When a prominent politician dies, the eulogies usually hail him as a Great Leader who did Great Deeds. They're less likely to hail him for great humility or authenticity — perhaps because he didn't have those qualities in abundance, or because the eulogist doesn't value them all that highly.

When Henry Hyde died, though, he was hailed for all those things.

Hyde, a veteran congressman from Illinois, passed away last November at age 83. He was best known for his longtime pro-life leadership: The 1976 Hyde Amendment is the reason federal tax dollars haven't paid for abortions the past 30 years. (The year before they paid for 300,000.) But it wasn't just his legislative efforts that impressed people, it was the sincerity behind them.

I've read any number of affectionate tributes to Hyde since his passing. The first one that got my attention came from a source close to home — the Boundless blog The Line. Candice Watters recalls watching Hyde in action while she was a young Capitol Hill staffer. Contending energetically for one pro-life measure,

He spoke with deep emotion about the issue, including quoting a passage of literature about a father lamenting the loss of his daughter. It's been 15 years since I worked on Capitol Hill and much of the details are fuzzy. But I'll never forget Hyde, full of emotion, struggling through tears to finish reading that passage. It was no show.

Hyde, she says, was "in Washington not for fame and fortune, but to be faithful. He was that kind of statesman."

Many people had occasion to observe that same sincerity in Hyde. Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, first met him as a teenager and it made a lasting impression. He writes:

More than 30 years ago, I walked on to the floor of the House of Representatives on my first day as a congressional page — fidgeting in a new blue suit and trying desperately to hide the fact that I was terrified. I was immediately pushed into a scrum of representatives and pages running about in the midst of a close vote on a piece of legislation. Nobody really noticed the teenager being shoved around like flotsam and jetsam until I felt a huge hand grab me by the arm and pull me into a member's seat. I looked up at a tall man in an outrageously bright canary-yellow suit and a smile to match. It was Henry Hyde. While I was a Democratic page, he spotted me from across the room and ran over to stop me from being ground into chum.

Such stories come as no surprise to me. I'm old enough to remember most of Hyde's congressional career, and had read often of the high respect he held from his colleagues. Like most people then and now, I'd had good reason to be skeptical of politicians, and I was struck by the contrast.

Character isn't formed overnight, so it was also no surprise to learn that Hyde showed the same qualities throughout his life, from a tough Depression childhood to his pre-Congress career in the Illinois state legislature. While there, Turley notes, "a man with a gun barricaded himself in the bathroom near Hyde's office. The police were ready to shoot him but Hyde insisted on going in to speak with him. It turned out the man had problems at home. Hyde came out with the man and the gun."

We could think of that sort of heroism as a defining moment for a man's character. Yet to Christians, the best moments aren't the ones where we display virtues, but the ones where we own up to vices. So while reviewing Hyde's life, I was struck especially by this tale from Hyde's days as Illinois House majority leader, as reported in the Nov. 30, 2007 issue of Chicago Sun-Times:

U.S. District Court Judge Wayne Andersen was an aide to Hyde at the time. He remembers Hyde fighting partisanship in Springfield, where a closely divided House was voting down every bill at the end of a session.

"Hyde stood up and said, 'I just voted against that bill out of anger at the other side. It was a mean-spirited vote and that's not how we ought to vote. I move to reconsider that bill and the previous 30 we just voted down.'" Most of the bills then passed, said Andersen.

That sort of repentance may be the rarest quality in powerful men. It was what made David "a man after God's own heart;" he found favor in God's eyes because he repented and sought forgiveness. And David's example may well have held special meaning for Hyde, a Christian who, a few years earlier, had his own Bathsheba. "When he told his wife about the affair, he broke down, filled with shame that continued to haunt him for the rest of his life. His late wife Jeanne forgave him, but he never forgave himself."

Thankfully, God did. And with God forgiveness means our sins are remembered no more.

Thankfully, too, Hyde won't be remembered for his sins in this world either. He'll be remembered, chiefly, for the work he did and the lives he saved.

Hyde was in the forefront of the pro-life fight virtually since the time it was legalized, long before a lot of other people joined up. He took a lot of heat and he suffered his share of indignities for it. (The American Civil Liberties Union actually spied on him as he went to church, hoping to convince courts that laws Hyde sponsored infringed on the "separation of church and state.") He didn't back away from the issue, in the legislature or outside it. He'd travel to speak at crisis-pregnancy center fundraisers and pro-life events. Unlike many politicians with decent voting records on abortion, he wasn't seeking support from pro-lifers: He was one of them in his heart.

There's no telling how many lives were saved through his efforts. I've told in a previous column how a single pro-life display at my own church helped prevent several abortions — how "for years afterward, when seeing a child playing in a park, I've often thought 'for all I know, that could be one of ours.'" How many lives, then, were saved through the decades-long efforts of Henry Hyde?

In her tribute to Hyde, Candice Watters closes simply by praying that "God will raise up leaders to continue his work." Amen to that. Leaders like Hyde aren't commonplace: When we get them we should be thankful, and when we lose them we should take some time to honor their legacy.