In designing and constructing the chapters that precede, three motives have been actively at work. There has been a desire to set within the realm of Civics a clear and balanced exposition of Lincoln's moral grandeur. There has been a desire to introduce within the realm of Ethics a fertile method of discussion and research. There has been a desire to intimate how in the realm of pure Religion the finished outline of a transparent character may provide a pattern for a true description of the problems of Theology.

Of these three motives the one last named has been preponderant. Lincoln's public life was keyed alike to moral honor and to faith in God. In his most quickening aspirations and in his most sacrificial sorrows his sense of personal obligation and his belief in an over-ruling Providence held fast together in a most notable unison. Guileless, luminous, and single-hearted in his rectitude and in his reverence, he affords a signal illustration of the way in which faith and conscience may vitally co-operate and even coalesce. He presents in consequence a signal opportunity for exploring the inner kinship of ethics and religion. His personality challenges us to inquire and see how honesty and godliness consort; how in a complete and balanced character the categories that define the basis of one's moral excellence may prove themselves to be the very categories that inform and underlie the religious life.

Here opens an engaging investigation. May the ultimate principles of a true ethical theory and the ultimate rationale of a true theology be found in living deed to coincide? To bring this question into open view is the ulterior aim of this book, and more particularly of this appended Epilogue.

In the open petals of the plainest flower soil and sunlight, earth and heaven meet in almost mystic union. Be this our parable. In the ample compass of a normal character, such as Lincoln shows, there is in very deed a mystic union—a vital partnership of man with fellowman, and of men with God. Be this deep fellowship described; for here commingle indivisibly the essential elements in any pure and full display in human life of morals and religion.

In Lincoln's public life there was undeniably a close companionship with God. Earth-born and earth-environed though he was, he had supreme affinity with heavenly realms. His face was seamed with suffering; he wore a humble mien; his habitual posture was a pattern of unstudied modesty. But through those sorrow-shadowed features shone a radiant exalted hope, as he walked and toiled in reverend covenant with the sovereign God of Nations. Besieged by day and night with difficulties and distresses such as rarely burden mortal men, in his nightly vigils and in his daily labors he clung to Deity, true civilian and true man of God at once. The terms of this high covenant were specific and distinct. They were the very terms that defined the conscious qualities of his upright, God-revering character. Be those qualities described.

In the first place, here in Lincoln's open character it becomes heavenly clear how profoundly intimate and at one are majesty and true humility. When the guise of each is fully genuine, they minutely correspond. In Lincoln's lowliness lay the very image of the majesty of God. To that high majesty his lowliness conformed. As in a mountain lake may be enshrined a perfect pattern of the heavenly firmament, so was Lincoln's reverence a conscious, free reflection of the excellence of God. His obedience was an intelligent recognition and re-enthronement of the sovereign law of God. His lowly posture, when in supplicating or interceding prayer, was induced by the bending pity of a compassionate God. That trusting appeal was the very echo of God's benign concern; and within the wrestlings of those intense entreaties the divine designs gained place in human history. Lincoln in his lowliness was Godlike. His humility was supremely dignified, supremely beautiful. In its open face, as in the face of a flower opening towards the sun, was resident a heavenly glory.

In the second place, this vital unison of man with God stands superbly evident in the stately wedlock of Lincoln's honesty with God's righteousness. In Lincoln's soul there lived a faith in God's integrity which no dark storm of human faithlessness, and no delay of heaven's righteous judgments could eclipse or wear away. This belief was in him an active energy. It grew to be a partnership with God's uprightness—a covenant in which his own soul's eagerest ambitions and resolves became upright. In his inmost soul it was his inmost aspiration to be an agent for enthroning here on earth the equity of God. And so, in fact, as a mighty nation's chief executive, he did become the executive of the will of God. In his transparent honesty there was a reflection of the sincerity of God. In his firm constancy there was upheld before this people's eye an index finger pointing to the steadfast constancy of God. In his pure jealousy for the utter sanctity of his plighted word there burned a fire that was kindled in the eye of God. In all his even, glowing zeal for righteousness he has been adjudged by all his fellowmen pre-eminently a man of God. And as signal devotee to honesty he demonstrates most signally that God and man may set their lives in unison.

