Western Hemisphere, and an object of honor, love, and reverence throughout the civilized world. Had he been a genius, an intellectual prodigy, like Julius Ceasar, or Shakespeare, or Mirabeau, or Webster, we might say: "This lesson is not for us — with such faculties any one could achieve and succeed"; but he was not a born king of men, ruling by the resistless might of his natural superiority, but a child of the people, who made himself a great persuader, therefore a leader by dint of firm resolve, and patient effort, and dogged perseverance. He slowly won his way to eminence and renown by ever doing the work that lay next to him doing it with all his growing might - doing it as well as he could, and learning by his failure. when failure was encountered, how to do it better. Wendell Phillips once coarsely said, "He grew because we watered him"; which was only true in so far as this — he was open to all impressions and influences, and gladly profited by all the teachings of events and circumstances, no matter how adverse or unwelcome. There was probably no year of his life in which he was not a wiser, larger, better man than he had been the year preceding. It was of such a nature — patient, plodding, sometimes groping, but ever towards the light that Tennyson sings:

Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds,

At last he beat his music out.

There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.

There are those who profess to have been always satisfied with his conduct of the war, deeming it prompt, energetic, vigorous, masterly. I did not, and could not, so regard it. I believed then I believe this hour,- that a Napoleon I., a Jackson, would have crushed secession out in a single short campaign-almost in a single victory. I believed that an advance to Richmond 100,000 strong might have been made by the end of June, 1861; that would have insured a counter-revolution throughout the South, and a voluntary return of every State, through a dispersion and disavowal of its rebel chiefs, to the councils and the flag of the Union. But such a return would have not merely left slavery intact it would have established it on firmer foundations than ever before. The momentarily alienated North and South would have fallen on each other's necks, and, amid tears and kisses, have sealed their reunion by ignominiously making the Black the scapegoat of their bygone quarrel, and wreaking on him the spite which they had purposed to expend on each other. But God had higher ends, to which a Bull Run, a Ball's Bluff, a Gaines's Mill, a Groveton, were indispensable and so they came to pass, and were endured and profited by. The Republic needed to be passed through chastening, purifying fires of adversity and suffering: so these came and did their work and the verdure of a new national life springs greenly, luxuriantly, from their ashes. Other men were helpful to the great renovation, and nobly did their part in it; yet, looking back through the

lifting mists of seven eventful, tragic, trying, glorious years, I clearly discern that the one providential leader, the indispensable hero of the great drama faithfully reflecting even in his hesitations and seeming vacillations the sentiment of the fitted by his very defects and shortcomings for the burden laid upon him, the good to be wrought out through him, was Abraham Lincoln.

masses

LINCOLN

BY J. T. TROWBRIDGE

Heroic soul, in homely garb half hid,

Sincere, sagacious, melancholy, quaint; What he endured, no less than what he did, Has reared his monument, and crowned him saint.

THE RELIGIOUS CHARACTER OF

1

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 1

BY B. B. TYLER

In 1865, the bullet of an assassin suddenly terminated the life among men of one who was an honor to his race. He was great and good. He was great because he was good. Lincoln's re

1 From The Homiletic Review, Funk & Wagnalls, Publishers.

ligious character was the one thing which, above all other features of his unique mental and moral as well as physical personality, lifted him above his fellow men.

Because an effort has been made to parade Abraham Lincoln as an unbeliever, I have been led to search carefully for the facts in his life bearing on this point. The testimony seems to be almost entirely, if not altogether, on one side. I cannot account for the statement which William H. Herndon makes in his life of the martyred President, that, "Mr. Lincoln had no faith." For twentyfive years Mr. Herndon was Abraham Lincoln's law partner in Springfield, Ill. He had the best opportunities to know Abraham Lincoln. When, however, he affirms that "Mr. Lincoln had no faith," he speaks without warrant. It is simply certain that he uses words in their usually accepted signification, although his statement concerning Lincoln is not true.

He

Abraham Lincoln was a man of profound faith. He believed in God. believed in the Bible. faith made him great. mentary on the words, "This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith." There was a time in Lincoln's experience when his faith faltered, as there was a time when his reason tottered, but these sad experiences were temporary, and Abraham Lincoln was neither an infidel nor a lunatic. It is easy to trace in the life of this colossal character, a steady growth of faith. This

He believed in Christ.
He believed in men. His
His life is a beautiful com-

grace in him increased steadily in breadth and in strength with the passing years, until it came to pass that his last public utterances show forth the confidence and the fire of an ancient Hebrew prophet.

It is true that Lincoln never united with the Church, although a lifelong and regular attendant on its services. He had a reason for occupying a position outside the fellowship of the Church of Christ as it existed in his day and in his part of the world. This reason Lincoln did not hesitate to declare. He explained on one occasion that he had never become a church member because he did not like and could not in conscience subscribe to the long and frequently complicated statements of Christian doctrines which characterized the confessions of the Churches. He said: "When any Church will inscribe over its altar as its sole qualification for membership the Savior's condensed statement of the substance of both law and gospel, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself,' that Church will I join with all my heart and soul."

Abraham Lincoln in these words recognizes the central figure of the Bible, Jesus of Nazareth, as "the Saviour." He recognizes God as the supreme Lawgiver, and expresses readiness, while eschewing theological subtleties, to submit heart and soul to the supreme Lawgiver of the universe. His faith, according to this language, goes out manward as