When we arrived and entered into the Lincoln Memorial at the west end of The Mall we saw the complete text of Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address inscribed on the right hand (north side) wall. Lincoln himself looks at what lies ahead.
At the historical juncture of the Second Inaugural, four years of civil war had already taken a horrendous toll on the nation. The Memorial enshrines Lincoln facing east. If you fix your attention on his face for a minute or so, it will be obvious that he is not exuberant in the least bit. How could he be? He's not downtrodden either. His face is somewhat expressionless which seems appropriate. He holds his head up because he has no other option. His hands, one lying on the arm rest, the other a semi-clenched fist, betray ambivalence and apprehension. Yet, at some point in the horizon the darkness will be pierced by increasingly uncontainable rays of light. The sun always rises.
I started reading the address. I remember having started reading on some prior visit, but this time I finished it. It took all of five to ten minutes and I was left in awe. I do not exaggerate in saying that I was rapt by text. While I was physically motionless my mind was crunching meaty words. I felt as if I could hold those words in my own hands and feel their weight. Most people were crowding Lincoln behind me. The north atrium was pretty bare and quiet if you can imagine such a thing at this monument on a Memorial Day. Perhaps, I was the only one reading at that moment.
Neither party expected for the war 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 pray to the same God, and each invokes 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 answered fully.
Lincoln knew his Bible and this Second Inaugural Address shows it. But it's not just that he knew the Bible and could quote and apply it in context. He knew the God of the Bible. He knew something about his righteous purposes and will for men. He knew his God would even be One to divinely intervene to confound and overturn the will and purposes of men. This one God in whom he believed never stood on the sidelines and he always had the last word for our sake.
Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.
Only a war president who knows a God of justice and peace could have had the grace and fortitude to hope and pray this way. Lincoln was no ordinary man. Perhaps there hasn't been as gifted an orator president as him since his death. But Lincoln himself would not have cared much for oratory for the sake of oratory. The Second Inaugural stands out because Lincoln, undoubtedly tempered by the experience of war more than he would have liked, puts God in the thick of it and at the helm of it and makes men, himself included, subservient (again for our very own sake) to Him.
Lincoln truly believed in Divine Intervention. Political addresses by heads of state are not known for reflecting this reality throughout history, modern history in particular. We go on deciding the fate of individuals, entire peoples and the world having faith in our so called capacity to be rational actors. But God lets that little fancy of ours run its course to its logical conclusion. It is a if we tell the joke not realizing that the joke is actually on us.
Lincoln looks eastward in his Memorial, seated and knowing that the sun will rise and that the night will pass. There's nothing he can do to contain one or the other, but he knows there's a living God whose judgments are "true and righteous altogether." His are words rooted in the experience of a living faith. Yes, there's much work to be done. There are wounds to bind and heal. A nation to pick up and put back together.
...to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
When I finished reading the Second Inaugural I regained motion. Did I just finish reading a sermon? Maybe. I might be guilty of going a little over the top here, but all I can say is that I made the sign of the cross as if I had heard the man himself say an "Amen" right when he finished his address. Did he beckon me to join him? I have no other answer but "Yes." Somebody may have seen me. Who cares.
Then I left and sat with my dad on the steps leading up to the Memorial. I was in awe.
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