LINCOLN'S CHARACTER
In all the chapters that have gone before, the essential constructive
factors have been very few. This is evident from their continual
reiteration--a reiteration that is too conspicuous to be overlooked.
In this is intimation that the last inclusive affirmation of this
study will be remarkable for its brevity and also for its open
clarity. The simple elements of such a closing synthesis may be here
set down.
As encouraging this attempt, it may be first remarked that Lincoln's
life attests and demonstrates the primacy of character. This is the
foundation of his fame; and hereby his fame is felt to be secure. To
this all men agree. This world-wide consent may be said to be
unhesitant, spontaneous, unforced, arising as though by common
instinct, or by a moral intuition, all men everywhere viewing him
alike, even as all eyes everywhere act alike in receiving and
reflecting light. Here is something of a significance nothing less
than imperial for a student of ethics. For it seems to say that by
universal suffrage an international tribute is rendered to a common
pattern of human life; that there is a world ideal in the moral realm;
that this ideal is visibly near; and that this realized ideal is so
altogether friendly, admirable and excellent as to win from every land
an overflowing flood of thankfulness and joy. So genuine, so genial,
and so grand is Lincoln's moral life. In the face of such a life, and
of such a tribute, a student of ethics may be emboldened to assume
that his science has indeed foundations; that those sure grounds are
after all not far to seek; and that when those cornerstones are once
uncovered, they will be within the easy comprehension of common men.
Here, then, in Lincoln's open and exalted life is at once a challenge
and a test for all who would like to attempt a careful survey of the
moral realm.
One sterling, standing coefficient of Lincoln's character was its
thoughtfulness. Piercing, pondering thought was with him a habitude.
His mind had insight, and he used its eye unsparingly. This was no
mere mental cunning, though he was surely passing shrewd and keen. In
Lincoln insight was so inseparably allied with an active sense of
responsibility that it may be best defined as searching honesty. Into
the massive, solid, stubborn problems of his perplexing day he drilled
and pierced by plodding, patient, penetrating thought. Kepler never
fixed his mind more steadily upon any study of geometric curves than
Lincoln his upon the intricate questions of government. And not in
vain. It may be truly said that Lincoln's moral judgments and resolves
were without exception the long-sought winnings of exactest and most
exacting mental toil.
One fruit of this sharp scrutiny was a quite unusual foresight. In
this keen certitude touching things to come he was almost without a
peer. But its design and its utility for him were ethical. The coming
issues towards which he explored were moral. The future he foresaw was
thick with evolving sanctions involved in moral deeds. For such
events, whether near or far, he had a seeing eye. And with a steady
view to those oncoming certainties he shaped his resolutions, and
plotted out his life. That those high purposes involved his soul in
untold sorrow he well and unerringly foresaw. It was not by mental
blunders that he became enmeshed in the anguish and anxiety that made
his life so shadowed and solitary. And it was not by shrewder wits
that other men escaped his all but constant fellowship with reproach
and grief. Lincoln saw beforehand whither his studied view of duty and
his clear-eyed obedience led. Where other men stood blind he achieved
to see that his selected, sorrow-burdened path was the only way to the
happiness that could wear and satisfy. His insight was betrothed right
loyally to the faithful league of moral verities. Thus Lincoln's
character was stamped and sealed with prudence. Here gleams his
wisdom. His thought was balanced, looking many ways and comprehending
many parts. Hence his sane judiciousness.
But this well-pondered carefulness was no mere mental sapience. The
world of Lincoln's painstaking thought was a world of character; a
world of liberty; a world of binding obligation; a world of right and
wrong; a world of God-like opportunities; a world of awful sanctions;
a world where dignity and shame are infinite; a world of manhood and
of brother men; a world where human souls outrank all other things,
like God.
These were the themes that Lincoln's mind inspected and adjudged. It
is by virtue of his life-long search to find in such mighty interests
as these their rational consistency, that mental values of the highest
grade pervade and signalize his character. No mortal course in all our
history was ever reasoned out more carefully than the course that
Lincoln chose and held with moral heroism to his death. To overlook or
underrate this thoughtfulness in any reasoned estimate or exposition
of Lincoln's character would be infinitely unfair. As with light and
vision, his thoughtfulness is the medium in which his character stands
manifest.
Quite as elemental in Lincoln's character as his thoughtfulness is his
courtly deference to duty. Lincoln's conscience controlled and held
him in his course, as gravitation holds and guides this globe. This
all men discern; and discerning, they admire. Deep in the center of
this unanimous admiration is a respect for Lincoln that amounts almost
to reverence. Lincoln's estimate of law was most profound. When, after
humble and all-engrossing search, he found and traced those sovereign
obligations to which he bowed his life, his estimate and attitude were
as though he stood face to face with God. But in that deference was a
courtliness that was beautifully Lincoln's own. He too admired, where
he obeyed. His thoughtfulness was a stately, sovereign court that
sanctioned and made supreme every law that he revered. This
transcendent, all-commanding sense of duty, springing from within, and
also descending from above, seated centrally within his character, is
centrally and inseparably inwrought within his fame. While his name
abides this princely heed for duty will persist to challenge and to
test each studied statement of his character.