In the third place there was in Lincoln's patient gentleness a profound resemblance to the all-enduring gentleness of God. His mastery of malice and his universal charity in the face of multitudes of bitter and malignant men attest eternally an intimate companionship with divine forbearing grace. His sacrificial intervention on behalf of all God's little ones whom human heartlessness had oppressed is world-arresting evidence and demonstration that in his kindly heart was throned the Heavenly Father's sympathy. Unto costly fellowship with this divine forbearance and compassion Lincoln opened unreservedly all the compass of his life. For afflicted and afflicting men he felt a sorrow, mixed with pity and rebuke, both born of the affection fathers feel, both proved sincere by years of sacrificial anguish unto death. And this he did with a discerning and deliberate mind. It was thus he understood the heart and ways of God; and thus by clear design he undertook in his own life to recommend the ways of God to men. In verity he was partaker and dispenser of the manifold grace of God. In him the mighty love of God found living medium. Like a gentle flower drinking gratefully the warmth and beauty flowing towards it from the sun, his soul absorbed the gentle ways of God and itself grew kind and beautiful. Here again it may be seen how intimate may be the life of man in God, the life of God in man.

In the fourth place there was in Lincoln's soul an all-prevailing confidence touching future destiny. This living confidence was the outcome of his close partnership with God. His faith believed that God's designs held fast eternally, and that conviction clouds and night and death were impotent to overshadow or obscure. The rather, as his faith and hope confided in that unfailing verity, that faith and hope became themselves unfailing. His sure belief became participant in God's dependability. Here is the deepest secret of his abiding steadiness. Hence his calm indifference to death.

And this illumines all his great appeals to his fellowmen with the light of a prophetic vision. For his fellow-citizens, as for himself, his sovereign aspiration was after permanence. This abiding life, whether in the Nation or in himself, he had the mind to comprehend, must be the very life of God within the soul. In civic Godliness alone could there be civic permanence. In the Nation's life the life of God must be incorporate. Then and then alone would any Nation long endure. For this bright civic hope, for this alone he lived. And this ever-springing hopefulness and confidence is the shining efflorescence of his Godliness. He clung to things eternal in a conscious league with God.

Here is something wonderful—something replete alike with mystery and with certitude—a vital unison of God and man in undeniable verity—a unison in righteousness and kindliness, in lowly and majestic dignity, in immortal spirit purity—a unison in which all that is most sacredly elemental in God and man most intimately coalesce, while yet remaining most unmistakably distinct—a unison in which is freely and consciously engaged all that personality, however self-discerning and free, can ever contribute or contain—a unison as historically real as it is immeasurably profound—a unison in which space and time provide the theater, while yet a unison in which time and space dissolve. Here is surely ample range for ample exposition of many a major problem in theology, and all within the open and familiar bounds of a normal moral life.

In close alliance and affinity with Lincoln's vital partnership with God, and of almost equal pregnancy for the problems of religious thought, is the marvelous intimacy of his inner and essential fellowship with men. This feature of his public life is becoming more commanding and impressive every year. To a degree altogether notable it is becoming widely understood how he and all his fellowmen were wonderfully allied. It is becoming seen by all of us that the qualities essential to his commanding excellence are qualities deeply typical of us all. His attitudes of deference and modesty, his promptings towards things permanent and durable, his equities, his kindnesses are universal. They are enthroned within us all. Everywhere, in everyone they ultimately predominate.

Wonderful as it may seem, this holds as true of enemies as it does of friends. Hosts of people, while Lincoln lived, held him their deadliest foe. Through all those bitter years, while they defamed, he meekly, mightily held his own, subduing malice, disdaining subtlety, despising scorn and arrogance, abhorring sordid greed; pleading humbly, but as a prince instead, for righteousness and charity and man's immortal destiny. And now all men detect that however deep and overmastering those aversions and animosities may have been, there was in his enemies and himself a moral kinship and agreement far more powerful and profound. His humble, hopeful plea that every man be fair and pitiful is winning everywhere today glad witness to its eternal and imperial validity.

And the wonder of this deep partnership with men but deepens, when we consider that the form of this all-appealing, all-prevailing partnership was sacrificial. This leads straight into the innermost interior of the problem of vicarious suffering—one mortal, suffering in another's place and for another's sake. Never in all that era of civic anguish in the civil war did any human mortal suffer keener or more continual sorrow than did he who of all the Nation's multitudes stood most untainted and innocent of the iniquity which that stern civic judgment was to purge away. Guiltless utterly of any part in slavery for his own profit or by his own consent, he partook with all the guilty ones of all the sorrows of its expurgation.

And yet more wonderful is the sequent fact that in precisely this voluntary and conscious unison of innocence and suffering in his outstanding life stood and moved the pillar of fire and the pillar of cloud that led this Nation through those sorrows by night and day.

