Abraham Lincoln's Cardinal Traits; / A Study in Ethics, with an Epilogue Addressed to Theologians

by Clark S. Beardslee

Here emerge the profoundest thoughts of Lincoln on the ways of God. And herein appears his contribution to a theodicy—a vindication of God's moral honor, where his moral government seems slack. How can thoughtful men conceive and hold that God is just, when such injustice and disaster are allowed at all, much less for centuries; in any corner of the earth, much less where heaven's favor seems to dwell?

Upon this subduing theme this last inaugural gives us Lincoln's most explicit words. Of God's personal being, and of his personal care, this address shows Lincoln to be perfectly assured. This was his standing attitude and confidence. Throughout his years in the presidency this trust had seemed unwavering. Indeed, by repeated, almost unconscious attestations, it was his stablest trust. Some of his utterances are tender and touching testimonials to his belief that God rules in his own personal career. But mainly his confessions of belief in the Providence of God are connected with national concerns. He did joyfully, almost jubilantly believe that this Republic was under God's special watch and care. His own hope for our national future well-being and honor rested mainly, we must judge, upon the tokens he thought he could trace in our thrilling and inspiring history of the divine controlling care. At bottom it was this faith that underlay all his patriotism. That the fundamental affirmations of our Constitution were rescripts and digests from the will and word of God was the lively ground and unfailing confirmation of his pure devotion to his Nation's honor and weal. More than aught in all the world beside, it was this religious faith that steadied and girded his will through all those strenuous days.

It is just here that this study of a theodicy sets in. Above all his former thoughts about himself, about his land, about the clash of right and wrong; above all thoughts of other men, and other times; even above his own and his opponents' former prayers and faith, he lifts new thoughts in new reverence and new docility towards God.

Still naught but slavery in his theme—its undeniable iniquity; its strange, prolonged permission; his own, and all other men's responsibility; its unavoidable entail in penalty; and the divine, enduring terms of new liberty and peace. Here are themes and fixed realities that seem eternally to disagree. Can they ever all be morally harmonized? Could even God enlighten that dark past? Could his own historic acts be morally unified? Nothing he had ever done with slavery, not even its utter elimination in his act of freedom, had ever been done, he explicitly affirmed, on moral grounds. Yet slavery, and by his own hand, was indeed undone. But even so the spirit of the South was still invincible, and war was holding on. What indeed could be the thoughts and plans of God?

To begin with, he confesses both North and South and all the land gone wrong. This is the first component in his theodicy. Neither North nor South, not even in the act of prayer, had walked with God, nor found the truth, nor gained its wish. All thoughts of men, in the righteous rule of God, were being overturned. This confession verges near to worship, acclaiming, as it does, the Almighty's designs; and venturing as it does, to trace and reproduce the Almighty's thoughts.

Here is seen how genuine is the moral earnestness in Lincoln's earnest thoughtfulness. As though by a very instinct, his form of words betrays his reverence. He refrains from dogmatism. He refrains even from affirmation. He knows he is venturing upon a daring flight. He is assuming to conjoin together into a moral unison that bitter sample of the age-long cruelty of man against his brother, and the transcendent sovereignty, the eternal justice, and the age-long silence of God. His formula is a modest supposition. But within its modesty is an eye that searches far.

He takes resort in one of the most trenchant declarations of Christ, that momentous saying in his colloquy about the majesty and modesty of a little child:—"Woe unto the world because of offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh."

In this colloquy Jesus seems to be moved by a tender impulse of affectionate jealousy for the model beauty and grace of children. But that tenderness is roused into one of the most terrific outbursts that ever passed his lips. Little children are Christlike, Godlike, models of the citizenship in the heavenly Kingdom. God is their jealous guardian and defender. But Godlike, and of heavenly dignity though they be, they are shy and frail. And men, as they grow gross and impudent, abuse and offend their defenselessness. So things have to be. But woe to such offenders. They were better tied to that mammoth stone that the mule turns in the mill, and submerged in the abyss of the deep of the great sea.

Here are four noteworthy elements:—a blended heavenly modesty and majesty and innocence; an insufferable insolence; a trebly-terrible penalty; and a strange and ominous necessity.