will, tireless patience, humanity, preserved from demoralizing
weakness by conscientious reverence for law, ardent love of country,
and, regulating all, a commanding sense of responsibility to God, the
Judge of all. These, though wrapped in seeming rustic garb, were
found in Abraham Lincoln. He had mental breadth and clearness. In
spite of a defective early education, he became a self-taught
thinker, and later in life he read widely and meditated profoundly,
until he acquired a thorough mental discipline. He possessed the
power to comprehend a subject at once in the aggregate and in its
details. His eye swept a wide horizon and descried clearly all within
its circumference. He was a keen logician, whose apt manner of
"putting things" made him more than a match for practiced
diplomatists and wily marplots. These were men of might about his
council-board, scholars and statesmen, but none arose to his
altitude, much less was either his master.

That very facetiousness sometimes critcised, kept him from becoming
morbid, and gave healthfulness to his opinions, free alike from fever
and paralysis. That his was incorruptible integrity, no man dare
question. He was not merely above reproach, but eminently above
suspicion. Purity is receptive. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for
they shall _see God_," is as profound in philosophy as comprehensive
in theology. Purity in the realm of moral decision and motive, is a
skylight to the soul, through which truth comes direct. Abraham
Lincoln was so pure in motive and purpose, looked so intensely after
the right that he might pursue it, that he saw clearly where many
walked in mist.

Without developing the characteristics of the ideal statesman
analytically, let us see how they were manifest in his administration.