Another factor of Lincoln's character, likewise radical, impossible to
omit, is his free and self-formed choice. That Lincoln's choice was
truly free, self-moved, and truly unconstrained comes clear
impressively when one for long inspects and understands his
thoughtfulness. Lincoln's mental action in its riper stages was a pure
deliberation. In that careful pondering we can feel and see his
ripening moral preference grow clear and free from trammels of every
sort, and gain towards decisions that know no other influence but
reason wholly purified. So inseparable in him were choice and seasoned
wisdom. From this it follows that Lincoln's ripe decisions can be
understood only when one comprehends his mental equilibrium.
And here it comes to view that Lincoln's moral resolutions led him far
asunder from the multitudes. It is here that Lincoln's isolation takes
departure. This parting of the ways needs noting narrowly. From his
selection of his path for life the world at large draws back. Yet even
so he still retains the world's applause. Here opens the true secret
of his distinction, as of his excellence and power. This secret lies
deeply hidden, and yet openly revealed in the comely balanced law his
thoughtful wisdom led his noble will loyally to admire, adopt, and
struggle unto death to keep.
What now in true precision was this comely, balanced programme of a
moral life that Lincoln's wisdom led his will to adopt? Here is the
apex of this study. That it is not beyond man's reach, the world's
applause and Lincoln's lowly plainness and full accessibility may well
encourage any man to hope. That this inquiry should stand unanswered,
or be answered heedlessly, or with any vagueness, is unworthy of our
day or of our land. But in the answer should be verbally embodied
adequate and intelligible explanation of Lincoln's moral majesty, of
his unexampled intimateness with every sort of men, and of an
undivided world's applause.
These tests are heeded by the answer which this study ventures to
suggest, when it says that Lincoln's thoughtful ponderings on the ways
of God, on the souls and lives of men, on the microcosm in every man,
and on the principles of all society, revealed to him the obligation,
in deference to himself, to his neighbor, and to his God, and with
full heed to immortality, to choose and follow to its full perfection
the law of even truth and love. To be fair, and kind, and pure, as a
lowly, kingly child of God--this was the wisdom, the obligation, the
aspiration of Lincoln's life. This was the moral sum and substance of
his thoughtful, free, obedient life. Here in brief and in full is
Lincoln's character.
In such a character is Godlike potency, and fluency, and dignity.
Within its easy interplay is true simplicity, and unison. Within its
harmony shines the eye of beauty. Amid all turbulence it holds serene.
Its movements convey a majesty that awakens deference. It is free,
like God, to devise, adjust, and originate, ever having inner power
creatively to overcome or reconcile outright antagonism. Its
thoughtfulness has a master's power to divide, combine, and
comprehend. It can gaze unblenched and unamazed into the awful face of
evil. It can plant and wield a leverage that can overturn every evil
argument. In its finished ministry it can present a portrait of the
human soul true to its very life. In such a character, though
compassed in a single life, and marked with signal modesty, there
dwells a fulness adequate to delineate and comprehend all the mighty
magnitudes within the moral universe.
Such is the character that Lincoln's life leads all the world to
admire. Its beauty lies enshrined within the blended light of wisdom,
freedom and obedience along the way where loyalty, charity, humility
and hope of immortality shine ever brighter unto perfect day. Here is
wisdom. And here is worth. And here these two are one.
LINCOLN'S PREFERENCE
In the chapter just concluded, the field of ethics is termed a
"universe." In the chapter upon Theodicy, it was noted that in
Lincoln's most thoughtful ponderings, the great world of reality that
passes under the name of physics, or the physical world, seemed to lie
outside the field of his concern. Here is a matter demanding something
more than a bare allusion. The ponderable universe of material things
has impressive majesty. It is too solid and real and present in our
life to be ignored. Among the stars and beneath the hills and within
the seas are solid and substantial verities. We are environed by their
influences on every side. It is deep within their strong embrace that
our predetermined fate is being continuously unrolled. What can be the
scope and what must be the value of any view of ethics or any plan of
life in which this solid, ever-present, all-embracing material world
is so indifferently esteemed?
It is with just this query in mind that this research into the mind of
Lincoln was first conceived. And the query which has been throughout
in immediate review, but unpropounded openly as yet, now demands to be
defined and scrutinized. Did the mind of Lincoln, engrossed as it was
upon interests supremely ethical, and ignoring, as it seemed to do,
all those vast and deep complexities of the purely physical world,
find for our unquiet human thought the true and perfect equilibrium?
Or was the thought of Lincoln unbalanced and incomplete, misguided and
inadequate essentially? In brief, how must ethics and physics, these
two and only two supreme realities, when each is most fairly
understood, be conceived to correlate and harmonize? As between these
two realities, each so imperial and so irreducible, which holds
primacy?
Here is for any thoughtful mind well nigh the last interrogation. To
attain a competent reply the essential qualities of each and either
realm must be uncovered and compared. In physics here, and in ethics
there, what attributes pervade, abide, and are essential? And, these
true qualities being seen in each, as between the two, which proves
itself superior; in which does the soul of man find rest?
