respect as the cornerstone of all

reliability, his neighborly kindness as the prime condition of all

true comity, his child-like deference towards God as the basis of all

genuine dignity, and his rating of human souls above all perishable

goods as the absolute and essential foundation of any perpetuity,

forms a programme as elemental and imperial among mightiest Nations,

as among humblest neighborhoods of men. Lincoln's obedient recognition

of the Almighty's purposes in over-ruling national affairs, his

king-like resolution to hold loyally by his innate sense of equity,

his eagerness for the elevation of all the oppressed, his instinctive

aspiration in his civic life for foundations that cannot fail, and his

uncomplaining fellowship with the penal sorrows of his erring fellow

citizens,--all apprehended and defended and adhered to with such a

lucid mind and steadfast will and prophetic hope upon the open

platform of our American Republic--propose both in active practice and

in reasoned theory a pattern of statesmanship, capable of

comprehending the political conditions, and directing the diplomacy of

all the governments of the world. Here are the primal conditions and

constituents of international amity. Agreements constructed and

defended thereupon among the Nations could not fail to be fair. They

would surely endure. And as the centuries passed, the faith of Lincoln

in a Ruler of Nations, just, benign, eternal, supreme, would

aboundingly increase.

But once again it must be said that these are not the themes, nor this

the flight of an untrained imagination. The peace among all Nations

towards which Lincoln's hope appealed, was being patterned upon a just

and lasting achievement among ourselves. And among ourselves the

government was being tried in the burning, fiery furnace of a civil

war. It was being proved in flames what factors in a national civic

order were permanent, and fair, and approved of God. It was out of

deep affliction and unsparing discipline, rebuking all our sins,

humbling all our vanity, purging all our hopes, and cementing among

ourselves a just and lasting brotherhood, that Lincoln found the heart

to hope for perpetual fraternity through all the world. Within his

wish deep-wrought, hard-earned, clear-eyed wisdom was crystallized. It

was an imperial proposition, momentous, comprehensive, profound. It

embodied nothing less than a political philosophy.

But these assertions demand a closer scrutiny. Does Lincoln's thought,

in scope and mode, deserve in any sense to be entitled a philosophy?

In soberness, is any such pretension justified? Are Lincoln's

principles so radical, so comprehensive, so well-ordered, as to

deserve a title so supreme?

All turns on truly understanding Lincoln's apprehension of reality.

Lincoln's world was a society of persons. God, himself, his fellowman

engrossed his thought and interest. Among all persons, as seen and

known by him, there was a full affinity. All men were equal, and all

were kindred to the great God. This was the starting point, this the

circuit, and this the goal of all his conscious thought and toil. This

was his world. To penetrate its nature was to handle elements. To

grasp those elements was to be inclusive. And to comprehend their

native correlation was to master fundamental wisdom.

Here Lincoln shows his mental strength. Among all these elements he

traced a fundamental similarity. A common pattern embraced them all.

The highest and the lowest were essentially alike. All were dowered

with kindred capacities for nobility. He never suffered himself or any

of his fellowmen to forget his own elevation from lowliest ignorance

and poverty to the presidency. However humble, all could rise. However

ignorant, all could learn. However unbefriended, all deserved regard.

Life and liberty and happiness were a common boon, an even, universal

right. For fellowship with God, even when buffeted beneath divine

rebukes, all might hope. The ultimate, open possibility of such divine

companionship is shown in this last inaugural, where Lincoln's keen

discernment avails to comprehend, that even sinning men may, through

penitent acceptance of heaven's rebukes, win heaven's favor and walk

with God. Thus Lincoln learned and knew that among all men, and

between all men and God there was a fundamental ground of imperishable

affiance. Here lies the foundation of his philosophy.

And this affiance was in its being moral. With him the real was

ethical. Pure equity was the primal verity. By character were all

things judged. Politics and ethics were identical. In the thought of

Lincoln the qualities constituting our American Union, the qualities

that defined and contained its very being, the qualities that made it

a civic entity, securing to it its coherence and perpetuity, the

qualities guaranteeing that it should not dissolve and disappear in

the fate and wreck of all decaying things, the qualities that made it

worth the faithful care of God and the loving loyalty of men, were

identical with the qualities constituting himself a free, responsible

soul. The same humble reverence, the same mutual goodwill, the same

regard for durability, the same jealousy for integrity as informed his

personal conscience and inspired his personal will, should form the

law and determine the deeds of the Nation as well, if the Nation was

ever to have in its civic being a dignity worthy to survive. Here is a

standard conformable at once with the measure of things in heaven, the

measure of a Nation, and the measure of every man.

Such is the scope of this inaugural. In penning that grave paragraph

touching "unrequited toil," Lincoln had his eye alike upon the

individual slave, upon the Nation as a whole, upon long centuries, and

upon the ways of God. It may be said with equal truth that he was

pondering the sin and hurt of a single act of fraud, the vital

structure of organic civic life, the continual tenure of right and

guilt through lives and times that seem diverse, and the unison of

moral estimates that hold with God and men alike forever. This may not

be denied. The sin inflicted in a single wrong, like that of slavery,

may implicate a Nation in a guilt that, under the impartial and

upright rule of God, the centuries cannot obliterate. Inhuman scorn,

short-sighted greed, disloyalty and cruelty, however disguised, or

however upheld, entail a doom too certain and too sovereign for the

centuries to unduly defer, or for any nation to ever annul.

Here are principles undeniably. And as undeniably these principles

are supreme. A just God is over all. To his high purposes all things,

even the most perverse, must eventually conform. To his right rule

even unrighteous men must bend. Into intelligent harmony with his will

all upright men may come, finding in lowly acknowledgment of his great

majesty their true dignity, in loyalty to his pure righteousness their

own complete integrity, in imitation of his universal benignity their

perfect mutual friendliness, and in a vision of his eternal purity

their assurance of personal and civic perpetuity. Thus in the midst of

all being, and in the conscious presence of Him in whom all being

finds its source, our personal, human being finds its transcendent

dignity and crown. Living thus, and living thus together, men find

life indeed. Thus all, endowed alike with the common sanctity of life,

enjoying equally the common right to liberty, share equally a common

boon of happiness. Thus each man alone and thus the civic order as a

whole may survive and flourish under God in just and lasting peace.

This, in Lincoln's thought, was final, comprehensive truth. Taken in

all its foursquare amplitude and unison, there was nothing human it

did not avail to fitly arrange and fully circumscribe. Whether for man

alone or for men in leagues, whether for States supreme or for States

confederate, it provided every needful guide and bond. As for the

international arena, so for every lesser realm of social life, the

principles enshrined in this inaugural are civic wisdom crystallized.

They proffer to our human social life nothing less than a philosophy.

This is the wisdom literally inscribed upon the tablet of this last

inaugural. To unveil its face before an ever heedful and ever more

attentive world is being found a sovereign function of succeeding

time. Men are ever learning, but have ever yet to learn what Lincoln

was. Despite his fame, his proper glory has been veiled. His features

have been shadowed, almost smirched. His reputation has been overlaid

with rumours and reports of excessive pleasure in ribald, rollicking

hours in wayside inns. But in his very laughter there were deep hints

of measured soberness. Seasoned wisdom flavored all his wit. His very

folly was profound. But when his mood of frolic passed, when, and

almost without any inner change, his outer mien grew serious, and

sadness brooded on his face, then his speech was fed from nether

springs. Then his lips were freighted from afar, and his speech was

rich with precious lore.

In his inmost instinct Lincoln was a philosopher. Out of life's

complexities he was always searching for its clue. His speeches deal

at bottom with nothing but details. But out of the mesh of those

details he was always weaving principles. It is this that gives his

words their weight. He is by his own right a true philosopher. It was

true wisdom with which he dealt. With true wisdom he was in love. In

his own character he has garnered all his gains. By self-refinement he

has become a Nation's pattern. In himself are treasured all the

honors, dignities, and rewards that appertain to a worthy devotee of

wisdom. Assuredly, and beyond all fair dispute, the author of this

last inaugural, when fairly measured and esteemed for what he was, and

what he did, and what he overcame in civic realms by sheer original

research, far more than any Dr. Faust, deserves his doctorate and

degree. In sober verity the author of this inaugural is a true Doctor

of Philosophy.

HIS THEODICY--THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

The last preceding chapter closed with an allusion to Dr. Faust. That

reference may now be profitably resumed. Goethe's Faust is introduced

as in deep uneasiness before the unsolved mysteries of life. He is

described as having mastered all that all the Faculties can give, but

all to no sure end, and as being then beguiled into other paths and

scenes, there to prosecute afresh his quest for present satisfaction.

In this new quest he accepts the guidance of a scorner into realms of

magic, sorcery, and witchcraft; into scenes of ribaldry, debauchery,

and basest sordidness; into lust, murder, and treacherous

unfaithfulness; into a devilish trade for present carnal happiness, at

cost of freedom, reason, and any heed for future destiny.

One notable feature in all this quest is its submergence in the sea of

things that surge up around the passing life, only to pass away

themselves and disappear. His riddles and his quests, his ideals and

delights are largely physical. His guide does not conduct him into the

steadfast presence and observation of things permanent and spiritual.

He is prone to make him roam in realms of magic, where forms and deeds

are too thin and vague to be even shadows, and too false to be even

artificial, but where yet each scene excites the imagination to

perishing desires for joys of sense. Carnal potions, charms, and lust;

physical tumults and delights so largely occupy the central place in

all the scenes, that the riddles Faust would fain resolve are, to a

large degree, the mysteries of the universe of sense.

Now let any man compare the major problems in the mind of Goethe's

Faust with the problems that Lincoln felt to be supreme. One discovers

instantly a vast divergence. Themes and questions, that to the very

end of Goethe's life perplexed and vexed his thought, were in

Lincoln's writings not so much as named.

But far beyond all this. The vast, unwieldly world of solid sense, so

baffling, but so sure, now so terrible, and now so kind, now serving,

and now crushing boastful, trembling man, now begetting, and now

absorbing endless, countless generations and multitudes, seems not to

constitute a vexing or perplexing theme in Lincoln's most insistent

thought. This can never be explained as due to a painless, care-free,

earthly lot; nor to a pampering environment; nor to physical

stolidity; nor to incapacity for aesthetic joys. The lines that seamed

his face, the muscles that leashed his frame, the structure of his

hands, the meaning message upon his lips, his shadowed, sobered,

brooding eyes attest a different tale. Lincoln was sufficiently aware

of the plain and common sorrows incident to our earthly environment.

