Abraham
Lincoln
A sermon preached in Philadelphia, while the
President was lying in the city.
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| Phillips Brooks Image created by Mary Katherine May |
From Addresses by the Right Reverend Phillips Brooks,
Bishop of Massachusetts. Philadelphia: Henry Altemus, 1895. This work is in the Public Domain. Glossary at end of document.
LINK to free downloads on Archive.org of this sermon in PDF (book scan), JPG and Word (transcribed) formats. BabaMary is Mary Katherine May on Archive.org.
This blog post created by Mary Katherine May of QualityMusicandBooks.com.
“He chose David also
His servant, and took him away into the sheepfolds that he might feed Jacob His
people, and Israel his inheritance. So
he fed them with a faithful and true heart, and ruled them prudently with all
his power.” Psalm lxxviii 71, 72, 73.
While I speak to you
today, the body of the President who ruled this people, is lying, honored and
loved, in our city. It is impossible
with that sacred presence in our midst for me to stand and speak of ordinary topics
which occupy the pulpit. I must speak of
him today; and I therefore undertake to do what I had intended to do at some
future time, to invite you to study with me the character of Abraham Lincoln,
the impulses of his life and the causes of his death. I know how hard it is to do it rightly, how
impossible to do it worthily. But I
shall speak with confidence, because I speak to those who love him, and whose
ready love will fill out the deficiencies in a picture which my words will
weakly try to draw.
We take it for
granted, first of all, that there is an essential connection between Mr.
Lincoln’s character and his violent and bloody death. It is no accident, no arbitrary decree of
Providence. He lived as he did, and he
died as he did, because he was what he was.
The more we see of events, the less we come to believe in any fate or
destiny except the destiny of character.
It will be our duty, then, to see what there was in the character of our
great President that created the history of his life, and at last produced the
catastrophe of his cruel death. After
the first trembling horror, the first outburst of indignant sorrow, has grown
calm, these are the questions which are bound to ask and answer.
It is not necessary
for me even to sketch the biography of Mr. Lincoln. He was born in Kentucky fifty-six years ago,
when Kentucky was a pioneer state. He
lived, as boy and man, the hard and needy life of a backwoodsman, a farmer, a
river boatman, and, finally by his own efforts at self-education, of an active,
respected, influential citizen, in the half-organized and manifold interests of
a new and energetic community. From his
boyhood up he lived in direct and vigorous contact with men and things, not as
in older States and easier conditions with words and theories; and both his
moral convictions and his intellectual opinions gathered from that contact a
supreme degree of that character by which men knew him, that character which is
the most distinctive possession of the best American nature, that almost
indescribable quality which we call in general clearness or truth, and which
appears in the physical structure as health, in the moral constitution as
honesty, in the mental structure as sagacity, and in the region of active life
as practicalness. This one character,
with many sides, all shaped by the same essential force and testifying to the
same inner influences, was what was powerful in him and decreed for him the
life he was to live and the death he was to die. We must take no smaller view than this of
what he was. Even his physical conditions
are not to be forgotten in making up his character. We make too little always of the physical;
certainly, we make too little of it here if we lose out of sight the strength
and muscular activity, the power of doing and enduring which the backwoods-boy
inherited from generations of hard-living ancestors, and appropriated for his
own by a long discipline of bodily toil.
He brought to the solution of the question of labor in this country not
merely a mind, but a body thoroughly in sympathy with labor, full of the
culture of labor, bearing witness to the dignity and excellence of work in
every muscle that work had toughened and every sense that work had made clear
and true. He could not have brought the
mind for his task so perfectly, unless he had first brought the body whose
rugged and stubborn health was always contradicting to him the false theories
of labor, and always asserting the true.
As to the moral and
mental powers which distinguished him, all embraceable under this general
description of clearness of truth, the most remarkable thing is the way in
which they blend with one another, so that it is next to impossible to examine
them in separation. A great many people
have discussed very crudely whether Abraham Lincoln was an intellectual man or
not; as if intellect were a thing always of the same sort, which you could
precipitate from the other constituents of a man’s nature and weigh by itself,
and compare by pounds and ounces in this man with another. The fact is, that in all the simplest
characters that line between the mental and moral natures is always vague and
indistinct. They run together, and in
their best combinations you are unable to discriminate, in the wisdom which is
their result, how much is moral and how much is intellectual. You are unable to tell whether in the wise
acts and words which issue from such a life there is more of the righteousness
that comes of a clear brain. In more
complex characters and under more complex conditions, the moral and the mental
lives come to be less healthily combined.