In the universe of physics, in all the world of things men see and
touch and weigh one pervading and abiding quality is change. We speak
indeed of the eternal hills; and before their age-long steadfastness
that phrase seems accurate. But it is only soaring rhetoric, surely
sinking from its flight, when sober science sets about to cipher from
the distinct confessions of their very rocks the date of their birth,
the story of their growth, and the sure predictions of their complete
decay. In all the stability of the solid hills there is nothing
permanent. So with the ageless stars. So with the ever-flowing sea.
And so with the very elements of which hills and stars and sea are
mixed. All the story of all their genesis and journeying and vanishing
is a never-ending tale of change. Nothing physical abides the same.
Beneath the daring rays of present-day research all things are being
proved impermanent, all found verging over the infinite abyss.
Transmutations are in progress everywhere.
In the soul of Lincoln there was craving for a sort of satisfaction
which nothing mutable could ever meet. Amid this pageantry of change,
among these ceaseless transformations, with all their passing beauty,
and all their final disappointment, there was in him a hungering after
something that should hold eternally. And within this very eagerness
was genuine kinship with the changeless foothold in things eternal
which it aspired to find. His very longing was innerly undying. His
thirst for immortality was in itself averse and opposite to death
essentially. Deep within his desire, deep within himself were living
verities, within themselves immutable. His admiration before God's
majesty, his free covenant with perfect loyalty, his friendly
kindliness towards all others like himself, and his God-like
sacrificial grief for all wrongdoing, held within their pure vitality
visions and passions and aspirations that no mortal darts could touch.
And when with clear discernment he freely chose to fill his soul with
hopes and deeds that eternally evade decay, he selected, as between
things that change and things that abide, that reality to whose
eternal primacy every passing day yields perfect demonstration.
Nowhere in physics, in ethics alone could be found the perfect solace
of conscious perpetuity.
Another quality of all things physical, a quality likewise
all-pervading and persistent, is their want of spontaneity. Within the
nature of this mighty physical bulk, that is forever altering its garb
and form, and within all its flowing change there is no liberty.
Through all the ever-varying orbit of the moon; in all the marvelous
wedlock of the elements within the rocks and soils and plants; in all
convulsions and explosions of air and sea and fluent gas; in
lightning, fire, and plague; in all the age-long monotony of instinct,
habit, and proclivity, there is no conscious choice, no
character-worth, no ennobling and terrifying responsibility. Through
all this change of mortal things all things are fixed. Naught is nobly
free.
In the soul of Lincoln there was a passion to be free. In this desire
there was a clear intelligence, and a purpose like to God's. He
coveted a dignity that was self-achieved. He deemed that worth, and
that alone, supreme that was his own creation. Only in deeds that he
himself determined could he discern true excellence. Herein he stood
apart from brutes, ranked above the hills, and pierced beyond the
stars. And when, with such an insight, and such a soaring wish, and in
such high dignity, he freely chose to hold supreme the life and
thought and joy that are truly free, rating all things fixed and
physical as forever far beneath, he allotted certain primacy to that
which he discreetly judged undoubtedly pre-eminent. In closest
consonance with what has last been said, comes now to be affirmed, a
central quality of all things purely physical--persistent and
pervading everywhere--their absolute inertia morally. They move as
they are moved, and never otherwise. The law by which their being is
controlled is not their own. At the last and evermore physics, though
the measureless arena of unmeasured active energy, is powerless. It
cannot even obey. But most demonstrably it can never command, not even
itself. It is vastly, deeply, and forever only passive; although
within its ponderous frame are playing with baffling constancy forces
that weary all too easily our most stalwart thought.
In such a realm as this, forever unawakened and evermore unjudged,
Lincoln's awakened and judicial soul could never find contentment.
Within that manly heart was enthroned a conscience, alert alike to
receive and to originate, as also to approve and fulfill all noble and
ennobling obligations. He knew the meaning and the sense of duty, the
weight of duty claimed, and the worth of duty done. In his true heart
was a living spring of moral law. And in cherishing with exalted
satisfaction this imperial quality of all true moral life, therein
deciding that physics held nothing worthy of any comparison, he gave
kingly utterance to a judgment and decision and desire that could
estimate infallibly the ultimate competitors within his conscious life
for primacy. For ever in ethics, as never in physics, right judgment
finds its source.
Yet another quality of physics, likewise all-pervasive and permanent,
is the mocking, paralyzing mystery in which all its certainties are
veiled. The mighty acquisitions to our certain knowledge in the realm
of nature are superbly manifold and as superbly sure. The swelling
catalogue of things well certified in the material world seems to
advance the modern scientific mind almost to genuine apotheosis. But
of all these stately certitudes there is not one but walks in darkness
no human eye nor thought can penetrate. Before heroic and unexampled
diligence and daring the scientific frontiers are receding everywhere;
but only to make still more amazing and unbearable their
inscrutability. On every horizon of the physical realm yawn
infinitudes, whether of space or time, of geometry or arithmetic, of
electron or of cell, so defiant, so bewildering, and so overwhelming
in their complete defeat and mockery of our bravest and best
intelligence that our proudest powers are palsied utterly. Whichever
ways we turn, whatever gains we win, we face at last, in the very eye
of our research, and in the very heart of our desire, a changeless
silence that mocks all hope, and leaves us standing in an utter void.
