" . . . the trailing splendors of the inner life which he inhabits. . . . "

February 15, 1998

Presidents' Day

Psalm 72

Some years ago Congress changed what we used to celebrate as either Washington's or Lincoln's birthday into Presidents' Day weekend. And what happens? Congress takes a recess, the schools launch their winter vacations, the ski areas pray for a pre-weekend blizzard, car dealers assemble their sensational packages, and credit card companies urge a buying spree charging us only 1.9% on purchases made over these three days. What a come-down, from Washington and Lincoln, to an automile blowout and yes, perhaps even worse, to something called Presidents' Day, where the likes of the Roosevelts, Wilson, Jackson, Washington and Lincoln get no more respect than Harding, Buchanan, and Pierce. We remember some of them with scant appreciation as in the following double dactyl:

Higgledy-piggledy
Benjamin Harrison,
Twenty-third President
Was, and as such,
Served between Cleveland's, and
Save for this trivial
Idiosyncracy,
Didn't do much.

We can be tough on our Presidents. As another observer shrewdly remarked, "The President of today is the postage stamp of tomorrow."

In any case, there is one president who continues to haunt many of us. It is President Lincoln. And the title of this sermon is taken from amid the eulogy delivered by my predecessor, Jacob Manning, on Easter Day, April 16, 1865, following Lincoln's assassination on Good Friday. I wish to touch base this morning with some "trailing splendors of the inner life which (Lincoln) inhabits;" splendors of courage and hope, vision and kindness, patience and trust -- splendors expressed in his farewell address to the people of Springfield in February 1861, before leaving for Washington -- some states already repudiating the Union, his election and person the butt of scorn and ridicule, Lincoln suggesting he bore a task "greater than that which rested upon Washington," and then continuing, "without the assistance of that Divine Being, who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail. Trusting in him who can go with me, and remain with you and be everywhere for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet be well. To his care commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell." And thus he leaves Springfield, to return some four years later in order to be buried.

I

First of all, just a small reflection on the dominant presence of Lincoln and his shadow for so much of our politics and identity in this country. David Donald, whose recent biography serves as the most accurate and discerning one-volume reflection on Lincoln's life, wrote a fascinating article some years ago entitled, "Getting Right with Lincoln." Its point lies in our almost messianic remembrance of him and of our use of his name for credibility and authority for much that passes in our national life. Lincoln stands at the heart of our political affairs. Who, for instance, provides the glue and the mystique, for the Republican Party? I see Ronald Reagan seems to capture much of its recent enthusiasm, what with Washington's  national airport now named for him, and some of his sponsors surveying the granite on Mount Rushmore. But for generations, Lincoln provided the luster and mythic aura for the Republicans. As David Donald writes,

Every four years Republican hopefuls sought -- and presumably secured -- Lincoln's endorsement. According to the campaign literature, Lincoln invariably bore marked physical and moral resemblance to the party's candidates including such unlikely persons as William McKinley, William Howard Taft and Calvin Coolidge. [Calvin Coolidge!?] Year after year, Republican politicos reviewed their party's lineage in Lincoln Day addresses that the world has little noted nor long remembered. One oration, however, deserves to be treasured -- that of Warren G. Harding, commencing, "Destiny made Lincoln the agency of fulfillment, held the inherited covenant inviolate and gave him to the ages. No words can magnify or worship glorify." As W.S. Gilbert observes, "The meaning doesn't matter if it's only idle chatter of a transcendental kind."

The Democrats, according to Donald, "raided the Republican closet." And infuriated them. When someone suggested Franklin Roosevelt deliver an address at Lincoln's tomb in Springfield, Donald tells us, Springfield Republicans cried sacrilege and one of them "threatened an injunction to stop this Democratic outrage."

Frank Williams reminds us that "during the 1992 presidential race Lincoln seemed to belong to both Bill Clinton and George Bush. Clinton, at the time of the Gennifer Flowers revelation, was seen leafing through the books,  Lincoln on Democracy andLincoln on Leadership and Bush compared himself to Lincoln, "a lonely White House occupant." Perhaps, says Williams, because the President is a symbol of national unity and stability Lincoln is used shamelessly for political ends: Clinton has quoted Lincoln to justify activist government; many encouraged Bush to dump Dan Quayle as his Vice Presidential running-mate citing Lincoln's replacement of Hannibal Hamlin; and William F. Buckley, Jr. advised American voters not to ignore George Bush, "Just because he is not Abraham Lincoln."

So we live with this icon, this monumental political, cultic, for many, almost spiritual presence who can be molded to our deepest understandings of citizenship, representing in himself and inviting us to respond in tough and trying times, not with cynicism or despair, nor with hatred and revenge, but rather with what Lincoln himself called, "the better angels of our nature."