They cooperate, they help each other less. They come even to stand over against each
other as antagonists; till we have that vague but most melancholy notion which
pervades the life of all elaborate civilization, that goodness and greatness,
as we call them, are not to be looked for together, till we expect to see and
so do see a feeble and narrow conscientiousness on the one hand, and a bad,
unprincipled intelligence on the other, dividing the suffrages of men.
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| Addresses by Phillips Brooks Philadelphia: Henry Altemus, 1895 |
Another evident
quality of such a character as this will be its freshness or newness; if we may
so speak. Its freshness or
readiness—call it what you will—its ability to take up new duties and do them
in a new way, will result of necessity from its truth and clearness. The simple natures and forces will always be
the most pliant ones. Water bends and
shapes itself to any channel. Air folds
and adapts itself to each new figure.
They are the simplest and the most infinitely active things in
nature. So, this nature, in very virtue
of its simplicity, must be also free, always fitting itself to each new
need. It will always start from the most
fundamental and eternal conditions, and work in the straightest even although
they be the newest ways, to the present prescribed purpose. In one word, it must be broad and independent
and radical. So, that freedom and
radicalness in the character of Abraham Lincoln were not separate qualities but
the necessary results of his simplicity and childlikeness and truth.
Here then we have
some conception of the man. Out of this
character came the life which we admire and the death which we lament
today. He was called in that character
to that life and death. It was just the
nature, as you see, which a new nation such as ours ought to produce. All the conditions of his birth, his youth,
his manhood, which made him what he was were not irregular and exceptional, but
were the normal conditions of a new and simple country. His pioneer home in Indiana was a type of the
pioneer land in which we lived. If ever
there was a man who was a part of the time and country he lived in, this was
he. The same simple respect for labor
won in the school of work and incorporated into blood and muscle; the same
unassuming loyalty to the simple virtues of temperance and industry and
integrity; the same sagacious judgment which had learned to be quick-eyed and
quick-brained in the constant presence of emergency; the direct and clear
thought about things, social, political, and religious, that was in him
supremely, was in the people he was sent to rule. Surely, with such a type-man for ruler, there
would seem to be but a smooth and even road over which he might lead the people
whose character he represented into the new region of national happiness and
comfort and usefulness, for which that character had been designed.
But then we come to
the beginning of all trouble. Abraham
Lincoln was the type-man of the country, but not of the whole country. This character which we have been trying to
describe was the character of an American under the discipline of freedom. There was another American character which
had been developed under the influence of slavery. There was no one American character embracing
the land. There were two characters,
with impulses of irrepressible and deadly conflict. This citizen whom we have been honoring and
praising represented one. The whole
great scheme with which he was ultimately brought in conflict, and which has
finally killed him, represented the other.
Beside this nature, true and fresh and new, there was another nature,
false and effete and old. The one nature
found itself in a new world, and set itself to discover the new ways for the
new duties that were given it. The other
nature, full of the false pride of blood, set itself to reproduce in a new
world the institutions and the spirit of the old, to build anew the structure
of the feudalism which had been corrupt in its own day, and which had been left
far behind by the advancing conscience and needs of the progressing race. The one nature magnified labor, the other
nature depreciated and despised it. The
one honored the laborer, and the other scorned him. The one was simple and direct; the other,
complex, full of sophistries and self-excuses.
The one was free to look all that claimed to be truth in the face, and
separate the error from the truth that might be in it; the other did not dare
to investigate, because its own established prides and systems were dearer to
it than the truth itself, and so even truth went about in it doing the work of
error. The one was ready to state broad
principles, of the brotherhood of man, the universal fatherhood and justice of
God, however imperfectly it might realize them in practice; the other denied
even the principles, and so dug deep and laid below its special sins the broad
foundation of a consistent, acknowledged sinfulness. In a word, one nature was full of the
influences of Freedom, the other nature was full of the influences of Slavery.
In general, these
two regions of our national life were separated by a geographical
boundary. One was the spirit of the
North, the other was the spirit of the South.
But the Southern nature was by no means all a Southern thing. There it had an organized, established form,
a certain definite, established institution about which it clustered. Here, lacking advantage, it lived in less
expressive ways and so lived more weakly.
There, there was the horrible sacrament of slavery, the outward and
visible sign round which the inward and spiritual temper gathered and kept
itself alive. But who doubts that among
us the spirit of slavery lived and thrived?
