ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 A TRIBUTE 
 
 Delivered, February 14 , 1909 , upon the Occasion 
 of a Special Memorial Service, 
 
 by 
 
 Rev. JAMES W. LEE, D.D. 
 
 Pastor, Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church South, 
 Atlanta, Ga. 
 

 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 A TRIBUTE 
 
 Delivered, February 14 , 1909 , upon the Occasion 
 of a Special Memorial Service, 
 
 by 
 
 Rev. JAMES W'. LEE, D.D. 
 
 V . 
 
 Pastor, Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church South, 
 Atlanta, Ga. 
 
173. 'Kk 3 
 6L5U 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 To celebrate the centenary of the birth of Abraham 
 Lincoln, a special memorial service was held in Trinity 
 Methodist Episcopal Church, Atlanta, Ga., on the even¬ 
 ing of Sunday, February 14, 1909. 
 
 This same City of Atlanta—the scene of this unique 
 service—had been reduced to ashes just forty-five years 
 ago by a division of the Federal Army which looked 
 to Lincoln as its Commander-in-Chief. 
 
 The Memorial Service was presided over by an offi¬ 
 cer of the Grand Army of the Republic, while seated 
 upon the platform and also uniting in the service 
 was the Commander-in-Chief of the United Confed¬ 
 erate Veterans. 
 
 A newspaper account of this service was sent to Hon. 
 Robert T. Lincoln, who wrote in acknowledgment as 
 follows : 
 
 ‘Chicago, Ill., Feb. 20, 1909. 
 “ 60 Lake Shore Drive. 
 
 “ My Dear Sir : 
 
 ‘ 1 1 thank you very heartily for your kindness in send¬ 
 ing me the report of the memorial service in Trinity 
 Church upon the anniversary of my father’s birth. None 
 of the occurrences of last week have affected me so much 
 
4 
 
 as this meeting, as an indication of the realization of 
 the hopes which I think guided every act of his while 
 President. It is dramatic that this proof should come 
 from a city destroyed by one of the armies under his 
 supreme command and be presented by Confederate 
 soldiers, listening with approval to an address of such 
 eloquence and patriotic feeling as yours. As his son, I 
 am very grateful for the meeting and more than grate¬ 
 ful for your distinguished part in it. 
 
 “ As General Scully spoke of the Gettysburg address 
 and of the circumstances under which he thought it was 
 written, I think you will be interested in knowing the 
 facts about it, as related by my father’s Secretary, Mr. 
 Nicolay, and I am therefore sending to you a re-print of 
 an article written by Mr. Nicolay in 1894. From it you 
 will see that my father probably wrote a short address 
 before the beginning of the journey and only changed it 
 slightly just before its delivery. I think it improbable 
 that he could have secured a minute to himself in his 
 car filled with people even to reflect as to his words for 
 the next day. Renewing to you the assurances of my 
 grateful feelings, 
 
 “ I am 
 
 “ Very sincerely yours, 
 
 (Signed) “Robert T. Lincoln.” 
 
 The Rev. James W. Lee, D.D., 
 
 Atlanta, Ga. 
 
PROGRAM. 
 
 Service in Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 
 Sunday Evening, February 14 , 1909 . 
 
 D. I.^Carson, chaplain of O. M. Mitchel Post No. 1, 
 Grand Army of the Republic, presiding. 
 
 Organ prelude. 
 
 Music—Choir of Trinity Church. 
 
 Reading the Scripture—Rev. A. F. Sherrill, D.D., 
 dean of Atlanta Theological Seminary. 
 
 Prayer—General Clement A. Euans, commander-in¬ 
 chief United Confederate Veterans. 
 
 Reading—Mr. Lincoln’s Favorite Poem, “O, Why 
 Should the Spirit of Mortal be Proud?”—Colonel T. H. 
 Jones, camp A, Wheeler’s cavalry. 
 
 Reading—Mr. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, Brig¬ 
 adier General A. J. Scully, United States Army, retired. 
 
 Address—Rev. J. W. Lee, D.D. 
 
 Hymn, “My Country ’Tis of Thee”—Congregation. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
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 https://archive.org/details/abrahamlincolntr00leej_0 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 
 
 Address by Rev. James W. Lee, D.D., Pastor of Trinity 
 Methodist Episcopal Church, South. 
 
 “ All things work together for good to them who love God, to them 
 who are called according to His purpose.”—Romans xiii., 28. 
 
