action." We hardly can give a better idea of the intenseness of his religious conviction than by quoting from a long letter written to his father when concluding his Oxford course, in which he expresses his desire to become a clergyman. "With reference to the dignity of the office, I know of none to compare with it; none which can compete with the grandeur of its end or its means-the end, the glory of God, and the means, the restoration of man to that image of his Maker. When I look to the standard of habit and principle adopted in the world at large. . . then, my beloved father, the conviction flashes on my soul with a moral force I cannot resist, and would not if I could, that the vineyard still wants labourers . . . there can be no claim so solemn and imperative as that which even now seems to call us with the voice of God from heaven and to say, 'I have given mine own Son for this rebellious and apostate world, the sacrifice is offered and accepted, but you, you who are basking in the sunbeams of Christianity why will you not bear to fellowcreatures sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death the tidings of this universal and incomprehensible love?""

...

Do you think Gladstone made a mistake in not becoming a minister of the Gospel? Which should one consider most in choosing a profession, his abilities, his opportunities, or his inclinations?

Eighth Week, Seventh Day: Gladstone, the World's Greatest Citizen

But Paul said, I am a Jew, of Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city: and I beseech thee, give me leave to speak unto the people. . . . And the chief captain came and said unto him, Tell me, art thou a Roman? And he said, Yea. And the chief captain answered, With a great sum obtained I this citizenship. And Paul said, But I am a Roman born.-Acts 21: 39; 22:27, 28.

Paul was a Jew, a Roman, a citizen of Tarsus, and a Christian. Each of these relationships brought its privilege and at the same time its responsibility. When speaking before Jews, he spoke as a Jew; when speaking before Gentiles, he spoke as a Roman. Three times he publicly appealed to his Roman citizenship. Yet he did not merely do this to play Morley, "The Life of William Ewart Gladstone," Vol. I, p. 2.

them off one against the other. He had a message for both Jew and Gentile, and a duty towards each, and as a Christian he fulfilled both. Of Mr. Gladstone we think as equally a statesman and a citizen. His citizenship overstepped the bounds of political party, the bounds of race and nationality. He sought to do the best he could for the borough that sent him to Parliament, but when it came to be a question between his borough and England's good, or between England's good and Ireland, or between the Empire and the world, his justice could be relied on to be even and impartial. So honorable and even-tempered was he, and so wide was his achievement in human progress, that Prince Bismarck, the "Iron Chancellor" of Germany, Britain's greatest enemy, said of him, “On the day that Mr. Gladstone died, the world lost its greatest citizen.”

Which do you admire more, Gladstone or Napoleon? Which of the two men sought admiration? How did each attain the measure of admiration which he has? What did Gladstone, Britain's greatest statesman, the world's greatest citizen, think of the Christ?

STUDY IX

Abraham Lincoln-President

COMMENT FOR THE WEEK

Abraham Lincoln, son of Thomas Lincoln, was born in Hardin, now La Rue County, Kentucky, on February 12, 1809. He was of Quaker descent, his early ancestors having come from Berks County, Pennsylvania. Before the birth of his grandfather Abraham, the family had removed to Rockingham County, Virginia, and here his father, Thomas Lincoln, was born. Later the family again migrated, this time to Kentucky, where in 1784 Abraham Lincoln, Sr., was killed by the Indians. Owing to the early death of his father, coupled with the straitened circumstances of his mother, Thomas Lincoln, father of the sixteenth president of the United States, grew up without education and never was able to do more in the way of writing than to inscribe his name. In 1806, when he was twenty-eight years of age, he married Nancy Hanks, mother of Abraham.

When Abraham was eight years old his father moved from Knob Creek, Kentucky, where he had resided at a point three or three and a half miles southwest of Atherton's Ferry, to what is now Spencer County, Indiana. This change was made partly because of slavery, but chiefly on account of the difficulty in securing land titles in Kentucky. The family settled in an unbroken forest, to clear which was the immediate task. Abraham, being large for his age, had an ax put into his hands at once, and except during the seasons of planting and harvest he used this implement a great deal of the time up to his twenty-third year. His schooling during this period did not amount to more than one year. He never entered an academy or a college as a student and was never inside such a building until after he had received admission to the bar. This lack of education was a source of regret to him and he

did what he could to remedy it, studying and nearly mastering his six books of Euclid after he became a member of Congress. While still living in Indiana, at the age of nineteen, he made his first trip to New Orleans on a flatboat, working his passage.

