Qass. Book. uf^ '^ FUNERAL ADDRESS DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN, riRMVKIlKD I\ THE CHURCH OF THE COVENANT, April 10, ISii.'t, m Rev. C. M. BUTLEK, D.D, PUBLISHED BY REQUEST. PHILADELPHIA: HENRY B. AS FI ME AD, BOOK AND JOB PRINTER, Nos. 1102 AND 1104 Sansom Strkkt 1865. ^fe FUNERAL ADDRESS DEATH OF ABRAHAM LTNCOLN, DKLITERED IN THE CHURCH OF THE COVENANT, April 19, 1865, Rev. C. M. BUTLER, D.D. It PUBLISHED BY REQUEST. PHILADELPHIA : HENRY B. ASHMEAD, BOOK AND JOB PRINTER, Nos. 1102 AND 1104 Sansom Street. 1865. XjftHp. Rev, and Deau Doctor: We were so much interested, gratified, and, we hope, benefited, by your touching and eloquent address this morning, and felt that it so perfectly reflected the feelings and sentiments of our own hearts, that, desirous in common with many others of preserving it in a permanent form, we venture to ask a copy of your notes for publication. AVith great respect and esteem, Trulj' yours, W. T. Sabine, Andrew Wheeler, John Tanguy, John P. Rhoads, James A. Kirkpatrick, Paul G. Oliver, Robert Reed, Samuel Simes, Charles G. Sower. Philadelphia, ^jsr/Z 19, 1865. West Philadelphia, A2)ril 24, 1S65. Dear Brethren: I have written out as perfectly as my memory would enable me, the hastily prepared address, delivered from a few meagre notes, which you received so kindly, and have requested for publication. Conscious as I am that it is your pro- found interest in the subject which has led to your high estimate of my most imperfect presentation of it, I yet too completely share the universal desire of the people to render honor to the memory of our dear departed President, to feel at liberty to withhold the address from publication. Very respectfully, yours, C. M. Butler. Rev. W. T. Sabine, Andrew Wheeler, &c., &c. TO THE MEMORY REV. DUDLEY A. TYNG, ONE OF THE FIRST TO SEE, AND TOE BRAVEST TO DENOUNCE THE SYSTEM AND THE SPIRIT OF SLAVEHOLDING, WHICH HAS PLUNGED OUR COUNTRY INTO THE HORRORS OF REBELLION AND WAR, AND ASSASSINATED OUR BELOVED PRESIDENT LINCOLN, THIS ADDRESS IS INSCRIBED. ADDRESS. We attend to-duy an exceedingly solemn and affect- ing funeral service. I say that we attend the service — because, although the remains of our late lamented President are not here, we nevertheless take a real and substantial part in the high and sacred ceremonial ap- pointed for his obsequies. The marvellous agency of the telegraph has annihilated distances, and brought the most remote States, as it were, around his bier. And to-day there is no distinction between friends and mourners. We are all mourners. There is scarcely a house in all our broad land which is not draped in the symbols of sorrow, or a heart that is not heavy with its reality. We are all children, gathered in passionate and sobbing grief around the prostrate form of our murdered, beloved, and honored father. To-day tens of thousands of ministers of God speak to millions of the assembled people. Their A^oice is one, their theme one, their lam- entations and their affectionate eulogies the same. They all unite in the same faith, the same prayer, the same 6 vow. Their faith is unshaken that God has not for- saken, though he has chastened us, in our hour of triumph. Their prayer is that, chastened and corrected, but not given over unto death, God's ^' loving correction may make us great." Their vow is to cleave with new purpose of heart to the God who in wrath remembers mercy, and who fits us for high duties only by subject- ing us to the discipline of mighty sorrows. It is a new thing, this actual loarticipaiion of a whole nation in the funeral obsequies of its fallen chief. When the lamented Henry Clay was buried, a large portion of the country was conscious, at the moment, that the mournful ceremonies were in progress ; but not then, as now, was the whole nation officially invited and expected to take a part in the funeral obsequies, by gathering in their houses of worship and joining in the offices for the burial of the dead. But, indeed, every- thing connected with this tragedy is new. Such a re- bellion as that which has brought this revolting atrocity in its train is new in the history of the world. There have been revolutions against oppressive governments, or in behalf of rights withheld; there have been conspir- acies and revolts like that of Cataline, by bad men for the indulgence of atrocious passions, and the overthrow of states ; but, like Cataline's, they have been limited in their field, and speedily suppressed. But never before did a revolt from a beneficent government occur for the purpose of obtaining freedom to make and keep men slaves; and never before did so vile a scheme cover such a wide area with desolation, and hurrj^ such multitudes into graves, and keep itself alive in evil power for a pe- riod so long. It is a new thing in these latter days to have at the head of a nation a man of such unique and simple greatness; and new certainly is that unparalleled and profound sorrow which has benumbed us into indif- ference for victories, and changed the rapturous hope of anticipated peace into the inconsolable anguish in which, for the moment, peace or Avar, victory or defeat, seem equal, because he, our father, is not with us to sustain us in the one and rejoice with