He knew what havoc cold and heat, hunger and pain, toil and want,

plague and death could visit upon our human life. But none of these

things seemed to trouble him. So engrossed was he with questions he

called "durable," that all physical discomforts and distresses, with

their connected pleasures and desires and hopes and fears, were but

passing, minor incidents.

This undoubted fact in Lincoln's mental habitude is a signal and

significant factor, to be held in careful estimation in a final

judgment of Lincoln's character. Ethics, pure ethics, themes that

dealt with realms where man is truly responsible and truly free, were

his supreme concern from first to last. And so it comes to pass that

the problem, which for him is truly fundamental and ultimate, passes

wholly by at once all that burden of so-called evil, in the fear and

hurt and mystery of things inflexible, and clings fast hold of things

alone that are responsible and free.

Touching the theme of this chapter, and touching also this last

inaugural, the following letter, written March 15, 1865, to Thurlow

Weed, already cited and considered once, deserves a bit of heed

again:--

Every one likes a compliment. Thank you for yours on my little

notification speech and on the recent inaugural address. I

expect the latter to wear as well as--perhaps better

than--anything I have produced; but I believe it is not

immediately popular. Men are not flattered by being shown that

there is a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them.

To deny it however, in this case, is to deny that there is a

God governing the world. It is a truth which I thought needed

to be told, and, as whatever of humiliation there is in it

falls most directly on myself, I thought others might afford

for me to tell it.

Truly yours,

A. LINCOLN.

This letter shows what Lincoln judged to be the secret of this

inaugural's permanent hold on human approbation. It was its humble

testimony to the fact that, amidst and above the errors and sins, the

struggles and failures of men and Nations, there is a world-governing

God. Here opens a theme that is truly sovereign and ultimate.

The last inaugural reveals that Lincoln was closely pondering two

incongruous themes: the bitter career of slavery; and the just rule of

God.

Touching the first--the fact of human slavery--whatever other men

might think, in Lincoln's view it was always abhorrent, a primary

immorality. He was naturally "anti-slavery." Even in this address,

guarded against all malice, and suffused with charity, he could not

forbear from saying:--"It may seem strange that any men should dare

to seek a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from other

men's faces." Man's right to live was in his thought primal. That

right carried with it the right to enjoy the bread that his own hands

had earned. Such a privilege was the central element in human

happiness. Such felicity was elemental. Such freedom and such joy were

the simplest common boon in our common, earthly lot.

The institution of slavery blasted that joy, denied that liberty,

robbed that right to life. This annihilated hope. It ranked men with

brutes. Such a ravaging of human desires and human rights Lincoln

judged, from the side of the slave-holder, a paramount crime; and from

the side of the slave, an insufferable curse. The terrible enormity of

both crime and curse was measured in Lincoln's estimation by the

enormity of the war. Viewed any way, that war was the indication and

register of the wrong done, and the wrong borne, by men in the

centuries of slavery. Arrogance and insolence, ruthlessness and

cruelty, dishonesty and faithlessness, luxury and lust, trailed all

along its path. That, in a Republic dedicated to liberty, men would go

to war and fight to the death with their fellow-citizens in defense

and perpetuation of tyranny and bonds, gave evidence to the strange

and obdurate perverseness involved and nurtured in the mood and

attitude of men that were bent on holding fellow men as slaves. The

existence of such an institution in any land Lincoln deemed a national

calamity; in a free Republic he felt it to be a heaven-braving anomaly

and affront. It was a flagrant evil, bound to bring down woe.

But in the deep entanglements of history this baleful institution had

to be condoned, even in this land made sacred to the free. Inbred

within the Nation in the Nation's very birth, that it be sheltered

within the Nation's life became a national responsibility. From this

firm bond Lincoln himself could not escape. In the Constitution that

Lincoln swore to uphold, when first he took the presidency, slavery

was sheltered, if not entrenched. As chief magistrate of the whole

Republic, however obnoxious slavery might be, he had the obnoxious

thing to protect. This he freely admitted, and explicitly declared in

his first inaugural.

Here was the beginning of his final, moral debate. How should he

morally justify himself in defending what he morally abhorred? That

this dual attitude should be assumed he seemed fully to concede. This

shows most clearly, and in its sharpest moral contradiction, when, in

his first inaugural, he volunteered to permit an amendment to the

Constitution, enacting, as the supreme law of the land, that slavery

should remain thereafter undisturbed forever. How he brought his mind

to take that stand has never been made clear. He said in that

connection that such an amendment was in effect already Constitutional

law. But previous to that date he had always pledged and urged

forbearance with slavery, on the understanding that such forbearance

was only for a time; that, as foreseen and designed by the men who

framed the Constitution, slave holding was always to be so handled, as

to be always on the way to disappear. It is not easy to see how a man,

to whom the practice of holding slaves was so morally repellent, could

participate in making it perpetual. One could wish that just this

problem had been frankly handled under Lincoln's pen. It must have

been plainly before his thought. And the words of few men would be

more worthy of careful record and review than deliberate words from

Lincoln upon this world-perplexing query:--how adjust one's thoughts

and acts to a moral evil, that inveterately endures, and is never

atoned? But in fact that amendment was never carried through. One of

the fruits of slavery was its rash unwisdom at just this juncture.

Still, though the amendment lapsed, slavery held on. And slaveholders

tightened their resolution to retain their rights in slaves, or rend

the Union. This precipitated war. This may seem to have doubled

Lincoln's problem, slavery and national dissolution. Standing at the

apex of national responsibility, he had to bear the hottest brunt of

the physical anguish, the mental perplexity, and the moral sorrows of

a war waged by a slave-holding South in militant secession. But in

reality, in his thought, the two were one. All turned on slavery. This

was the burning blemish in the Constitution. This was the intent of

the war. This was the burden on his heart. Here was a load too

grievous for any man to bear. It bore preponderantly on him. And yet,

as regards any personal and conscious desire or deed, he was through

and in it all conscious within himself of innocence. His trial and

sorrow were without cause. How now, in his soberest thought, was all

this moral confusion explained? Hating slavery with all his heart,

innocent all his life of any inclination to rob another man of

liberty, but pledged and sworn to shelter slavery under the arm of his

supreme and free authority, how could he prove himself consistent

morally?

Here emerge the profoundest thoughts of Lincoln on the ways of God.

And herein appears his contribution to a theodicy--a vindication of

God's moral honor, where his moral government seems slack. How can

thoughtful men conceive and hold that God is just, when such injustice

and disaster are allowed at all, much less for centuries; in any

corner of the earth, much less where heaven's favor seems to dwell?

Upon this subduing theme this last inaugural gives us Lincoln's most

explicit words. Of God's personal being, and of his personal care,

this address shows Lincoln to be perfectly assured. This was his

standing attitude and confidence. Throughout his years in the

presidency this trust had seemed unwavering. Indeed, by repeated,

almost unconscious attestations, it was his stablest trust. Some of

his utterances are tender and touching testimonials to his belief that

God rules in his own personal career. But mainly his confessions of

belief in the Providence of God are connected with national concerns.

He did joyfully, almost jubilantly believe that this Republic was

under God's special watch and care. His own hope for our national

future well-being and honor rested mainly, we must judge, upon the

tokens he thought he could trace in our thrilling and inspiring

history of the divine controlling care. At bottom it was this faith

that underlay all his patriotism. That the fundamental affirmations of

our Constitution were rescripts and digests from the will and word of

God was the lively ground and unfailing confirmation of his pure

devotion to his Nation's honor and weal. More than aught in all the

world beside, it was this religious faith that steadied and girded his

will through all those strenuous days.

It is just here that this study of a theodicy sets in. Above all his

former thoughts about himself, about his land, about the clash of

right and wrong; above all thoughts of other men, and other times;

even above his own and his opponents' former prayers and faith, he

lifts new thoughts in new reverence and new docility towards God.

Still naught but slavery in his theme--its undeniable iniquity; its

strange, prolonged permission; his own, and all other men's

responsibility; its unavoidable entail in penalty; and the divine,

enduring terms of new liberty and peace. Here are themes and fixed

realities that seem eternally to disagree. Can they ever all be

morally harmonized? Could even God enlighten that dark past? Could his

own historic acts be morally unified? Nothing he had ever done with

slavery, not even its utter elimination in his act of freedom, had

ever been done, he explicitly affirmed, on moral grounds. Yet slavery,

and by his own hand, was indeed undone. But even so the spirit of the

South was still invincible, and war was holding on. What indeed could

be the thoughts and plans of God?

To begin with, he confesses both North and South and all the land gone

wrong. This is the first component in his theodicy. Neither North nor

South, not even in the act of prayer, had walked with God, nor found

the truth, nor gained its wish. All thoughts of men, in the righteous

rule of God, were being overturned. This confession verges near to

worship, acclaiming, as it does, the Almighty's designs; and venturing

as it does, to trace and reproduce the Almighty's thoughts.

Here is seen how genuine is the moral earnestness in Lincoln's earnest

thoughtfulness. As though by a very instinct, his form of words

betrays his reverence. He refrains from dogmatism. He refrains even

from affirmation. He knows he is venturing upon a daring flight. He is

assuming to conjoin together into a moral unison that bitter sample of

the age-long cruelty of man against his brother, and the transcendent

sovereignty, the eternal justice, and the age-long silence of God. His

formula is a modest supposition. But within its modesty is an eye that

searches far.

He takes resort in one of the most trenchant declarations of Christ,

that momentous saying in his colloquy about the majesty and modesty of

a little child:--"Woe unto the world because of offenses! for it must

needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense

cometh."

In this colloquy Jesus seems to be moved by a tender impulse of

affectionate jealousy for the model beauty and grace of children. But

that tenderness is roused into one of the most terrific outbursts that

ever passed his lips. Little children are Christlike, Godlike, models

of the citizenship in the heavenly Kingdom. God is their jealous

guardian and defender. But Godlike, and of heavenly dignity though

they be, they are shy and frail. And men, as they grow gross and

impudent, abuse and offend their defenselessness. So things have to

be. But woe to such offenders. They were better tied to that mammoth

stone that the mule turns in the mill, and submerged in the abyss of

the deep of the great sea.

Here are four noteworthy elements:--a blended heavenly modesty and

majesty and innocence; an insufferable insolence; a trebly-terrible

penalty; and a strange and ominous necessity.