In the realm of simple physics the human intellect, despite the fact
that in the physical realm the mind of man has triumphed gloriously,
is faced forever with the taunting consciousness that its primal task
is still undone.
In an undertaking such as this, and in such a hapless outcome, the
mind and life of Lincoln could never be engrossed. He was ever facing
mystery indeed in the perplexities that throng the moral realm. In
fact, in the darkness and confusion that enshroud and mystify the
world of duty and award were all his sorrows born. But in those
mysteries moral honesty is not mocked. Where iniquities prevail, the
soul that bows towards God sees light. Where sin abounds, the heart
that yields the sacrifice of penitence finds peace. In the face of
hate and strife and bloodshed, to banish malice and to cherish charity
is to enter and to introduce complete tranquillity. Where lives grow
coarse and souls are base and purity is all denied, the soul that
seeks refinement grows refined and consciously approaches God. When
God is mocked and scorners multiply and hearts grow hard in pride, the
heart that meekly, humbly holds its confidence in the transcendent,
all-controlling Deity opens in that lowly faith deep springs of
never-failing hope. In these mysteries, however baffling and
persistent, these efforts towards relief find sure and great reward.
In such a field and in such endeavors it was Lincoln's sovereign
preference to measure out all the forces of his conscious life. Attent
towards God, benign towards men, upright within, and prizing life, he
found, not defiance and despair, but perennial quickening and
encouragement, whatever problems darkened round his life. For him such
soul-filling verities, and such a corresponding faith held
far-transcending primacy. And so in conscious, sovereign and
everlasting preference for the truth that shows all its light in
character, and for the faith that such clear truth forever
illuminates, Lincoln testified his confidence that in the face of
physics ethics holds supreme pre-eminence.
Of all this searching estimate and supreme comparison of these two
divergent realms one's mind may gravely doubt whether Lincoln's mind
had perfect consciousness. Concerning this no one may speak, except
with hesitance. But any one whose mind has entered into intimate
partnership with all the wealth of Lincoln's words is well aware that
it was a habit of his mind to pursue its themes to their farthest
bourne. In penetration and in pondering not many minds were ever more
evenly taxed. His mental persistence and deliberation were almost
preternatural. Discovering this, a student of his mental ways will
grow to feel that, in a likelihood almost equivalent to full
certainty, Lincoln was wittingly aware of all the meaning in his
proclivity to rate ethical interests uppermost.
At any rate, in his life and writings, so the matter stands. And
standing thus in the deeply conscious soul of Lincoln, the matter has
a high significance. It seems to testify with a prophet's steady voice
that in all the total realm of being, the realm of freedom, of
consciousness, and of character is the first and sovereign verity;
that the real is fundamentally ethical; that he who seeks for perfect
satisfaction must bring to his inquiry the glad allegiance of a moral
freeman and a moral judge; that in every undertaking becoming him as
man each cardinal moral excellence must grow and shine increasingly;
that every mental acquisition must conduce to a lowliness that adores,
to a gentleness that loves, to a purity that pledges immortality, to a
self-respect that is the mirror and original of all reality; that only
thus, in all this universe, and to all eternity, can the soul of man
gain triumphs that can satisfy. Only so will truth grow fully radiant,
and mystery become benign. Only so can finite man find peace before
his Maker, and face serenely all that wisest unbelief finds terrible.
This is truth. Here is freedom. Such is faith. Thus, in a freeman's
faith truth stands complete.
Such is Lincoln's preference. Like another Abraham, and with a kindred
insight and determination, he won all his triumphs and renown by
faith--a free and conscious faith in God, and soul, and character.
Here are designations, at once so plastic and so precise, at once so
simple and so profound, as to signify and demonstrate how souls of men
may conquer death; how one may be a perfect devotee to another
person's weal, and still preserve his own integrity; how perfect
sanctity may assume a full companionship with sin, whether by
redemption or rebuke, and still remain unflecked; and how in man's
humility may be enshrined a dignity wherein supernal majesty may be
unveiled.
In some such vivid, moral terms, mobile to grasp and manifest the
boundless range and priceless worth within the sovereign moral law; as
also to declare unerringly the fateful and unbounded issues of a moral
choice, may students hope to trace with true intelligence the real
foundations of Lincoln's all but unexampled power and fame.
AN EPILOGUE
ADDRESSED TO THEOLOGIANS
In designing and constructing the chapters that precede, three motives
have been actively at work. There has been a desire to set within the
realm of Civics a clear and balanced exposition of Lincoln's moral
grandeur. There has been a desire to introduce within the realm of
Ethics a fertile method of discussion and research. There has been a
desire to intimate how in the realm of pure Religion the finished
outline of a transparent character may provide a pattern for a true
description of the problems of Theology.