us in the other. And new no less are the stupendous events and contrasts which have been crowded in the first two weeks of April. Within that period the triple lines that guarded Peters- burgh and Richmond have been stormed. General Lee with the remnant of his army has surrendered, Mobile has fallen, Raleigh has been occupied, and Jefferson Davis has become a fugitive, who will either escape in company with eternal infamy, or be laid hold of by in- exorable justice. Within that period the old tattered flag of Fort Sumter, reverently preserved for such an occasion, was raised over the luins of the fortification from which treason struck it down, on the fourth anni- versary of the fatal day that saw it lowered; and the same devout soldier who surrendered it with patriotic agony lifted it to its old place, with a gratitude that was too sacred to be exultation, amid the choaking cheers of 8 assembled thousands and the thunder of the victorious fleets and armies. And then, on that very night, when our beloved President had reached the point which he had been patiently laboring and hoping to attain for four long cruel years — at the precise crisis of his profoundest satisfaction and his brightest promise, he was instantly struck dead by the hand of an assassin ! Surely these are solemn events — startling contrasts. Surely the crime of murdering such a man, so merciful and mag- nanimous, at such a time and amid such events, and with such a place of honor and veneration in the nation's heart, is new and unparalleled in its guilt. Surely God is moving among us with majesty and power, and speak- ing to us in trumpet tones. Let us bow in iilial awe beneath his chastenings, and listen reverently to his teachings. And now it becomes us to endeavor to interpret this awful providence, to comprehend the causes and the character of the profound emotion which fills our hearts, and to study the solemn lessons which God intends that we should learn. We are so startled and stricken by the event, in part, because we had a strong persuasion that our President came to the kingdom "for such a time as thisj" and was designated by God as the chosen instrument to take us safely through the perils and perplexities in which we are involved. And now he is taken away from us! Hence we feel bewildered, as well as bereaved. It had come to be a settled conviction of the people of this country that Abraham Lincoln had been trained and led and elected to accomplish the work of our national re- generation. When we look back to the period of his election, we see that the time was then ripe for revolu- tion. We had been for half a century sowing the wind, and then was heard the first hoarse breathing of the awakening whirlwind. The slaveholding South had been led, through interest, to stifle its convictions of the sin of slavery. It had learned successively to tolerate, vindicate, and applaud this institution; until at length it claimed for it a divine sanction, and denounced as in- fidel all who believed that it was evil. Under its influ- ence, character in the slave States had become arrogant, dictatorial, self-willed, unrestrained, and, when thwarted, cruel. It is now evident that the irrepressible moral conflict between the principles of free and slaveholding communities was about to be transferred from the arena of discussion and of politics to the battle-field. Our Government was to be tried to the uttermost. We were to be sorely tried and chastened, but not given over unto death. In that crisis we looked to Mr. Lincoln to weather the storm, and felt that God had placed him at the helm. If when the storm raged highest, and we seemed about to be engulphed or driven and crushed upon the rocks, we doubted for a moment his ability and 10 skill, or feared that God had given us up to destruction, that apprehension did not long continue. We were soon settled in the conviction that he was our Heaven desig- nated preserver; and that some of the qualities and peculiarities which had created our misgivings, v.'ere precisely those which fitted him for this fearful crisis. We saw that he was at the same time firm to principle and pliant to circumstance — like a ship which is held by its anchor, but yields gracefully to the sway of tides. If he had been less firm to principle, he would have yielded to the enormous pressure of intimidation and cajolement which friends and foes brought to bear upon him. If he had been of more rigid personal will as to modes and policies, then he could not so wisely have adapted himself to the rapidly changing exigencies of the times, and the corresponding moods of the public mind. The nation was to be brought to its present con- victions by the stern logic of events. These convictions constituted his starting-point. And yet he was ready to step back, and stand with the people at the point which they had gained, in the full conviction that they would soon advance with him to his position. It was this re- ligious faith that our President had been given to us and fitted for us^ in order to save us at this time of peril, that caused us to be so startled when he was suddenly removed. It is difficult for us to comprehend, as we no doubt shall, that his peculiar work was done, his mission ended, his reward ready. 