civil strife, while our friends and brothers on so many ensanguined fields were falling and dying for the cause of liberty and Union. Let them cheer and strengthen and sustain us to-day. True, this new sorrow and chastening has come in such an hour and in such a way as we thought not, and it bears the impress of a rod that is very heavy, and of a mystery that is very deep. That such a life should be sacrificed at such a time, by such a foul and diabolical agency; that the man at the head of the nation, whom the people had learned to trust with a confiding and a loving confidence, and upon whom more than upon any other were centred, under God, our best hopes for the true and speedy pacification of the country, the restoration of the Union, and the return of harmony and love; that he should be taken from us, and taken just as the prospect of peace was brightly opening upon our torn and bleeding country, and just as he was beginning to be animated and gladdened with the hope of ere long enjoying with the people the blessed fruit and reward of his and their toil and care and patience, and self-sacrificing devotion to the interests of liberty and the Union-oh! it is a mysterious and a most afflicting dispensation. But it is our Father in heaven, the God of our fathers, who permits us to be so suddenly and sorely smitten, and we know that His judgments are right, and that in faithfulness He has afflicted us in the midst of our rejoicings. We needed this stroke, this dealing, this discipline, and therefore He has sent it. Let us remember our affliction has not come forth of the dust, and our trouble has not sprung out of the ground. Through and beyond all second causes let us look and see the sovereign permissive agency of the first great cause. It is His prerogative to bring light out of darkness and good out of evil. Surely the wrath of man shall praise Him, and the remainder of wrath He will restrain. In the light of a clear day we may yet see that the wrath which planned and perpetrated the death of the President was overruled by

Him, whose judgments are unsearchable and His ways past finding out, for the highest welfare of all those interests which are so dear to the Christian, patriot, and philanthropist, and for which a loyal people have made such an unexampled sacrifice of treasure and of blood. Let us not be faithless, but believing.

"Blind unbelief is sure to err,

And scan his work in vain;

God is his own interpreter,

And he will make it plain.”

We will wait for His interpretation, and we will wait in faith, nothing doubting. He who has led us so well, and defended and prospered us so wonderfully during the last four years of toil, and struggle, and sorrow, will not forsake us now. He may chasten, but He will not destroy. He may purify us more and more in the furnace of trial, but He will not consume us: no, no. He has chosen us, as He did His people of old in the furnace of affliction, and He has said of us, as He said of them, "This people have I formed for myself; they shall show forth my praise." Let our principal anxiety now be that this new sorrow may be a sanctified sorrow; that it may lead us to deeper repentance, to a more humbling sense of our dependence upon God, and to the more unreserved consecration of ourselves and all that we have to the cause of truth and justice, of law and order, of liberty and good government, of pure and undefiled religion. Then, though "weeping may endure for a night, joy will come in the morning." Blessed be God, despite of the great, and sudden, and temporary darkness, the morning has begun to dawn-the morning of a bright and glorious day, such as our country has never seen. That day will come and not tarry, and the death of a hundred presidents and their cabinets can never, never prevent it. While we are hopeful, however, let us also be humble. The occasion calls us to prayerful and tearful humiliation. It demands of us that we lie low, very low, before Him who has stricken us for our sins. Oh, that all our rulers and all our people

