know the full mind and heart of our age, we must again take a
survey beyond the church walls. The emotional forces which have moved
the world have been largely in the direction of certain social
aspirations. The first was for Liberty--freedom from the tyranny of
king's and priests. It won its first great victory in America, where the
War of Independence and the making of the Constitution marked by a brave
struggle and a masterpiece of good sense the consummation of many years'
growth of an English shoot in virgin soil. England herself has followed
with more unequal steps to a similar result. In France, there was
volcanic explosion which convulsed Europe. The other Continental states
have variously followed, save Russia, which as yet lies impotent under
despotism. Following the substantial success of the effort for Liberty,
or blending with it, came the aspiration for a better Social Order. In
one phase, this worked toward the consolidation of nations on natural
lines of race and history, as in Germany and Italy. In America, the two
ideas of universal Freedom and national Union, conflicting for a while
with each other, blent at last and triumphed after a mighty struggle.
The supreme figure in that struggle was Abraham Lincoln; who in his
public capacity illustrated how the most complicated problems of
statesmanship find their best solution through good-will, resolution,
patience, and homely shrewdness; while in his own life he showed that a
man may rise above misfortune and melancholy, unaided by creed or church,
working only by absolute fidelity to the right as he sees the right, till
he renders to his fellows a supreme service and wins their unbounded love.

The aspiration for Social Order pauses not when it has won national unity
and harmony. The principle and the result of the existing industrial
system no longer content those who live under it. That system has been
stimulated by the enormous material acquisitions which have flowed from
invention. It has improved in some degree the condition of most members
of society, but with a marked inequality in the improvement, and at the
cost of the mutual hostility which unchecked competition involves, and
which is fruitful in moral mischief and material waste. The laborer has
gained in intelligence by the school and the newspaper; holding the vote,
he feels himself one of the masters of the state; sympathy draws him to
his own class. The scholar sees that the sy