11 II. And we feel this death 'profoundly, because we affec- tionately regarded Mr. Lincoln as pre-eminently our President — our chosen and our real representative. Louis XIV called himself the state. The two Napo- leons have claimed that they tvere the people rejjre- sentcd, — the incarnation of the nation. What Louis claimed on a theory of divine, and the Napoleons on a theory of human right, Mr. Lincoln tvas for us, in our theory, and in our feehng. He was more than our official, he was our actual representative. He was the concentration of our principles, purposes, and feelings — many consentient wills and hearts compacted into one. And this is what he supremely wished and aimed to be. He regarded it as his highest honor and duty to repre- sent the conscience and patriotism and will of this great nation. He had full faith in the theory of our Govern- ment as a self-government by elected magistrates, which was no less from God, because it was through and for the people. Hence he felt that he was sent, not to de- feat, but to further the people's settled will. Hence all our enthusiasm and generosity and magnanimity and patriotism were bidden to go to Washington, and to speak and act through him. Hence, as the incarnation of all that was best, without that which was poorest and lowest in us, we loved him as a second and better self — the possible self which we wished to be. When there- fore he was struck down, stunned and speechless, we 12 too were stunned. We were at first cast into a silent and stupid apathy of grief, to be succeeded, when we were roused from it, by a passion of keen and indignant sorrow. Then it was revealed to us how much we had loved and confided in him. AVe had come to feel that we were sure he was doing wise and right things, even when we could not see them to be so; because it had proved to have been so, many times before. We felt that if we knew all the complications of his position we should see that he was acting wisely — just as we would act, and as we would have him act, in such a crisis. Therefore, when he was so suddenly removed, it seemed -as if there could be no one to take us into his heart and counsels as he had done, and understand and feel with us as had understood and felt. He was our Moses who had only just taken us over the blood-red sea of rebellion, and had but begun to sing with us the song of triumph, when he was taken away ; and we had expected that he would lead us across the desert into the promised land. But indeed there is no wide desert to pass over. We are on the borders of that land. On the very day of his death our great leader had looked upon it from his Pisgah of observation, and had rejoiced at the goodly heritage upon which his people were about to enter. Oh fliithless, impatient, sorrowing hearts, Be still, be still, and know that God is God ; God not only in his justice but in his rounded attributes of wisdom, righteousness, and truth, which are all but ministers of his love. 13 III. Our grief is profound, not only because of the startling nature of this blow; not only because our President seemed providentially designated and supremely quali- fied for his high office, but because we had come to feel for him a warm personal regard, and to take great pride and satisfaction in his peculiar character and gifts. He was so utterly void of pretension, so simple and plain in speech and manners, that it took us some time to learn that he was no less great than good. We had come to understand him well and to rejoice in him. He was dis- tinctively a product of our institutions. Most of our eminent statesmen upon the seaboard have been more or less modified by the influences of foreign culture and as- sociation. Not so Mr. Lincoln. He had taken into his great nature all the influences, and ideas, and feelings of the West, from all its classes; and stood forth the rep- resentative of its vigor, its humor, its energy, its confl- dence and its success. He was one of the most genuine and truthful of men. He made no professions and had no affectations ; and was to a marvel, for a man who had risen from so humble a position, free from egotism. He had not even that subtlest of all egotism which besets especially plain men who have risen high; that which hides itself under the profession of being void of it. He was simply himself, and acted out himself, and said no- thing about himself. He had a big and busy brain. His mind was not in- 14 deed elegantly cultured, nor did lie possess a brilliant imagination, nor, so far as we know, strong powers of philosophical insight into abstruse themes. But his mind was singularly sound, sagacious and shrewd. It was also self-distrustful, slow and pains-taking. He came to understand men and things, not by sudden insight, but by careful and repeated meditations. He looked wide, and he looked deep, and he looked all around, and he looked inside and outside, and he looked many times be- fore he came to a conclusion. And then it was a conclu- sion. And although he was not imaginative, he was gifted with a sort of witty and quaint fancifulness, which clothed his thoughts in epigrammatic forms, which com- mended them to the popular apprehension, and fixed them in the memory. And then the thorough honesty of