That privacy no man can intrude upon. That lonely
search of the spirit for the right perhaps no man can assist. This
strange child of the cabin kept company with invisible things, was born
into no intimacy but that of its own silently assembling and deploying
thoughts.
I have come here to-day, not to utter a eulogy on Lincoln; he stands in
need of none, but to endeavor to interpret the meaning of this gift to
the nation of the place of his birth and origin. Is not this an altar
upon which we may forever keep alive the vestal fire of democracy as
upon a shrine at which some of the deepest and most sacred hopes of
mankind may from age to age be rekindled? For these hopes must
constantly be rekindled, and only those who live can rekindle them. The
only stuff that can retain the life-giving heat is the stuff of living
hearts. And the hopes of mankind cannot be kept alive by words merely,
by constitutions and doctrines of right and codes of liberty. The object
of democracy is to transmute these into the life and action of society,
the self-denial and self-sacrifice of heroic men and women willing to
make their lives an embodiment of right and service and enlightened
purpose.
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