Here again is something wonderful—something again replete with mystery and with certitude. And here again do mystery and certitude stand truly unified and harmonized. Truly they are unified. But in that unison their identity stands clarified. There where Lincoln's manhood shows most humane and universal, a Nation's common symbol, outlining nothing less than a puissant Nation's boundless majesty, there stands defined, as with engraver's finished art, his separate, ever sacred, individual nobility. Even there where his moral being merges most completely into deepest sympathy with the afflictions that descend on sin, there his own integrity and personal jealousy for righteousness are most outstanding and distinct. But be it said again, in Lincoln do that broad humaneness and that erect nobility, that sympathy and that jealousy subsist in unison. In strict verity he is our Nation's surrogate. Surely here again is ample range for ample exposition of many a major problem of theology, and all still held within the open and familiar bounds of a normal moral life.

So Lincoln stood in unison with God and fellowman. Ideally complete in his own identity, he was ideally allied with other lives through all the personal realm. And be it well and truly seen that the elements of this affiance with his God, and the elements of his firm league with brothermen were identically the same. In each and either realm the binding bonds were fealty to charity, to equity, to humility, to purity. These four qualities explain and guarantee completely his allegiance. These and these alone were the constituent elements of all his brotherhood and of all his reverence. And it is within the nature of these four vital qualities, at once so Godlike and so human, and within their ever-living interplay that one must look to find whatever Lincoln's character can contribute to the problems of theology.

What averments tremble here! Our mighty human race does truly live in unison. Within that peopled unison the life of one may have far-ranging partnership. That partnership is closely definable in terms of character. In Lincoln's life as private soul, and as vicar of us all alike, his constancy and kindliness, his purity and lowliness embrace and body forth his total being, with all he bore and wrought. Herein unfolded all his beauty and all his worth, whether as a single citizen or as a Nation's representative.

And our humble human life does also truly share the life in God. Within that heavenly unison the lowliest soul may have exalted fellowship. And so in Lincoln's loyalty and tenderness, his lowliness and thirst for immortality, as man of God, unfolds the heavenly beauty of God's eternal purity and majesty, God's benignity and faithfulness.

So do lives of free and conscious beings most truly flourish and so do they most truly blend. Our fellowship with Lincoln, and Lincoln's fellowship with us; God's fellowship with Lincoln and Lincoln's fellowship with God; this mystic unrestricted partnership of noble souls; unfolding and unrolling sovereign harmonies, even when they antagonize; in vengeance or compassion fulfilling all their mission and dominion through the earth—these are indeed our sovereign realities. In scanning these we may indeed discern deep ways of God and men.

Mighty highways open here—highways that enter every major province of theology. Be these avenues observed.

Whence came the blight of slavery? How in human soil could such inhumanity germinate? What is the virus of its contagion? What makes its guilt so terrible?

Must inhumanity be avenged? May avengers still be merciful? May hardened men become regenerate? May guilt and innocence be reconciled?

Why such anguish on the innocent? Why should little ones be crushed? Why such hosts of patient ones meekly bearing wrong and shame? Why do offenses need to come? How does patience work on sin? How does sorrow work on guilt?

What is human brotherhood? May fellowmen be surrogates? May men's honor interchange?

Wherein stands human character? What makes a man responsible? How sovereign is man's liberty? How supreme is man's intelligence? Are moral beings subject to decay?

May finite man come near to God? Does God come near to finite man? May plans of men and God's designs combine? May God be seen in human life? May human hearts partake of God? Are love and truth and liberty, the crown of human dignity, enthroned in God ideally?

Is Christ indeed the Lord of men? Is he our life? Are his teachings true? Is his love divine? Can he indeed redeem?

Upon such queryings as these, all running deeply into mystery, each one fast rooted in reality, and each one voicing in each human soul an urgent quest, those sterling elements of Lincoln's character, his lowliness, his living hope, his pity, and his faithfulness shed grateful light.

Be these four qualities unveiled before the face of sin, that sin may be defined.

When in the presence of some noble majesty or of some courtly modesty a free and conscious soul is arrogant or insolent; when a being born for endless life in freedom, light and purity, exchanges God and immortality for idol forms and baseness and decay; when recipients of God's unnumbered benefits, and participants in the joys and sorrows of a teeming world of brothermen remain ungrateful and unpitiful; when beings destined to be sons of light prefer hypocrisy and unbelief; then, irreverent, corrupt, ungracious, and untrue, sin shows all its horridness and iniquity.

And when in the presence of pure grace and truth all such perverseness stands revealed; then the beauty of a quiet modesty, as it respects all worthy majesty, will make supremely plain the ugliness of every form of insolence; then the life that opens towards perpetual dawn will most mightily and forevermore reproach the life that feasts upon corroding food, fattening and hardening towards decay; then outpouring, patient love will visit on ingratitude and hate their most unbearable rebuke; and then the radiant light of simple truth and pure sincerity will set all falsity and unbelief in uttermost disgrace. In such an awful penalty, supreme and unavoidable, will sin incur its doom.

