he saw that no permanent peace could be had while the institution of slavery remained. His second inaugural address is a faithful transcript of himself. It contains no shadow of boasting, no personal reference, no vanity of prediction. It is the writing of one who felt himself as in the hollow of God's hand, to be used for God's purposes. It is eminently solemn and humane, tender and trustful. Here are the two closing paragraphs:

"Both parties to the war read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes his aid against the other. It may seem strange that any man should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes. Woe unto the world because of offences, for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh.' If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of these offences, which in the providence of God must needs come, but which, having continued through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woes due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may soon pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid with another drawn with the sword, said three thousand years ago, so, still it must be said, 'The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'

as was

"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to

finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphans; to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations."

This last paragraph ought to be engraven on his monument. In the midst of life, brethren, we are in death. Death meets man at every turn, a surprise and a mystery. In the high places of the nations men fall sometimes by violence, and sometimes in peace; and the more private circle of the home is visited by death's call, and our friends are borne away to the tomb. That same morning which witnessed the departure of the spirit of President Lincoln from the earth witnessed also the departure from this life of a venerable life connected with this congregation. No man living could be in more ardent sympathy with the cause of emancipation than he was. He had passed through a lengthened public life, honored with various high public trusts, and had reached an advanced age which demanded repose. But with fourscore years upon him, he had a heart tender as a child for the wrongs of the slave. Any reference to these wrongs stirred his whole nature with profound and visible motion. You know I refer here to the late Mr. Justice Gale.

Yes; in the midst of life we are in death. Men fall at conspicuous posts, and in the full bustle of active public life. While the tidings of President Lincoln's death were yet fresh upon us, ships from beyond the sea came with further tidings of sadness and death. We heard that Richard Cobden, one of England's foremost men, had suddenly ceased to be. He had come up to

London to take part in a debate concerning Canada; but sickness seized him, and soon cut short his life. He, too, like President Lincoln, was a self-made man, rising gradually from humble birth and social obscurity, until, by dint of perseverance, attainments, and character, he became one of the most influential men

of the nation. He was a representative man of the bone and sinew of England, - her intelligent middle and industrial classes. These are the classes who have built up Britain's material power and greatness. These are the men who plant her colonies, carry her wide-stretching commerce, and her traditions of liberty, all over the earth: here bearing fruit in one form; in another place, bearing fruit in another form. Canada and the United States are both the products of the energy and enterprise of the middle and industrial classes of our common mother-country. Mr. Cobden, like Mr. Lincoln, was a man of marked sincerity of purpose and integrity of character. Like Mr. Lincoln, he had to bear his share of obloquy from flippant and reckless partisan opponents; but like Mr. Lincoln, too, he triumphed over these, and has bequeathed a name to his country, which his country will not willingly let die. His name is intimately identified with some of the most important political and economic reforms of the present century. He cheapened the food of the operative masses in England, after a hard and tedious conflict with the ignorance and selfishness of the agricultural interests and landed aristocracy. He lived to see the nation a grateful convert to his enlightened principles of commerce. He was invited to join Lord Palmerston as Cabinet Minister; but he declined. He was offered rank and title; but he declined. He wanted neither office nor title. His desire was that of a sincere and noble mind, to serve his countrymen—the great mass of his toiling countrymen with an honest and disinterested service. And, when the calamity of civil war befel the United States, his intelligent acquaintance with American affairs, and his clear moral vision, preserved him from that lamentable delusion on this matter in which certain classes of English society became almost hopelessly involved. President Lincoln had in him an enlightened and faithful friend. He was the consistent supporter of the cause of free labor and of

popular government in the free States, as against all factitious claim to sympathy and support made on behalf of an attempt to establish an oligarchical Republic founded on slave labor. His voice did as much as any other man's to keep the masses of the English people right on this great subject. He was, beside, the steady advocate of international peace. He had faith in Christianity as a religion of peace. Sixteen years ago, it was my privilege to meet him as a delegate to the Peace Congress then held in Paris. Then and there, I listened to his calm, cogent, and convincing speech on the main topic of the Congress. I do not know in what form he would have written his religious creed. But his expressed maxim was, "You have no hold on any man who has no religious faith." There was no narrowness about his religion. It was broad in its sympathies, and practical in its aims. He said he liked the Unitarians, "because they did not make their faith and works distinct." And, speaking as I do from a Unitarian pulpit, I may be pardoned for alluding to the fact, that Richard Cobden first tried his power as a public speaker in the Cross-street Unitarian Chapel Room in Manchester. And when he wanted help in any good cause, as he was heard to say many years afterwards, he knew he could always rely on the Unitarian young men of that city. When Richard Cobden, the son of a Sussex farmer, died, one of England's genuine noblemen. passed away. When he died, the cause of human freedom and progress lost one of its most enlightened friends and devoted advocates.

In the midst of life we are in death. On the seventh day of this present month of April, the grave closed over the mortal remains of this conspicuous representative Englishman. Just one week afterwards, on the fourteenth day of this same month, an assassin's hand brought death to a conspicuous representative American. Abraham Lincoln and Richard Cobden, names fa

miliar in two continents, no, longer represent living men. Both have passed away from the scene. Yet, from a human point of view, how needful to their two nations were these two men! Both were lovers of freedom. Both were friends of peace. Each in his own nation was a pledge of peace toward the other nation. The removal of these two men about the same time is a notable and startling fact in the order of Divine Providence, — a fact, solemn, inscrutable, admonitory. How shall we interpret this double dispensation of death? And what use shall we make thereof? Brethren, the times are critical. War exists on this continent; and the spirit which breeds war is unhappily too rife here and elsewhere. What then? Are we not bound to look soberly and devoutly at passing events? And, as we stand at this hour by the freshly closed grave of Richard Cobden, and behold the murdered body of Abraham Lincoln passing along, amid a nation's wail, to its tomb, shall we not pray, and put our prayer into effort, that the two great and kindred nations, of which these two men were such conspicuous representatives, shall remain in amity and at peace each with the other? Every true friend of either nation must desire this, and can desire nothing but this. And all such persons should have a clear understanding of their duty at this juncture. The governments of the two countries are friendly and peacefully disposed. The most recent intercourse between our Queen's representative at Washington, and the new President of the United States, indicates a spirit of mutual friendliness, which goes beyond the coldness of mere formality. But, in contrast with this friendly temper of the two governments, we cannot but notice the unfriendly temper of certain classes of persons on both sides of the frontier line. By whatever name they are called on this or the other side, how different soever may be their origin on one side or the other, or apparently opposite their present party connections, their temper,