The Johnson City comet. (Johnson City, Tenn.) 1916-1917, 1916-02-17
| COL N DAY.
OBSERVED AT NATIONAL SOL
DIERS' HOME-ADDRESS BY
REV. ROWE.

On last Saturday evening at Memo
rial Hall, National Soldiers Home
special exercises were instituted il
commemoration of one of America
greatest heroes, Abraham Lincoln
Rev. W. E, Rowe, pastor of the Uni
ted Brethren Church of Johnson City
delivered the Memorial Address which
stirred the patriotism and love in ev
cry heart present for the preseryel
of our country.
After a few well-chosen predatory
remarks, Rev. Rowe repeated as ar
Introductory text, Lincolns immor.
tai Gettysburg address and then
plunged into his mastery speech
from which the following is ex'
tracted:
If | were to use a further text
would quote the words of the LORD
to Moses at the institution of the
passover-'And this day shall be unto
you for a memorial'--for this day is
est heroes, whom we as a nation de-
light to honor from the Great Lakes
on the North to the Gulf on the South
and from the Atlantic on the East to
the Pacific ON the West.
Abraham Lincoln was born in a
cabin of Kentucky, of parents who
could hardly read; born new Moses
in the solitude of the desert where
are forged all the great and obstinate
thoughts, monotonous like the desert
and like the desert sublime; growing
up among the primeval forests where
their fragrance send up a cloud of
incense and with their murmurs a
cloud of prayers to Heaven.
A boatman at eight years in the
impetuous current of the Ohio and at
IL woodsman with an ak and arm
telling the immemorial trees to open
way into unexplored regions for his
tribe of wondering workers; reading
no other book than the Bible, the
book of sorrows and great hopes, die
tated by the prophets to the sound
of fetters they dragged through Min
evah and Babylon.
A child of nature in a word by one
of those miracles, only comprehensi-
BILE among free people, he fought for
his country and was raised by his
fellow citizens to the congress at
Washington and by the nation to the
Presidency of the Republic; and when
the evil grew more virulent, when
those states were dissolved, when the
slave holders uttered their war cry
and the slaves their groans of des-
pair; the woodcutter, the boatman,
the son of the West, the descendant
of Quakers, the humblest of humble
before his conscience, greatest of the
great before history, ascends the cap
itol, the greatest moral height of our
time, and strong and serene with his
conscience and his thought; before a
veteran army, hostile Europe behind
him, England favoring the South,
France encouraging reaction in Mex
leo, in his hand the riven country; he
arms two millions of men, gathering
half a million of horses, sends his ar
tillery twelve hundred miles week
from the banks of the Potomac to the
shores of the Tennessee; fights more
than six hundred battles, and renews
before Richmond the deeds of Alex
ander and Caesar. Many of you here
tonight realize something of the cost
as you travel back in thought to
Lookout mountain, Charlottesville,
The Wilderness, Srottsylyania, Ma
nassas Junction, Melvern Hill and
many other places where great bat
ties were fought, as you hear the
,Nf fhO Nd h Of
kerry and the groans of the dead and
dying in your imagination; there is
stirred within you every drop of pa
triotic blood as you realize the great
principle for which this man stood
Next to Washington, Lincoln stands
forth as the grandest patriot in our
American life. Washington was the
father of his country" Lincoln was
her most loyal SON. Washington
brought the United States into being;
Lincoln made that beinb immortal !;
Washington unfurled a new flag
among the nations of the world Lin
coin made that flag a mighty power
among those nations. Dead they
speak. And so the nation most right
ly and fittingly made the birthdays of
these, her illustrious sons, legal hol-
idays, to inspire us to purer, nobler
and holier manhood
Abraham Lincoln like David of old,
was diyinely led fro mobscurity up to
the very highest place in the land.
Away back there in that little log
cabin God and His angels watched
over that humble birth and guarded
that precious life until the hour came
and the great Emancipation was called
TO set at liberty those that were
bound" Reared in the forests of
poverty, ignorance, and darkness,
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