the man's nature, and his freedom from passions and resentments, allowed his clear mind to work strait for- ward to just conclusions. Hence it was that the whole nation had learned to feel confident that the President would not represent their first impulsive and hasty judg- ments, but their sober second thoughts. But it was the character rather than the intellect of Mr. Lincoln that made him so dear to the peojDle. His character was indeed beautiful and noble. So simple, so honest, so just, so benevolent! I should say that he was a man of full and tender benevolence, and with an affectionateness and sensibility that were deep and true, without being sentimental or demonstrative. But he was 15 altogether peculiar in this — that the whole big volume of his nature rolled on in one current of justice, gener- osiiy, mercifulness and magnanimity. There did not seem to be even any little eddies of resentment and ani- mosity. It was a deep, clear placid stream that filled, but did not overflow its banks. If it had not the rush of the torrent, neither did it have its turbidness ; if it was without its sparkle, so also it was without its shal- lowness. It is remarkable, very remarkable, that during all the exciting years of his administration, there is no record of a word of passion or resentment spoken or written by him. There have been no deeds of personal revenge. Severity was most alien from his kind forgiv- ing and genial nature. Not only in public, as an homage to the proprieties of his exalted station, has he uttered no sentiments unbecoming the placable Father of all his people; but it is well known that in the intimacies of social life he never gave way to those impulses of indig- nation which were felt for him by all patriotic and loyal hearts. Never, since our Government was organized, has such vile vituperation been heaped upon a public man as upon Mr. Lincoln. Without one particle of reason for such a representation he has been depicted, at home and abroad, as a hideous monster in character, in morals and in manners. And yet he has never noticed these foul libels. He seems to have known from what spirit they came, and to have expected them; and to have estimated the force of the violent passions raised against 16 him and his governmrnt, with the unimpassioned calm- ness with which he would calculate mechanical powers- And yet, no doubt, this persistant defamation must have wounded his affectionate and honorable nature. As it did not embitter, it must have ennobled and exalted him. When I recently saw him at the anniversary of the Christian Commission in the Capitol, the central figure of that vast assembly, as I looked down upon him from the clerk's desk, I was struck with the change that had taken place in his countenance since I had last seen him, three years before. His face was furrowed as by many cares, but had a strange look of patience, meekness and fatherhood, mellowing his old look of honest and genial energy. He entered into the exercises of that evening with an absorbed earnestness which suffered no abate- ment to the end of the five hours during which they con- tinued. It was indeed towards the close of it that a simple but impressive little ballad, called "Your Mission" was repeated, as it was whispered to me, by his request. There were stirring songs of patriotism that night, whose choruses were like the clash of cymbals ; but that which he wished to hear again was the simple and touching little ballad, "Your Mission." There was something very affecting to me in this circumstance. He seemed to sit among his people as one of them, and to feel and to de- sire to have them feel that in this great crisis each should know and fulfill his work for his country and humanity, whether that work were great or small. The object of 17 the ballad was to make the humblest feel that he had some task to do ; and that it was important because the combined result of all that was to be done Avould be glorious. At one verse of the ballad sung with exquis- itely simple pathos, I observed that his face worked with deep emotion. This was the verse — If you cannot in the conflict, Prove yourself a soldier true, If where fire and smoke are thickest, There's no work for you to do : When the battle-field is silent, You can go with silent tread ; You can bear away the wounded, You can cover up the dead. These things, and things like these — sympathy with the suffering, generosity to foes, a strong mind and a full heart, a spirit not of fear, but of love, and of power, and of a sound mind — these are the characteristics which have so endeared him to the nation, and explain its passionate outburst of universal sorrow ! IV. It is one of the chief elements of our admiration and reverence for Mr. Lincoln that he was the champion and emancipator and the martyr to the emancipation, of four millions of slaves. And yet he was the fartherest possi- ble from being a theoretical, hasty, impulsive reformer. It is true that from his first entrance into public life he was profoundly impressed with the evil and the sin of 18 slavery, and with its absolute incompatibility with the first principles of our Republican institutions. He began his political career with the announcement that there were two systems, two