 II

And what do these better angels represent? To paraphrase Jacob Manning's words, "what trailing splendors of the inner life does Lincoln inhabit?" Why bring him to church this morning? Well, I bring him to church because, as implied a moment ago,  he reminds us of the power of pardon; the capacity to understand, to embrace and to bear within ourselves the terrible furies and antagonisms of the human heart.

The calumny and vilification Lincoln endured seem murderous in their intent and intensity. As one historian writes, he was the most unpopular man ever elected President of the United States. When he entered the White House "they called him an illiterate, a barroom witling, a crude fellow, a charlatan, a wretched imbecile, a pettifogging demagogue, a half witted usurper, a simple Susan."

When the Union, for decades, fragile, sectional, stretched taut to the point of breaking by factional dispute, finally tore apart on the occasion of his election, "they called him a second Benedict Arnold, a blunderer, a lunatic, a perjured traitor." In his efforts to preserve and sustain the Union with the resources and manpower, the law and, yes, extra legal claims at his command, they labeled him "a tyrant, a dictator, a despot, a subservient tool of designing men."

One of the most sublime addresses in the English language, the one at Gettysburg calling for "a new birth of freedom," triggered contemptuous asides: "silly remarks, dishwatery utterances, totally inadequate and ludicrous sallies."

And in the election of 1864, a season of policy failure and battlefield horror so terrible many in his own party sought to discard him, they called him "a ridiculous joke, a compound of cunning and heartless folly, a betrayer of liberty, a politician but never a statesman, a vulgar and swaggering storyteller, a bunch of poor sticks, a crooked piece of timber, a third rate lawyer who once split rails and now splits the union." They accused him of a weak intellect, they censured him as "false to freedom," they reproached him as "controlled by corrupt interests," they charged him "guilty of damnable blunders." Wendell Phillips, right here in Boston, called him "a timid, ignorant president all the more injurious because he is honest -- a first rate second rate man. That's all there is to him." Beat him. Dump him. Destroy him.

And do you know Lincoln's response to this defamation and smear by-and-large continues to awe us? There is a magnanimity and generosity of spirit capturing us to this day. He reflected on the poignant irony of the accusations. "It is a little singular," he said to his secretary, "that I, who am not a vindictive man, should always have been before the people for election canvasses marked for their bitterness." And later, listening to a smug report bearing on the demise of two of his most virulent detractors he responded to the smug reporter saying, "You have more of that feeling of personal resentment than I. Perhaps I may have too little of it, but I never thought it paid. A man has not time to spend half his life in quarrels. If any man ceases to attack me, I never remember the past against him. . ." And his secretary John Hay remembers him saying on one occasion, "I am for short statutes of limitations in politics."

Who can number the pardons he offered? In anticipation of the second inaugural with its urgent plea for malice toward none and charity for all, he said to his Secretary of the Navy, while others pressed for a vengeful subjugation of the Confederacy, "Are we ever again to be united and fellow countrymen? If so, by my theory there is much to forgive. Those who are in this new movement seem to think there is nothing to forget. I am for conciliation; they seem to be governed by resentments. They believe we can be made one people by force and vengeance. I think we are not likely to bring about unity by hatred and persecution."

Friends, I don't know about you, but I find this approach to others who bear resentments against us, who deceive us, cut us off, spread falsehoods about us, look to do us injury or succeed in doing so -- I find Lincoln's approach sadly,  shamefully, remorsefully far beyond my own faculties and almost my ken. Lincoln captivates me, at least partly, because of his profound capacity to conquer his resentments -- not simply in politics, but in personal relations with his so-called "statute of limitations." When we see it -- when we feel it -- in another human being it astonishes us. But here is the beauty part, and perhaps this is why we keep pondering this "trailing splendor of Lincoln's inner life" -- I don't want to claim too much here, but perhaps his tendency to pardon reminds us of the "statute of limitations" we believe the love of God bears us. Whenever we hear tell of - or, incredibly enough, experience -- someone's loving us through and beyond our own distinctly unlovable behavior, seemingly wiping the slate clean, preparing to get us started all over again, renewed, recreated -- we know a semblance of a Divine encounter. This gracious "statute of limitations" -- don't you love that? -- is surely a "trailing splendor of the inner life which Lincoln inhabits . . ." and which, God be praised, we might inhabit too.

III

But more. We find in Abraham Lincoln an approach to personal crisis that seems to me to provide both inspiration and comfort, to model trust as well as to mediate it. Let me illustrate. The Lincolns had four boys: Robert, Eddie, Willie and Tad. Eddie died at four years old in 1850. Mrs. Lincoln, writes David Donald, was inconsolable. Of course! Mr. Lincoln, internalizing emotions as usual, commented for the record only, "We miss him very much."

