The morning journal-courier., 1908-02-13

at him, an earnest inquirer; and fin ally. when he carried on his heart the burdens of a nation, and stamped up- on his face its woes, sucn a simple, trustful spirit of dependence upon God as might grace the life of a child. So grew his faith, as genuine faith must always grow, not by argument but by trial. If any soul shaking experience were needed to make Lincoln a pro- foundly religious man, that experience came to him out of the war. All great men in the worlds history have been religious men! for the simple reason that religion is the development of those powers by which man rises above himself and becomes, in sense, super man. Greatness. by its very nature, involves the unfolding of those highest powers of faith and hope and love If you look at Lincoln from any conven- tional point of view you will get wholly wrong impression of him. He must ba judged by the things in him that were out of sight If religion Is compounded of those essences of char acter that we call faith and hope and love then Lincoln was a religious man indeed. Let us study him from this point of view. Let us see how truly religious he was-not because he held certain dostrines. but because he ex- emplified certain qualities of soul.
 This Neans that we are to keep in mind that the religion of Lincoln had to do with things that were close down to the ground He was SO wholly a child of nature that 1t would have been strange indeed had his religion not breathed the spirit of common signs and sounds.
 The color of the ground was in him,
 the red earth
 The tang and odor of the primal things
 The rectitude and patience of the rocks, The gladness of the wind that shakes The courage of the bird that dares the The justice of the rain that loves the
 leaves;
 The pity of the snow that hides all scars;
 The loving kindness Of the way-sldc
 we'll
 l The tolerance and equity Of light That gives as freely to the shrinking
 weed
 As to the great oak haring to the wind
 | To the graves low hill as to the Mat terhorn
 | That shoulders out the sky l I have said enough to make clear to | you that the basis of Lncoln's relig- l ion was a wonderful depth of feeling. He was intensely alive. The freshness and spontanelty of the child-spirit nev- CT went out of him. He lived unto the last under the spell of haunting mystery.
 His joys were tenser, his griefs were l deeper, than those of ordinary men. It was this minglng of extremes that made him so strangely fascinating and | lent to his conversation such irresisti- ble charm.
 "A soft Kentucky strain was in his voice,
 And the ohio's deeper boom was there,
 With some wild accents of old Wa
 bash days
 And winds of Illinois"
 A man, men say of him, who could pass from tears to laughter by the 1 frail bridge of single sentence. Only few suspected how deep were the currents of feeling that flowed i through his nature. Can one ever forget that picture of the young Lin coin standing all night by the grave of his first love and crying brokenly: T cannot bear to have the rain fall upon her" Without instituting sin gle inquiry we know that here was the making of great religious char acter. During the long years of hard and at times. bitter struggle that fol- lowed, Lincoln gained the mastery over his feelings, and brought the tu- multuons forces of his nature under strong control. Yet. even to the last he would occasionally find himself mastered by some violent emotion Secretary Stanton said of him: Many time did Mir. Lincoln come in after midnight in an agony of anxiety occa- stoned by despatches he had received He would throw himself at full length on the sofa and cry out stanton these things will kill me. I shall go mad, I can't stand it,' Rightly he was called Father Abraham" for he carried upon his heart the burdens of all who suffered in the interests of the great cause. Study the later portraits of Lincoln, and while you get from them a sense of supreme mastery, oi almost oppressive intellectual force the thing that you take with you from the study is the conviction that here was a man whose sympathies were wide and deep as the spaces between the stars. Pre-eminently man oi heart, and the heart. after all, is the essential thing in religion.
 From such depth of feeling we would expect deeds Of tenderness tc spring. Nor are we disappointed. Il we may believe a tenth of the storie. told of him, Lincoln was as gentle a. he was strong I used to stop befor. that statue of him in Lincoln park Chicago Under the shelter of thu massive hand which rests upon hi, breast the little sparroEs build theii