 In his essay on German literature, Thomas Carlyle 
 declares that “there is a divine idea pervading the vis¬ 
 ible universe; which visible universe is indeed but its 
 symbol and sensible manifestation, having in itself no 
 meaning or even true existence independent of it. To 
 the mass of men this divine idea lies hidden; yet to 
 discern it and seize it and live wholly in it is the con¬ 
 dition of all genuine virtue, knowledge, freedom and 
 the end, therefore, of all spiritual effort in every age.” 
 
 This is the interpretation given by a master in litera¬ 
 ture of the words of the text. The machinery of the 
 universe works for good to all those who discern and 
 seize and wholly live in the divine idea at its heart. 
 Here we have a principle by which to account for 
 the continuous activity and influence of every great 
 man in history. The universal order publishes larger 
 and larger editions of the men who discern and seize 
 and wholly live in the divine idea history is gradually 
 unfolding. Because of this, newly-bound copies of 
 Abraham and Moses and Isaiah and St. Paul are issued 
 by the wheel work of the centuries for the readers of 
 every passing age. Those who are the called accord¬ 
 ing to His purpose are such as yield to the pressure of 
 the eternal intention of the Almighty and expend their 
 spiritual efforts in the direction it urges. 
 
8 
 
 I. 
 
 The contemporaries of a distinguished man can 
 not know the place he is to take in history. They are 
 too close to him to see all there is of him if he be really 
 great, and too near to quite measure his diminutiveness 
 if his prominence be due to the accidents of external 
 estate or official position. A time exposure of nearly 
 eight centuries was required for Sabatier to get the 
 picture he took of St. Francis and published in his “Life 
 of St. Francis of Assisi.” 
 
 The clods that fall upon their graves close the careers 
 of the rank and file of men. It is only now and then 
 that one of our race appears on the planet with wealth 
 of being stored in his soul too great to be locked inside 
 a tomb, who lives again, not only in eternity, but through¬ 
 out all time: 
 
 “In minds made better by their presence, live 
 In pulses stirred to generosity, 
 
 In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn 
 Of miserable aims that end with self, 
 
 In thoughts sublime that pierce the night-like stars, 
 
 And with their mild persistence urge man’s search 
 To vaster issues.” 
 
 Such a man was Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 II. 
 
 His mortal remains were consigned to their last 
 resting place forty-four years ago, but the further away 
 we get from the day of his funeral and from the few feet 
 of ground enriched by his sleeping dust, the more clearly 
 is it understood that there was little of Lincoln John 
 Wilkes Booth was able to kill, and a very small part of 
 him his loved ones were able to bury. 
 
9 
 
 Lincoln belonged to that class of men who learn in 
 consecrated service the secret of the resurrection, and 
 who discover and practice the method of finding them¬ 
 selves for this world and the next, by losing themselves 
 before they cease to breathe. Lincoln did not wait 
 for the judgment trump of the last day to call him 
 from the dead. While alive in the flesh, he conformed 
 to eternal principles and by them was transformed 
 into an incorruptible citizen of all the ages. 
 
 III. 
 
 Not by any process of analysis can one deter¬ 
 mine the particular gift, or power, or accomplishment, 
 it was in Lincoln that won for him the favor of the years. 
 It is well known that time can neither be flattered nor 
 bribed. Not without good reason are favors shown 
 this mortal or that by the tearless order of the flying 
 suns. When the centuries are found conspiring to 
 augment the worth and fame of a man, it may be known 
 absolutely, that he was of value, beyond the capacity 
 of the time in which he lived to express. It is the habit 
 of the universe, always and everywhere, to mete out to 
 every one exact justice. When, therefore, we see the 
 investment a person makes of himself in his own age, 
 constantly drawing large instalments of interest in suc¬ 
 ceeding times, we may know that he failed to get all 
 that was due him while he lived. The contemporaries 
 of Bruno did not appreciate him sufficiently to grant 
 him standing room during his natural life. They burnt 
 him on the Campo dei Fiori in the city of Rome. But 
 in four hundred years, the life capital he left had so in¬ 
 creased in value that his countrymen found the amount 
 large enough to build him a monument, which now 
 
10 
 
 stands in the neighborhood of the spot from which he 
 started to heaven in a chariot of flame four centuries 
 ago. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln has grown more during the 
 years that have elapsed since he was assassinated than 
 any other man of all history ever did in a half century 
 after his death. It took four hundred years in the case 
 of Bruno to convert his pyre into his monument, but it has 
 taken only fifty years in the case of Lincoln to convert 
 the bullet of his assassin into many shafts of marble, 
 and into as many monuments of affection as there are 
 hearts beating in the breasts of civilized human beings. 
 