forms of society — the slave-hold- ing and the free — which could not continue to subsist side by side. His one great political principle which shaped all his subsequent opinions and policy, was the essential equality in right of all men, and therefore the duty of human governments to secure to them that right by law. He knew that this was the prime principle of our confederation; and he believed that the false gloss upon it which slavery had introduced would finally be expunged. But this was always with him a principle, and never a fanaticism. Hence he was patient, steady, slow sometimes — too slow and undecided we thought — in his dealings with it. He did not believe that this evil fruit of slavery, grafted on the stock of liberty, was to be removed by cutting down the tree. If he could not discern how it was to be done, he was very sure it was not to be done that way ; and had full faith that in some way it would be accomplished. Hence, never for a moment did he give in to the feeling of some of the more vehement anti-slavery men, that the slave States might be permitted to establish their secession. That in his opinion, would be, if not the cutting down of the tree, at least he feared the throwing of all its generous juices into the grafted branches, to nourish and multiply the poisoned fruit. How strong his faith and feeling 19 upon this subject were, appears to us now, with new dis- tinctness, from the remarkable declaration which he made when he stood under the folds of the flag which he raised four years ago on Independence Hall. As he thus raised it and stood beneath it and spoke, he said in substance to all the world: "This is the banner under which I en- list, and this is what I understand to be meaning of the service in w^hicli I am engaged." His observation was to the effect that the Declaration of Independence gave promise that in due time, " the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance;" and to this he added, with a reference to his own feelings, which w^as unusual, the solemn assev- eration ''that if the countr}'" could not l)e saved without giving up that principle, he was about to say that he would rather be assassinated upon the spot than to sur- render it." The Lord be praised that the country has been saved, not by the sacrifice, but by the maintenance of that principle; and that he who uttered this noble sentiment has been the instrument of providence in its realization. And alas ! he has been assassinated, not because of its failure, but because he was the agent of its success. In time, "due" but earlier that he or any one deemed possible, the aw^ful weight of bondage has been lifted from the shoulders of an outraged race; and to us, in dying, he has left the duty of seeing that they "have an equal chance." These are plain words, but they have mighty meanings, and involve lofty obliga- tions. 20 Seldom has any man been placed in a position to be- stow such a boon upon a race, a country, and the world. For it w^ys not only liberty to four millions of present slaves, but no less to the multiplying millions of their descendants, who would have succeeded to their bond- age. It was not only a liberation of the slaves, but of their masters from the bondage of the evil engendered by their mastership. It was the liberation of the coun- try from a political dominance and dictation, when the alternative was resistance with war, or submission with disgrace. And this magnificent service to his country Mr. Lincoln did not hurry to render, that he might win by it the enviable eclat which it could not fail to gain. He was cautious and slow, lest he should defeat by haste the result which he felt confident would be wrought out by time. Few persons now think him to have been pre- cipitate. Many regard him as having hesitated too long. Now that this act has passed into history, we feel that God guided him alike in his hesitation and his decision. If he had been egotistical, and eager, and impassioned, and impressible, he might have brought on anarchy by precipitation. If he had not been firm he might have yielded to the intimidation which the remaining slave power of the South exercised through its vassels at the North, and delayed indefinitely, or too long. At the right, ripe time, he issued his proclamation of eman- cipation. Unparalleled is the boon which to bond and free, to North and South, he has thereby bestowed. 21 Wilberforce was said to have ascended to Heaven, bear- ing with him the chains of eight hundred thousand eman- cipated slaves. Our wise, and honest, and fearless leader has emancipated four millions, from the most accursed and accursing system of slavery which the world ever witnessed. Alexander, of Russia, has been the honored instrument of liberating twenty-five millions of his sub- jects from serfdom; but the serfdom of Russia is pale by the side of the blood-red iniquity of Southern slavery. Oh, how noble a work was this, and how well performed ! This slavery in our midst was an angry and spreading cancer directly over the nation's heart, and a steady and skilful hand was required to cut it out without destroy- ing the life of the body politic, into all of which it would soon shoot its poisonous fibres. He has destroyed it, and in destroying it, has fallen. He is a martyr to the bafiled and exasperated slave spirit. He heard and obeyed the exhortation addressed to him by his country, by a long enslaved and helpless race, by humanity, by the ages past, and the coming ages. Bo just and fear not ; Let all the ends thou aimest at be thy country's, Tiiy God's, and truth's ; Then if thou fullest, thou fallest a blessed martyr. VI. But that which gives depth and intensity to the popu- lar emotion, is a feeling of glowing and righteous indig- nation. Let no man be afraid either of the expression. 