Christ which
inspired his disciples and founded the church was in truth an
instance--clad in imaginative, pictorial form--of what proves to be an
abiding law of human nature--the vivid realization of the continued and
higher existence of a noble and beloved life.

We may believe that in the progress of the race this faculty is being
developed. In its first emergence it was confused by crude
misinterpretations. A single instance of it was for two thousand years
construed as a unique event, the reversal of ordinary procedure, and the
basis of a supernatural religion. Now at last we correlate it with other
experiences, and interpret it as a part of the universal order.

Tennyson expresses that present heaven which is sometimes revealed to the
soul:--

"Strange friend, past, present, and to be;
Loved deeplier, darklier understood;
Behold, I dream a dream of good,
And mingle all the world with thee.

"Thy voice is on the rolling air;
I hear thee where the waters run;
Thou standest in the rising sun,
And in the setting thou art fair.

"What art thou, then? I cannot guess;
But though I seem in star and flower
To feel thee some diffusive power,
I do not therefore love thee less:

"My love involves the love before;
My love is vaster passion now;
Though mixed with God and Nature thou,
I seem to love thee more and more.

"Far off thou art, but ever nigh;
I have thee still, and I rejoice;
I prosper, circled with thy voice;
I shall not lose thee though I die."

Two men beyond all others in America have interpreted the higher life.
Emerson revealed it through the medium of thought, beauty, and joy.
Lincoln showed it in action, sympathy, and suffering.

Lincoln had the deepest cravings of love, of ambition, and of religion.
His love brought him first to bereavement which shook his reason, then to
the daily tragedy of an unhappy marriage. His ambition--he said when he
entered his contest with Douglas--had proved "a failure, a flat failure."
In his crude youth he exulted in the rejection of Christianity; then he
felt the pressure of life's problems, and was powerless before them. He
could believe only what was proved,--all beyond was a sad mystery. He
bore himself for many years with honesty, kindness, humor, sadness, and
infinite patience. He did not for a while rise to the perception of the
highest truth in politics, but he was faithful to what he d