Of these three motives the one last named has been preponderant.
Lincoln's public life was keyed alike to moral honor and to faith in
God. In his most quickening aspirations and in his most sacrificial
sorrows his sense of personal obligation and his belief in an
over-ruling Providence held fast together in a most notable unison.
Guileless, luminous, and single-hearted in his rectitude and in his
reverence, he affords a signal illustration of the way in which faith
and conscience may vitally co-operate and even coalesce. He presents
in consequence a signal opportunity for exploring the inner kinship of
ethics and religion. His personality challenges us to inquire and see
how honesty and godliness consort; how in a complete and balanced
character the categories that define the basis of one's moral
excellence may prove themselves to be the very categories that inform
and underlie the religious life.
Here opens an engaging investigation. May the ultimate principles of a
true ethical theory and the ultimate rationale of a true theology be
found in living deed to coincide? To bring this question into open
view is the ulterior aim of this book, and more particularly of this
appended Epilogue.
In the open petals of the plainest flower soil and sunlight, earth and
heaven meet in almost mystic union. Be this our parable. In the ample
compass of a normal character, such as Lincoln shows, there is in very
deed a mystic union--a vital partnership of man with fellowman, and of
men with God. Be this deep fellowship described; for here commingle
indivisibly the essential elements in any pure and full display in
human life of morals and religion.
In Lincoln's public life there was undeniably a close companionship
with God. Earth-born and earth-environed though he was, he had supreme
affinity with heavenly realms. His face was seamed with suffering; he
wore a humble mien; his habitual posture was a pattern of unstudied
modesty. But through those sorrow-shadowed features shone a radiant
exalted hope, as he walked and toiled in reverend covenant with the
sovereign God of Nations. Besieged by day and night with difficulties
and distresses such as rarely burden mortal men, in his nightly vigils
and in his daily labors he clung to Deity, true civilian and true man
of God at once. The terms of this high covenant were specific and
distinct. They were the very terms that defined the conscious
qualities of his upright, God-revering character. Be those qualities
described.
In the first place, here in Lincoln's open character it becomes
heavenly clear how profoundly intimate and at one are majesty and true
humility. When the guise of each is fully genuine, they minutely
correspond. In Lincoln's lowliness lay the very image of the majesty
of God. To that high majesty his lowliness conformed. As in a mountain
lake may be enshrined a perfect pattern of the heavenly firmament, so
was Lincoln's reverence a conscious, free reflection of the excellence
of God. His obedience was an intelligent recognition and
re-enthronement of the sovereign law of God. His lowly posture, when
in supplicating or interceding prayer, was induced by the bending pity
of a compassionate God. That trusting appeal was the very echo of
God's benign concern; and within the wrestlings of those intense
entreaties the divine designs gained place in human history. Lincoln
in his lowliness was Godlike. His humility was supremely dignified,
supremely beautiful. In its open face, as in the face of a flower
opening towards the sun, was resident a heavenly glory.
In the second place, this vital unison of man with God stands superbly
evident in the stately wedlock of Lincoln's honesty with God's
righteousness. In Lincoln's soul there lived a faith in God's
integrity which no dark storm of human faithlessness, and no delay of
heaven's righteous judgments could eclipse or wear away. This belief
was in him an active energy. It grew to be a partnership with God's
uprightness--a covenant in which his own soul's eagerest ambitions and
resolves became upright. In his inmost soul it was his inmost
aspiration to be an agent for enthroning here on earth the equity of
God. And so, in fact, as a mighty nation's chief executive, he did
become the executive of the will of God. In his transparent honesty
there was a reflection of the sincerity of God. In his firm constancy
there was upheld before this people's eye an index finger pointing to
the steadfast constancy of God. In his pure jealousy for the utter
sanctity of his plighted word there burned a fire that was kindled in
the eye of God. In all his even, glowing zeal for righteousness he has
been adjudged by all his fellowmen pre-eminently a man of God. And as
signal devotee to honesty he demonstrates most signally that God and
man may set their lives in unison.
In the third place there was in Lincoln's patient gentleness a
profound resemblance to the all-enduring gentleness of God. His
mastery of malice and his universal charity in the face of multitudes
of bitter and malignant men attest eternally an intimate companionship
with divine forbearing grace. His sacrificial intervention on behalf
of all God's little ones whom human heartlessness had oppressed is
world-arresting evidence and demonstration that in his kindly heart
was throned the Heavenly Father's sympathy. Unto costly fellowship
with this divine forbearance and compassion Lincoln opened
unreservedly all the compass of his life. For afflicted and afflicting
men he felt a sorrow, mixed with pity and rebuke, both born of the
affection fathers feel, both proved sincere by years of sacrificial
anguish unto death. And this he did with a discerning and deliberate
mind. It was thus he understood the heart and ways of God; and thus by
clear design he undertook in his own life to recommend the ways of God
to men. In verity he was partaker and dispenser of the manifold grace
of God. In him the mighty love of God found living medium. Like a
gentle flower drinking gratefully the warmth and beauty flowing
towards it from the sun, his soul absorbed the gentle ways of God and
itself grew kind and beautiful. Here again it may be seen how intimate
may be the life of man in God, the life of God in man.
