ew then this of
what he was.

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 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 and the
most infinitely active things in nature. So this nature, in very
virtue of its simplicity, must be also free, always fitting itself to
each new need. It will always start from the most fundamental and
eternal conditions, and work in the straightest, even though they be
the newest ways, to the present prescribed purpose. In one word, it
must be broad and independent and radical. So that freedom and
radicalness in the character of Abraham Lincoln were not separate
qualities, but the necessary results of his simplicity and
childlikeness and truth.

Here then we have some conception of the man. Out of this character
came the life w