Its formal existence had been swept away from one State after another,
partly on conscientious, partly on economical grounds, but its spirit was here,
in every sympathy that Northern winds carried to the listening ear of the
Southern slaveholder, and in every oppression of the weak by the strong, every
proud, assumption of idleness over labor which echoed the music of Southern
life back to us. Here in our midst lived
that worse and falser nature, side by side with the true and better nature
which God meant should be the nature of Americans, and of which he was shaping
out the type and champion in his chosen David of the sheepfold.
Here then we have
the two. The history of our country for
many years is the history of how these two elements of American life approached
collision. They wrought their separate
reactions on each other. Men debate and
quarrel even now about the rise of Northern Abolitionism, about whether the
Northern Abolitionists were right or wrong, whether they did harm or good. How vain the quarrel is! It was inevitable. It was inevitable in the nature of things
that two such natures living here together should be set violently against each
other. It is inevitable, till man be far
more unfeeling and untrue to his convictions than he has always been, that a
great wrong asserting itself vehemently should arouse to no less vehement
assertion the opposing right. The only
wonder is that there was not more of it.
The only wonder is that so few were swept away to take by an impulse
they could not resist their stand of hatred to the wicked institution. The only wonder is, that only one brave,
reckless man came forth to cast himself, almost single-handed, with a hopeless
hope, against the proud power that he hated, and trust to the influence of a
soul marching on into the history of his countrymen to stir them to a
vindication of the truth he loved. At
any rate, whether the Abolitionists were wrong or right, there grew up about
their violence, as there always will about the extremism of extreme reformers,
a great mass of feeling, catching their spirit and asserting it firmly, though
in more moderate degrees and methods.
About the nucleus of Abolitionism grew up a great American Anti-Slavery
determination, which at last gathered strength enough to take its stand to
insist upon the checking and limiting the extension of the power of slavery,
and to put the type-man, whom God had been preparing for the task, before the
world, to do the work on which it had resolved.
Then came discontent, secession, treason. The two American natures, long advancing to
encounter, met at last, and a whole country, yet trembling with the shock,
bears witness how terrible the meeting was.
Thus, I have tried
briefly to trace out the gradual course by which God brought the character
which He designed to be the controlling character of this new world into
distinct collision with the hostile character which it was to destroy and
absorb, and set it in the person of its type-man in the seat of highest
power. The character formed under the
disciple of Freedom and the character formed under the discipline of Slavery
developed all their difference and met in hostile conflict when this war
began. Notice, it was not only in what
he did and was towards the slave, it was in all he did and was everywhere that
we accept Mr. Lincoln’s character as the true result of our free life and
institutions. Nowhere else could have
come forth that genuine love of the people, which in him no one could suspect
of being either the cheap flattery of the demagogue or the abstract
philanthropy of the philosopher, which made our President, while he lived, the
center of a great household land, and when he died so cruelly, made every
humblest household thrill with a sense of personal bereavement which the death
of rulers is not apt to bring. Nowhere
else than out of the life of freedom could have come that personal
unselfishness and generosity which made so gracious a part of this good man’s
character. How many soldiers feel yet
the pressure of a strong hand that clasped theirs once as they lay sick and
weak in the dreary hospital! How many
ears will never lose the thrill of some kind word he spoke—he who could speak
so kindly to promise a kindness that always matched his word! How often he surprised the land with a
clemency which made even those who questioned his policy love him the more for
what they called his weakness, --seeing how the man in whom God had most
embodied the discipline of Freedom not only could not be a slave, but could not
be a tyrant! In the heartiness of his
mirth and his enjoyment of simple joys; in the directness and shrewdness of
perception which constituted his wit; in the untired, undiscouraged faith in
human nature which he always kept; and perhaps above all in the plainness and
quiet, unostentatious earnestness and independence of his religious life, in
his humble love and trust of God—in all, it was a character such as only
Freedom knows how to make.
Now it was in this
character, rather than in any more political position, that the fitness of Mr.
Lincoln to stand forth in the struggle of the two American natures really
lay. We are told that he did not come to
the Presidential chair pledged to the abolition of Slavery. When will we learn that with all true men it
is not what they intend to do, but it’s what the qualities of their natures
bind them to do, that determine their career!
The President came to his power full of the blood, strong in the strength
of Freedom. He came there free and
hating slavery. He came there, leaving
on record words like these spoken three years before and never contradicted. He had said, “A house divided against itself
cannot stand. I believe this Government
cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect Union to be dissolved; I do
not expect the house to fall; but I expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the
other.” When the question came, he knew
which thing he meant that it should be.
