And just as clear is his supreme esteem for values that are permanent and pure. Above all changing accidents Lincoln honored the Godlike human soul. In harmony herewith his thoughts and arguments were prone to handle centuries. And in rating worth his standard was a man's humanity. Thus he shaped the records and the prospects of our history into a philosophy. Thus he interpreted the war. It was God's vindication of the immortal value of the humblest man. Carnal pleasures and worldly gains, wrung from human lives at the cost of the degradation and debasement of the human soul, and in defiance of God's eternal and indefeasible laws, Lincoln saw to be of all things the most foolhardy and crude. So spiritual and pure was his conception of God and man, and his active understanding of the meaning of historic efforts and events. Ideals, endeavors, and enjoyments, even though normal and worthy, if they dealt with values that were decaying and gross, were cheaply rated by him; while the Nation's perpetuity, each man's spiritual quality, and God's eternal purity held eminence unfailingly in his affection and esteem. Here is spirituality, pure within, and by the inwardly pure plain to see. As in the shapely quadrilateral of the Parthenon, this fourfoldness in the character of Lincoln is cardinal. Each quality is an element, each conforming with an elemental factor in the nature of every man. This involves that in its essential substance each trait, so far considered, is incapable of analysis. And each refuses to be resolved into something else. Each one is a simple and a constant co-efficient in Lincoln's moral being. Each one exists within his life in a complete integrity, indivisible, self-contained. His humility, thus, is integral and unmixed. When Lincoln bows, as he does in this inaugural, before his God, and therein offers his life in a bending ministry to all his fellowmen, that reverence and that ministry are, as ministry and as reverence, pure lowliness. The phases of that lowliness may pass through continual transformation. And those changing forms may have changing designations. It may be submission before God's sovereignty, reverence before his majesty, awe before his mystery, obedience before his authority, trust beneath his Providence, confession under his rebukes; but common, essential, and unchanged within them all is simple, pure humility.