22 or of the thing which it expresses. It is no jDart of my theology to strike Justice out of the character or govern- ment of God. It is no part of my political creed to ex- pel it from human governments as if it were the synonym of vengeance, and the opposite of mercy. It is no part of my practical religion to repress the throhbings of righteous indignation. We must not befool ourselves and emasculate our religious manhood by substituting a feeble sentimentality and a sickly pitifulness for crime, for that noble indignation against wrong which is but another manifestation of supreme loyalty to right. "And when he had looked round about on them tvith anger, being grieved." Such is the record of the feeling of Jesus on one occasion, at the cruelty and hypocrisy of the Jews. I suppose it was essentially the same emo- tion as that which we experience at the sight of evil doing. And again — if that terrific denunciation of Christ against the Scribes and Pharisees, when the repeated "Wo unto you Scribes and Pharisees" sounds like the whirr of an oft-descending lash, is not the expression of a righteous indignation — what is it? And again — when he was unjustly and brutally smitten, and exclaimed : — '•If I have done evil, bear witness of the evil; but if not, why smitest thou me?" Was he not righteously indig- nant? We shall indeed resemble evil spirits if Ave allow righteous reprobation to pass into revenge; but we shall not resemble God if we seek to keep it from running into sin by its annihilation. And now I contend that it would not be pious, but inhuman, if we did not regard this awful crime with swelling indignation. It is not often that such a crime is possible. It is not often that one dagger or one bullet can pierce a whole nation's heart. It is not indignation alone at the poor wretch who struck the blow, that should be felt. He was in- deed a fit subject for this evil slave spirit to enter and possess. He was one whose profession and habit it was to utter great swelling words of sentiment which called itself brave and noble, while living a base dissipated life, and giving himself up to all vile and violent passions. And he must be blind indeed who does not see that it is to the baffled and enraged slave spirit that our President has fallen a victim. Who can doubt it? The system developes of necessity, arrogance, cruelty, and a lordly Avill. When rebellion was inaugurated in behalf of this system of oppression, these qualities were all intensified and deepened. ''Rebellion," says inspiration, "is as the sin of witchcraft." Witchcraft is a revolt from, and an attempted independence of Heaven — constituted powers. And so is rebellion a revolt against the heaven-consti- tuted power of an established, righteous government. Hence it takes with it as its inspiration and evil enthu- siasm, a fiendish hatred. When it fails in its object and is driven back, it becomes murderous rage. "Out of the heart" so occupied, proceed murders. And noAV what is this poor creature who murdered our beloved President ? What is he but first a victun 24 and then an instrument of this evil spirit ? What was his soul but a house swept and garnished for this spirit? There is good reason to believe that, more than once, persons high in office and position in this revolted gov- ernment have been occupied with schemes for the Pres- ident's assassination. It is beyond all question that his murder was arranged and attempted when he first went to the Capital. And thus this attempted revolution, which has abused the noble words liberty and inde- pendence, " to blazon evil deeds and consecrate a crime," began with an attempted, and goes out with an executed assassination ! But whether or no this murder were de- vised or known or connived at by officials, it is assuredly but the legitimate result of w^hat has been constantly taught and professed by all classes in the rebel confed- eracy. All their youth have been taught that it would be a noble deed to remove this monster from the earth. He would be a nobler than Brutus, and slay a worse than Csesar, who should do this deed. This system has con- verted gentle women into furies, and high-toned gentle- men into brigands. Oh, it is a fearful thing to be hurried into a passionate championship for the wrong ! Mothers have magnified this spirit of murderous revenge, not against wrong, but against right's resistance of wrong, at the family board. They have talked murder. Politicians have shrieked it from the hustings ; individuals have advertised for it in the newspapers ; statesmen have de- claimed it in the halls of legislation ; generals have pro- 25 claimed it at the head of armies ; the public journals have preached it with