His whole nature settled that question for him. Such a man must always live as he used to say
he lived (and was blamed for saying it) “controlled by events, not controlling
them.” And with a reverent and clear
mind, to be controlled by events means to be controlled by God. For such a man there was no hesitation when
God brought him up face to face with slavery and put the sword into his hand
and said, “Strike it down dead.” He was
a willing servant then. If ever the face
of a man writing solemn words glowed with solemn joy, it must have been the
face of Abraham Lincoln, as he bent over the page where the Emancipation
Proclamation of 1863 was growing into shape, and giving manhood and freedom as
he wrote it to hundreds of thousands of his fellow-men. Here was a work in which the whole nature
could rejoice. Here was an act that
crowned the whole culture of his life.
All the past, the free boyhood in the woods, the free youth upon the
farm, the free manhood in the honorable citizen’s employments—all his freedom
gathered and completed itself in this.
And as the swarthy multitudes came in, ragged and tired, and hungry, and
ignorant, but free forever from anything but the memorial scars of the fetters
and the whip, singing rude songs in which the new triumph of freedom struggled
and heaved below the sad melody that had been shaped for bondage; as in their
camps and hovels there grew up to their half-superstitious eyes the image of a
great Father almost more than man, to whom they owed their freedom, --were they
not half right? For it was not to one
man, driven by stress of policy, or swept off by a whim of pity, that the noble
act was due. It was to the American
nature, long kept by God in his own intentions till his time should come, at
last emerging into sight and power, and bound up and embodied in this best and
most American of all Americans, to whom we and those poor frightened slaves at
last might look up together and love to call him, with one voice, our Father.
Thus, we have seen
something of what the character of Mr. Lincoln was, and how it issued in the
life he lived. It remains for us to see
how it resulted also in the terrible death which has laid his murdered body
here in our town among lamenting multitudes today. It is not a hard question, though it is sad
to answer. We saw the two natures, the
nature of Slavery and the nature of Freedom, at last set against each other,
come at last to open war. Both fought,
fought long, fought bravely; but each, as was perfectly natural, fought with
the tools and in the ways which its own character had made familiar to it. The character of Slavery was brutal,
barbarous, and treacherous; and as the whole history of the slave power during
the war has been full of ways of warfare brutal, barbarous, and treacherous,
beyond anything that men bred in freedom could have been driven to by the most
hateful passions. It is not to be
marveled at. It is not to be set down as
the special sin of the war. It goes back
beyond that. It is the sin of the
system. It is the barbarism of
Slavery. When Slavery went to war to
save its life, what wonder if its barbarism grew barbarous a hundred-fold!
One would be
attempting a task which once was almost hopeless, but which now is only
needless, if he set himself to convince a Northern congregation that Slavery
was a barbarian institution. It would be
hardly more necessary to try to prove how its barbarism has shown itself during
this war. The same spirit which was
blind to the wickedness of breaking sacred ties, of separating man and wife, of
beating women till they dropped down dead, of organizing licentiousness and sin
into commercial system, of forbidding knowledge and protecting itself with
ignorance, of putting on its arms and riding out to steal a State at the
beleaguered ballot-box away from freedom—in one word (for its simplest
definition is its worst dishonor), the spirit that gave man the ownership in
man in time of peace, has found out yet more terrible barbarisms for the time
of war. It has hewed and burned the
bodies of the dead. It has starved and
mutilated its helpless prisoners. It has
dealt by truth, not as men will in time of excitement, lightly and with
frequent violations, but with a cool, and deliberate, and systematic contempt. It has sent its agents into Northern towns to
fire peaceful hotels where hundreds of peaceful men and women slept. It has undermined the prions where its
victims starved, and made all ready to blow with one blast their wretched life
away. It has delighted in the lowest and
basest scurrility even on the highest and most honorable lips. It has corrupted the graciousness of women
and killed out the truth of men.
I do not count up
the terrible catalogue because I like to, nor because I wish to stir your hearts
to passion. Even now, you and I have no
right to indulge in personal hatred to the men who did these things. But we are not doing right by ourselves, by
the President that we have lost, or by God who had a purpose in our losing him,
unless we know thoroughly that it was this same spirit which we have seen to be
a tyrant in peace and a savage in war, that has crowned itself with the working
of this final woe. It was the conflict
of the two American natures, the false and the true. It was Slavery and Freedom that met in their
two representatives, the assassin and the President; and the victim of the last
desperate struggle of the dying Slavery lies dead today in Independence Hall.
