The mystery of human personality
Story★★★★‘The historian, C. A. Beard, writes of Lincoln: “He was uncouth in manner, coarse sometimes in speech, tall, lanky, homely, awkward. Yet the severest of his critics was arrested by something compelling about the person- ality of Lincoln— something transcending the roughness of the frontier.”
““Something—what was it? The mystery of human personality! Do we stumble at the thought of Christ’s divinity? If we cannot explain a Lincoln, must we falter in confusion before the mystery of One who was both Son of man and Son of God?
“Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary? Whence hath this man these things?” And we hear His calm voice, ‘Marvel not... . The wind bloweth where it listeth . . . thou canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth.”
Every at- tempt to explain Jesus on some basis less than divine has died or is dying of its own barrenness. A religion that leaves no place for the mystery of divinity will soon find that it has left no place for itself in the world of humanity.
The point
Lincoln's mysterious greatness despite his rough appearance challenges skeptics to accept the divine mystery in Christ, transcending human reason. The story shows that greatness defies explanation and demands faith.