passionate iteration. As I have elsewhere written, this assassination is but the conver- sion of the Richmond Sentinel from a literary to a lit- eral bowie-knife, and of the Examiner into a revolver, wielded, not by a theoretical, but an actual assassin. It is the same spirit that buried our poor boys, after the battle of Bull Run, with their faces downward, and con- verted their skulls into drinking-cups. It is the same spirit wdiich led to the systematic and slow starving of our poor prisoners, in the midst of communities which we have since learned were abounding with provisions, and in prisons wdiich were in sight of churches, where bishop and priest knelt with Jefferson Davis, and called themselves miserable sinners, and then rose and lifted no finger to alleviate this unspeakable atrocity. And that wdiich this spirit has so persistently preached has at length been practiced. Our President has been mur- dered. And now, in full view of the origin and the re- morseless character and the awful wrongs wa-ought by this spirit, shall I call upon you to deal gently and for- givingly, I do not say Avith this assassin, but with the spirit wdiich has been his evil inspiration ? Shall I bid you to repress your indignation at this spirit, and call that repression Christian meekness and forbearance ? No ! In full recollection of the place in which I stand, and of the sacred office which I bear, I say, solemnly and calmly. No ! It were treason to right ; it were fra- 26 ternization with evil; it were to declare yourself, unlike your Master, not the eternal foe but the ally and apolo- gist of the Devil. Brethren, we must prepare ourselves for stern duties. While merciful and magnanimous to the misguided and the penitent, we must hew this Agag of unrelenting murder in pieces before the Lord. Not — God forbid ! — in a sjDirit of revenge, not in unholy zeal for a holy cause, but in calm and indignant sorrow that such a spirit should appear among us, and such a duty devolve upon us, should this work be done. I call upon you then, in this sacred place, and on this anniversary, as I understand it to be, of the death of that young Christian hero, your first pastor, who was the earliest to see and the bravest to protest against and denounce the iniquity of slavery, when it was walking dominant in the high places of power — a moral martyr to this cause, whom you so generously rescued and sustained — I call upon you by his cherished memory, and I call upon you by the memory of our venerated common father, snatched from us in our hour of extremest need, to breathe here and now, to Heaven, the solemn vow that you will not rest from the right use of all your influence and power, by word and deed, until the last clinging fibres of this gigantic upas tree, Avhich has so long shed its poison upon the nation, shall be uprooted from the soil. For Zion's sake we will not rest, and for Jerusalem's sake we will not hold our peace, until the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness and the salvation thereof as a lamp 27 thatburneth; until before their blaze this accursed spirit of oppression of a harmless and helpless race, and of mur- derous hatred of those who would protect them, shall flit back to its native hell, to appear no more among us. VI. The one only consolation in this our great sorrow, which w"e can take fully to our hearts to-day, is the un- speakable one of knowing that our beloved President has been led during the fearful trials to which he has been subjected to the personal and practical knowledge of the Redeemer. We believe that he dates his de- cision, and his new experience as a Christian, from the impressions make upon his mind and heart by visiting the fearful field of Gettysburgh. And, although the Christian sentiment of the land regrets that Mr. Lin- coln came to his death in a theatre ; yet we must make no narrow canons for others' consciences. Hast thou faith ? Have it to thyself before God. Happy is he who condemneth not himself in that thing which he al- loweth." His attendance at that time was evidently from a good-natured desire to gratify the people, and not from his own inclination. It is certain that he ex- hibited the fruits and acted upon the principles of a Christian. Many Avho profess more, would do well if they did as much. Many persons in high positions often feel compelled, as a part of their official duty, to be present at many places for which they have no taste, no 28 inclination, and which perhaps they may disapprove. Let us not too harshly judge them. Let us remember that the kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. We rejoice to know that Mr. Lincoln had become a man of prayer, and had learned to resort in his perplexities to God. His last immortal inaugural was so full of Christian sentiment, that it has been called in ridicule an extract from a sermon. In our assurance of his Christian character, we find our highest consolation. If as he disappears we cry out, in our bereavement and an- guish, "My father! my fjither!" we are consoled as we are able to add, as we see hirfl escorted to the skies, "The chariots of Israel and the horsemen thereof!" VII. And now let us strive to gather up some of the lessons which this dreadful tragedy bequeaths