Such is the scope of this inaugural. In penning that grave paragraph touching "unrequited toil," Lincoln had his eye alike upon the individual slave, upon the Nation as a whole, upon long centuries, and upon the ways of God. It may be said with equal truth that he was pondering the sin and hurt of a single act of fraud, the vital structure of organic civic life, the continual tenure of right and guilt through lives and times that seem diverse, and the unison of moral estimates that hold with God and men alike forever. This may not be denied. The sin inflicted in a single wrong, like that of slavery, may implicate a Nation in a guilt that, under the impartial and upright rule of God, the centuries cannot obliterate. Inhuman scorn, short-sighted greed, disloyalty and cruelty, however disguised, or however upheld, entail a doom too certain and too sovereign for the centuries to unduly defer, or for any nation to ever annul. Here are principles undeniably. And as undeniably these principles are supreme. A just God is over all. To his high purposes all things, even the most perverse, must eventually conform. To his right rule even unrighteous men must bend. Into intelligent harmony with his will all upright men may come, finding in lowly acknowledgment of his great majesty their true dignity, in loyalty to his pure righteousness their own complete integrity, in imitation of his universal benignity their perfect mutual friendliness, and in a vision of his eternal purity their assurance of personal and civic perpetuity. Thus in the midst of all being, and in the conscious presence of Him in whom all being finds its source, our personal, human being finds its transcendent dignity and crown. Living thus, and living thus together, men find life indeed. Thus all, endowed alike with the common sanctity of life, enjoying equally the common right to liberty, share equally a common boon of happiness. Thus each man alone and thus the civic order as a whole may survive and flourish under God in just and lasting peace. This, in Lincoln's thought, was final, comprehensive truth. Taken in all its foursquare amplitude and unison, there was nothing human it did not avail to fitly arrange and fully circumscribe. Whether for man alone or for men in leagues, whether for States supreme or for States confederate, it provided every needful guide and bond. As for the international arena, so for every lesser realm of social life, the principles enshrined in this inaugural are civic wisdom crystallized. They proffer to our human social life nothing less than a philosophy.