with vice itself and from vicious men. He knew very well that the world, in the present ethical state of mankind, could not be governed by saints alone,—that the good could not withdraw from the bad, but must stand together with them, in order that the whole may be made better as fast as possible. He did not remove men from office, or decline to appoint men to office, because of any bad habits they may have had, provided their bad habits would not detract from their usefulness for the work assigned them. It is reportedand probably with truth-that, when, during the siege of Vicksburg, some delegation asked for the removal of General Grant because of his alleged intemperate use of whiskey, the President replied, that he would like to ascertain what kind of whiskey General Grant was in the habit of using, that he might give it to some of the other generals. Yet the president himself was temperate to the degree of total abstinence; and he made this reply, not because he was insensible to the evil of intemperance in the army, but because he believed, what has proved to be the case, that General Grant, with the immense responsibility that was placed upon him, would have strength to resist temptation, and so give unimpaired his consummate ability to the salvation of the republic. President Lincoln was no moral Pharisee. He was a Pharisee in no respect. He had none of the "I-am-holier-than-thou" spirit. He grasped the hand of every man as a brother. He was no moral exquisite, standing aloof from his kind, with nerves too delicate for contact with men of common frailties.

Yet, though his moral nature was not of the extremely sensitive order, it was extraordinarily strong and sure, and

was never harmed by contact with vice. He was eminently above being influenced by evil example. He had an integ rity upon which the foulest slander of partisan strife has left no stain; an honesty that at once summoned and held the confidence of the country; a frankness and sincerity that astonished politicians accustomed to concealed and sinister ways; a simplicity of habit that excited the derision of fashionable and conventional circles of society; a conscientiousness that knew no indirection, and startled the habitués of political circles in Washington; an ambition that aimed only at his country's welfare, and saw only his country's glory; an unselfish, unswerving, unflagging devotion of himself and all his means and abilities to what he saw to be right; a humility that never knew pretence, and never even allowed him credit for his good deeds; and a moral courage that, though not bold at radical innovation, was never prevented from innovation by any thought of popularity or unpopularity, and which held to every step that had been taken from a conviction of its justice, and to every principle that had been adopted because it was right, with a firmness that was anchored to the very throne of God. Here are moral qualities that made Abraham Lincoln preeminently the moral leader for the times. When we sum them up, we have a greatness of moral nature for which we shall not soon find the peer among the great magistrates of the world.

President Lincoln's moral qualities rose naturally into the religious; and of the religious character of the man, we come, finally, to speak. But here he has a right to the reserve which covers every person's deepest and inmost life. Because we have put a man into a public position and made

him our servant, it does not give us a claim to enter with him into his closet, to lurk as eaves-droppers for his prayers, or to sit in judgment on his religious emotions. I shall not seek to spy behind the sacredness of this private veil. It is the religious character of the man only so far as publicly manifest that we have any right or proper interest to examine.

And keeping within these limits, we should not say that President Lincoln had the finest spiritual quality. He was not a Fenelon, a Thomas a Kempis, a Channing, or an Edwards. He lacked the intuitional faculty, I judge, in spiritual things as he did in intellectual; and, as was necessary from his cast of mind, he approached religion from the ethical and practical side. With its metaphysics or its prophecies, its theologies or its ecstacies, its Transcendental visions or its Methodistic raptures, he did not trouble himself. His religion was on the broad level of common sense. His sharp logic and keen humor could not fail to perceive and prick some of the long-standing theological absurdities,—as when, in his reply to an ecclesiastical delegation who, in the common phrase of their faith, had expressed the hope that the Lord would be on his side, he said: "I have not given myself any care whether the Lord is on our side; but I do feel anxious that myself and the people should be on the Lord's side."

Whatever were his ecclesiastical associations or training, we may be sure that such a mind was thoroughly unsectarian and liberal. There was no cant in his religion; no meaningless professions of piety. He, clearly, believed more in performing duty than in subscribing to theologies, believed

in a religion of righteousness-of obedience to God and helpfulness towards man. I do not credit the account, recently published, of an interview had with him by some Western clergyman, in which phrases are put into the presi dent's mouth that sound very much like the exclamations heard in an excited meeting of revivalists. They do not tally with his marked characteristics of calmness and religious sobriety; he was no spiritual, more than intellectual, enthusiast; and this account doubtless received its flavor of pious zeal from the fervid evangelical conduits through which it passed. Nor, on the other hand, do I give much weight to what I heard on better authority, in Washington,- that President Lincoln was a warm admirer of Theodore Parker, and in sympathy with that great heresiarch's rationalistic views of religion, though, from the cast of Mr. Lincoln's mind, I should credit this report sooner than the other: I can well conceive that he would find much to attract him in Mr. Parker's plain, practical sense in religious things, and in the rugged, homely way in which he dealt with some of the metaphysical absurdities of theology. There was really much in common between the characters of the two men,so much, that of this we may be sure: whatever Mr. Lincoln's theological views were, and though it is not very probable they were in agreement with Mr. Parker's-quite likely he had not even read Mr. Parker's books-yet he would not have been frightened away, by any theological heresies of Mr. Parker, from admiring the sturdy moral courage of the man, or sympathizing with his efforts for the advancement of public morals and the elevation of humanity. Outwardly, President Lincoln was connected with the Presbyterians,—

that is, when he had leisure from public duties, he went to a Presbyterian church, and probably, without giving much thought to the matter, accepted in the main the doctrines there preached; but he was not a member of any church, and not an habitual attendant on the services of any. He was too broad to be a zealot of any sect; too practical to care much for the creed of any. He believed in a religion of work and duty.

Yet he was also a man of prayer, and faith, and trust. This country has hardly had a president who tried more sincerely to know and to do God's will; or who had a stronger belief in an overwatching and overruling Providence. When he said in respect to the progress and issues of the war, that God alone could claim to have controlled events, we see that the language in his mouth was no common-place of piety, and no mere convenient phraseology, easily used, as an apology for some unexpected or uncomprehended turn of affairs; but that the words expressed what he really meant and believed. More and more he came to consider himself as but an instrument in the hands of the Almighty.

His faith, it is true, was of conviction, rather than of temperament; his trust, the lesson learned through the stern tasks of an eventful life, rather than the childlike instinct of dependence. He had no ecstacies of faith. It was not given him to see spiritual visions. His religion did not fly; it had to walk the whole dusty way of life; it kept him close to the duty of earth, seldom allowing him even a glimpse of the height or splendor of heaven. We could wish, for his own joy, that his trust had been more intuitional;