Over these four factors Lincoln's mind must have pondered long. Else

how explain their place in this inaugural? They form the foundation of

its central paragraph, and constitute its paramount argument; forming

alike a sobering admonition, and a humble ground of hope to all the

Nation, while at the same time holding aloft before the Nation's

thought the outline and substance of a stately vindication of the ways

of God. Evidently here is shapely fashioning in lucid speech of

Lincoln's ripest, surest thought. As one faces all its range, it seems

like the open sky, clear but fathomless. But its wisdom is doubly

sealed, and it bears a double claim to our respect. It shows the way

of Lincoln's mind, and the way of the mind of Christ. Not quickly will

any other thinker, however disciplined, traverse all its course. But

travel where he will in the mighty orbit of this inquiry, the modern

thinker, whatever his attainment, may find in this inaugural shining

indications that Lincoln's thought has gone before.

In this modest, far-searching supposition, transferred to American

history from the lips of Christ, Lincoln firmly grasps two solid

facts, elemental and universal in human life:--the beautiful modesty

of the meek; and the ugly arrogance in the strong. Strength and

weakness needs must be. These invite to rudeness and retreat. Then the

powerful overbear. The gentle are overborne. Offenses multiply. The

arrogant prevail. So must it be. But when the meek go down beneath the

wicked rudeness of the strong, then the Most High God, within whose

firm dominion both strong and weak share equally in all the privileges

and rights of liberty and law, sets over the offended one his shield,

and against the proud offender his sword, until pity and equity are

enthroned upon the earth again. Thus must it be. The meek must suffer.

Offenders must arise. But meekness is a heavenly, Godlike quality. And

as with God, so with his gentle little ones, patient gentleness will

be duly vindicated; rude arrogance will meet exact and fit rebuke; and

it will stand clear that strength and weakness may dwell together in

equity and liberty and peace.

This was the age-long moral process which Lincoln's eye discerned, and

the final issue which his expectation hailed. Then and therein his eye

discerned that all voices would be constrained to proclaim that in all

the moral world pity and equity were prevalent; that the least had

Godlike majesty; that humility gave to all the great their

courtliness; and that there was within all men a fadeless worth, far

outranking all other wealth.

But it is essential to note, not alone that Lincoln offers this in the

modest form of supposition; but that, as it leaves his lips, it

assumes the formula of a confession. Even the meek receive rebuke. The

gentlest have wandered also away from God. The problem has surpassed

us all. All have somewhat to learn from God. That arrogance may meet

its due, meekness must be yet more meek. It must needs be that

offenses come. Greater than all our wrong, and all our patience, is

the patient truth of God. This must be fully learned. It is under

wrong that wrong is made right. It is by meekness under arrogance that

arrogance is put to shame. It is by gentleness under rudeness that

rudeness is subdued. Offenses must needs be. Only in sacrificial

submission to its woe is the problem of evil ever resolved. Only thus

is the iniquity of the sin measured back upon the evil doer in a

symmetrical and equivalent rebuke.

But this is never to exculpate the offender or condone the offense.

Blood with the sword, drop for drop, must be meted out to the

slaveholder, as he meted out to the slave blood with the lash. All the

wealth that the bonds-man's lord has snatched from the toiling slave

must be yielded up. Over human scorn and greed and injustice and

cruelty hang unfailingly judgments that are true and righteous

altogether. Neither may they who are offended rail, nor they who

offend exult, over the divine delay. Nor when God's judgments fall may

they who are rebuked complain, nor they who are redeemed turn

exultation into arrogance. God's ways, and his alone are even, and

altogether true.

In thoughts like these Lincoln's final explanation of the ways of God

took form. In patient, repentant, adoring acquiescence his heart found

rest. His sorrows were profound, the sorrows of a patriot, kinsman to

all the sorrowful in the land. But he learned, however deep the

stroke, to forbear complaint. He received the sorrows of the war into

his own breast as heaven's righteous woe upon a haughty land, and as

heaven's discipline, teaching offenders the woe of their offense. So

his ways became coincident with the greater ways of God.

But in this moral explication of the war, and of all that the war

involves, two vastly different types of character persist. Lincoln's

solution of the enigma was in diametrical contrast with the views of

the leading spirits of the South. Not like him did they rate slavery,

nor conceive the war, nor understand the ways of God. How, now, could

Lincoln's view assimilate this obduracy in the South? This question

was clearly within the scope of Lincoln's thought, and its answer is

embraced in what has already been explained. Given an even penalty for

any sin, drop for drop with the avenging sword for blood with the

lash, and it is morally indifferent whether men rail, or whether they

acquiesce. The wrong is made right. The meek are redeemed. God's delay

is vindicated. Rudeness is reversed. The law is fully revealed. Man's

liberty is honored equally. Cruelty and unfairness are rebuked. The

gains of greed are scattered. Humblest men are crowned with eternal

dignity. To such, whether from the North or from the South, as with

melting sorrow and repentance welcomed to their bosoms this bitter

vindication of those primal rights, the sorrows of the war opened into

perennial peace. To such as repelled that proffered vindication, there

was in the sorrows of the war no alleviation. But for both,

nevertheless, and for both identically, the sorrows of the war

completed the moral vindication of a pure and Christlike equity and

friendliness. Thus all the ways of God, with the repentant and the

rebellious alike, are just and righteous altogether. This it is the

highest wisdom of men to acquiescently confess. To this even those who

rebelliously complain and rail must finally utterly submit.

And now one final matter remains--the idea and definition of

happiness. When men discuss the problem of evil in the universe, and

in its awful presence try to substantiate their confidence in the just

and friendly care of a transcendent Deity, one subtle touchstone

governs all they say:--What is their conception of human weal, and of

human woe? What in actual fact is deepest misery; and what is true

felicity? What do they assume man's highest good to be?

Just here is wide and multiform diversity. For illustration, let

thought recur to the contrast with which the topic of this chapter was

introduced. The idea of happiness that Goethe plants in Dr. Faust, and

the idea of happiness that ruled in Lincoln, are as separate as the

poles. And again, to keep within the setting of this inaugural, the

happiness towards which Lincoln strove, and in which his thought found

satisfaction, contrasted mightily with the happiness that informed the

aspirations of the leaders of the South. In their ideal, disdain of

all inferiors, delight in easy luxury, unequal acknowledgment of

rights, and a cruel stifling of the very rudiments of love, were mixed

and working mightily. Desiring and enjoying that Elysium, their

estimate of evil, their definition of the highest good, and their

programme for a final consummation under God could have no fellowship

with any final plan of thought approved by Lincoln.

What was Lincoln's highest happiness? This merits pondering anywhere;

but compellingly, where one tries to trace his views upon this

problem of theodicy; and yet still more when one conceives in this

inquiry how in Lincoln's life his ethics, his civics, and his religion

became coincident.

As this mighty problem resolves itself in Lincoln's mind, it

comprehends, along with his own welfare and worth and true

contentment, the equal dignity and happiness of every other man, and a

harmonious consonance with the being and decree of God. He sees that

scorn of any other man involves in time the scorner's shame. He sees

that robbery, however veiled, entails a debt whose perfect

reimbursement the slowest centuries will in their time exact. He sees

that any form of malice or unfriendliness, housed and fed in any

heart, will forfeit all the joy of gratitude, and fill that heart at

last with vindictive hate and bitterest loneliness. He sees that

fleshly joys, however lush and full, are marked and destined for a

swift and sure decay and weariness and vanity. And so, to realize the

perfect welfare, he commends to himself, and urges persuasively on all

other men, the sovereign good of an even justice, upheld within

himself, and so measured out to other men by the perfect standard of

God's self-respecting loyalty; of universal charity, eager everywhere

to minister universal benefit and peace; of supreme enthusiasm for

enduring life; and of a genuine humility, that shares all hope with

all the lowly, and trusts and honors God. In this fourfold, composite

unison of conscious, deathless life Lincoln sees the fairest goal, the

choicest boon, the highest good of man. In the presence of such a

standard, and before the outlook of such a hope Lincoln fashions his

theodicy.

Here then is the sum of Lincoln's thought upon this bewildering

theme:--

The evil that makes this earthly lot so dark and hard is man's wrong

to man; the awful sorrows of the meek; the offenses wrought upon the

helpless by the arrogant.

Before this mystery all other mysteries, however deep and terrible,

such as hurricanes and famine, plagues and death, may not be named.

This most sovereign evil is most clearly understood by those who are

oppressed. Their eyes pierce all its deeps. The rude are, by their

rudeness, blind.

The names of all who suffer and are still are registered on high for

full solace and redemption.

The register of the rudeness of the strong is also full, and destined

for full requital.

This redemption and requital shall be wrought by God.

In this redemption the ruthless may relent and share with all the meek

the full measure of all their sorrows, and so become partakers of all

their joy.

If ruthlessness persist, full requitals shall still descend, and in

the presence of God's even righteousness every mouth shall be stopped.

And so shall all evil be fully rectified.

HIS PIETY--THE PROBLEM OF RELIGION

Of all the words of Lincoln, evincing what he thought of God, none

outweigh the witness of this last inaugural. His reply to Thurlow Weed

regarding this address, referred to in another place, concerned

precisely just this point--the movements and the postulates of his

religious faith. As his ripened mind prepared and pondered and

reviewed this speech, there accrued within his consciousness a solemn

confidence that it was destined to become his most enduring monument;

and that as coming generations became aware of its outstanding

eminence, their eyes and hearts would fasten on those words about the

age-long, just, and overturning purposes of God. There was a

confession, so Lincoln felt assured, embracing and conjoining North

and South and East and West in an equal lowliness and shame; and

declaring and extolling God's divine supremacy over all the erring

waywardness and awful sufferings of men.

In this outpouring of his burdened heart before his God, and in the

presence of his fellowmen, there is evidence respecting Lincoln's

piety that courts reflection.

In the first place it indicates where Lincoln's sense of moral

rectitude found out its final bearings. Those purposes of God, as

Lincoln watched their operation, were working out the moral issues in

the awful wrong of age-long, unrequited toil in perfect equity. Strong

men had been wronging weaklings and inferiors. Helpless men had been

suffering untold sorrows. Indignant men had been crying out in hot and

hasty protest for full and speedy vengeance. Thoughtful men had been

tortured over weary, futile wonderings as to how the baffling problem

could be solved. Convulsions and confusion, which no arm or thought of

man could start or stay, were shaking and bewildering all the land.

But through and over all, as Lincoln came reverently to believe, a

sovereign God held righteous government; and out of all the baffling

turmoil he was, by simple righteousness, bringing perfect unison and

peace. The dark mystery of unrequited wrong was being illuminated by

the righteous majesty of complete requital. But in its full

perfection, it was a righteousness such as no mind of man devised. It

was the righteousness of God. Here Lincoln's moral sense was purified.