 V. 
 
 How are we to account for this subtle, intangible, 
 growing personal reality, rising round us like an atmos¬ 
 phere, we represent to ourselves by the name of Lincoln? 
 It was not his statesmanship. Hamilton was a more 
 brilliant master of the structure and functions of govern¬ 
 ment. It was not his oratory. He never reached the 
 level of magnetic speech perpetually maintained by 
 Webster. It was not simply his gift of boundless common 
 sense. In this respect, Benjamin Franklin was his equal. 
 It was not his devotion to the cause of abolition simply. 
 Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison did more 
 to create and direct the moral conviction that gave to 
 the slaves their freedom. It was not merely because 
 he was the chief executive of the republic during the 
 stormiest period of the national history, and managed 
 to conduct it through the most terrific civil war ever 
 waged. There were others who might have guided 
 the ship of state through the storms that imperiled its 
 
11 
 
 existence. We must look deeper than his words, deeper 
 than his deeds, deeper than the official position he held, 
 to find the source of Lincoln. 
 
 VI. 
 
 In the words of the text, “All things work together 
 for good to them that love God.” And in the interpre¬ 
 tation of these words by Carlyle, we find the principle 
 by the aid of which we can account for Lincoln, and for 
 every other man whose name the passing ages can not 
 blot from the memory of our race. Whoever in any 
 age discerns and seizes and wholly lives in the divine 
 idea history is unfolding insures the publication of him¬ 
 self in larger and larger volumes with every clearer and 
 completer expression of that idea. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Plato discerned and seized and wholly lived in the 
 divine idea it is the function of philosophy to interpret, 
 hence speculative thinkers for twenty-five centuries have 
 kept his work fresh in the memory of thoughtful men. 
 Copernicus wholly lived in the divine idea expressed in 
 the constellations, and henceforth the morning stars 
 can never sing together without magnifying the glory 
 of his genius. Darwin, born the same year, the same 
 month and the same day with Lincoln, identified him¬ 
 self wholly with the divine idea expressed in the method 
 of creation, hence all nature, through its flowers and 
 through its birds, will never cease to fill the sky with 
 perfume and melody in honor of his achievements. 
 The divine idea Lincoln wholly lived in was not the intel¬ 
 lectual aspects of it, with which speculative thought 
 
12 
 
 is concerned; nor the biological aspects of it with which 
 naturalists are concerned; nor the mechanical aspects 
 of it, with which astronomers are concerned; but it 
 was the distinctly human aspects of it, with which lovers 
 and martyrs and heroes are concerned. The universities 
 will guard the fortunes of Plato; the observatories will 
 keep fresh the memory of Copernicus; the naturalists will 
 take care of the interests of Darwin, but humanity, 
 aching, struggling, suffering, despairing, triumphing, will 
 recount to itself over and over again, until the last page 
 of human history is written, the courage, the patience, 
 the pity and the sacrifice of Lincoln. The poor belated 
 negroes, slaves to petty kings in Africa, slaves to humane 
 masters in America, but nevertheless slaves, until 
 Lincoln, by a stroke of the pen, knocked the shackles 
 from off their limbs, will never cease, in time nor eternity, 
 to lift their dark faces in gratitude to him as to their 
 savior from bondage. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Soldiers in blue, and soldiers in gray, more of 
 whom now march amid the hills of day than drag 
 their weary feet over the scenes of conflict, are able to 
 see, by the light of a larger, sweeter time, territory suf¬ 
 ficient of the heart of Lincoln for all brave men to stand 
 and love, and the armies of Grant and the armies of 
 Lee, now, thank God, united on earth and united in 
 heaven, will both regard the martyred president as their 
 commander-in-chief to all eternity. The sections have 
 learned in fifty years that it is better to convert their 
 energies into the flying shuttles of commerce to weave 
 the people together than it is to turn them into minie 
 balls to shoot the people apart. No man’s future is 
 safer for the time to come than that of Abraham Lincoln. 
 
