Middletown transcript., 1915-02-13
ABRAHAM LINCOLN

ADNAf1AM LlNSULN
GEORGE Washington! Abraham
- Lincoln! The noblest names in
our country's history, and two of the
most illustrious in all the worlds his
tory-the first styled the Father of
his countryside second, the Savior of
it.
What are some of the things that
made Lincoln great? The theme Is so
rich one can editorially but glance at it.
l. He was simple. So few of the men
posterity's verdict has called great,
were simple-few SO truly as he ever
dared be that. How Abraham Lincoln
has glOrifed the lowly common people
from whom he sprang! His humble
origin was never his false shame, but
ever his proper, glowing pridel How
has he forever ennobled the commonest
meanest things of life till Poverty's
hard toiling has become glorious, and
its cabin palace After his life, the
poorest Iowliest American lad in cheap
hOmespun may be potentially deemed
the first citizen of the Republic.
As one looks abroad in the large
arena of Nature-nay, observes in all
the wide universe of God, what seems
the highest exhibition of Omnipotence,
the one thing most typical of Deity? Is
it the terrific crash of elemental war,
the awful spectacle of volcanic fires, or
of hurricane swept oceans? Is it not
on the contrary, simplicity, quietness?
When the prophet of old looked for
a symbol of the Almighty, he found it
not ''in the great and strong wind that
rent the mountains, nor in the earth
quake" not yet ''in the fire" but ''in
still, small voice.
The mightiest force in the universe
is probably that unknown, mysterious
something men call "the attraction of
gravitation" which silently, but always
and with resistless power, operates
through all distances.
So, throughout his whole career, from
the days of his rude frontier life when
he wore walnut-stained jeans and even
as big lad slept like a kenneled hound
in his leaf-lined crib, to his latest hour,
when clothed with honor and dignity as
the Chief Magistrate of great nation
he performed through a period of Pc
culiar difficulty and peril a great task
and achieved a unique Immortality
the character of Lincoln, remarkable in
its very simplicity, was as simple, as
quiet, as modest as a childs!
2 He was honest and truthful.
Transparently sincere and conscienti-
ous-al this was the great Lincoln.
Though ever acting with the greatest
tact, and capable when the public need
demanded, of exercising the acutest
wisdom and of employing the boldest
policy with Titan's strength.
These elements of moral greatness
truth, honesty. sincerity, were native
qualities to his mind, and no stress of
fate, no temptation, ever hindered in
him their lifelong operation; and be-
cause whole nation had early come to
know that he was true, true as the Pole
star to its northern quality-true to
them and to the Union, they trusted
him as implicitly as Deity himself, when
in those awful hurricane days of dis
union and war his strong, true hand
wisely piloted the ship of state through
every danger past every shoal and
rock, where a weaker hand, or one
less absolutely true, might have made
shipwreck of the Union and of the
Worlds best hope of freedom.
8. He was humble-a deep humility
was always a marked trait of his-hu-
militv the rarast ond d;,,;nast o,,,oI;A,
of greatness seldom, indeed possessed
by common greatness, but only by ex-
traordinary greatness. For in truth
and it is spoken with all reverence-the
character of Lincoln in its profound,
unaffected ehild-like humility, reminds
one of the like character in the Son of
God himself, and that divine attribute lin