He was being taught of God. And this he clearly, humbly recognized.

And he took full pains in this address to give God all the praise. And

so his reverence towards Deity, and his affirmation touching

righteousness became identical. His sense of equity stood clothed in

piety.

In the second place, deep within the heart of these divine

instructions were such unveilings of God's high majesty, in his

steadfast reign above the passing centuries, as awoke on Lincoln's

lips such lowly adoration as attuned these words of Godly

statesmanship unto a psalm of praise. Here Lincoln's lowliness attains

consummate beauty. It is indeed an utterance of profound abasement. It

sinks beneath a strong rebuke. It acknowledges sad wanderings. It

accepts correction, and meekly takes God's guiding hand. It also sees

God's excellence, his high thoughts and ways, his irresistible

dominion, his moral spotlessness. And before that revelation he humbly

walks among his fellow-citizens, the lowliest of them all, confessing

that the reproach involved in what he said fell heaviest upon himself;

and therein, as a priest, leading the Nation in an act of worshipping

submissiveness before the Lord. Herein his comely, moral modesty

becomes an act and attitude of simple reverence towards God. And thus

his humility, just like his sense of righteousness, becomes apparelled

all about with Godly piety.

In the third place, this new discernment of the ways of God unfolds

profound discoveries of the divine evaluation of the diverse,

contending interests in our commingled life. It makes clear which

values fade, and which shine on eternally. The problem upon which

Lincoln had transfixed his eye was that two and one-half centuries of

hard and sad embondagement. By that gross sin men's deathless souls

were bought and sold for transient gain. Past all denial, therein was

moral wrong; else moral wrong had no existence. Its presence, every

time he faced it, tortured Lincoln, and made him miserable. And it

affronted heaven, overturning God's creative fiat of equality in all

mankind. It set and ranked brief creature comforts and desires above

the worth of heaven's image in a brother man. Every day it challenged

heaven's curse. But heaven's judgment was delayed. Long centuries

seemed to show that heaven was indifferent whether human souls or

carnal pleasures held superior rank.

But now, within the awful tumult of the war there boomed an undertone,

conveying unto all who had quick ears to hear, how God adjudged that

wrong. Upon dark battle clouds shone heavenly light, making newly

plain God's estimate of slaveholder and of slave; of joys and gains

that perish with their use, or await recall; and of souls that never

die. Those awful tidings told how ill-gotten, carnal wealth is

mortgaged under woe, and to the uttermost farthing must be released;

how offending men affront the Lord; and how all offenses must be

avenged. They made full clear how he who grasps at earthly gain by

wrecking human dignity commits a primal sin--a sin that time, though

it run into centuries, cannot obscure, or mitigate, or exempt from

strict review. They reveal infallibly that God's pure eye is on God's

image in every son of man; that supreme, far-seeing ends are lodged in

all the good but unenduring gifts wherewith God's wise and kindly

bounties crown man's toil; that a perfect moral government holds

dominion everywhere and forevermore; and that beneath this rule, in

God's own time, it shall come supremely clear that feasts and luxury

and fine attire, that wealth and lust and pampered flesh have lesser

worth and pass away, while souls of men may thrive, and gain, and win

new worth eternally.

As Lincoln's eye reviewed these centuries of reveling wealth, and

impoverished hearts; and beheld, in the issues of the resultant war,

that wealth laid waste, and those pure hearts fed and filled with hope

and liberty; his wisdom to compare all earth-born, mortal things with

things unperishing and heavenly passed through new birth, new growth

to new completeness in depth and clarity and confidence. And all this

gain to Lincoln, while wholly ethical, dealing as it did with the

wrong and right in human slavery and liberty, owed all its increase to

truer understanding of the Lord. Here again his ethics was purified by

faith. His faith was deeply ethical. As with his lowliness, and his

rectitude, so with his moral valuation of the human soul. It was

vestured all about with Godly piety.

In the fourth place, within the awful wreckage of the war, with which

this last inaugural is so absorbed, there were mighty attestations

that God was pitiful. That war could be defined as God's vengeance on

man's cruelty. Precisely this was what Lincoln grew to see. To all who

toiled in slavery the war had brought deliverance. Thereby the

stinging lash was snatched from human hands; the human heel was thrust

from human necks; the shameless havoc of the homes of lowly men was

stayed; countless sufferings were assuaged; and true blessedness was

restored to souls hard-wonted to unrelenting grief.

And this achievement was alone the Lord's. Of all down-trodden men

high heaven became the champion. In all its awful judgments he who

ruled that conflict remembered mercy. High above all the bloody

carnage of those swords there swayed the scepter of the All-pitiful.

In the very doom upon the strong God wrought redemption for the poor.

And so, as that dreadful wreckage brought to nothing all the pride in

the extorted gain of centuries, it published most impressively that he

who reigned above all centuries was All-compassionate.

To this great thought of God, Lincoln keyed this last inaugural. The

majesty of God's sovereign law of purity and righteousness was robed

in kindliness. Into this high truth ascended Lincoln's patriot hope.

Let men henceforth forswear all cruelty, and follow God in showing all

who suffer their costliest sympathy. This was a mighty longing in his

great heart, as he prepared this speech. Before God's vindication of

the meek, let the merciless grow merciful. Yea, let all the land, for

all the land had taken part in human cruelty, confess its wrong,

accept God's scourge without complaint, thus opening every heart to

God's free, healing grace, and binding all the land in leagues of

friendliness. Let men, like God, be pitiful. Like God, let men be

merciful. In mutual sympathy let all make clear how men of every sort

may yet resemble God, the All-compassionate. This was the trend and

strength of Lincoln's gentleness, as it stood and wrought in full

maturity beneath God's discipline, within this last inaugural. It was

nothing but an echo and reflection of the gentleness of God. And so,

in his benignity, as in his rectitude and lowliness and purity, he

stood in this address attired in Godly piety.

So Lincoln's ethics can be described, in his ripened harvest-tide of

life. So it stands in this inaugural. It is alike a living code for

daily life, and a religious faith. It is born and taught of God. It is

Godliness without disguise, upon the open field of civic

statesmanship. It is a prophet's voice, in a civilian's speech. It is

the seasoned wisdom of a man familiar equally with the field of

politics, and the place of prayer. It shows how God may walk with men,

how civic interests deal with things divine. It proves that a civilian

in a foremost seat may without apology profess himself a man of God,

and gain thereby in solid dignity. It shows how heaven and earth may

harmonize.

But this manly recognition in Lincoln's mind of the inner unison of

ethics and religion was in no respect ephemeral, no careless utterance

of a single speech, no flitting sentiment of a day. It was the

fruitage of an ample season's growth. It was royally deliberate, the

issue of prolonged reflection, the goal of mental equipoise and rest

to which his searching, balanced thought had long conduced. It was in

keeping with an habitual inclination in his life.

This proclivity of his inwrought moral honesty to find its norm and

origin, its warrant and secure foundation in his and his Nation's God

must have taken shape controllingly within those silent days that

intervened between his first election in 1860, and the date of his

inaugural oath in 1861. Else, in those brief addresses on his way to

Washington, that marvelous efflorescence upon his honest lips of an

ideal heavenward expectancy is unaccountable. In those dispersed and

fugitive responses, from Springfield to Independence Hall and

Harrisburg, there breathed such patriotic sentiments of aspiration and

anxiety as owed their ardor, their excellence, and their very loyalty

to his eager trust and hope, that all his deeds as president should

execute the will of God. Throughout his presidential term this wish to

make his full official eminence a facile instrument of God, attains in

his clear purpose and intelligence a solid massiveness, all too

unfamiliar in the craft of politics.

The witness to this, in a letter to A. G. Hodges of April, 1864, is

most explicit and unimpeachable. This letter is a transcript of a

verbal conversation, is written by request, and is designed distinctly

to make the testimony of his mortal lips everywhere accessible and

permanent. Its major portion aims to give his former spoken words a

simple repetition. Then he says:--"I add a word which was not in the

verbal conversation." And upon this he appends a paragraph, as of

something he could not restrain, the while he was conscious perfectly

that what he was about to write was certain to be published and

preserved among all men. In this letter, so doubly, so explicitly

deliberate, he is defending his decree for unshackling the slave, by

the plea, that only so could the Union be preserved. In the appended

paragraph, he disclaims all compliment to his own sagacity, and

accredits all direction and deliverance of the Nation's life, in that

dark mortal crisis, to the hidden, reverend government of a kind and

righteous God.

If any man desires to probe and understand the thoughtfulness of

Lincoln's piety, let him place this doubly-pondered document and the

last inaugural side by side, remembering discerningly the date of

each, detecting how each conveys Lincoln's well-digested judgment of

unparalleled events, and not forgetting that Lincoln foresaw how both

those documents would be reviewed in generations to come. Here are

signs assuredly that Lincoln's lowliness and reverence, his

prayerfulness and trust, his steadfastness and gratitude towards God

had been balanced and illumined beneath the livelong cogitations of an

even, piercing eye. Pursuing and comparing every way the tangled,

complex facts of history; the endless strifes of men; the broken

lights in minds most sage; and the awful evidence, as the centuries

evolve, that greed and scorn and hate and falsity lead to woe; his

patient mind grows poised and clear in faith that a good and righteous

God is sovereign eternally. The truth he grasped transcended

centuries. His grasping faith transcends change.

But Lincoln's piety was not alone deep-rooted and deliberate, the

ripened growth of mixed and manifold experience. It was heroic. It was

the mainspring and the inspiration of a splendid bravery. This is

finely shown in the early autumn of 1864. On September 4 of that year

he wrote a letter to Mrs. Gurney, a Quakeress. This letter bears a

most curious and intimate resemblance to the central substance of the

last inaugural. It witnesses to his earnest research after the hidden

ways of God.

Within this search he sees some settled certainties. He sees that he

and all men are prone to fail, when they strive to perceive what God

intends. Into such an error touching the period of the war all had

fallen. God's rule had overborne men's hopes. God's wisdom and men's

error therein would yet be acknowledged by all. Men, though prone to

err, if they but earnestly work and humbly trust in deference to God,

will therein still conduce to God's great ends. So with the war. It

was a commotion transcending any power of men to make or stay. But in

God's design it contained some noble boon. And then he closes, as he

began, with a tender intimation of his reverent trust in prayer. The

whole is comprehended within this single central sentence, a sentence

which involves and comprehends as well the total measure of the last

inaugural:--"The purposes of the Almighty are perfect, and must

prevail, though we erring mortals may fail to accurately perceive them

in advance."