13 
 
 He wholly lived in the divine idea at the bottom of the 
 American union. He identified himself with the central 
 current of our national life. We can not move toward 
 the fulfillment of our destiny as a people without per¬ 
 petually witnessing the spirit of Lincoln, accompany¬ 
 ing us, like a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire 
 by night. The greater we become as a power among 
 the nations, the wider becomes the scope of our com¬ 
 merce, the stronger becomes our influence for unity, 
 world-wide and universal, the greater and wider and 
 stronger will become Lincoln, who sought in his life to 
 harmonize a divided people, and dying left a legacy of 
 sympathy and tenderness and sacrifice which, by its 
 “mild persistence,” has re-united forever in the bonds 
 of undying love the members of the national household. 
 
 IX. 
 
 It would not be true to say that Lincoln was 
 superior in this or that respect to all other men who 
 lived in our country between the years of 1809 and 1865. 
 But it is true that he, more than any other, charged 
 with the responsibility of national affairs, did discern 
 and seize and wholly live in the divine idea it seems to 
 be the purpose of Providence to realize through these 
 United States. It was his complete conformity to the 
 central purpose of this nation, as he had light to see it, 
 that gives him his unique and growing place in history. 
 
 X. 
 
 The men for whose good the machinery of the 
 universe works and whose lives it republishes with every 
 revolution of its wheelwork, are not always the strongest 
 men in intellectual endowment or administrative ability. 
 
14 
 
 Nero had, perhaps, had as much or more native ability 
 than Saint Paul, but Nero threw himself across the purpose 
 of God, and was ground to powder by it, while Saint Paul 
 directed his life parallel with it, and hence lives in larger 
 and larger measure with the gradual unfolding of the 
 divine purpose. Napoleon was a much greater force 
 than Wellington, but Napoleon was left discomfited 
 and broken by the roadway of events, while Wellington 
 was chosen to move on down the years at the head of 
 his invincible columns. Herbert Spencer had intellectual 
 ability equal to that of Hegel, but the English thinker 
 built his system across the track of advancing thought, 
 and had the sorrow of seeing it smashed by the enginry 
 of things, before he died, while the German thinker, 
 lifting up his system parallel with the universal order, 
 and hitched to the purpose at its center, will enjoy the 
 happiness of perpetually teaching the human mind. 
 
 XI. 
 
 It often happens that the noblest men discern 
 and seize and wholly live in an idea, they take to be 
 divine, but which, when subjected to the test of time, 
 turns out to lead away from the track of history. The 
 real test, therefore, of the greatness of one who has 
 played a prominent part on the stage of human affairs, 
 is this: how completely did he discern and build upon 
 an idea moving toward realization in the eternities. A 
 great and consecrated man may choose a promising idea, 
 and upon it as a foundation, build of gold, or silver, or 
 precious stones, or wood, or hay, or stubble, but inevita¬ 
 bly the day of Judgment comes, and then his w^ork is 
 made manifest, for the day shall declare it. Every man’s 
 work is tried, and it is known in every case, finally, of 
 
15 
 
 what sort it is. If a man’s work abide which he hath 
 built upon an eternal foundation, he shall receive a 
 reward, both for his work and for the wisdom that guided 
 him in choosing the right idea upon which to build. 
 But if a good man’s work shall be burnt because built 
 on a wrong idea, he shall suffer the loss of all his effort 
 in the performance of that work, but he himself shall be 
 saved yet so as by fire. 
 
 Lincoln’s work has stood the tests of fifty years of 
 judgment days. It has been revealed through fire of 
 what sort it was and is. He is now being rewarded both 
 for his work and for the insight that led him to build 
 on an eternal foundation. Those of us who left the 
 union fifty years ago were just as good and great and 
 consecrated as were those who remained in it. Our 
 works, too, were of gold, and silver, and precious stones, 
 but the idea we selected as a foundation upon which to 
 build was not moving in the track of events. Our 
 Southern Confederacy has been burnt, but the patriot¬ 
 ism, devotion, consecration, which took form in its 
 fading and passing fortunes, are forever safe. So great 
 are we as a people that it has taken only fifty sad, heart¬ 
 rending years, to bring us to a national level of good 
 will, upon which it is in the hearts of all to give to the 
 Confederates the same praise for their loyalty to what 
 they believe to be right, and to cover their graves with 
 flowers as deeply beautiful, as to those who fought on 
 the side of victory and in the direction of the idea the 
 the God of history is unfolding. 
 
 XII. 
 