Solemnly, in the
sight of God, I charge this murder where it belongs, on Slavery. I dare not stand here in His sight, and
before Him or you speak doubtful and double-meaning words of vague repentance,
as if we had killed our President. We
have sins enough, be we have not done this sin, save as by weak concessions and
timid compromises we have let the spirit of Slavery grow strong and ripe for
such a deed. In the barbarism of Slavery
the foul act and its foul method had their birth. By all the goodness that there was in him; by
all the love we had for him (and who shall tell how great it was); by all the
sorrow that has burdened down this desolate and dreadful week, —I charge this
murder where it belongs, on Slavery. I
bid you to remember where the charge belongs, to write on the doorposts of your
mourning houses, to teach it to your wondering children, to give it to the
history of these times, that all times to come may hate and dread the sin that
killed our noblest President.
If ever anything
were clear, this is the clearest. Is
there the man alive who thinks that Abraham Lincoln was shot just for himself;
that it was that one man for whom the plot was laid? The gentlest, kindest, most indulgent man
that ever ruled a State! The man who knew
not how to speak a word of harshness or how to make a foe! Was it he for whom the murderer lurked with a
mere private hate? It was not he, but
what he stood for. It was Law and
Liberty, it was Government and Freedom, against which the hate gathered and the
treacherous shot was fired. And I know
not how the crime of him who shoots at Law and Liberty in the crowded glare of
a great theater differs from theirs who have levelled their aim at the same
great beings from behind a thousand ambuscades and on a hundred battlefields of
this long war. Every general in the
field, and every false citizen in our midst at home, who has plotted and
labored to destroy the lives of the soldiers of the Republic, is brother to him
who did this deed. The American nature,
the American truths of which our President was the anointed and supreme embodiment,
have been embodied in multitudes of heroes who marched unknown and fell
unnoticed in our ranks. For them, just
as for him, character decreed a life and a death. The blood of all of them I charge on the same
head. Slavery armed with Treason was their
murderer.
Men point out to us
the absurdity and folly of this awful crime.
Again and again we hear men say, “It was the worst thing for themselves
they could have done. They have shot a representative
man, and the cause he represented grows stronger and sterner by his death. Can it be that so wise a devil was so foolish
here? Must it not have been the act of
one poor madman, born and nursed in his own reckless brain?” My friends, let us understand this
matter. It was a foolish act. Its folly was only equaled by its
wickedness. It was a foolish act. But when did sin begin to be wise? When did wickedness learn wisdom? When did the fool stop saying in his heart,
“There is no God,” and acting godlessly in the absurdity of his impiety? The cause that Abraham Lincoln died for shall
grow stronger by his death, —stronger and sterner. Stronger to set its pillars deep into the
structure of our nation’s life; sterner to execute the Justice of the Lord upon
his enemies. Stronger to spread its arms
and grasp our whole land into freedom; sterner to sweep the last poor ghost of
Slavery out of our haunted homes.
But while we feel
the folly of this act, let not its folly hide its wickedness. It was the wickedness of Slavery putting on a
foolishness for which its wickedness and that alone is responsible, that robbed
the nation of a President and the people of a father. And remember this, that the folly of the
Slave power in striking the representative of Freedom, and thinking that
thereby it killed Freedom itself, is only a folly that we shall echo if we dare
to think that in punishing the representatives of Slavery who did this deed, we
are putting Slavery to death. Dispersing
armies and hanging traitors, imperatively as justice and necessity may demand
them both, are not killing the spirit out of which they sprang. The traitor must die because he has committed
treason. The murderer must die because
he has committed murder. Slavery must
die because out of it, and it alone, came forth the treason of the traitor and
the murder of the murderer. Do not say
that it is dead. It is not, while its
essential spirit lives. While one man
counts another man his born inferior for the color of his skin, while both in
North and South prejudices and practices, which the law cannot touch, but which
God hates, keep alive in our people’s hearts the spirit of the old iniquity, it
is not dead. The new American nature
must supplant the old. We must grow like
our President, in his truth, his independence, his religion, and his wide
humanity. Then the character by which he
died shall be in us, and by it we shall live.
Then peace shall come that knows no war, and law that knows no treason;
and full of his spirit a grateful land shall gather round his grave, and in the
daily psalm of prosperous and righteous living, thank God forever for his life
and death.
