Some weeks after the President visited the school, and the teacher directed his attention to the verse, which was still there. Mr. Lincoln read it; then, taking a crayon, said: "Boys, I have another quotation from the Bible, and I hope you will learn it and come to know its truth as I have known and felt it." Then below the other verse he wrote: "It is more blessed to give than to receive. A. LINCOLN." The influence of the Bible on the life and literature of Lincoln was remarkable. It gave to this nation and the world a life of service, and in that service he placed the most delicate spirit of sincerity, sobriety, sympathy, and love. In literature he has given to us abiding beauty in its simplicity and strength of expression. Of his Gettysburg speech the London Quarterly Review said, substantially, that the oration surpassed every production of its class known in literature; that only the oration of Pericles over the victories of the Peloponnesian War could be compared to it, and that was put into his mouth by the historian Thucydides. Mr. Sumner said it was the most finished piece of oratory he had ever seen. Every word was appropriate. None could be omitted and none added and none changed. Professor Albert S. Cook, teacher of English Language and Literature in Yale, in his book, The Bible and English Prose Style, seeking to show the influence of the Bible on the style of great writers, says: "But the matter is beyond dispute when we come to a piece of classic prose like Lincoln's Second Inaugural, which certainly owes nothing to the Romans of the Decadence." Then this sample of the Bible style is given: "'Neither party expected the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and prayed to the same God, and each invoked his aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been fully. The Almighty has his own purposes!'