In the fourth place there was in Lincoln's soul an all-prevailing
confidence touching future destiny. This living confidence was the
outcome of his close partnership with God. His faith believed that
God's designs held fast eternally, and that conviction clouds and
night and death were impotent to overshadow or obscure. The rather, as
his faith and hope confided in that unfailing verity, that faith and
hope became themselves unfailing. His sure belief became participant
in God's dependability. Here is the deepest secret of his abiding
steadiness. Hence his calm indifference to death.
And this illumines all his great appeals to his fellowmen with the
light of a prophetic vision. For his fellow-citizens, as for himself,
his sovereign aspiration was after permanence. This abiding life,
whether in the Nation or in himself, he had the mind to comprehend,
must be the very life of God within the soul. In civic Godliness alone
could there be civic permanence. In the Nation's life the life of God
must be incorporate. Then and then alone would any Nation long endure.
For this bright civic hope, for this alone he lived. And this
ever-springing hopefulness and confidence is the shining efflorescence
of his Godliness. He clung to things eternal in a conscious league
with God.
Here is something wonderful--something replete alike with mystery and
with certitude--a vital unison of God and man in undeniable verity--a
unison in righteousness and kindliness, in lowly and majestic dignity,
in immortal spirit purity--a unison in which all that is most sacredly
elemental in God and man most intimately coalesce, while yet remaining
most unmistakably distinct--a unison in which is freely and
consciously engaged all that personality, however self-discerning and
free, can ever contribute or contain--a unison as historically real as
it is immeasurably profound--a unison in which space and time provide
the theater, while yet a unison in which time and space dissolve. Here
is surely ample range for ample exposition of many a major problem in
theology, and all within the open and familiar bounds of a normal
moral life.
In close alliance and affinity with Lincoln's vital partnership with
God, and of almost equal pregnancy for the problems of religious
thought, is the marvelous intimacy of his inner and essential
fellowship with men. This feature of his public life is becoming more
commanding and impressive every year. To a degree altogether notable
it is becoming widely understood how he and all his fellowmen were
wonderfully allied. It is becoming seen by all of us that the
qualities essential to his commanding excellence are qualities deeply
typical of us all. His attitudes of deference and modesty, his
promptings towards things permanent and durable, his equities, his
kindnesses are universal. They are enthroned within us all.
Everywhere, in everyone they ultimately predominate.
Wonderful as it may seem, this holds as true of enemies as it does of
friends. Hosts of people, while Lincoln lived, held him their
deadliest foe. Through all those bitter years, while they defamed, he
meekly, mightily held his own, subduing malice, disdaining subtlety,
despising scorn and arrogance, abhorring sordid greed; pleading
humbly, but as a prince instead, for righteousness and charity and
man's immortal destiny. And now all men detect that however deep and
overmastering those aversions and animosities may have been, there was
in his enemies and himself a moral kinship and agreement far more
powerful and profound. His humble, hopeful plea that every man be fair
and pitiful is winning everywhere today glad witness to its eternal
and imperial validity.
And the wonder of this deep partnership with men but deepens, when we
consider that the form of this all-appealing, all-prevailing
partnership was sacrificial. This leads straight into the innermost
interior of the problem of vicarious suffering--one mortal, suffering
in another's place and for another's sake. Never in all that era of
civic anguish in the civil war did any human mortal suffer keener or
more continual sorrow than did he who of all the Nation's multitudes
stood most untainted and innocent of the iniquity which that stern
civic judgment was to purge away. Guiltless utterly of any part in
slavery for his own profit or by his own consent, he partook with all
the guilty ones of all the sorrows of its expurgation.
And yet more wonderful is the sequent fact that in precisely this
voluntary and conscious unison of innocence and suffering in his
outstanding life stood and moved the pillar of fire and the pillar of
cloud that led this Nation through those sorrows by night and day.
Here again is something wonderful--something again replete with
mystery and with certitude. And here again do mystery and certitude
stand truly unified and harmonized. Truly they are unified. But in
that unison their identity stands clarified. There where Lincoln's
manhood shows most humane and universal, a Nation's common symbol,
outlining nothing less than a puissant Nation's boundless majesty,
there stands defined, as with engraver's finished art, his separate,
ever sacred, individual nobility. Even there where his moral being
merges most completely into deepest sympathy with the afflictions that
descend on sin, there his own integrity and personal jealousy for
righteousness are most outstanding and distinct. But be it said again,
in Lincoln do that broad humaneness and that erect nobility, that
sympathy and that jealousy subsist in unison. In strict verity he is
our Nation's surrogate. Surely here again is ample range for ample
exposition of many a major problem of theology, and all still held
within the open and familiar bounds of a normal moral life.