So let him lie here
in our midst today, and let our people go and bend with solemn thoughtfulness
and look upon his face and read the lessons of his burial. As he paused here on his journey from the
Western home and told us what by the help of God he meant to do, so let him
pause upon his way back to his Western grave and tell us with a silence more
eloquent than words how bravely, how truly, by the strength of God, he did
it. God brought him up as he brought
David up from the sheepfolds to feed Jacob, his people, and Israel, his
inheritance. He came up in earnestness
and faith, and he goes back in triumph.
As he pauses here today, and from his cold lips bids us bear witness how
he has met the duty that was laid on him, what can we say out of our full hearts
but his— “He fed them with a faithful and true heart, and ruled them prudently
with all his power.” The Shepherd of the People! that old name
that the best rulers ever craved. What
ruler ever won it like this dead President of ours? He fed us faithfully and truly. He fed us with counsel when we were in doubt,
with inspiration when we sometimes faltered, with caution when we would be
rash, with calm, clear, trustful cheerfulness through many an hour when our hearts
were dark. He fed hungry souls all over
the country with sympathy and consolation.
He spread before the whole land feasts of great duty and devotion and
patriotism, on which the land grew strong.
He fed us with solemn, solid truths. He taught us the sacredness of
government, the wickedness of treason.
He made our souls glad and vigorous with the love of liberty that was in
his. He showed us how to love truth and
yet be charitable—how to hate wrong and all oppression, and yet not treasure
one personal injury or insult. He fed all his people, from the highest to the
lowest, from the most privileged down to the most enslaved. Best of all, he fed us with a reverent and
genuine religion. He spread before us
the love and fear of God just in that shape in which we need them most, and out
of his faithful service of a higher Master who of us has not taken and eaten
and grown strong? “He fed them with a
faithful and true heart.” Yes, till the
last. For at the last, behold him
standing with hand reached out to feed the South with mercy and the North with charity,
and the whole land with peace, when the Lord who had sent him called him and
his work was done!
He stood once on the
battlefield of our own State, and said of the brave men who had saved it words
as noble as any countryman of ours ever spoke.
Let us stand in the country he has saved, and which is to be his grave
and monument, and say of Abraham Lincoln what he said of the soldiers who had
died at Gettysburg. He stood there with
their graves before him, and these are the words he said:
“We cannot dedicate,
we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men who struggled here have
consecrated it far beyond our power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember
what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be
dedicated to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so
nobly advanced. It is rather for us to
be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these
honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the
last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead
shall not have died in vain; and this nation, under God, shall have a new birth
of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, and for the
people shall not perish from the earth.”
May God make us
worthy of the memory of Abraham Lincoln!
GLOSSARY
Definitions taken
from Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary
of the English Language. LINK
Ambuscade. Literally, a lying in a wood,
concealed, for the purpose of attacking an enemy by surprise: hence, a lying in
wait, and concealed in any situation, for a like purpose.
Effete. 1. Barren; not capable of
producing young, as animal, or fruit, as the earth. An animal becomes effete by
losing the power of conception. The earth may be rendered effete by drouth, or
by exhaustion of fertility. 2. Worn out
with age; as effete sensuality.
Embody (embodied). To
form or collect into a body or united mass; to collect into a whole; to
incorporate; to concentrate; as, to embody troops; to embody detached
sentiments.
Hew (hewed). 1. To cut with an ax, or other
like instrument, for the purpose of making an even surface or side; as, to hew
timber. 2. To chop; to cut; to hack; as,
to hew in pieces.
Licentiousness. Excessive
indulgence of liberty; contempt of the just restraints of law, morality and
decorum.
Sagacity. 1. Quickness or acuteness of
scent; applied to animals. 2. Quickness
or acuteness of discernment or penetration; readiness of apprehension; the
faculty of readily discerning and distinguishing ideas, and of separating truth
from falsehood.
Sagacious. 1. Quick of scent; as a
sagacious hound; strictly perhaps, following by the scent, which sense is
connected with Latin sequor; with of; as sagacious of his quarry. 2. Quick of thought; acute in discernment or
penetration; as a sagacious head; a sagacious mind.
Scurrility. Such low. vulgar, indecent or
abusive language as is used by mean fellows, buffoons, jesters and the like;
grossness of reproach or invective; obscene jests, etc.
Sophistry. Fallacious reasoning;
reasoning sound in appearance only. These men have obscured and confounded the
nature of things by their false principles and wretched sophistry.
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