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, reflectsin 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 paragraphwill 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 expounda 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, clearwithin 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 livingLincoln, 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.
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 ofsuch 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 hewell 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 andvision, 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.
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, thesetrue 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 withperfect 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 thatare 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 aresuperbly 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 redemptionor 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.
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. InLincoln'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 waskindled 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 withGod. 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 ofmany 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 ofvicarious 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 withLincoln, 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? Arehis 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 sinfulsouls 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 endurancesin 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.
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 apeculiar 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 bepaid 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.