and consistently the character which the law of Christ indicates; that in the face of all opposition, originating in his own nature, and all springing from the example or authority of the world, and even all embodied in the wiles and assaults of the Devil, he should prove himself the righteous man. We may say, therefore, as the Psalmist has said, that, always and everywhere, there is something for the righteous man to do. And we may say farther, what perhaps is implied in his saying, that especially in those exigencies when the powers of evil have reached such a height and compass in their operations that the very foundations of society and government are destroyed; when, it might seem, there was nothing for Christian faith to do, but bow before the storm, and hide itself, impotent and unheeded, in obscurity, — it is the duty of the righteous man to kindle anew the flame of his faith, and strive by bolder efforts than ever to throw the light of its influence upon the gloom and confusion which are weltering around him.

This principle I have taken the pains to state at this length, because it is under the authority of it, that I shall press upon your consideration the remarks I am about to make. These remarks, you will probably have anticipated, will have reference to the extraordinary position in which we have been placed by the awful and astounding tragedy at the seat of the Federal. Government, which has been announced to us during the last week. It has seemed to me, that sacred as it has been my habit to keep this pulpit to the promulgation of the strict themes of the gospel, and to the exercise of the proper function of Christ's ambassadors, the beseeching men to be reconciled to God," I was called upon to-day, in view of such an occurrence, to let the voice of Providence propose my subject, while the aid of Scripture should be invoked to give the light under which to view it.

The shock occasioned by the death of the Chief Magistrate

of the nation, under which the public mind is yet reeling in bewilderment and dismay, has left, I doubt not, wherever it has spread, just that impression which the Psalmist's words, "the foundations are destroyed," describe. An earthquake rending the soil beneath our feet could not have struck a deeper sensation of horror into our hearts, or prostrated them with a more profound feeling of calamity. The words which reported to us the crime and its mournful issue broke upon us with the stunning effect of a thunder-clap. Their import was too startling, too appalling, to be credited. The "foundations," the things familiar and established, the ideas, sentiments, instincts, usages, and traditions, in which we had been accustomed to confide, and which we thought were as stable as our civilization, and as sacred as our religion, were indeed overturned by it. The ground upon which we had been wont to stand seemed dissolving under us. Time and place grew unreal. Centuries seemed to have been expunged from the calendar of the world's history, and we were rolled back into the grim scenery of barbaric lands. A vision of ferocious hate and bloody violence, such as imagination had sometimes looked at in its pictures of brutal and savage antiquity, stood revealed in our midst, as a present and palpable fact. Our minds revolted at it. Our eyes turned in terror from it. Involuntarily we closed them with our clasped hands, and sought thus to escape seeing the truth of that which we were forced to confess we could not make untrue. Alas, no! With all our shuddering aversion to see its truth, we could not, we cannot, make it untrue. We never can. To the end of time, it will remain recorded in our national annals, that the man who filled the seat, and wore the honors of the representative of the sovereignty of this great American Republic, perished under the hand of an assassin. We could not have believed that such a record would ever darken and sadden those annals. We could not have

believed that, beneath these skies and on this soil, the creature could have breathed, who could have perpetrated such a deed. And yet, in bitter sorrow and shame we make the confession, it has been done. Others, my friends, will tell you how, in their judgment, you ought to feel and act in view of such an event. It will be my endeavor, standing on the platform, and trying to express the spirit of the gospel of Christ, to point out to you in a few particulars, what, in my judgment, is the Christian way of feeling and acting in view of it. Always and everywhere, we have seen, the righteous man has his post to fill, and his work to do. He has them here and now. The wide lament which is going up from the nation's palpitating heart-"The foundations are destroyed, the foundations are destroyed!"-calls upon him, amidst all the tumultuous excitement of the occasion, to maintain his character, and to reflect, resolve, and express himself distinctly as a righteous man.

Speaking, then, from the stand-point occupied by such a man (it may seem almost superfluous for me to say it, and yet I deem it highly expedient to do so), I would say, in the first place, that this act of assassination must be adjudged an unmitigated and gigantic sin against God, and as such is to be regarded with utter abhorrence and reprobation. In this light, pre-eminently, it must present itself to every Christian mind. Its bearings upon ourselves, under the relations in which we may have stood personally to the object affected by it, must not be suffered to divert our attention from those which attach to it in this particular aspect. Here is a crime, an atrocious, a diabolical crime, — an outrage upon the majesty of God. It was an exhibition of malignity on the part of the doer of it, not merely against his human victim, but against God. He was a hater of God; and the righteous man, with a holy indignation which the Scriptures have taught him how to express, can only say of him, "Do not I hate

them, O Lord! that hate thee? And am I not grieved with those that rise up against thee? I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies!" There is reason to fear, that our hearts have grown callous under the teachings of war, or may be so pre-occupied by personal feeling of one kind or another, that we may fail to be affected adequately with the enormous turpitude of even a deed of violence like this. I beg you to look at it, therefore, with me in a few of its features.

First, then, it was murder,- murder conceived, and, in part, executed, upon a scale which makes it a massacre. It was man shedding man's blood, deliberately, maliciously, and illegally. Viewed merely under this aspect, it was an enormous sin, — a sin which God has branded with special tokens of his detestation, and consigned to the heaviest penalty which human justice can inflict.

But, more than this, it was an impious invasion of the domain of divine Providence. Every human life is a sphere under the administration of that Providence. But the life of the magistrate, the sovereign, from the vaster scope of the interests which are comprehended in it, in a peculiar sense, may be said to be such a sphere. The life of the magistrate, the sovereign,*is an essential element in that apparatus by which God mediately governs the world, - an instrument upon whose agency is suspended the execution of his policy concerning the world. It is one of those "foundations" or pillars, upon which he has been pleased to rest the vast and complex scheme of his purposes. To destroy such a life is to contract the guilt of a hardihood which dares to cross the path of Jehovah, — to snatch the sceptre from his hand, and violently reverse or confound his counsels.

Again, it is an act which desecrates, in the most flagrant form, the divine ordinance of government. I say the divine ordinance of government, for with the Bible in my hand I can give no lower

For the attainment of all supposed to have been

character to government. It is a creature of God as truly, and almost in the same sense, as man is. worthy ends for which man can be created is conditioned upon the existence of government. Now, government as the creature or ordinance of God is a most sacred thing. It is to be regarded with religious reverence, and approached and transacted with with religious respect. I know this idea has been perverted, has been made the basis of a "divine right of kings," and has been carried among the despotisms of the Old World to the length of denuding the people of all political rights, and making them the mere property and prey of their sovereigns. This abuse has received, or is receiving, its correction, and may now be considered obsolete. But it may well be questioned, whether we in this country, under our better philosophy, have not been falling into an abuse in the opposite quarter, and fabricating a "divine right of the people," by which Government, as a positive creature of God, has been shorn of its rights, as much as the people were of theirs, under the prevalence of the old heresy of the "divine right of kings." Government, as an independent, substantial fact; a sacred thing, placed by God amongst us and over us; something different from the people, and the citizen and voter; a priestly institution, " called of God, as was Aaron," to minister to our national tribes, and bearing like him the inscription, "Holiness to the Lord," upon its venerable brow, - has it not come to wear a common look, to lose credit and sanctity in our eyes? Have not the arts of the politician and demagogue, like the scissors of Delilah, robbed it of its native prerogative, and forced it, with its eyes put out, to employ its powers in making sport for the Philistines of faction and party? And may not this oversight, this deterioration of its character as a divine ordinance, have helped to bring on the fearful convulsion through which we have been passing? And may