of the words by which we
signify the qualities of duty, of mercy, of devotion to the right, of lofty
disinterestedness in battling for the good of others.

There have been other men as great and other men as good; but in all the
history of mankind there are no other two great men as good as these, no
other two good men as great. Widely though the problems of to-day differ
from the problems set for solution to Washington when he founded this
nation, to Lincoln when he saved it and freed the slave, yet the qualities
they showed in meeting these problems are exactly the same as those we
should show in doing our work to-day.

Lincoln saw into the future with the prophetic imagination usually
vouchsafed only to the poet and the seer. He had in him all the lift toward
greatness of the visionary, without any of the visionary's fanaticism or
egotism, without any of the visionary's narrow jealousy of the practical
man and inability to strive in practical fashion for the realization of an
ideal. He had the practical man's hard common sense and willingness to
adapt means to ends; but there was in him none of that morbid growth of
mind and soul which blinds so many practical men to the higher aims of
life. No more practical man ever lived than this homely backwoods idealist;
but he had nothing in common with those practical men whose consciences are
warped until they fail to distinguish between good and evil, fail to
understand that strength, ability, shrewdness, whether in the world of
business or of politics, only serve to make their possessor a more noxious,
a more evil, member of the community if they are not guided and controlled
by a fine and high moral sense.

We of this day must try to solve many social and industrial problems,
requiring to an especial degree the combination of indomitable resolution
with cool-headed sanity. We can profit by the way in which Lincoln used
both these traits as he strove for reform. We can learn much of value from
the very attacks which following that course brought upon his head, attacks
alike by the extremists of revolution and by the extremists of reaction. He
never wavered in devotion to his principles, in his love for the Union, and
in his abhorrence of slavery. Timid and lukewarm people were always
denouncing him because he was too extreme; but as a matter of fact he never
went to extremes, he worked step by step; and because of this the
extremists hated and denounced him with a fervor