So Lincoln stood in unison with God and fellowman. Ideally complete in
his own identity, he was ideally allied with other lives through all
the personal realm. And be it well and truly seen that the elements of
this affiance with his God, and the elements of his firm league with
brothermen were identically the same. In each and either realm the
binding bonds were fealty to charity, to equity, to humility, to
purity. These four qualities explain and guarantee completely his
allegiance. These and these alone were the constituent elements of all
his brotherhood and of all his reverence. And it is within the nature
of these four vital qualities, at once so Godlike and so human, and
within their ever-living interplay that one must look to find whatever
Lincoln's character can contribute to the problems of theology.
What averments tremble here! Our mighty human race does truly live in
unison. Within that peopled unison the life of one may have
far-ranging partnership. That partnership is closely definable in
terms of character. In Lincoln's life as private soul, and as vicar of
us all alike, his constancy and kindliness, his purity and lowliness
embrace and body forth his total being, with all he bore and wrought.
Herein unfolded all his beauty and all his worth, whether as a single
citizen or as a Nation's representative.
And our humble human life does also truly share the life in God.
Within that heavenly unison the lowliest soul may have exalted
fellowship. And so in Lincoln's loyalty and tenderness, his lowliness
and thirst for immortality, as man of God, unfolds the heavenly beauty
of God's eternal purity and majesty, God's benignity and faithfulness.
So do lives of free and conscious beings most truly flourish and so do
they most truly blend. Our fellowship with Lincoln, and Lincoln's
fellowship with us; God's fellowship with Lincoln and Lincoln's
fellowship with God; this mystic unrestricted partnership of noble
souls; unfolding and unrolling sovereign harmonies, even when they
antagonize; in vengeance or compassion fulfilling all their mission
and dominion through the earth--these are indeed our sovereign
realities. In scanning these we may indeed discern deep ways of God
and men.
Mighty highways open here--highways that enter every major province of
theology. Be these avenues observed.
Whence came the blight of slavery? How in human soil could such
inhumanity germinate? What is the virus of its contagion? What makes
its guilt so terrible?
Must inhumanity be avenged? May avengers still be merciful? May
hardened men become regenerate? May guilt and innocence be reconciled?
Why such anguish on the innocent? Why should little ones be crushed?
Why such hosts of patient ones meekly bearing wrong and shame? Why do
offenses need to come? How does patience work on sin? How does sorrow
work on guilt?
What is human brotherhood? May fellowmen be surrogates? May men's
honor interchange?
Wherein stands human character? What makes a man responsible? How
sovereign is man's liberty? How supreme is man's intelligence? Are
moral beings subject to decay?
May finite man come near to God? Does God come near to finite man? May
plans of men and God's designs combine? May God be seen in human life?
May human hearts partake of God? Are love and truth and liberty, the
crown of human dignity, enthroned in God ideally?
Is Christ indeed the Lord of men? Is he our life? Are his teachings
true? Is his love divine? Can he indeed redeem?
Upon such queryings as these, all running deeply into mystery, each
one fast rooted in reality, and each one voicing in each human soul an
urgent quest, those sterling elements of Lincoln's character, his
lowliness, his living hope, his pity, and his faithfulness shed
grateful light.
Be these four qualities unveiled before the face of sin, that sin may
be defined.
When in the presence of some noble majesty or of some courtly modesty
a free and conscious soul is arrogant or insolent; when a being born
for endless life in freedom, light and purity, exchanges God and
immortality for idol forms and baseness and decay; when recipients of
God's unnumbered benefits, and participants in the joys and sorrows of
a teeming world of brothermen remain ungrateful and unpitiful; when
beings destined to be sons of light prefer hypocrisy and unbelief;
then, irreverent, corrupt, ungracious, and untrue, sin shows all its
horridness and iniquity.
And when in the presence of pure grace and truth all such perverseness
stands revealed; then the beauty of a quiet modesty, as it respects
all worthy majesty, will make supremely plain the ugliness of every
form of insolence; then the life that opens towards perpetual dawn
will most mightily and forevermore reproach the life that feasts upon
corroding food, fattening and hardening towards decay; then
outpouring, patient love will visit on ingratitude and hate their most
unbearable rebuke; and then the radiant light of simple truth and pure
sincerity will set all falsity and unbelief in uttermost disgrace. In
such an awful penalty, supreme and unavoidable, will sin incur its
doom.
But in the very penalty it stands proclaimed how sinful souls may be
transformed, and hostile hearts be reconciled.
When pride, subdued by majesty, rejoices in humility; when grossness,
shamed by purity, welcomes purging fires; when malice, melted by
forbearance, partakes the sacrifice and becomes itself compassionate;
when falsity, unveiled by verity, submits to its rebuke and welcomes
truth with deep docility and faith; then within the sinner's penitence
is every penalty absolved, and between embittered souls comes perfect
reconciliation.
Be these four qualities addressed to that supreme transaction named
atonement.
When, in perfect loyalty and in perfect lowliness, with a perfect
charity and with an utter trust in immortality, one like a Son of Man
consents to bear the dark affront of insolence and perfidy from base
and deadly men, enduring meekly what his soul abhors, then to all the
sons of men is published equally, and with supreme assurance, that
sins of men must be indeed avenged, and that sinful men may be indeed
redeemed.
