t comes of a clear conscience, or of the sagacity that
comes of a clear brain. In more complex characters and under more
complex conditions, the moral and the mental lives come to be less
healthily combined. They co-operate, they help each other less. They
come even to stand over against each other as antagonists; till we have
that vague but most melancholy notion which pervades the life of all
elaborate civilization, that goodness and greatness, as we call them,
are not to be looked for together, till we expect to see and so do see a
feeble and narrow conscientiousness on the one hand, and a bad,
unprincipled intelligence on the other, dividing the suffrages of men.

It is the great boon of such characters as Mr. Lincoln's, that they
reunite what God has joined together and man has put asunder. In him was
vindicated the greatness of real goodness and the goodness of real
greatness. The twain were one flesh. Not one of all the multitudes who
stood and looked up to him for direction with such a loving and implicit
trust can tell you to-day whether the wise judgments that he gave came
most from a strong head or a sound heart. If you ask them, they are
puzzled. There are men as good as he, but they do bad things. There are
men as intelligent as he, but they do foolish things. In him goodness
and intelligence combined and made their best result of wisdom. For
perfect truth consists not merely in the right constituents of
character, but in their right and intimate conjunction. This union of
the mental and moral into a life of admirable simplicity is what we most
admire in children; but in them it is unsettled and unpractical. But
when it is preserved into manhood, deepened into reliability and
maturity, it is that glorified childlikeness, that high and reverend
simplicity, which shames and baffles the most accomplished astuteness,
and is chosen by God to fill his purposes when he needs a ruler for his
people, of faithful and true heart, such as he had who was our
President.

Another evident quality of such a character as this will be its
freshness or newness; if we may so speak. Its freshness or
readiness--call it what you will--its ability to take up new duties and
do them in a new way, will result of necessity from its truth and
clearness. The simple natures and forces will always be the most pliant
ones. Water bends and shapes itself to any channel. Air folds and adapts
itself to each new figure. They are the simplest an