Here is a confession notable in itself. It would be notable in any

man, and at any time. But when one marks its date, its notability is

enhanced impressively. For Lincoln was traversing just there some of

the darkest hours of his overshadowed life. It was the period

following his second nomination for the presidency in May of 1864, and

before the crisis of election in November of the same year. Central in

that season of wearisome and ominous uncertainty fell the failure of

the battle in the Wilderness under Grant; the miscarriage of his plans

for Richmond; and the awful carnage by Petersburg. Here fell also the

date of Early's raid, with its terrible disclosure of the helplessness

in Washington. Thereupon ensued, in unexampled earnestness, a

recrudescence of the great and widespread weariness with the war; and

of an open clamor for some immediate conference and compromise for

peace. Foremost leaders and defenders of the Union cause throughout

the North sank down despairingly, convinced that at the coming

national vote Lincoln was certain to meet defeat. At the same time the

army sorely needed new recruits; but another draft seemed desperate.

Then Lincoln's closest counselors approached his ears with heavy words

of hopelessness about the outlook in the Northern States confessedly

most pivotal.

In the midst of those experiences, on August 23, 1864, Lincoln penned

and folded away with singular care from all other eyes, these

following words:--

"This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable

that this administration will not be reelected. Then it will be my

duty to so co-operate with the president-elect as to save the Union

between the election and the inauguration, as he will have secured his

election on such ground that he cannot possibly save it afterward."

Those words were written eleven days before he penned the sentiments

cited above from the letter to the Quakeress. Between those two dates

the Democratic Convention of Chicago had convened and nominated

General McClellan.

Amid such scenes, in the presence of such events, and among such

prognostications, Lincoln chiseled out those phrases about the

perfect, hidden, but all-prevailing purposes of God. Here is Godly

piety in the sternest stress of politics. Here faith is militant, and

unsubdued. Its face is like a burnished shield. Its patience no

campaign outwears. In its constancy suggestions of surrender can find

no place. It was forged upon a well-worn anvil, under mighty strokes,

and at a fervent heat. Fires only proved its purity. It was fighting

battles quite as sore as any fought with steel. It was the deathless,

truceless courage of a moral hero. It was pure and perfect fortitude.

Its struggle, its testing, and its victory had not been wrought on

earthly battle-fields. Its strife had been with God. More than with

the South, Lincoln's controversy had been with the Most High. He

wrestled with the heavenly angel through the night, like the ancient

patriarch. Like the ancient saint, he bore the marks of grievous

conflict. And like him of old, he gained his boon. He achieved to see

that God and perfect righteousness were in eternal covenant.

Such was Lincoln's piety. His view of God gave God an absolute

pre-eminence. In Lincoln's day, as in the day when Satan tempted

Christ, vast areas of human life seemed to give all faith in God's

control the lie; and men in multitudes abjured such futile confidence.

But Lincoln kept his faith in God, and truth, and love, and

immortality. And in that faith he judged his trust, and hope, and

prayer to be preserved on high inviolate. There above, he firmly held,

were lodged eternally the perfect pattern and assurance of full

rectitude and charity. And in that understanding he held on earth

unyieldingly to the perfect image of that heavenly norm, in a pure and

acquiescent loyalty and love. Thus discerningly, submissively,

triumphantly did Lincoln's heart aspire to unify an honest earthly

walk with a living faith in God.

One word remains. As Lincoln makes confession of his faith in this

inaugural, extolling God supremely, and therein announcing to his

fellowmen the groundwork of his morality, it comes to view that the

qualities held fast in Lincoln's heart, and the attributes of God have

marvelous affinity. The equity he adores in God he cherishes within

himself, and recommends to all. God's estimate of the incomparable

value of a human soul, when set beside the variable treasures men

exchange, Lincoln's judgment reverently approves, and as reverently

adopts, establishing thereby a standard quality in his conscious life.

God's tender pity for the poor, hidden deep in his divine rebuke of

slavery, and hidden deeper still within his mercy for all who help to

bear its awful sacrifice, melts and molds the heart of Lincoln to the

same compassion. And to the very outlines of God's majesty, as his

sovereign purposes are all unrolled and all fulfilled throughout the

earth, Lincoln's soul conforms ideally, in its humble vision and

expression of devout, discerning praise.

Here is something passing wonderful. Between a fragile, mortal man and

the eternal God, when each is limned in terms of ethics, appears a

deep and high agreement. There is enthroned in each a common

righteousness. In each, the laws of mercy are the same. In each are

constituted principles inwrought with immortality. And within the

eternal interplay of reverence and majesty between mankind and God,

there is a fellowship in dignity that proves the holy Maker and his

moral creature to be immediately akin. And so the mind and will of

Lincoln, in this their moral plenitude, may interpret and recommend,

may apprehend and execute the eternal purposes of God. This high

commission Lincoln humbly, firmly undertook. And in his commanding

life there is a mighty hint, not easy to silence or erase, that

Godliness and ethics, which have been set so often far apart, were

eternally designed for unison.

HIS LOGIC--THE PROBLEM OF PERSUASION

In the study of Lincoln's ethics it is not enough to describe it as an

ideal scheme of thought, however notable its range and poise and

insight may be seen to be. As Lincoln's character stands forth in

national eminence among our national heroes, he figures as a man of

deeds, a man of powerful influence over the actions of other men, a

man of masterly exploits. However truly it may be affirmed that

multitudes of adjutants reinforced his undertakings at every turn and

on every side, it still holds also true, and that a truth almost

without a parallel, that his sheer personal force was the single,

undeniable, over-mastering energy that shaped this Nation's evolution

through an outstanding epoch in its career. It was primarily out of

those prolific and exhaustless energies, stored and mobilized within

himself, that he rose, as though by nature, to be national chief

executive. It was straight along the line of his far-seeing vision and

advice that Congress and the Nation were guided to accept and

undertake that terrible enterprise of war. In that great struggle he

came to be in firm reality, far more than any other man, the

competent, effective commander-in-chief. He was chief councilor in a

cabinet whose supreme function dealt singly with matters wholly

executive. It was by the almost marvelous unison of wisdom and

decision resident in him that Congress and the Nation were day by day

induced to hold with an almost preternatural inflexibility to the

single, sovereign issue of the strife. When, after four years of

unexampled bitterness, multitudes were wearying of all patience in

further hostilities, it was his personal momentum and weight, more

than any other influence, that held the prevailing majority of the

national electorate to predetermine by their free ballots that, at

whatever cost of further war, the principles of liberty, equality, and

national integrity should be placed above all possible challenge or

assault forever.

And in the period before the war and before his elevation to the

presidency this same executive efficiency, this singular capacity to

mold the views and stir the motives of other men, was likewise in

continual demonstration. Discerning how supreme a factor in our

American affairs was the power of public sentiment, and observing how

that power was being utilized to undermine the national tranquillity,

he challenged and overthrew single handed the leading master of the

day in the field of political management and debate. Trusting in the

same confidence, and pursuing the same device, he appealed to the

civic consciences of men in the open field of free debate, by the

single instrument of reasoned speech, until, by his persuading

arguments, he consolidated into effective harmony and led to national

victory a party of independent voters, with watchword, platform, and

experience all untried. In all the process by which that new-formed

party gained access to national pre-eminence it was Lincoln's

governing influence that went ahead and gave the movement steadiness.

And through it all he vitally inspired a Nation, now undivided and

indivisible, with a prevailing, corporate desire, that all succeeding

days and all beholding Nations are now deeming, for any stable civic

life, the true enduring ideal.

And all of this was compassed and set afoot within scarcely more than

one decade. In October of 1854 at Peoria, he consciously took up his

strenuous enterprise. In April of 1865, he laid it down and ceased to

strive. Single handed he undertook the task. Through all its progress

the weight of that one hand was undeniably preponderant. And when that

hand relaxed, the task that its release left trembling was one that

stirred a mighty Nation's full solicitude.

Here is something marvelous. These affirmations, as thus far made,

seem certainly overdrawn, and totally incredible. An agency and an

efficiency of national dimensions, introducing and completing an epoch

in our national history; but an agent and an outfit almost defying

inventory, his personality seeming in every phase so simple and

without prestige, and all his ways and means seeming so unpromising

and plain; the while through all his course he was confronting a

resistance and a hostility whose impulse was rooted in centuries of

firm and proud dominion, and whose onset made a Nation tremble. How

can such stupendous affirmations be clothed with credibility? Was it

indeed the hand of Lincoln that turned the Nation from its mistaken

path? Was it Lincoln's will that reinaugurated our predestined course?

Was it Lincoln's overcoming confidence that established in the land

again a good assurance that its integrity was indestructible?

If questions such as these were addressed to Lincoln himself for his

reply, we may be sure his answer, like all his ways, would contain a

beautiful mingling of modesty and confidence. Heeding well the mortal

crisis, and hearing the Nation's call for help, he would not refuse,

when bidden and appointed, to take his stand alone at the very apex of

the strain, knowing well that the burdens to be borne would be greater

than tasked the strength of even Washington; and affirming as he

advanced warily to his post, that in his appointment many abler men

had been passed by. But then he would re-affirm and urge again all the

arguments of his great addresses and messages and debates, beginning

with that initial trumpet peal in Peoria in 1854, and not concluding

until, after all had been rehearsed and reavouched, he recited again

with prophetic earnestness this last inaugural. And throughout all

his devout re-affirmation of all the spoken and written appeals to

which his patriotic mind gave studied form and utterance in that

intense decade, a discerning ear could distinguish in every paragraph

profound and penetrating attestations, such as these:--This is a

mighty Nation. Its future is far more vast. Its present perplexities

are intricate. It has been misled. It needs most sane direction. I am

stationed at her head. Difficulties environ me. My burdens outweigh

Washington's. But this land was conceived in liberty. It was dedicated

to be free. Here all are peers. God's hand has been on our history.

Our destiny enfolds the highest human weal. God is with us still.

Human hearts are with us. Here is overcoming power. Despite my frailty

and poor descent, I will never leave my place. I see how other men

prevail with multitudes by personal appeal. This shall be my

confidence. Though I have no name, though there is perhaps no reason

why I should ever have a name, I can plead. I can plead with men. It

is a Godlike art. Grave as is my problem, this is its grand solution.

