Mr. Lincoln's power entirely in the mode of his education, hard and disciplinary as it was. We must rather look for it in his spiritual inheritance, for there was something more in him than the quality we call genius. Genius accounts for much, but it does not always work out in the courage, the moral elevation, and the devotion to duty which made Lincoln both a hero and a martyr. In Lincoln, all is harmonious and consistent-deed answering to word. When he spoke for the Nation he so loved, his lips were as though touched with a live coal from the altar. He seemed to be of the same fibre with the prophets of Holy Writ and it may be said, without irreverence, that he was a "priest after the order of Melchisedec, without beginning or end of days," combining the kingly and priestly functions essential to the service of his Nation and his time.

The concluding sentence of his Cooper Institute speech, "Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty, as we understand it," voiced the faith in which he lived and in which he died. Though dead, he yet speaketh, even as never while he lived; though dead, he remains enshrined in the hearts of the people a living example, as an incentive to higher Christian citizenship, and to the

belief in the unity and justice of the divine purpose "toward which the whole creation moves."

Why was it that this product of the prairies, unlettered and unknown, arose to such heights of moral vision and statecraft? Why was it that he who knew so little of literature could compel the eulogia of the Nation's literary masters? Why was it that this son of an humble frontier settler could rise above the clouds that blind the eyes of ordinary men and see the course a mighty Nation must take to preserve its existence and keep alive the hope of human freedom?

Ask God Who, in creating a continent, upraises a mighty mountain range above the plains, and above the mountain peaks one that towers above all the rest, penetrates all clouds and forever reflects the light of the fleckless skies upon the crags and plains below; and Who, once in a century, raises up a man whose towering personality rises above the common multitudes that throng the hills and vales, as the mountain above its fellows, and for all times sheds the light of his achievements and his glory upon the world, to inspire even those who tread the humbler walks of life that they, in their sphere, may make their lives sublime.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE COMPLETE CHRISTIAN

CLEARED of the charges made by Layman and Herndon, and repeated since by many that Lincoln was at heart a skeptic, and possibly an infidel, no matter what he may have seemed to some in private words and public utterances, there remains a task which unperformed still leaves the subject open to discussion. It is not enough to remind the reader that only those see who have eyes to see, only those hear who have ears to hear. Even a casual reader of Herndon's extraordinary oration on Lincoln will perceive that Herndon's instinct was to explain all the phenomena of personality without resort to religious faith, and however intimate Lincoln may have been with his law partner, he was dealing with a man who, like Darwin, born the same year as Lincoln, had developed his great intellectual gifts at the expense of his spiritual genius and without Darwin's awakening at last to his loss of power to be moved, as when a young man he stood in the gorgeous loneli

ness of a Brazilian forest and heard voices whispering of the Creator.

Of one thing Herndon was certain-that Lincoln was honest in all things, that he never, even in the stress of politics, sacrificed his love of thinking and speaking what appeared to him to be the truth. In consequence it would seem necessary to make clear the Christianity of Mr. Lincoln by telling out of his own mouth the story of his attitude toward Christian fundamentals. This, too, can be done without intrusion on ground dedicated to those elements and incidents illustrative of his greatness as a "human," who would have been great at any time, in any place, inside Christianity like Lincoln, or outside like Marcus Aurelius.

Abraham Lincoln was brought up in a Christian home. No boy ever received more definite Christian training than that given to him by Nancy Hanks and Sally Johnston. He knelt at the family altar. He went to church. He was swept by the emotions kindled at camp-meetings. He heard great revivalists like Cartwright and Akers. There never was a time when he was not interested mind and heart in Christian preaching and in Christian experience. His old friend, Billy Brown, said in 1896:

I never knew anybody who seemed to me more interested in God, more curious about Him, more anxious to find out what He was drivin' at in the world than Mr. Lincoln. I reckon he was allus that way. The Bible was the whole thing, and there ain't any doubt he knew it pretty near by heart, knew it well before he could ever read.'

If he was slow in committing himself unreservedly to the Christian theology of his day it was partly because he took a larger view of God's loving kindness as described by Jesus than some who were laying more stress on the wrathful Jehovah of the Old Testament. In his early manhood he wrote a paper often cited as proof he was no Christian, which really was such a tribute as Brooks or Beecher later might have paid to Love Divine expressed in God's relationship to

man.

Tom Paine, who was no atheist, may have held him back from full committal to the theology men commonly associated with the Bible. To a mind as acute as Lincoln's and accustomed from the first to see all round a subject, Voltaire came with a challenge to be sure he was right before he went ahead. Volney's Ruins, not so widely read as Paine

Ida M. Tarbell: "In Lincoln's Chair"-in The Red Cross Magazine, February, 1920, p. 7.