But in the very penalty it stands proclaimed how sinful souls may be transformed, and hostile hearts be reconciled.

When pride, subdued by majesty, rejoices in humility; when grossness, shamed by purity, welcomes purging fires; when malice, melted by forbearance, partakes the sacrifice and becomes itself compassionate; when falsity, unveiled by verity, submits to its rebuke and welcomes truth with deep docility and faith; then within the sinner's penitence is every penalty absolved, and between embittered souls comes perfect reconciliation.

Be these four qualities addressed to that supreme transaction named atonement.

When, in perfect loyalty and in perfect lowliness, with a perfect charity and with an utter trust in immortality, one like a Son of Man consents to bear the dark affront of insolence and perfidy from base and deadly men, enduring meekly what his soul abhors, then to all the sons of men is published equally, and with supreme assurance, that sins of men must be indeed avenged, and that sinful men may be indeed redeemed.

In that transaction malice faces patience, and patience faces malice for a final strife. There candor bears the lying taunt of acting in disguise. Humility endures the shameful charge of shameless arrogance. Compassion bows as though a thief to all the brutal rudeness of a mob. The soul of immortal purity is bartered for by traders greedy after silver coins, and driving through their trade with lamps and clubs.

But in the measure and in the manner of that transcendent patience malice is preparing for itself the manner and the measure of its own just doom. And in the measure and the manner of that same transcendent patience contrition may discern the manner and the measure of its release. In that mighty mingling of aversion and endurance sin must behold alike its omnipotent redemption and its omnipotent rebuke. Thus love, in perfect sympathy, and truth, in perfect equity set forth in heavenly purity the sovereign majesty of an atonement for the world.

Be these four radiant qualities applied to him we call alike the son of Mary and the Son of God. In him, the Son of God, shines such a plenitude of grace and truth as becomes the glory of the very God, revealed in such immortal purity as proves him heir and very Lord of all eternity, and wearing such a dignity as belongs at once to heaven's majesty and our most genuine humility; while deep within his open life as son of Mary there shines such a full and genial truth and grace as proves his true humanity, so free from mortal taint through all our transient scenes as proves his spirit's immortality, and manifesting everywhere to all the sons of man their own ideal lowliness. These are all his beauty. In him they fully blend. They blend in him indeed. But they do not dissolve. And so may we with souls akin to him whom Mary bore behold in him the proper image of our complete humanity; and still with eyes and vision all unchanged, behold within those same fair traits the very image and the unbounded fulness of the glory of the infinite God.

Be these same radiant qualities our proper medium for beholding Deity. Conceive of One in whose being the only light and glory reside in the pure majesty of a perfect grace and truth. Conceive how these free living qualities permit a unison in fellowship, a fellowship in unison. Conceive how such a unison permits to each participant complete equality and a full infinity. Conceive thus how perfect constancy and perfect kindliness, revealed in perfect purity, and clad in perfect majesty may manifest eternally in mystic unison the blessedness of a perfect personality. Conceive how such a partnership in unison, and unison in partnership will be evermore containing and enjoying within itself an evermore unsullied Spirit life, engendering and completing all the finite forms of being of the created universe; an evermore unfolding Love that is the one original of every fatherhood in heaven and earth; and an evermore Responding Love that is the primal inspiration of the admiring and adoring thankfulness of every child of God; while evermore displaying in a loyal self-respect the eternal archetype and origin of every verity and every equity enthroned in any earnest upright mind. And so conceive in terms as vivid as our own intelligence and liberty how true transcendent Deity may wield no other energy and know no other blessedness than unfolds forever in a free and conscious unison and partnership in pure transcendent love and truth.

Transcendent thoughts and ventures these. But abounding other thoughts and ventures no less transcendent wait and urge for utterance. They all assume no less, and nothing more, than that in the living vision of a living personality hides and shines the harmony that may unite the mysteries and the certainties of this universe. Let Truth, as personal self-respect; and Love, as self-devoting life; and Purity, that fears no death; and Dignity, that crowns all worth—let these be clearly seen, each one apart; and clearly seen again when fully unified—and human thought holds categories in hand whereby the problems of our mental and ethical and religious life may be resolved.

Of all of this what goes before is but a brief and bare suggestive hint. Its development and vindication call for the completed exposition of such a balanced round of thought as may be found in a prophet like Isaiah, an apostle like Paul, or an evangelist like John.