-the nation would probably have been irretrievably ruined long ere this. We thought him, at the beginning of the conflict, slow and vacillating. We longed for the will and boldness of a Jackson at the head of affairs. But subsequent events have shown, that his moderation was the highest wisdom; that his slowness was the most speedy method of accomplishing the great work in hand. We had confidence in his honesty from the beginning; but we had learned to call him great as well as good, and to view him as the centre of the nation's hopes for the future. His career as a ruler is one of the most remarkable in history. His success in uniting the people in his support, and in so conducting the delicate and important duties of his trust as to escape all aspersion upon his fidelity to his country, is almost without parallel. No public man in the history of the country, not even Washington himself,-in his own time, ever gained so deep a hold upon the affections of the people; and this was accomplished, not by any of the tricks of a demagogue, but solely by his complete devotion to the highest interests of the nation, and his eminent fitness for his post. Can the loss be supplied? We needed him in the future as much as we needed him in the past, perhaps more. In the great questions of reconstruction that are now coming before the Government, that same cool judgment and clear sagacity are needed quite as much as in the conduct of the war. The great fear resting on the hearts of thoughtful men, after our military triumph over the rebels was felt to be assured, was, that mistakes might be made in the final settlement of our national difficulties, which would lose us all that we had gained, and sow the seeds of strife for years to come. Our great reliance, under God, was in the honesty and sagacity of our Chief Magistrate, whose past success we felt to be a guarantee for the future. No man can take his place at the head of the government, and inspire such confidence in the hearts of the people. We fear

now, as we look forward, lest in some way, through official incompetency or unfaithfulness, our recent triumphs over the enemy shall prove barren of their expected fruit of blessing for the nation and the world. Our trusty pilot is stricken down just as we are among the rocks and shoals that line the shores of peace, and there is now danger that we may go down within sight of the desired haven. God in Heaven avert so dire a calamity! For the sake of humanity, and for thy kingdom's sake, save us from the evils of confusion and anarchy! As thou hast taken away our Moses, raise us up a Joshua to lead us unto the Land of Promise!

It was no part of my purpose to dwell at length on the character of the President, or to prophesy the consequences that may follow his removal. It will be more fitting to consider for a moment some of the lessons which this terrible event is adapted to teach.

May we not believe, that one part of God's purpose in permitting this atrocious crime was to teach us still more impressively, even than by the events of the past four years, our entire dependence upon him, and to lead us to place all our hopes for the future in Heaven alone. We had learned this lesson partially, but perhaps not sufficiently. Perhaps we were trusting too much in the wisdom of the Government. Perhaps there was danger, that our military triumphs might turn away our thoughts from God, and that we might, without some further discipline, return to our idolatry of men and human agency. Perhaps, in the public rejoicings of the last week, there had been too much thought of the human agents by whom our victories were gained, and too little recognition of the hand of God. Perhaps our reliance for the future was too much on human wisdom, and not enough on the God of Israel.

It has been one of our greatest temptations to forget the ruler

ship of God in our national affairs. It has been our great sin as a people, through all the years of our history. Our trials during the last four years had done something in teaching us the fragility of reliance upon human wisdom and power; but perhaps this new stroke was needed to impress the lesson ineradicably upon us. If our President had been spared to us, he might have taken that place in our hopes for the future which belongs only to God. This support is now taken from us, and we must now put our trust in Heaven alone. God is a jealous God. He will not give his glory to another. Every idol that interposes itself between him and his creatures, he will destroy. How sad the thought, that it may have been our excessive love and reverence for the President, that made it necessary for God to suffer wicked men to execute their deed of blood upon him!

May we not believe, also, that it was God's purpose in this event, to bring out more clearly to the view of the world the atrocious nature of that system of iniquity in whose interest the crime was committed.

The facts of the case, as thus far developed, will not warrant us in charging this deed of blood directly upon the rebel Government. Perhaps they knew nothing of it, and would have discountenanced such a desperate deed if the plan had been revealed to them. But that the crime is a legitimate result of the cause for which they are contending, and that it is in harmony with their conduct through the whole war, is manifest. We ought not to have been surprised that a system, that could originate a rebellion against the best government on earth, should resort to any means to secure success, or to revenge defeat. The system of slavery itself was "the sum of all villanies;" and why should its abettors hesitate to assassinate any one whom they feared or hated as an enemy of their cause? It was in its very nature a system of violence, the nurse of every deed of outrage and shame.

It seems to have been a part of God's purpose, from the beginning of this conflict, to exhibit to the gaze of the world all the foul enormities of the system. It is wonderful how slow we have been, to heed the teachings of Providence in this respect; how blind the eyes even of the people of the North have been, to this monstrous iniquity. At the beginning of the war, we looked upon its radical opponents as fanatics and madmen. The very principles of the institution ought to have fixed us in deadly hostility against it; but we refused to look at it in the light of principle, and were willing to temporize and compromise with the infernal system. God determined, therefore, to use measures of instruction that would be heeded. He permitted the upholders of the system to rend the Union asunder, and to deluge the land with blood. He gave our sons and brothers into their hands to be tortured and starved in their prisons. He suffered them to send their piratical ships out upon the ocean to burn our shipping, and transform the mariner's signals of distress into signs of warning. He permitted them to send incendiaries to burn our cities; and now, to impress the lesson still more deeply, he permits the assassin to take the life of the first officer of the Government.

No stroke could have been more impressive. Nothing could have struck more deeply. If this crime does not awaken us to a sense of the atrocity of the rebellion, and of the system which originated it, nothing can. It was perhaps needed to fix the national heart more unchangeably in its purpose; to root out the evil, utterly and for ever; and to lead even us of the North to a deeper penitence before God for our past complicity with the great crime against humanity and Heaven. If there is now in the loyal North a man who can longer apologize for slavery, let him be declared a reprobate, lost to all the feelings of humanity, blind to all the teachings of God's providence. If there is a man who can think of this deed of blood, and find it in his heart to utter

one word of sympathy for the rebellion, let him receive the name of traitor, and suffer a traitor's doom.

This atrocious crime will also, I trust, lead us to see the need of greater sternness in dealing with traitors. It should awaken the Government and the people to the necessity of visiting upon the originators of the rebellion, to which this deed of assassination is but a fitting accompaniment, the severest penalty of the law, if they shall fall into our hands. An ill-timed demand for clemency on the part of the Government towards the rebels had begun to pervade the public mind. Let no blood be shed; let us deal with the rebels as with erring brethren,—has been the exhortation to the Government, of would-be philanthropists. In the generous exultation of victory, there was danger that the claims of war and justice might be utterly forgotten, and that posterity might be left to the inference that treason against a righteous government law was not a crime deserving of punishment. We needed some further manifestation of the awful guilt of this rebellion. We needed some stroke of crime that should, by its atrocity, startle us from our gentle mood. We needed some development of the diabolical spirit of the rebels, that should force the conviction upon us of the necessity of the sternest exercise of retributive justice, - positive in our dealing with the responsible authors of the rebellion. "Now let justice be done," was the suppressed utterance of all loyal men yesterday, as, with tearful eyes, they spoke together of our beloved Lincoln lying in his blood. That utterance was inspired by a principle implanted within us by the Creator, and its mandate should be heeded as the voice of God.

We read in the Bible of a sin against God, which can never have forgiveness, either in this world or in the world to come. If there be a crime on earth that stands in a like relation to human law, of that crime have the leaders of this rebellion been guilty;