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all the privileges of which men are capable of wise and proper exercise, for Abraham Lincoln's word is out.

It is not my right to suggest a word of counsel or advice for the future; but I have the right to say, that there is one man who seeks your prayers and desires your counsel. It is he who has been recently inaugurated—unexpectedly and distrustfully, as we are told-President of these United States. Though a President has gone, we must sustain the President that remains. I look upon the State of Tennessee, from which he comes, as being the centre of the great arch of the Union: midway between the South and North, with the climate of the one and the other, its soil susceptible of producing the products of both sections, it calls for all the consideration that either section of the country can demand for its people. Its political character and structure have the same variety and connection with the destinies of our country, and for thirty years have been more closely contested in political struggles than any other State of the Union. Its vote has decided many issues, and great men have represented its interests and destinies; and it has given us two Presidents, whose administrations have been identified closely, not only with the existence, but with the extension and interest, of our country. Jackson, with his mailed arm, struck disunion down at its first appearance, and adapted the policy of the country to its need. Polk confirmed the policy of Jackson, and extended the boundaries of our happy land until it reached from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast. Among the great men of place, we have had Benton, Houston, Bell, Foster, and hundreds of others whose names are known, and who have been and are connected indissolubly with the happiness and liberty of our people. From amid these men, the new President has been called. Among them he has grown, and from their teachings has he been instructed. His life has been one of activity, energy, and integrity. Character is not made in

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a day; it will never be forfeited in an hour. Our lamented President, if he could advise us, would counsel us to sustain the Government, and those left to take his place; and we are assured that the two great officers then at the head of the nation-a few days before the departure of the first and greatest upon full consultation, found that they had perfectly concurrent views, and separated with the confidence that each wished the prosperity and success of the other. Let us then accept this day, its grief, and the lesson which it imparts, and be more than ever determined, in the presence of God, with the ability and power he has given us, to do our duty to our country, by maintaining its institutions and perpetuating its principles and liberties.

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FUNERAL ORATION ON THE DEATH OF

PRESIDENT

LINCOLN:

DELIVERED BEFORE THE MAYOR, CITY COUNCIL, AND CITIZENS OF PORTLAND, APRIL 19, 1865 ; ·

BY REV. J. J. CARRUTHERS, D.D.

MR.

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TR. MAYOR AND FELLOW-CITIZENS, -The memorable days of our Republic are multiplying with marvellous rapidity; and amongst the most memorable of them all will be the fourteenth of April, eighteen hundred and sixty-five, when the hand of violence fell fatally on all that was mortal of Abraham Lincoln. The dreadful tragedy more dreadful than any ever represented in the mimicry of the dramatic stage has sent a thrill of unmitigated horror through the land; and anguish, paralleled only by the sorest domestic grief, has filled the hearts and households of our nation. The second Father of his country -second, only because he was not the first - has fallen; and, in common with many millions of afflicted mourners, we are met to pay the last tribute of respect to the memory of one whose death is felt by each of all these millions as a personal bereavement. The stroke has fallen unexpectedly and suddenly upon us; but suddenly and unexpectedly only because it is not given to us to foresee the events and issues even of a single day. Divine benevolence and wisdom have thrown over even the nearest future, a curtain so impenetrable, that human sagacity, however trained

and tutored by experience, can but conjecture as to what lies behind it. To God himself, nothing is unknown. He "seeth the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the thing that is not yet done." Nor must we withhold the closing part of this inspired declaration, in which he says, "My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure." Without impairing in the least the free agency of man, without mitigating in the least the guilt or just desert of human crime, the Sovereign Ruler of the universe is ever working out to their designed issues his purposes of judgment and of mercy. Abraham Lincoln was "immortal till his work was done;" and though his purposes were broken off, even the thoughts of his heart, by the hand of the assassin, those of the All-wise and the Almighty are undisturbed and undiverted even by a catastrophe like this. It was in subserviency to his designs, that. Abraham Lincoln first saw the light, and was born with qualities, physical and mental, which, when matured by exercise, observation, and experience, fitted him for the high position he ultimately reached, and for the solemn responsibilities that ever invest the chief magistracy of this great Republic. He who drew the deliverer of Israel from the bulrushes of the Nile, and trained him for his destiny in the wilderness of Midian, took Abraham Lincoln, in his seventh year, from his birthplace in Kentucky, and, till his twentieth, kept him in salutary seclusion amidst the then dense forests of Indiana. Here his naturally strong and stalwart frame gained daily vigor from the work to which penury impelled and honest industry inclined him. Here too his mental faculties were developed and disciplined by the study of men rather than of books; although of books, he had the best in that volume which, beyond all others, yields the most nutritious intellectual aliment, and has, in all ages, given instrumentally the greatest moral heroes to the world. Of these, the Pioneer of Indiana was pre-eminently one; and the keen acumen, the unaf

fected earnestness, the filial fidelity, the untiring industry, the ever unslacked thirst of knowledge, the unimpeached and unimpeachable truthfulness of Abraham Lincoln, were, in no small degree, the natural results of early conversance with the lives and acts and utterances of patriarchs and prophets and apostles. No College claims him as its alumnus. His Alma Mater was fixed by Providence amidst the woods and waters of the then far-West. His days were spent in hard and ill-remunerating toil, and few indeed were the hours that could be spared for what is called intellectual improvement. But what was wanting in classical learning, in philosophical research, in scientific acquisitions, was more than counterbalanced by the reflex action of his own mind, by the close study of his country's history, by the stern necessities of a life admitting of no idleness, and by the dictates of a moral dignity that would not stoop to dissipation. In another and a higher sense than is usually attached to such an epithet, Abraham Lincoln was a learned man. When he moved from Indiana to his adopted State of Illinois, he largely knew himself. He knew, by close and careful study, the character of Washington. He knew the constitutional history of his own country, and best of all— he knew and revered those high and holy principles of right and justice which had come to him in his forest home, with the seal and stamp of divine authority. These principles were incorporated with his mental being, interwoven and blended with his daily thoughts, giving steadiness and direction to the noble ambition that sought eagerly to honor and to serve his country.

True greatness is never unallied with modesty; but modesty in him was something else, and something vastly better, than that mawkish, mopish shamefacedness, which affects a sense of inferiority that is not felt, and creeps and cringes for compliments that are not deserved. When summoned by the citizens of Illinois

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