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while gaunt famine and pale distress follow their desolating steps. Hail, blessed Peace! Again will the busy hum of industry be heard over our wide domain; again will the plough of the husbandman glide tranquilly over fields now blasted with the fires of war, while a bright and glorious future dawns upon us.

Doubtless within the breast of our martyred President arose many a bright anticipation of tranquil and happy times approaching. Guided in all his acts "with malice toward none, with charity to all," no undue exultation over vanquished foes pervaded his kind and noble heart; but it glowed with a quiet joy and Heaven-directed gratitude that his work had nearly ended, and that, beneath his guidance, quiet and happiness was once more about to bless his country.

In my address to you, I have confined myself solely to eulogizing the memory of Mr. Lincoln. The moral and religious instruction to be gleaned from the various circumstances attending his cruel death have been eloquently dwelt upon on former occasions by our respected minister, far more ably, and by fitter lips than mine.

According to the will of the everlasting King, our President has been taken from this earth. May the great God of Israel have mercy on his soul! may he pardon his iniquities, and keep his good deeds ever in his sight! In the language of our beautiful ritual, "May his soul enter the resting-place of the patriarchs! may our God guide him to the cherubim; and may he be decreed the happiness of paradise! May the repose established in the celestial abode, a forgiveness of trespasses, favor from Him that throneth on high, and a goodly portion in the life to come, be the resting-place and the reward" of Abraham Lincoln!

Philadelphia Inquirer, June 2, 1865.

ORATION BY REV. HORATIO STEBBINS:

DELIVERED AT SAN FRANCISCO, CAL., APRIL 19, 1865.

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FFLICTED PEOPLE!-In pathetic imagination we have taken up our march, following the dead corpse of our great leader, till at length we are come beneath this protecting canopy, reared like a sky above the arts and industries of a great people. Little did we think, when from the vigor of abundant life we extemporized this edifice, and in very play of childhood lifted this dome toward the sky, that it was to give us such shelter, and receive such consecration. Sweeter than the odor of all pleasant fruits, more precious than the wine of the vintage, more beautiful than the work of the cunning artificer, this tender and reverent respect, this aroma of a people's tears. Oh temple of peace, in a land of war! open wide thy gates, that the men of the city may weep at thine altars for the sorrow of the land!

Our great leader still leads us well; for we keep time, in our march, with the throbs of that precious heart which, though it has ceased to beat in the breast which bore it, still sways the tides within us as the sea sways beneath the stars. It is the quality of all lofty virtue, and distinguished excellence of public administration, to be embodied in principles, sentiments, and convictions, which appeal to all men on the broad ground of reason and truth.

All great and good rulers are the representatives of ideas and principles which lie very near the common heart. The wise and beneficent ruler of a State enters into that humanity over whose life he is called to preside. Men call him theirs by kindred tie of universal justice. They say they love him because by happy instinct. They know that the fountains of his soul are in the mountain summits of the same truth with theirs. in some sense the life of mankind, -the personification of the best hopes and the best beliefs of men.

His life is

When such an one is brought from great elevation, meekly borne for the good of men, to join the great equality of death, he seems greater to our minds in that equality than in his exaltation; for the powers that made him dear to us then are set free in us, and through our tears we see the setting glories of our love. Among all imposing scenes and events of which the earth is the theatre, the most sublime is a nation in tears, in tears for a man who represented its principles, and to whom it had confided its noblest trusts. It testifies that there is such a thing as public faith; that there is such a thing as the public good; that there are principles of justice, honor, and truth, which sway all hearts, which are worth living for, and which are worth dying for. It testifies that while good men die, wept and honored, principles have an unending life, pervading humanity, and passing from man to man, from generation to generation, and from age to age; and, while we join to-day the vast procession of a nation's sorrow, we find comfort and consolation in the thought that we stand also in that other procession, whose ever-onward motion is the progress of mankind.

We have been obliged to reconcile our minds as best we could to the relentless fact that the President is dead, and that he died by the hand of an assassin. At first, the shock was too great to bear. The mind could not admit the fact, with all its attendant

appalling circumstances, as a part of its intelligence; but we are so constituted, that whatever is we must confess, and no successful defence can be made against the patient persuasions of reason. The death of the President, had it come by divine appointment unmixed with human instrumentality; had he died in his own house, upon his own bed, surrounded by all the charities which bless the last moments of earthly existence, it could have been received and borne with a certain patience, and equanimity of mortal anguish. We could have said, "Death has all privilege, and the freedom of the earthly realm."

But when the shock of this dark wickedness is over, and the mind assumes its serenity once more; looks out upon the world of thought and life; thinks, compares, reasons, and judges,—the first intelligent impression it receives from reflection is a sudden surprise at its own former shock and wonder. Why should the assassination of the President fill us with astonishment and dismay? If I am told that it is the appalling crime at which the blood congeals, I reply, that it is of the same nature with that power against which we contend, every throb of whose life is a crime against mankind. The assassin is the finest, the intensest expression of organized barbaric passions. Defeated in principles, and compelled to retreat before the smallest ray of truth, he lets loose his insane rage upon persons. Never did assassin's blow strike so noble a head; yet never did assassin's blow fall so helpless. What crime has not the rebel power committed? It would seem, from the shock to our sensibilities, that we were not aroused to the enormity of that wickedness until we had seen it displayed in all its infernal intensity of malignant passions. The plot to murder the President - whether it be intrigue and conspiracy of individuals, or whether it be the design of the rebel powers is of the same quality as the rebellion itself, and has its roots there. The assassin carried the same fire that first flashed

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the lurid glare of war upon the sky at Sumter, and the same perfidy in his breast, with Davis and Floyd and Breckinridge. The import and meaning of the assassination are not any qualification of the death of the President, not any new element of embarrassment in the functions of government; but it is the strong flash of light which it throws into the sunless caverns of perfidy and wrong in the powers against which we contend. Did we need such an admonition? I will not forestall Providence by saying that we did not. Of one thing I am sure: the philosophic historian will record with pungent moral satire the insensibility of the American people to the deep wrongs of human slavery. He will record too, that, after years of devastating war, there were still some of moral dulness so great, and political sagacity so short-sighted, that it required the blood of the President, drawn by the hand of a hired assassin, hired by the power with which they would strike hands, to rouse them to the awful realities of outraged laws, and to feel the presence of events such as inaugu

rate new eras.

Men are mightier in their death than in their life when they die exponents of principles that live for ever. If it is true that nations have no immortality, it is for the same reason that the human body has none. Its forms are too gross to sustain that exalted intellectual and moral life. But they are the theatre for the display of all that is human; and nothing human ever dies. They are a part of an almighty and benignant purpose for the education of man; and whatever mingles in that stream is perpetual. Our intelligence refers this universe to the government of a Power all-mighty, all-wise, and all-good. Our religious faith rests in that, by moral instincts as natural as those which lead a child to cling to its mother; and we are not permitted to believe that any wild and random power of evil is let loose upon the earth. The assassin is the most malignant and hideous form of

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