In that transaction malice faces patience, and patience faces malice
for a final strife. There candor bears the lying taunt of acting in
disguise. Humility endures the shameful charge of shameless arrogance.
Compassion bows as though a thief to all the brutal rudeness of a mob.
The soul of immortal purity is bartered for by traders greedy after
silver coins, and driving through their trade with lamps and clubs.
But in the measure and in the manner of that transcendent patience
malice is preparing for itself the manner and the measure of its own
just doom. And in the measure and the manner of that same transcendent
patience contrition may discern the manner and the measure of its
release. In that mighty mingling of aversion and endurance sin must
behold alike its omnipotent redemption and its omnipotent rebuke. Thus
love, in perfect sympathy, and truth, in perfect equity set forth in
heavenly purity the sovereign majesty of an atonement for the world.
Be these four radiant qualities applied to him we call alike the son
of Mary and the Son of God. In him, the Son of God, shines such a
plenitude of grace and truth as becomes the glory of the very God,
revealed in such immortal purity as proves him heir and very Lord of
all eternity, and wearing such a dignity as belongs at once to
heaven's majesty and our most genuine humility; while deep within his
open life as son of Mary there shines such a full and genial truth and
grace as proves his true humanity, so free from mortal taint through
all our transient scenes as proves his spirit's immortality, and
manifesting everywhere to all the sons of man their own ideal
lowliness. These are all his beauty. In him they fully blend. They
blend in him indeed. But they do not dissolve. And so may we with
souls akin to him whom Mary bore behold in him the proper image of our
complete humanity; and still with eyes and vision all unchanged,
behold within those same fair traits the very image and the unbounded
fulness of the glory of the infinite God.
Be these same radiant qualities our proper medium for beholding Deity.
Conceive of One in whose being the only light and glory reside in the
pure majesty of a perfect grace and truth. Conceive how these free
living qualities permit a unison in fellowship, a fellowship in
unison. Conceive how such a unison permits to each participant
complete equality and a full infinity. Conceive thus how perfect
constancy and perfect kindliness, revealed in perfect purity, and clad
in perfect majesty may manifest eternally in mystic unison the
blessedness of a perfect personality. Conceive how such a partnership
in unison, and unison in partnership will be evermore containing and
enjoying within itself an evermore unsullied Spirit life, engendering
and completing all the finite forms of being of the created universe;
an evermore unfolding Love that is the one original of every
fatherhood in heaven and earth; and an evermore Responding Love that
is the primal inspiration of the admiring and adoring thankfulness of
every child of God; while evermore displaying in a loyal self-respect
the eternal archetype and origin of every verity and every equity
enthroned in any earnest upright mind. And so conceive in terms as
vivid as our own intelligence and liberty how true transcendent Deity
may wield no other energy and know no other blessedness than unfolds
forever in a free and conscious unison and partnership in pure
transcendent love and truth.
Transcendent thoughts and ventures these. But abounding other thoughts
and ventures no less transcendent wait and urge for utterance. They
all assume no less, and nothing more, than that in the living vision
of a living personality hides and shines the harmony that may unite
the mysteries and the certainties of this universe. Let Truth, as
personal self-respect; and Love, as self-devoting life; and Purity,
that fears no death; and Dignity, that crowns all worth--let these be
clearly seen, each one apart; and clearly seen again when fully
unified--and human thought holds categories in hand whereby the
problems of our mental and ethical and religious life may be resolved.
Of all of this what goes before is but a brief and bare suggestive
hint. Its development and vindication call for the completed
exposition of such a balanced round of thought as may be found in a
prophet like Isaiah, an apostle like Paul, or an evangelist like
John.
LINCOLN'S SECOND INAUGURAL
Fellow-Countrymen:
At this second appearing to take the oath of the presidential office,
there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the
first. Then a statement, somewhat in detail, of a course to be
pursued, seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four
years, during which public declarations have been constantly called
forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still
absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the Nation, little
that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which
all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself;
and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory. With high hope for the
future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.
On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts
were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it--all
sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered
from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war,
insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without
war--seeking to dissolve the Union, and divide effects, by
negotiation. Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make
war rather than let the Nation survive; and the other would accept war
rather than let it perish. And the war came.
One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not
distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern
part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful
interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the
war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the
object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war;
while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the
territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the
magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither
anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even
before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier
triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the
same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against
the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just
God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's
faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of
both could not be answered--that of neither has been answered fully.
The Almighty has His own purposes. "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." If we shall suppose that American slavery
is one of those offenses which, in the Providence of God, must needs
come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now
wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this
terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall
we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which
the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we
hope--fervently do we pray--that this mighty scourge of war may
speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the
wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of
unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn
with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was
said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, "The
judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."
With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the
right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish
the work we are in; to bind up the Nation's wounds; to care for him
who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan--to
do all which may achieve a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and
with all Nations.
Transcriber's Notes:
Inconsistent/archaic spelling and punctuation retained from original.