New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1915-02-12
Lincoln.

Time and history, which expose things as 'he!
uere IN 80 doing bring them into a perfect mar
p,onv with things as they sre--or dismiss them
forever The past lives for us exactly IN pro-
norton 10 its spiritual alliance with the present
"As dead as Pharaoh" runs the familiar phrase
That past is gone indeed Pharaoh was man
like unto ourselves. and our civilization Is III
debt to his, yet is he lost In the Egyptian night
The poet clearly tells us why, in his piercing ailu
sim 70 "the hand that Knocked them and the
heart that fed" Man cannot live by bread alone
Without ideas he starves. Lincoln, who fought
70 free a race to-day performs service 1or MS
countrymen which they need now as greatly as
they needed 1t in the sixties. He stirs their SOULS
he enkindies their imaginations.
What is freedom worth, without feeling7 Hero
worship that Is rooted in gratitude alone increases
No mans stature, and it easily degenerstes into
the arid Journalism Of habit. The true hero is
neither the benefactor, merely, nor even the EN-
bodiment Of a specific ideal He Is, rather the
man whose memory works strange magic tax
ing us out of ourselves we know not how, break
ing I'D the still waters Of pettiness enlarsmg our
ninds and our hearts as the clean winds quicken
the pulse and make US at one with golden uni
verse.
The biographers-some Of them-have tried 10
bring Lincoln closer TO US by hsrplng on MS
weaknesses, and they have failed. Others nave
tried 70 transform him into demigod, and they
too have failed The people Of the United States
have understood him through love, and their
image OF him is the right one Is it tillal love
or fraternal? Who shall say? 1t is, at all events
a clairvovant thing, which no other great Amer
lean has ever developed In the national conscious
ness, not even Washington. And 1t partakes OF aii
that is finest, all that Is truest, all that Is SIM
nlest in humanity. We talk of Lincoins measure
blo traits-of his kindness and his patience, his
. humor and his resolution, his eloquence and his
political genius. We weigh in our scales the WORK
that he did the man that he was But still the
secret of his power eludes us. All we know is
that the spirit OF man is in some mysterious way
touched nay, thrilled by the spirit Of Lincoln as
it is touched and thrilled only by the gifts OF God
Thus are we moved by the nober voices in
poetry and music; thus we moved by shin
ing deed. and again, by some sublime moment In
the visible world AS these things belong to US ALL
SO Lincoln belongs to us all, the hero and the In
spiration of democracy; and when we say this we
are thinking not Of a form Of government, but OF
the eternal forces Of sympathy and faith which
make men brothers. Do they wait for war to
bring them into play? They the breath Of our
existence day by day. in all times. And 1t Is
because their appeal is Lincoln's that he is not
only our hero but our friend. How, on this ami
versary Of his BIRTH does he set US thinking, and,
by the same token, enrich us with high emotion /!
With him in our thoughts we soarao the stars,
and in the same instant our hearts are turned
with deeper humility TO the little human tender
nesses which more than all else make life worth
living. Life is larger and more splendid because
we are the inheritOrs of his renown. We face It
- with fuller courage and q more generous ambi-
ton because he lived and died. And with this
strength that he means to US, with this spur,
there comes also profound happiness. No man
can be sorrowful, thinking on Lincoln, that man
of sorrows. The very greatness and glory of him
must make us glad. His name is the sound Of
a trumpet his fame like the shadow of great
rock in thirsty land. In him are brought
back to the peace and gertrude and JOY of ele-
mental things, for
He is made one with Nature:
He is a presence to be felt and known
In darkness and in ight, from herb and stone
Spreading itself whereer that Power may move
Which has withdrawn his being TO its own;
Which wields the world with never-wearied love
crsta;ns II from beneath and kindes It above.