 The people of this country, North and South, have 
 come to a point of view, high enough above the level 
 of fifty years ago, to appreciate the good and great men 
 
16 
 
 on both sides of the question that separated them once 
 into contending armies. Think of a service like this 
 to-night, held in a city that was burnt to the ground 
 forty-five years ago by order of the commander-in-chief 
 of the Federal army, whose memory we meet here to 
 honor. Nothing like it before ever took place in all 
 history. It is a strange and great thing under the sun. 
 To what unexpected heights is this movement toward 
 fraternity and affection to move? How much higher 
 are the waters of good will to rise? If they continue to 
 climb they will finally reach the shores upon which New 
 York and Boston are situated, so that a memorial serv¬ 
 ice in honor of Jefferson Davis will be held in those 
 quarters, where they once hated Mr. Davis as thoroughly 
 as we did Mr. Lincoln. Let the waves of fraternity 
 swell, until they shall cover every patch of territory and 
 island that separated us. 
 
 Theodore Roosevelt, half Georgian and half Dutch¬ 
 man, now the best loved president who has occupied 
 his exalted position since Washington, when a young 
 man, referred to Jefferson Davis as the arch traitor, 
 but recently upon his return from a hunting trip in 
 Louisiana, congratulated the people of Mississippi for 
 contributing to the country the illustrious name of 
 Jefferson Davis, and praised them for the honors they 
 had conferred upon that great man. 
 
 Charles Francis Adams, only a short time ago, made 
 the frank statement that he was for a long time too 
 prejudiced to read the life of Mr. Davis, but, finally, 
 being led to do so, he declared that he found his character 
 without a blemish. 
 
 The difference between Abraham Lincoln and Jeffer¬ 
 son Davis was not that they were not both good and 
 
17 
 
 great men, but the difference is that Mr. Lincoln took 
 passage on a ship that will sail the seas of time forever, 
 while Mr. Davis made the mistake of getting aboard a 
 vessel that was wrecked, because out of the course mapped 
 by Providence, as the destined way for the people of 
 this country to voyage. 
 
 When the confederates left the sinking confederacy 
 and walked up the gangway back into the magnificent 
 ship upon which all our people began the voyage to the 
 future the great captain was cold in death, but had he 
 been alive he would have shared his last dollar and his 
 last drop of heart’s blood with the brave men who had 
 been sailing in perilous seas, but who at length were 
 coming back to the vessel we will all sail in to the shores 
 of eternity. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 In his “Reminiscences of the Civil War,’’ General 
 John B. Gordon relates a touchingly beautiful inci¬ 
 dent, illustrative of the sentiment common deep 
 down in their souls to the soldiers of both the Union 
 and the Confederate armies. The Northern troops 
 were on one side of the Rapidan River, and the 
 Southern men were on the opposite hills of the other, 
 when the stillness of the April twilight was suddenly 
 broken by the notes of “ Hail Columbia, Happy 
 Land.” In quick response to this volley of emotion 
 from the Northern side of the river, the air was set 
 to vibrating by the thrilling strains of ‘ ‘ Dixie ’ ’ from 
 the Southern banks of the stream. Then, as if 
 untouched by this exchange of sectional salutations, 
 one lone volunteer, thinking, doubtless, of loved ones 
 at home, lifted his voice into the immortal words of 
 “ Home, Sweet Home,” when, as if moved from 
 
18 
 
 Heaven, both armies lost sight of all points of the 
 national compass, and without reference to who was 
 right or who was wrong, without reference to flags 
 of truce or terms of surrender, re-established on the 
 spot, under the skies of Virginia, the American 
 Union, by all getting together in the universal 
 cadences, wrung from the lonely spirit of John Howard 
 Payne. 
 
 Little did those brave men think, fifty years ago, 
 when ceasing to swap lead long enough to do a little 
 trading in sentiment, closing their transactions by all 
 getting together in “Home, Sweet Home,” that they 
 were giving voice to prophecy, which those of us who 
 meet here to-night have lived to see fulfilled. “Hail 
 Columbia, Happy Land,” is now domesticated in the 
 South, and “Dixie” is tumultuously at home in the 
 North. 
 
 Both purified from the flavor of sectionalism through 
 the wondrous alembic of love are parts of the songful 
 furnishment of every sweet home in the Union! 
 
 The underlying feelings at the bottom of brave 
 hearts on the Rapidan have, through deepening ex¬ 
 perience of fifty years, made their way to the top of 
 our hearts to-day. We are all back, not merely in 
 song but in fact in the “Sweet National Home” of 
 our fathers, and from thence, by the grace of God, 
 we will never go any more.