It was on March 1, 1830, when Abraham had just completed his twenty-first year, that his father and family, including his stepmother with her two daughters and their husbands, left the old homestead in Indiana for Illinois, traveling in wagons drawn by ox teams, one of which Abraham drove. About ten miles west of Decatur, on the north side of the Sangamon River in Macon County, they built a log cabin and made rails sufficient to fence ten acres of ground. This they ploughed and on it raised a crop of corn that same year.

Not long after this he hired himself out for twelve dollars a month to make a flatboat, which he took to New Orleans with produce. On his return he clerked in a country grocery store at New Salem. The following year, at the age of twenty-three, he joined a company of volunteers to fight the Black Hawks, and was elected captain. After his return he ran a grocery store, which failed, ran for the Legislature and failed, was local postmaster, and did enough surveying to keep himself alive. During all his spare time he studied whatever books he could get his hands upon.

In 1834 he was actually elected to the Legislature, where he met Major John T. Stuart, another member, a leading lawyer of Springfield, and a man of culture and excellent education. Major Stuart took a liking to the lanky young legislator, loaned him law books, and after Lincoln had secured a law license in 1836, took him into partnership. In 1842 the tie was further bound by Lincoln's marriage to Mr. Stuart's niece, Mary Todd, a beautiful and accomplished Kentucky girl. Thereafter the profession of the successful young lawyer took all his time until 1854 when, as he himself says, "the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused him as he had never been aroused before." He "took the stump" in the autumn campaign, and at once attracted attention.

Slavery was the question of the day, the issue having been temporized for half a century, and the storm-center was the Missouri Compromise. The compromise could not last, could only put off the day of reckoning. On the right solution of the question rested the future history of America, and, to a

certain extent, the future of free institutions in the world. Moreover, the issue was clouded by another question equally fundamental, which in a sense seemed to go contrary to the first; hence the necessity for clear thinking. The first or slavery issue was that of liberty—the right of all men to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The second issue was that of restraint-the necessity for the individual, or the disgruntled minority, to abide by the decision of the majority, without which there can be no government. The two outstanding principles of Lincoln's life correspond to these two issues the first, which he quoted often from his boyhood days on, "All men are born free and equal," and the second, which he came in time to hold as even more important, the Union, of which he said at Galena, Illinois, in 1856: "We do not want to dissolve the Union, and you shall not."

It was these great fundamental principles which Lincoln debated with Douglas in 1858, and on them he drew the issue clearly and concisely. He then gave expression to the public opinion as yet unformulated, on issues of life and death to republican government, and at a bound he became the leader of the Union factions. His election to the Presidency in 1860 was inevitable. But the true greatness of the man did not appear until he grasped the helm of the foundering "ship of state" in 1861, and, when all but he despaired, guided her to safety. Throughout one of the greatest wars of history he never flinched, nor turned aside from his purpose, nor compromised his principles. Yet there was no spirit of malice in his heart, and no word of bitterness ever escaped his lips. He was President of the whole country, relentless toward principles that were evil, tender-hearted toward men, whether of the North or the South. The division entered his own household, yet his love was sufficient for all. When his sisterin-law, the widow of a Southern general, Gen. Ben Hardin Helm, who had been killed in battle, fled to him at the White House for protection, he received her and picked her up like a baby in his strong arms, exclaiming with tears in his voice, "I didn't mean it, little sis, I didn't mean it."

Thus he was able to preserve the Union and to free the slaves, to solve the two greatest questions of his day. And he was able by his faith and his love and his great magnanimity to cement together the torn body of that Union, so that today it is as truly one as any human personality. But