Rev. Dr. Moses D. Hoge.
The public career of Robert E. Lee forms one of the most impressive and inspiring chapters in human history.
In many respects he occupies a place all his own in the military annals of the world.
But men are not fully known by their official lives or by those conspicuous acts which fill the world with their fame.
It is to the social and domestic realm that we look for those traits of character—the uprightness, the courtesy, the magnanimity, and the supreme devotion to duty—which constitute the true men. So, too, it is to the religious life that we look for the sincerity, the meekness, the humility and the self-consecration which constitute the true Christian.
Therefore, when we contemplate a man, like Lee, it is not the splendid renown of the soldier, nor the virtues of the citizen, nor the devotion of the Christian alone that impresses us, but the harmonious blending of all in a character of such strength, symmetry and attractiveness as to form an ideal which at once gratifies the intellect and satisfies the heart.
Men thus endowed by nature and by grace form the models most worthy of imitation and become the bequests of Providence to coming ages.
By the admiration they command and by the affection they attract, they inspire and encourage others to the pursuit of ‘whatsoever things are just and true and lovely and of good report,’ and thus lift humanity to a higher plane.
