Bronze Tablet Inscribed with the Gettysburg Address

(Replicas of this tablet were placed by the Committee of One Hundred upon the walls of the schools of Chicag

hantonly or selfishly. It is convections
were imperturbable because he thought
clearly, coherently, patiently and finitfully,

comandice and treachery; he lover

and thought righteousness. A patriot

Facsimile of Manuscript Tribute from Dr. Charles J. Little,
President of Garrett Biblical Institute, Chicago

free and half slave." It was a prediction derived from steady and consecutive vision. For genuine logic, like the logic of Euclid which fascinated him, is, after all, a continuous seeing. Given the elements of a situation, the mind watches them as consequence follows consequence in sure and certain revelation. Never to befool oneself about an actual situation and never to befool oneself in reasoning upon it-these are the bases of science, physical and political. And science is the modern almanac, the handbook of prediction. When men like Douglas were attempting to manipulate and thwart the laws of God which determine national destiny, Abraham Lincoln was humbly studying them in the spirit of Galileo and of Francis Bacon.

Daniel Webster once declared that it is wholly unnecessary to re-enact the laws of God. The saying, strictly construed, is true enough, but the implications of it, as Lincoln saw, are utterly false. We need not, indeed, re-enact the laws of God, but our statutes, if they shall work benefit and not disaster, must recognize and conform to them. The laws of God, left to themselves, leave us in impotence, and exposed to hunger, disease and disaster. All our mastery of the physical world depends upon our actively using, not upon our pas.sively submitting to, the laws of the material universe. In this sense every flying locomotive is a re-enactment of the laws of God; so is every telescope that opens to mortal vision the splendors of immensity, and every microscope with which we track to their hiding places the mysteries of life and death. So is every temple that we rear, every bridge that we build, every steamship that we construct, every mill that we erect, and every machine into which we conduct the energy of steam or electricity. The whole progress of civilized man may be measured by the extent to which he has learned in his activities to obey and to employ the laws of God. So, too, in the political world, the great structures that we call commonwealths must, in this sense, be re-enactments of eternal principles. If they are to be beneficent and not malignant, those who create and control them must learn the laws by which alone benign results can be obtained. Constitutions can en

dure and statutes increase the welfare of the people only as they realize and do not contravene the principles of righteousness and progress. Penetrating to this simple but tremendous truth, Lincoln obtained his vision of the future; his prophetic gaze swept the political horizon and discerned the inevitable. And this foresight was both profound and far-reaching. In learned information his horizon might be termed a narrow one; but in his grasp of principles and of their ultimate and universal consequences he was broader and deeper than any statesman of his age. The only time I ever saw him was at the flag-raising in Philadelphia, on Washington's birthday, in 1861. I could not hear his voice, so great was the intervening crowd, but the words that I could not hear I have read and pondered often since:

"I never have had a feeling politically," said the predestined martyr for whom assassins even then were lying in wait, "that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence that sentiment . . . which gave liberty not alone to the people of this country, but hope to all the world, for all future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights would be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance. Now, my friends, can this country be saved on that basis? . . . If it cannot be saved without giving up that principle, I was about to say I would rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it."

If this be narrowness of vision, then may God contract the eyes of American statesmen to a similar horizon!

Such was the mind of Abraham Lincoln-a mind that gravitated gladly to the truth of things; a mind that loved light and hated darkness; a mind that found rest only in eternal principles, and inspiration in prophetic visions and exalted political ideals.

Possibly under different surroundings he might have become a renowned scientist; more probably his radiant and steady intellect, united to his great heart would have made. him even under other conditions a supreme statesman. For the scientist seeks chiefly for causes and is satisfied to find and to show them; if he concerns himself for beneficent results, as he often does, these are not his principal quest.

He searches for the seeds of things and delights to see them grow. The statesman, on the other hand, seeks first, last, and always the welfare of the people. And Lincoln loved the people, craving their happiness and hating oppression even when it assumed the form of law. Monarchs and oligarchs strive mainly to perpetuate their privileges and to increase their power; even in Republics there be those who usurp free institutions in order to enlarge their wealth and to entrench their tyranny. Lincoln perceived too clearly and felt too keenly the burdens of the common man, ever to become the active or the passive instrument of any power that would abridge his liberties or diminish the opportunities of his children. The Declaration of Independence, so often mentioned in his speeches, he recognized as the embodiment of the principles that determine all political progress. Human governments are sanctioned and favored by Almighty God, so long, and so long only, as they promote the welfare of the people and further the progress of mankind. Directly they become instruments of oppression, or strongholds of tyranny, they provoke the judgments which are righteous altogether, when "the wealth piled up by unrequited toil" shall be sunk in the divine wrath "and every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword."

And he recognized himself, humbly and gladly, as a product of the principles that he defended. Freedom had made it possible for his own soul to expand to dimensions not unworthy of its Almighty Architect. One needs only to read the story of modern Italy, of her exiles and her patriots dying in dungeons and upon the scaffold, to see how impossible would have been such a career under the Italian skies. It is enough to make one weep tears of blood to know the tremendous price that the descendants of Dante and of Galileo paid for unity and liberty. And her Garibaldi grew strong in the shelter of our Declaration of Independence. But a poor lad like Abraham Lincoln, even though capable of penetrative, prophetic, and profound vision-a poor lad, awkward in body, homely in features, and unaggressive in disposition, with no capital but his strong arms, his big heart, and his luminous