Here are designations, at once so plastic and so precise, at once so simple and so profound, as to signify and demonstrate how souls of men may conquer death; how one may be a perfect devotee to another person's weal, and still preserve his own integrity; how perfect sanctity may assume a full companionship with sin, whether by redemption or rebuke, and still remain unflecked; and how in man's humility may be enshrined a dignity wherein supernal majesty may be unveiled. In some such vivid, moral terms, mobile to grasp and manifest the boundless range and priceless worth within the sovereign moral law; as also to declare unerringly the fateful and unbounded issues of a moral choice, may students hope to trace with true intelligence the real foundations of Lincoln's all but unexampled power and fame. AN EPILOGUE ADDRESSED TO THEOLOGIANS In designing and constructing the chapters that precede, three motives have been actively at work. There has been a desire to set within the realm of Civics a clear and balanced exposition of Lincoln's moral grandeur. There has been a desire to introduce within the realm of Ethics a fertile method of discussion and research. There has been a desire to intimate how in the realm of pure Religion the finished outline of a transparent character may provide a pattern for a true description of the problems of Theology. Of these three motives the one last named has been preponderant. Lincoln's public life was keyed alike to moral honor and to faith in God. In his most quickening aspirations and in his most sacrificial sorrows his sense of personal obligation and his belief in an over-ruling Providence held fast together in a most notable unison. Guileless, luminous, and single-hearted in his rectitude and in his reverence, he affords a signal illustration of the way in which faith and conscience may vitally co-operate and even coalesce. He presents in consequence a signal opportunity for exploring the inner kinship of ethics and religion. His personality challenges us to inquire and see how honesty and godliness consort; how in a complete and balanced character the categories that define the basis of one's moral excellence may prove themselves to be the very categories that inform and underlie the religious life. Here opens an engaging investigation. May the ultimate principles of a true ethical theory and the ultimate rationale of a true theology be found in living deed to coincide? To bring this question into open view is the ulterior aim of this book, and more particularly of this appended Epilogue.