est, deepest, profoundest thoughts.

In trying to explain the character of Lincoln we therefore make our
final appeal unto God, for God alone is equal to the making of this
great man. When long time has passed, the name of Lincoln will probably
be mentioned with Moses, Julius Caesar, Paul, Shakespeare. Men will read
a few of his paragraphs as a kind of Bible of Patriotism. Washington's
name will not be less, but Lincoln's will certainly be more and more,
and then still more. God and Sorrow made the man great.

And this is his life story. In the darkest hour of the Republic, when
liberty and slavery were struggling to see which should rule the old
homestead, it became evident that slavery would turn the garden into a
desert, and the house into a ruin. And seeking a deliverer and a
saviour, the great God, in His own purpose, passed by the palace with
its silken delights. He took a little babe in His arms, and called to
His side His favourite angel, the angel of Sorrow. Stooping, he
whispered, "Oh, Sorrow, thou well-beloved teacher, take thou this little
child of Mine and make him great. Take him to yonder cabin in the
wilderness; make his home a poor man's house; plant his narrow path
thick with thorns, cut his little feet with sharp and cruel rocks; as he
climbs the hills of difficulty, make each footprint red with his own
life-blood; load his little back with burdens; give to him days of toil
and nights of study and sleeplessness; wrest from his arms whatever he
loves; make his heart, through sorrow, as sensitive to the sigh of a
slave as a thread of silk in a window is sensitive to the slightest wind
that blows; and when you have digged lines of pain in his cheeks, and
made his face more marred than the face of any man of his time, bring
him back to me, and with him I will free three million slaves." That is
how God made Abraham Lincoln great.

And then,--we slew him. For that is the way our ignorant, sinful earth
has always rewarded its greatest souls. Ours is a world where we crucify
the Saviour in Jerusalem, where we poison Socrates in Athens, where we
exile Dante in Italy, and burn Savonarola in Florence, and starve
Cervantes in Madrid, and jail Bunyan in Bedford,--for the greatest
manhood is always rewarded with martyrdom. And what better thing for
Abraham Lincoln than assassination, because he has emancipated three
million slaves and saved the Union, as the last, best hope of earth?

But, lo, who are these in