I will study to persuade. I will take refuge in the mighty power of

argument. I will confer, and conciliate, and convince. I will employ

my reason to the full. I will address, and assail, and enlist the

reason of other men. I will put all my trust in speech, in ordered,

reasoned speech. I will arrange all my convictions and hopes and plans

in arguments. I will approach men's wills with momentous propositions.

I will open a path to human hearts through open ears by my living

voice. I will make righteousness vibrate vocally. To men's very faces

will I rebuke their wrong. Argument, pure argument shall be my only

weapon, my only agency, my only way. By naked argument, honest and

unadorned, I will undertake to turn this Nation back to rectitude. I

will rest all my confidence in truth, truth unalloyed, abjuring every

counterfeit and all hypocrisy. It is truth's primal and mightiest

function to persuade. Through persuasion alone can freemen be induced

by freemen to yield a free obedience. The heavenly art of persuading

speech shall be for me the first and the last resort. By this most

comely instrument shall my most eager and ambitious wish gain access

to all this peopled land, and win vindication through all coming time.

Something such as this, as one must judge from Lincoln's practice, was

Lincoln's science and evaluation of the art of logical appeal. By

every token Lincoln was a master of assemblies. Upon a public platform

he was in his native element. There he won his place and name.

Whatever any one may say about Lincoln's reputation or Lincoln's

power, that power and that reputation were mined and minted in the

very act and exercise of reasoning appeal. As iron sharpeneth iron, so

he, in the immediate presence of audiences of freeborn men, assembled

from his very neighborhood, shaped and edged and tempered his total

influence. It was when upon the hustings, and while engaged in

pleading speech, that he commanded the Nation's eye and gained the

Nation's ear. And once advanced to national pre-eminence, it was still

by logical persuasion that the Nation's deference was retained.

What now was the inner nature of Lincoln's arguments? What was the

fiber, what the texture in the composition of his thought that made

its arguments so convincing? What was the structure, and what the

carrying power in his appeals that made their logic so prevailing, so

compelling, so enduring?

To find an answer to this inquiry let men review yet once again this

last inaugural. Here is a product of Lincoln's mind whose single

motive is persuasion, whose momentum does not diminish, and which

seems destined to be adjudged by history a master's masterpiece. What

does this short speech contain that gave it in 1865, and gives it yet,

an influence almost magical?

There can be but one possible reply. The factor in that address that

makes its influence so imperial is the moral majesty of the argument

in its major paragraph. That paragraph enshrines an argument. Though

fashioned in the mode and aspect of a reverent supposition, the steady

pace and import of its ordered thought is such as every ordered mind

admits to be compelling. But in substance and in structure that

argument is purely ethical. All turns upon that cited, undoubted fact

of age-long, unrequited toil. Upon that stern actuality hinges all the

arrangement of the thought. Its phrases move with rhythmic fluency;

but they bind together inseparably a Nation's duty, sin, and doom; not

omitting to enfold, with a marvel of moral insight, an almost hidden

intimation of a healing cure.

Here are weighty thoughts, thoughts that press and urge, thoughts that

carry and communicate the gravity of centuries. They contain an

interpretation. They clarify and illuminate. And they all co-ordinate.

They combine and operate together to enforce agreement. They

demonstrate that tyranny breeds a baleful progeny of guilt and woe;

that robbery binds the robber under debt to the full measure of his

rapine; that such guilt can never be forgotten; that such a woe is

pitiless; that the centuries, though slow and mute, are attentive and

impartial witnesses; and that God's even judgments are over all, and

are altogether just. This is all the content and all the purport of

this paragraph, and of all this speech: an exposition of American

slavery and of its resultant civil war, in moral terms, before the

moral bar of every hearer's conscience, and beneath the thought of

God's eternal righteousness; all turning upon the self-evident verity

that unpaid toil is wrong. In this prolific affirmation is the fertile

germ of all that Lincoln ever thought or undertook in that supreme

decade. Here are enfolded all his axioms and postulates and

propositions. By interlocking its multiform, infolded, self-evident

certitudes he framed all his arguments. Its overflowing, resistless

demonstrations in active human affairs formed all his corollaries.

Toil unrequited is a moral wrong. It cries to heaven, and shall be

avenged. In this avenging, if we but see our day, there is an open

door to join with heaven, and transmute its vengeance into recompense

and reconciliation.

This was Lincoln's logic. It was purely ethical. This was the

master-key to his transcendent statesmanship. Here was the secret of

his political efficiency. Thus, and in no other way, he swayed the

Nation. Himself a Godlike man, and discerning in every other man the

same Godlikeness; trusting his own soul's honesty, and appealing to

honest manhood in all other men; he took his stand beside all the

oppressed, and against all extortion; and voiced and urged and trusted

the sovereign moral plea for perfect charity, and perfect equity for

all.

But Lincoln's logic was interlaced with history. All through his

debates and addresses are woven the facts and sequences of our

national career. And to these connected events he clung in all his

arguments, as a man clings to the honor of his home. There was in

those events an argument. To tamper with that history, discrediting

its sure occurrences, or distorting their right connection, was in his

conception a downright immorality.

But mere historical exactitude was not the motive of Lincoln's appeal

to past events. The momentum of our past was for Lincoln's use

entirely moral. Here upon this continent, as he conceived our great

experiment, was being tried, in the presence and on behalf of all

mankind, a government in which the governed were the governors. Here

men are inquiring and being taught what true manhood can create,

uphold, and consummate upon a continental scale, in mutual equality.

Here men are schooled for independence. Here men may dare to fashion

their own law. Here men are nurtured towards full fraternity. Here men

are forced to heed the civic necessity of being fair. Here a boundless

impending future has to be kept steadily in view. Here the God of

Nations is teaching a Nation that he should be revered. Here, in brief

and in sum, men are being disciplined to know and cherish the

rudiments of civic character.

Thus Lincoln interpreted the meaning of our national history. In his

rating, its total purport was ethical. Any logical exposition of our

national career, if its statements are historically exact, will carry

moral consequences. If the logical sequence of any statement of our

historical course is morally perverse, then that statement of our

history is historically untrue. Thus Lincoln's jealous zest for

truthful history, for truthful argument, and for true morality became

coincident.

But Lincoln's logic was his own. His zeal for history was a freeman's

zest. His arguments were not the cold reflection of a borrowed light.

They were the fervid affirmations of his own convictions, compacted

into reasoned unison, out of the indivisible constituents of his very

manhood's honor. When in his appeal his soul most glowed, when the

ordered sequence and pressure of his thought waxed irresistible, he

was simply opening to his auditors the balanced burden of his honest

heart. Then genuine manhood became articulate. Then pure honor found

a voice. Then eloquence became naught but plain sincerity. Then

arguments became transparent, and affirmations convinced like axioms.

Then demonstrations moved. Assertions did persuade. Then the very

being of the orator took possession of the auditor in an intelligent

fraternity. True, indeed, a solid South, and multitudes besides,

derided his postulates, contemned his arguments, and scorned

derisively his tenderest appeals. But better than they themselves he

understood their hearts; and holding fast forever his deeper faith and

confidence, he maintained his reasoning and his plea, knowing surely

that in some future day their chastened hearts would vindicate his

words.

But in all of this exposition of Lincoln's logical force and skill

there has been no mention of a syllogism. Did Lincoln then neglect

that famous formula of argumentative address? To this natural inquiry

it must be replied that Lincoln understood right well the fine utility

of this strict norm of formal thought. Indeed, he had taken special

pains to perfect his skill in just that form of argument. To the

logical click in a well-formed syllogism his inner ear was well

attuned. Repeatedly he summoned in its aid. An excellent illustration

may be seen in his rejoinder to Douglas at Galesburg in September of

1858. But Lincoln's confidence was not in syllogistic forms, however

trim. His trust was in his moral axioms. Unaided, naked truth; truth

whose total urgency is self-contained, whose perfect verity is

self-displayed, and whose proudest triumphs are self-achieved; pure

truth, shaped forth in speech of absolute simplicity; truth that works

directly in the human mind, like sunshine in the eye, was Lincoln's

handiest and most common instrument in an argument. Thus he sought to

so use reason as to awaken conscience and arouse the will. And thus

his arguments prevailed.

This was Lincoln's logic. It was the orderly exposition of his honest

manhood, pleading with the honest intelligence of every other man for

his free assent. Himself a freeman whom God made free, and greeting in

every other man an equal dignity; with loyalty to himself and with

charity for all; with Godly deference and unfailing hope; he urged and

argued from his own true manhood, and from no other grounds, with a

logic that no true freeman can ever refute: that in this heaven

favored land, and for the welfare of all the world, these ethical

foundations of all true civic welfare be kept unmoved forever. In such

a moral character, and in such a moral argument is this expanding

Nation's only pride and sure defense. At any modern Round Table of

civic knights Lincoln is true King Arthur, and his persuading speech

the true Excalibur.

HIS PERSONALITY--THE PROBLEM OF PSYCHOLOGY

When Plato took his pen to write his dialogues; when Michael Angelo

took his chisel to fashion his Moses; when Raphael took his brush to

paint his Madonna; they were designing to make their several ideals of

personality pre-eminently beautiful and distinct. And each artist in

his way won a signal, a supreme success. Moses, Socrates, the Madonna,

are shining revelations of human personality. Success herein is the

height of highest art.

But what is personality? It seems an eternal secret, despite all human

search and art. Yet its secret is everywhere felt instinctively to be

of all quests the most supreme. By every avenue men are trying to

reach and reveal its hiding place. Our goal is nothing less than the

human soul. And upon this inquest the eyes and instruments of our

inspection are being sharpened with a determination and zeal hitherto

unparalleled.

Suppose this quest be turned to Lincoln. Surely here is a human

person. He stands enough apart in his preeminence to be pre-eminently

distinguishable and distinct; while yet his face beams near enough to

be as familiar and accessible as our most accessible and familiar

friend. For surely, despite all his proneness towards a musing

solitude, Lincoln, of all Americans, displays through all his

published statements, and in all his public life, an instructive and

unstudied openness and unreserve. Just here his marvelous power and

influence lie. He practiced no concealment. He held communion with all

his fellowmen. Herein consists his honesty.

Now may not an honest scholarship, honestly conceiving that of all

investigations our pursuit for the ways and dwelling place of

personality is easily supreme, as honestly believe that in the open,

waiting heart of Lincoln that supreme inquiry may find its supreme

reward? Surely here is promise of a labor that will pay. In Lincoln's

personality is a vein, a mine whose worth and sure utility no mineral

wealth can parallel.

