Fear can never be a basis of either religion or ethics. The one who is moved by fear makes his chief concern the avoidance of detection on the one hand, or the escape of punishment on the other. Men of large calibre have an unusual sagacity in sifting the unessential from the essential as also the false from the true. Lincoln, when replying to the question as to why he did not unite himself with some church organisation, said: "When any church will inscribe over its altar, as its sole qualification of membership, the Saviour's condensed statement of the substance of both law and gospel: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbour as thyself, that church shall I join with all my heart and soul." He was looked upon by many in his day as a non-Christian--by some as an infidel. His whole life had a profound religious basis, so deep and so all-absorbing that it gave him those wonderful elements of personality that were instantly and instinctively noticed by, and that moved all men who came in touch with him; and that sustained him so wonderfully, according to his own confession, through those long, dark periods of the great crisis, The fact that in yesterday's New York paper--Sunday paper--I saw the notice of a sermon in one of our Presbyterian pulpits--Lincoln, the Christian--shows that we have moved up a round and are approaching more and more to an essential Christianity. Similar to this statement or rather belief was that of Emerson, Jefferson, Franklin, and a host of other men among us whose lives have been lives of accomplishment and service for their fellow-men. Emerson, who said: "A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognise our own rejected thoughts. They come back to us with a certain alienated majesty." Emerson, who also said: "I believe in the still, small voice, and that voice is the Christ within me." It was he of whom the famous Father Taylor in Boston said: "It may be that Emerson is going to hell, but of one thing I am certain: he will change the climate there and emigration will set that way."