Addresses by the Right Reverend Phillips BrooksBrooks, Phillips
Religion
Addresses by the Right Reverend Phillips Brooks
Brooks, Phillips
Episcopal Church -- Sermons; Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865 -- Sermons; Sermons, American
Here then we have some conception of the man. Out of this character came
the life which we admire and the death which we lament to-day. He was
called in that character to that life and death. It was just the nature,
as you see, which a new nation such as ours ought to produce. All the
conditions of his birth, his youth, his manhood, which made him what he
was, were not irregular and exceptional, but were the normal conditions
of a new and simple country. His pioneer home in Indiana was a type of
the pioneer land in which he lived. If ever there was a man who was a
part of the time and country he lived in, this was he. The same simple
respect for labor won in the school of work and incorporated into blood
and muscle; the same unassuming loyalty to the simple virtues of
temperance and industry and integrity; the same sagacious judgment
which had learned to be quick-eyed and quick-brained in the constant
presence of emergency; the same direct and clear thought about things,
social, political, and religious, that was in him supremely, was in the
people he was sent to rule. Surely, with such a type-man for ruler,
there would seem to be but a smooth and even road over which he might
lead the people whose character he represented into the new region of
national happiness and comfort and usefulness, for which that character
had been designed.
But then we come to the beginning of all trouble. Abraham Lincoln was
the type-man of the country, but not of the whole country. This
character which we have been trying to describe was the character of an
American under the discipline of freedom. There was another American
character which had been developed under the influence of slavery. There
was no one American character embracing the land. There were two
characters, with impulses of irrepressible and deadly conflict. This
citizen whom we have been honoring and praising represented one. The
whole great scheme with which he was ultimately brought in conflict, and
which has finally killed him, represented the other. Beside this nature,
true and fresh and new, there was another nature, false and effete and
old. The one nature found itself in a new world, and set itself to
discover the new ways for the new duties that were given it. The other
nature, full of the false pride of blood, set itself to reproduce in a
new world the institutions and the spirit of the old, to build anew the
structure of the feudalism which had been corrupt in its own day, and
which had been left far behind by the advancing conscience and needs of
the progressing race. The one nature magnified labor, the other nature
depreciated and despised it. The one honored the laborer, and the other
scorned him. The one was simple and direct; the other, complex, full of
sophistries and self-excuses. The one was free to look all that claimed
to be truth in the face, and separate the error from the truth that
might be in it; the other did not dare to investigate, because its own
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account