Abraham Lincoln A Memorial Discourse

Excerpt

MEMORIAL DISCOURSE.

"In the day of adversity consider."

It is the day of adversity. A great grief throws its shadow over heart and hearth and home. There is such a sorrow as this land never knew before; agony such as never until now wrung the heart of the nation. In mansion and cottage, alike, do the people bow themselves.

We have been through the Red Sea of war, and across the weary, desert marches of griefs and bereavements, but heretofore we have felt that our leader was with us, and believed that surely as Moses was led by the pillar of cloud and of fire, so did God lead him.

But now that leader is not. Slain, slain by the hand of the assassin, murdered beside his wife! The costliest blood has been shed, the clearest eye is closed, the strongest arm is nerveless—the Chief Magistrate is no more. "The mighty man cries bitterly; the day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness."

It is no mere official mourning which hangs its sad drapery everywhere. It is not alone that a President of the Republic is, for the first time, assassinated. No; there is a tender grief that characterizes the bereavement of a loved friend, which shows there was something in this man which grappled him to men's hearts as with hooks of steel.

But mourning the death of the Chief Magistrate, it becomes us to review the elements of his career as a ruler, which have so endeared him to loyal hearts.

If I were to sketch the model statesman, I would say he must have mental breadth and clearness, incorruptible integrity, strength of will, tireless patience, humanity, preserved from demoralizing weakness by conscientious reverence for law, ardent love of country, and, regulating all, a commanding sense of responsibility to God, the Judge of all. These, though wrapped in seeming rustic garb, were found in Abraham Lincoln. He had mental breadth and clearness. In spite of a defective early education, he became a self-taught thinker, and later in life he read widely and meditated profoundly, until he acquired a thorough mental discipline. He possessed the power to comprehend a subject at once in the aggregate and in its details. His eye swept a wide horizon and descried clearly all within its circumference. He was a keen logician, whose apt manner of "putting things" made him more than a match for practiced diplomatists and wily marplots. These were men of might about his council-board, scholars and statesmen, but none arose to his altitude, much less was either his master.

That very facetiousness sometimes critcised, kept him from becoming morbid, and gave healthfulness to his opinions, free alike from fever and paralysis. That his was incorruptible integrity, no man dare question. He was not merely above reproach, but eminently above suspicion. Purity is receptive. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God," is as profound in philosophy as comprehensive in theology. Purity in the realm of moral decision and motive, is a skylight to the soul, through which truth comes direct....