What in very truth, what in solid fact, what in absolute reality is

Lincoln's personality? For undeniably in facing and regarding him, we

confront and apprehend a human life, compact and self-controlled, the

native home and throne of all the conscious and self-directed energies

that are ever resident within and representative of any man. If human

personality ever took evident and conscious shape and form, then

Lincoln is an open and easily approachable illustration of its

embodiment. Upon no object may a student of psychology more easily or

more wisely fix his eye than upon the soul of Lincoln, when it

thrills in resolute, intense endeavor, as in this last inaugural.

For one thing, that Lincoln should be the specimen of psychology

commanding any student's choice is suggested by Lincoln's notability.

Here is an exhibit in no way ordinary. He has secured the attention of

us all. And the attention of us all is athrill with mighty interest.

However it has come about, in some way, as a human personality, he

illustrates a type, he presents a sample so powerful and positive as

to stand before all eyes almost alone, while also so attractive as to

be by everyone beloved. This fact may fairly beget assurance from the

start that in any heedful search for the very substance of human

personality, an interior and intimate fellowship with Lincoln may show

us closely and clearly where it dwells, and what it is. For from the

start it stands plain that Lincoln's hold upon our hearts is in its

controlling co-efficients purely personal. That hold clings fast and

spreads afar, indifferent to space, or time, or even death. His

influence over us, so gladly welcomed and so clearly felt, is no wise

physical or temporal. It cannot be handled or weighed. It is personal.

Herein is high encouragement. And that in this sense of our response

to his enduring sway should be enfolded on our part, a kindred, pure,

enduring delight attests convincingly that within Lincoln's

personality and our own there is something mutual. Within the thing we

search and us who seek there is profound affinity. In this our

encouragement may heighten, and that with solid soberness, unto hope.

And then the scene of this his last inaugural is all aglow with

promise. For here if anywhere Lincoln's personality may be seen

engaged in the ripeness of his finished discipline, and the fullness

of his manhood's strength. The scene itself swells full of meaning;

and Lincoln's part and contribution fix and fill the center of its

significance. Surely if anything within that scene is plain to see and

localize, it is Lincoln's own identity. The living Lincoln is surely

there, wholly unreserved and unconcealed. There Lincoln's personality

is in fullest play, an evident and mighty revelation, plainly felt and

seen.

But it is only in the action that the actor comes to view; only in his

words does the thinker stand revealed. Here and thus, and nowhere else

or otherwise, is Lincoln's personality unveiled. And yet herein,

within the compass of this speech, Lincoln unlades a burden of such

grave concern, and unrolls a problem of such profound complexity as

could nowhere come to birth and utterance but in a mighty human heart.

In the vastness of that problem and anxiety can be gauged the vastness

of the measure of that heart. Here open into immediate view at once an

object and a method of research, fitted at once to challenge and

appall the bravest student's heart. But once its summons is

distinguished, it is irresistible.

One thing that meets the student, as he seeks the speaker in this

speech, is its witness to his titanic and pathetic toil. The words he

utters are the message of a laborer far forespent, voiced with mingled

weariness and hope, well towards the sunset of a weary day. The sun

had been fiercely hot. The field had been full of thorns. And through

the arid hours he had tasted little food, or rest, or joy. No

husbandman ever chose his seed or tilled his ground at greater cost of

patient care. None ever had to bend his frame to ruder weather, or

battle against more malicious and persistent pests. And all the agony

of that toil had been wrought through within the anguish of his mind.

In exactest and exacting thought he had engrossed and consumed the

full measure of his full strength. On all he had to bear and do he

pondered mightily. No mortal ever pondered more intently on all that

mortals ever have to meet. In this inaugural scene the soul of Lincoln

is straining at its full strength. No portion of his personal life is

idling. If a student's hand is truly deft, he can feel, as he fingers

the throbbing life of this address, the pulse beats of a full heart.

And within the grasp and compass of that heart are revolving vast and

strenuous themes. The soul of Lincoln is dealing with a Nation's

destiny. His speech is borne upon his single voice; but with that

single voice he pleads for millions; and its vibrations carry through

a continent, as a national oracle. Expounder and defender of the

Nation's vital honor, beleaguered all about with war, distressed by

all oppression, eager with a sacrificial passion that all men

everywhere may have liberty and an equal share in equity, searching

for a just and stable basis for the world's tranquillity, as he stands

and strives throughout that speech the structure of his soul grows

luminous. As he studied Providence and scanned the grounds of

government; as he peered far into the deeps of freedom, the majesty of

duty, and the sanctions of inviolable law; as he pondered the nature

of eternal right, and the deadly mischief of moral wrong; as he

watched the ways of hate and pride and falsity and sensual delights,

he was not alone compacting the substance and order of this immortal

address; but in the shapely body of his argument he has embodied and

uncovered his honest, guileless heart. In the very scars and seams

upon his sorrow-shadowed face, as he overcomes his task and fills out

his duty in this address, discerning eyes can see through the furnace

of how deep refinement his humble and majestic soul has been forever

beautified. Transforming themes possessed his mind. By the ministry

and inner influence of these themes he grew to be transformed; and in

the process and issue of that change the outline and texture of his

inner being becomes traceable.

And of this inner revelation the most notable mark is its simplicity.

As in this speech his inner life is introduced, its texture is not

perplexing and intricate. It is perfectly apprehensible. The total

speech can be quickly scanned. Its sentiments barely get your full

attention before they are at an end. Its entire compass can be

comprehended in a single glance. Its whole sum can be reviewed in a

single breath. And still its themes and propositions are imperial.

Within its fine simplicity its stateliness stands uneclipsed. Hence

its marvelous power to command. Upon all who look and listen, its

action and appeal are like the dawning of a day. Its major

propositions are assented to unconsciously. It works like light. It is

genial, winsome, clear. And it is irresistible. It moves. It rules. It

is an argument, the ordered appeal of a candid, earnest mind to the

reasoned thought of honest men. Gentle and modest throughout, it

contains and conveys compelling energy. It has the sturdiness of a

hardy oak. And yet its first appearing was like a new unfolding of our

flag. It is a kingly word, alike in lasting beauty and enduring

strength. In this there is surely some sure reflection of that hidden

man within, Lincoln's real, undying self.

And this still further may be said. Amid these sovereign interests and

affirmations their agent is thus employed of his own free choice. He

is no automaton. The Lincoln whom we seek, the Lincoln whom this

address is helping us to see can never be defined by physical terms.

Through the realm of physics things move as they are moved. Lincoln in

this address moves and guides and governs himself. And he is here

self-judged. This inaugural teems with moral verdicts, verdicts that

define eternal issues irrevocably. No higher function than this can be

imagined in any sphere of being, or in any form. These verdicts

Lincoln fastens upon himself. And before the same complete authority

he summons the whole Nation to bow. Deep within those verdicts there

throbs omnipotently a sense of moral duty, moral right, man's highest

good and goal. This ideal of what should be stands evident in this

inaugural in Lincoln's own humble conformity with God, in his own

unimpeachable integrity, in his unreserved benevolence, and in his

pure esteem for souls. In each one of these constituents of human duty

Lincoln sees unchallengeable authority. For the honor of each one he

deems himself responsible. Their mingled rays create the light in

which he writes this speech, by which this speech is read, and under

whose clear radiance he records his oath. Surely here are more than

hints for any one, who seeks to see just where this speech originates,

and most precisely how its author may be defined.

Within this last preceding paragraph one feels again the presence and

the movement of all that all the chapters of this volume have

contained. Herein we seem to face a sort of final synthesis of all our

study. If this be true, or only true approximately, then its face and

contents should be scrutinized until they are cleared of every shadow

or alloy. For this research is surely approaching its goal, and some

of its boundaries may surely be defined.

One line that shows indelibly is his intelligence; an intelligence

comprehending total centuries, and assembling within its scope extreme

diversities; an intelligence that has a piercing eye, acute to

distinguish and divide; an intelligence that has power to estimate,

compare, and summarize; an intelligence intolerant of error, and

eager after truth; an intelligence that can frame an argument

designed to clarify, convince, and win all other minds; an

intelligence that assumes to deal with God, receiving and reflecting

within its own interior and proper vision a revelation of the divine

intent. Here is an energy, at once receptive and original, fitted

marvelously for a reflection that can embrace and authorize eternal

truth.

This intelligence is within control. It is not a vagrant or unguided

force. It is under conduct, all its action to observe, inspect, and

estimate being ordered reasonably. And all this influence operating to

understand and counsel, all this wisdom, while gathering light and

substance from everywhere, is informed within, and wonderfully

self-contained. As Lincoln reasons in this inaugural, as he resolves

and purifies his argument, its power to convince is most intimate and

deep within himself. As he guides and shapes his thoughts for the

thought of other men, the convictions within the speaker, and their

power to persuade, so inwrought in the speech, become identical. In

his own consent choice and judgment are combined. Here is freedom

indeed, a freedom to discern as truly as to choose, to distinguish as

truly as to decide, to estimate as truly as to select, the freedom of

the intelligence, an intelligence that is truly free.

This freedom fashions character. It is a moral architect. It is

original, able to create. The author of this speech is self-produced.

The personality that comes to view among those words is

self-determined and self-made. Its plan was sketched by his own hand.

His position and his posture, his sentiments and his sympathies, his

bent and inclination, his moral postulates and axioms, his moral stamp

and trend and tone, his stability and moral sturdiness are all his own

invention, originally, essentially, inseparably his own. Lincoln's

character is Lincoln's handicraft. Its title vests in him. It never

was, nor could it ever become the property of another man. This all

men recognize. But this universal recognition is pregnant with

significance to any seeker amid the phenomena of Lincoln's life for

the substance of his personality. Somewhere within those statements

just now made, somewhere within Lincoln's conscious authorship and

invention of his moral worth is precious intimation of the whereabouts

and constitution of his personality.

This blend in Lincoln of freedom and intelligence, of liberty and

sanity is notable for its evenness. Lincoln's liberty is not

chimerical or riotous. It is regulated, orderly, real. Within himself

and over his full destiny, an unimpeachable sovereign though he is, he

is not prone towards wilfulness, but towards composure and sobriety.