But then in 1862, twelve-year-old Willie contracted typhoid. He died. Grief devastated the Lincolns. Mary Lincoln became so desolate she could not attend the funeral; she never again entered the bedroom where Willie died nor the room where they embalmed him. She suspended special events at the White House for a year, she forbade the weekly Marine Band concerts on the White House lawn. She never got over it.

And Lincoln himself? Looking on the face of his son, according to his secretary John Nicolay, Lincoln could only say brokenly, "he was too good for this earth . . . but then we loved him so." He devoured Shakespeare's tragedies, Lear, MacBeth, reciting, writes David Donald, from King John Constance's lament for her son:

And father Cardinal, I have heard you say
That we shall see and know our friends in heaven.
If that be true, I shall see my boy again.

According to Mary Lincoln, with Willie's death, the President begins finding religion now more a personal solace amid the contingencies and blows he sustained,, and which are sustained by each of us over the course of our lives. Lincoln begins to point toward a Providence working not only through the dynamics and events of people and nations, but amid the struggles and mysteries, the bafflement and bewilderment of life as we encounter and hack at it. Hamlet, as Donald indicates,  puts it best for Lincoln,

There is a divinity that shapes our ends
Rough-hew them how we will.

When I was growing up there hung on the walls of my bedroom that touching, and sublime letter Lincoln wrote to Lydia Bixby when he learned of the death of her sons in the Civil War. I know most of you are familiar with it, but today I cannot refrain from reading it again. Somehow it seems to me to represent the message of consolation any of us would wish to receive amid bereavement, the message any of us would wish to send in moments of personal crisis where words themselves seem pathetic, deficient, stumbling, garbled and hackneyed. Remember?

Dear Madam, I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.

I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from rendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only with the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom. Yours very sincerely and respectfully, . . .

Anyone here today bereaved, anguished, overwhelmed, stricken by loss? "I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you . . . the cherished memory of the loved and lost . . ." May you too live amid "the trailing splendor of the inner life which Lincoln inhabits . . ."

IV

And just one final note. The news this past month, and indeed since the Gulf War of 1991, has included references to Iraq, to Saddam Hussein and to what President Clinton and his advisors call "Weapons of Mass Destruction." While America's weapons of mass destruction concentrate this very moment in the Persian Gulf, diplomatic conversations continue in an effort to bring Saddam into line with UN resolutions and inspectors.

Who knows where this escalating game of chicken will end? Who knows who will blink first? No one knows should the F-16 Fighters, the cruise missiles, the B-1s and  B-52s, the Stealths and the ground forces -- what Secretary Cohen called the other day the "steel in the sword of freedom, the tip of that sword" -- no one knows what unpredictable, inevitably chaotic, surely bloody and perhaps wildly perverse consequences will arise. I suspect most of us place our hopes in diplomacy, though we know, this side of heaven, effective diplomacy and threats of coercion often go hand in hand.

How can we see this pending event? How perceive it from another vantage? When Lincoln delivered his Second Inaugural Address he devoted two thirds of it to confessing the possibility that the terrible scourge of the Civil war came as a divine judgment on the ethically invidious and morally bankrupt slave system -- a system he believed poisoned both North and South, a system he confessed responsibility under God for helping to perpetuate and sustain -- a system igniting a devastating and murderous conflict where he claimed righteousness for neither side, moral superiority for neither North nor South, but rather deferred to the transcendent  claims of Providence on the fragile, myopic, self-regarding claims of human beings -- and especially himself. He begged, with Biblical urgency, that we "judge not that we be not judged."

A friend complimented him on the speech. Lincoln replied as follows:

I believe (the address) is not immediately popular. Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference between the Almighty and them. To deny it, however, in this case is to deny that there is a God governing the world. It is a truth which I thought needed to be told and as whatever the humiliation there is in it falls most directly upon myself, I thought others might afford for me to tell it."

I pray this week that William Jefferson Clinton make no Divine claims for the weapon superiority of the United States, nor in our name claim the moral high ground if cruise missiles make their way to Baghdad. I pray he perceive himself as Lincoln, ready to acknowledge there may be a difference between the will of Almighty God and U.S. foreign policy, and that to affirm a God who governs the world infers inevitably corrupted human judgments and failed action driving us to our knees, acknowledging our limits, ready to receive whatever humiliation accrues as a consequence of that difference between God's will and our own. I pray that truly, if I may paraphrase, "with malice toward none; with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, we may to finish the work ofconciliation we are in, and do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations."

Now, there, in truth, we find ourselves embraced by a trailing splendor of the inner life which Lincoln inhabits.