may bow in the dust to-day beneath the chastening hand of God, and may their voices go up to Him as one voice, and their hearts go up to Him as one heart, pleading with Him for mercy, and for grace to sanctify our great and sore bereavement, and for wisdom to guide us in this our time of need. Such a united cry and pleading will not be in vain. It will enter into the ear and heart of Him who sits upon the throne, and He will say to us as to his ancient Israel, "In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy upon thee, saith the Lord, thy Redeemer." I have said that the people confided in the late lamented President with a full and a loving confidence. Probably no man since the days of Washington was ever so deeply and firmly imbedded and enshrined in the very hearts of the people as Abraham Lincoln. Nor was it a mistaken confidence and love. He deserved it-deserved it well-deserved it all. He merited it by his character, by his acts, and by the whole tenor and tone and spirit of his life. He was simple and sincere, plain and honest, trustful and just, benevolent and kind. His perceptions were quick and clear, his judgments were calm and accurate, and his purposes were good and pure, beyond a question. Always and everywhere he aimed and endeavored to be right and to do right. His integrity was thorough, all pervading, all controlling, and incorruptible. It was the same in every place and relation. In the consideration and the control of matters, great or small, the same firm and steady principle of power and beauty, that shed a clear and crowning lustre upon all his other excellences of mind and heart and recommended him to his fellow-citizens as the man who, in a time of unexampled peril, when the very life of the nation was at stake, should be chosen to occupy-in the country and for the country-its highest post of power and responsibility. How wisely and well, how purely and faithfully, how firmly and steadily, how justly and successfully, he did occupy that

post and meet its grave demands, in circumstances of surprising trial and difficulty, is known to you all, is known to the country and the world. He comprehended from the first the perils to which treason had exposed the freest and best government on the earth, the vast interests of liberty and humanity that were to be saved or lost forever, in the urgent impending conflict. He rose to the dignity and momentousness of the occasion, saw his duty as Chief Magistrate of a great and imperilled people, and he determined to do his duty and his whole duty, seeking the guidance and leaning upon the arm of Him of whom it is written, "He giveth power to the faint, and to them that have no might He increases their strength." Yes, he leaned upon His arm; he recognized and received the truth that the kingdom is the Lord's, and He is the Governor among the nations.' He remembered that 'God is in history,' and he felt that nowhere had His hand and His mercy been so marvellously conspicuous as in the history of this nation. He hoped and prayed that 'that same hand would continue to guide us, and that same mercy continue to abound to us in the time of our greatest need.' I speak what I know, and testify what I have often heard him say, when I affirm that that guidance and mercy were the prop on which he humbly and habitually leaned; that they were the best hope he had for himself and for his country. Hence when he was leaving his home in Illinois and coming to this city to take his seat in the executive chair of a disturbed and troubled nation; he said to the old and tried friends who gathered joyfully around him and bade him farewell, 'I leave you with this request-pray for me.' They did pray for him. And millions of others prayed for him. Nor did they pray in vain. Their prayers were heard, and the answer appears in all his subsequent history. It shines forth with a heavenly radiance in the whole course and tenor of his administration, from its commencement to its close. God raised him up for a great and glorious mission,

furnished him for his work, and aided him in its accomplishment. Nor was it merely by strength of mind and honesty of heart and purity and pertinacity of purpose that he furnished him in addition to these things; he gave him a calm and abiding confidence in the overruling providence of God, and in the ultimate triumph of truth and righteousness through the power and blessing of God. This confidence strengthened him in all his hours of anxiety and toil, and inspired him with calm and cheering hope, when others were inclining to despondency and gloom. Never shall I forget the emphasis and the deep emotion with which he said in this very room to a company of clergymen and others, who called to pay him their respects in the darkest days of our civil conflict: "Gentlemen, my hope of success in this great and terrible struggle rests on that immutable foundation, the justice and goodness of God." And when events are very threatening, and prospects very dark, "I still hope that in some way which man cannot see, all will be well in the end; because our cause is just and God is on 'our side." Such was his sublime and holy faith, and it was an anchor to his soul, both sure and steadfast; it made him firm and strong; and emboldened him in the pathway of duty, however rugged and perilous it might be. It made him valiant for the right, for the cause of God and humanity, and it held him in steady, patient, and unswerving adherence to a policy of administration which, he thought, and which we all now think, both God and humanity required him to adopt. We admired and loved him on many accounts, for strong and various reasons. We admired his childlike simplicity, freedom from guile and deceit; his stanch and sterling integrity; his kind and forgiving temper; his industry and patience; his persistent, self-sacrificing devotion to all the duties of his eminent position, from the least to the greatest; his readiness to hear and consider the cause of the poor and humble, the suffering and the oppressed; his charity towards those who questioned