He moves as one fast-held beneath the law that for all his movements

he will be accountable. He always wears the mien of one who carries

high responsibilities. Far from being arbitrary, he behaves as facing

within himself a court of arbitration, truly self-invested, and just

as truly sovereign. Of all his words and deeds and attitudes he is

himself self-constituted, reverend judge. Whether seeking to resolve a

doubt, or waiting to receive a verdict, his appeal is finally to

himself. This is his mood and posture in this inaugural. He is giving

an opinion. This scene is a literal crisis in a review in which a

Nation's history and delinquency have met incisive, balanced

examination, to the end that his own view of duty as president might

come clear to his own judicial eye, and all gain the approbation of

all mankind. In his loftiest originality, where his conscious power

and right to elect the path he takes is most self-evident, the way he

takes is also owned to be an unimpeachable obligation. Here is

another signal hint for the seeker after the living and abiding source

of Lincoln's words and deeds. Somewhere within this sense of duty, so

sane and free and serious, lives the very Lincoln whom we seek.

This judicial evenness within the free and reasoned movements of

Lincoln's action and argument is due to a balanced store of moral

ballast. His stalwart mind and sturdy will and steadfast consciousness

that duty binds his life stand leagued together in a partnership

employing infinite wealth. With these resources he daily ventures vast

investments. This speech is such a venture, laden with most goodly

merchandise. Indeed he ventures here, as everywhere, his all. His fear

of God, his self-respect, his neighbor love, his thirst for things

that last--these are the priceless treasure he examines with a

searching insight, estimates with judicial carefulness, enjoys with

soul-filling admiration, and then responsibly invests. On these and

these alone he chooses and resolves to seek returns. These are the

only seas where sail his ships. Here is all his merchandise. Here is

the only exchange where Lincoln ever resorts. Here and here alone can

one make computation of his wealth. If he has wisdom, it is here. Here

is all his liberty. Here is a full register of his life's accounts,

and of his full accountability. Here are all his goodly pearls. These

are the jewels that delight his heart. And if only students have the

eye to see, within this joy deep secrets are revealed.

Just here this study has to pause. For while it seems to be facing

straight for that in Lincoln which is innermost--his essential and

immortal self, transcending all the mere phenomena of life--and

standing where nothing intervenes between our eager search and his

steadfast soul, the outlook, as it is scanned by different eyes,

reflects in different minds world-wide diversity. Lincoln sees this

difference, and deals with it in this speech. He knows his chosen

estimates of God and man and government, of prayer and equity and

happiness, of right and wrong and penalty, awake resentful protest.

Just here his manhood shows its breed. Without resentment, but without

surrender, he takes and keeps his oath, expecting that God, humanity,

and time will vindicate his insight and his choice. This valiant

expectation stands today fulfilled, a commanding testimony that

Lincoln's personality, though so simply childlike in its every trait,

has majestic permanence and comprehension. Its inmost attributes, as

purified in him, reflect and clarify to other souls, however opposite

and hostile they may seem, their own essential and enduring rank. This

gives pointed intimation that in Lincoln's conscious life, deep

underneath his daily words and deeds, there is a conscious unity, the

very seat of freedom and law, a shrine of reverence, an altar of love,

a throne of truth, a fountain-head of purity--a unity that no

antagonist can overcome, that neither time nor death can decompose.

But an objection still persists. Some man will say that the search for

Lincoln's personality, as thus far carried on, has only dealt with

ethics, whereas research in personality is at bottom a problem of pure

psychology; and that in pure psychology the position holds impregnable

that naught beneath men's words and deeds can ever be discerned; that

naught indeed is real for this investigation but sensible phenomena;

that a human soul is something it is impossible to place.

This matter plainly claims respect. As an objection it is inveterate;

and whenever urged, it gains wide heed. In treating with it some

things rise up for hearing. To begin with, the intimation cited in the

former paragraph will honor pondering. Though that paragraph is

intent on ethics in its every word, no paragraph in all the volume

more strictly so, still its statements clear more ground than a single

hasty glance is liable accurately to survey. It is concerned with

ethics truly--again be that conceded. But in no concern of morals

whatsoever did Lincoln vacate intelligence. Never was pure

intelligence more intellectually engaged than when Lincoln's mind was

scanning moral problems. In such engagements Lincoln's total being was

occupied. And if amid the clustering multitudes of moral judgments and

decisions that attend his moral inquiries and activities, there is

witness to the presence of a freeborn judge whose identity remains

continuously and consciously single and the same, that fact sheds

searching light upon the problem with which this paragraph deals.

Let one listen again to this address--listen with a due intentness as

it speaks of Union and destruction and defense; of bondage and lash

and unpaid toil; of offenders, offenses and woe; of malice and charity

and right; of God and Bible and prayer; of widows and orphans and

wounds; of war and sorrow and peace; of Nations and centuries and

Providence. Here are trilogies and tragedies and millenniums, in

ethics and religion and philosophy--but borne from perishing lips to

perishing ears upon the perishing vehicle of a passing breath. This

human breath is frail, these human words are faint, this scene bursts

forth and vanishes. But those trilogies! They are more than flitting

words, and shifting scenes, and dying breath. The actor outlasts the

scene; the speaker outlives his word; the mortal breath is not the

measure of the man. He by whom these massive trilogies were marshaled

and deployed before a national audience, upon a Nation's stage, to

form a national spectacle, and expound a Nation's history, does not

perish with his breath, nor vanish with this scene. Before, within and

afterwards he lives, pre-arranging, fulfilling and surviving this

mighty drama of his life, mightily resembling God. A speech and scene

like this bear witness to an author and actor outdating and outranking

both scene and speech. An author looms within this speech, self-moved,

creative, free. An actor moves within this scene, self-made, poetic,

unconstrained. Speech and scene, voice and form are not the man. These

are but his fading vesture. Deep within those solemn trilogies, as

within a kingly robe, conveying to his vestment all its dignity,

though all unseen among its shapely folds, stands Lincoln's living,

Godlike self. It was to this the people paid their deference. Through

those clear syllables that came to utterance upon those mortal lips it

was Lincoln's immortal soul that became articulate. In those ringing

accents Lincoln's self became identified. If ever a human personality

crossed a human stage, not as actor echoing the words and attitudes of

other men, but as an author and creator, fulfilling within himself, in

God's fear, on other men's behalf, and with an eye to deathless

destinies, his own responsible trust, that man was Lincoln in this

second inaugural address. There he asserted and declared himself.

Here then, in the tone and impress of this address is the sovereign

place to find the tone and impress of Lincoln's soul. If that living

soul ever gave a conscious hint of its living lineaments and hidden

dwelling place, here is that hint's finest published utterance. Here,

then, is the total measure of our task. Upon this transparent speech,

and not upon vacant air, is the student of psychology to direct his

eye. Here is the final challenge. Deep within the deeps of this

supreme address, clear within the rhythms of these resounding

trilogies, what does one see and hear?

To the question thus defined an answer something such as this must be

returned:

Here in this inaugural address is designation and signature of a man

astute to comprehend a Nation's history, reverent towards

responsibility, a champion and exponent of liberty, commending with

radiant earnestness that all his fellow men so walk with God, so

cherish equity, and so walk in charity as to secure in all the earth

an amity that time can never disrupt.

Something such is the personality which this address attests. While

this speech exists, this testimony will endure. Its word stands firm.

And its signature is plain. He who wrote the speech has left upon its

manuscript his clear and sacred seal. He who gave its body shape was a

freeman none could bend, heedful of the arbiter none might disobey,

humble towards God, loyal to himself, a friend to every man, an

aspirant for life.

Surely these are intimations of personality. Here is Lincoln, a vivid

plenitude in living unison of timeless quietness and harmony,

ordaining freely his own law of even heed for self and brother man,

for God and spirit life. Here is the full manhood of a living soul,

Godlike and earthly-born. None of its features are solidified in

flesh, to be again and soon resolved. All its face is spiritual; all

its action free, self-ordered, and self-judged; all preserving

jealously its own kingly honor; all beaming graciously on other men;

all bearing homage up to God; all vivid with immortality; abhorring

mightily all pride and hate, all falsehood and decay; all sharing

sacrificially with other men the cost and shame entailed in righting

human wrong. This is Lincoln's personality. In Godlike, friendly,

undying self-respect; in heavenly, upright, immortal kindliness; in

humane, divine, self-honoring heed for spirit-life--in each and any

one of these four identical affirmations is Lincoln's personality

exhaustively engrossed, each and any one declaring that he contains

within himself a free and deathless soul, akin alike to God and man,

and bound therein by the self-wrought law of love and truth.

These terms define a life at once of human and of heavenly range, at

once inhabiting and transcending realms of change, at once self-ruled

and environed with responsibility. Here is elemental personality, in

inwrought and indivisible unity, with measureless capacity for

versatility, easily blending fulness of vigor with complete repose,

vestured and transfused with native symmetry and grace. In some such

living, breathing words, themselves transfigured and illumined by the

quickening verities they strive to body forth, may the pure, immortal

soul of Lincoln, and of every child of man, be defined, unburdened,

and declared.

Something thus must written words describe the soul that surged

beneath this speech, and freely gave this speech its being. Surely

such an undertaking must not be despised. That aspiring, creative

spirit, so earnest and so resolute, far more than any speech its

vision or its passion may body forth, demands to be portrayed. Grand

as are these paragraphs, their author has a far surpassing majesty.

Fitted as are these accents to reach and stir the auditors of a

continent, the soul from which these accents rise has an access to all

those auditors far more intimate.

If readers of this essay spurn the effort which it undertakes, let

them not be scorners merely. From among their number, let some one

arise, artist enough in insight and handicraft to make some truer

delineation of that living Lincoln, the abiding origin and author of

this and his every other noble speech and deed. Such an artist is sure

to find, if ever the conscious soul of Lincoln shines through his

hand, that when the inner face of Lincoln is portrayed, that portrait

will carry speaking evidence of a joyful and abiding consciousness of

liberty and law, of self and brother man, of things eternal, and of

God; that in his countenance, so sorrow-shadowed and yet so serene,

will shine a close resemblance to every other man; that through his

quiet eye will gleam that image of God in which he and all his fellow

men have been made; and that deep within it all will beam a radiant

assurance that by the way of sacrifice the awful mystery of sin has

been resolved.

Hitherward must men who seek the soul of Lincoln turn their eye.

Humble, gentle, and loyal, eager after the life that is its own

reward, at once dutiful and free, lavishing out his life to take the

sting from sin--this is the soul of Lincoln. In this image every man

will see himself reflected, either in affinity, or by rebuke, herein

revealing how all men resemble God. Something such is man. Something

such is our common manhood. Something such is our inherent testimony

as to our origin and source. And something such is the task of him who

would frame a valid definition of personality. No undertaking is more

profound, none more supreme. And once it is accomplished, forms of

statement will have been found availing to embody all man can ever

know of self or God.