to us. As Mr. Lincoln passes, he leaves behind some most impressive teachings. It is said that after his assassination the only motion which he made was a feeble lifting' ud of his ridit Ox O hand. That hand never lifted to strike or to oppress; that hand unstained by bribes ; that hand that had the habit of being so busy for us, that it moved unconsciously when the brain that had guided it was benumbed; that hand which wrote no sentence which dying he need wish to blot; that hand which penned the immortal proclama- tion of emancipation, and whose last work was mercy — 29 if that hand could .have again been lifted in obedience to a conscious brain and heart, it would have enforced, in its dying gesticulations, solemn and impressive teach- ings and exhortations. Let us receive them as if they came from him. 1. He would have exhorted us to new and holy unan- imity in the work of national regeneration. 2. He would have urged us to imitate his own noble forbearance and magnanimity in dealing with the misled and misinformed masses, who through a mistaken fury in avenging fancied wrongs, have brought upon them- selves real wrongs, and have already suffered more than his kind nature would have prompted him to inflict. 3. And by his death itself another lesson is conveyed to us which we fear he was too gentle ever to have im- parted; but the justice of which, could he have forseen his assassination, he would have been compelled to ad- mit. It is the lesson that, inasmuch as we now see and know the hideous spirit in Avhich this rebellion has been conceived and carried on, w^e will always and everywhere rebuke it and fight it ; that we will make no truce and have no fellow^ship with it; that we will put a just stigma upon it, and strip off its masks of honorableness and W' orth ; that we will pay no honor to those who have not only inaugurated this wanton rebellion, but have carried it on in a spirit alien from the civilization and Chris- tianity of the age. As for myself, I desire no personal or church fellowship with those who have led and fo- 30 mented this rebellion, be they Priests or Laymen. Those who have seen our poor soldiers starve and die in filth and squalor, and have uttered no protests, and made no efforts to remove this revolting inhumanity — I desire no communion with them, until the}^ shall have purged themselves of complicity with these fearful crimes against their brethren, or repented in dust and ashes of their sins. If this shall be schism in the church, it will be unity with God. 4. Our departed President would have exhorted us to stand by and support, with our efforts and our prayers, the successor to his honors and his cares, in whose pa- triotism, energy and ability he pLiced much confidence. I was a frequent witness of his heroism and fidelity in the session of Congress in 1860-Gl, when, fjxithful among the faithless, he alone of all the Senators was uncompro- mising in his loyalty. Let us pray that he may have not a spirit of fear, but of love, and of power, and of a sound mind, and that he may have grace both to do justly and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with his God. 5. And lastly, and as a more personal lesson, let us learn, that character will ultimately make itself known, and that if it be true and just it will dispel all slanders and confute all falsehoods. Mr. Lincoln has never an- swered accusations, he has never complained of the in- numerable falsehoods and criminations to which he was so long and unjustly subjected. They covered him as 31 the black moniing fogs sometimes shroud the sun, but they have disappeared before the clear shining of his rounded character as it ascended to the meridian of its fame and glory. And now we give our beloved Father up to history. We need not doubt where his place will be. It will not be in the blood-red volume where Alexander, and Caesar and Napoleon are inscribed. But it will be among the great and good, the benefactors of the race. With the beneficent Antonines, with William of Orange, with Washington, with Wilberforce, with Cavour, with Gara- baldi — noble Garabaldi, who will now rejoice the more that he has given' the name of Lincoln to the grandchild of his martyred wife — with these venerated and honored names will his be gathered. Soon he will be taken from us. While he yet lies in the Capitol, and while his obsequies are in progress, he seems yet to be, in some sense with us. But he is to be put away from us in a distant grave. No, let me not say that! The great heart of the country opens to receive him, and there shall he be buried — buried there as they are buried who lie in green and consecrated spots, where love comes to plant and tend the flowers which speak of resurrection, and where sadness is ennobled and cheered alike by memory and hope — buried there as are the great and good in vast cathedrals, resting amid the solemnities of lofty worship and the grandeur of sacred and imperishable architecture, 32 with memorials which tell successive generations of their virtues and their fame. Then sorrow not brethren as those without rich present consolation, as w^ell as hope — for if Jesus died and rose again, even so, them also that sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. R '12