I 
 
ra 
 
 e Ceatljings of tjje Crisis, 
 ADDRESS , ^> 
 
 DELIVERED IN 
 
 ST, PAUL'S CHURCH, CAMDEN, N. J., 
 
 ON THE OCCASION OP 
 
 THE FUNERAL 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 April 19, 1865. 
 
 Rev. J. F. GARRISON. ^\. 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 CAMDViN, N. J. : 
 
 INTEl) BY S. CHEW, AT TRE OFFICE OF THE '' WEST JERSEY I'RESS. 
 1865. 
 
®|e Stadjtiigs of i\t Crisis. 
 
 ADDRESS 
 
 DELIVERED IS 
 
 ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, CAMDEN, ^, J. 
 
 ON THE OCCASION OF 
 
 THE FUNERAL 
 
 ABEAHAM LINCOLN, 
 
 ^pril lO, I860. 
 
 Eev. J. F. GAREISON, M. D. 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 CAMEXEN, N. J. : 
 
 PRINTED BY S. CHEW, AT THE OFFICE OF TUE " WEST JERSEY PRESS." 
 
 18G5. 
 

 r:.v. 
 
 "With niallcp towards none, irith charity for all, irlth Jirmnexs hi the 
 rif/Jit as God gives us to see the rU/ht, let ns strife on to finisTi the work 
 ■tve are in, to bind «i> the Nation's tvounds, to care for him who sJiall have 
 borne tJie battle, and for his widow and orphans, to do all which may 
 achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with 
 all Kations." [From Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural.] 
 
St. Paul's Ciiuncii, Camden, April 20, 1865. 
 Rev. J. F. GARRISON, 
 
 Deak Sir :— Tho subscribers, members of the Vestry and 
 others, listened with great satisfaction to the sermon preached by you on the occasion 
 ( f the funeral services on the death of President Lincoln. We but give expression 
 to a general wish for a wider circulation of this sermon, in asking a copy for 
 publication. 
 
 0. 11. Taylor, 
 T. P. Carpenter, 
 RoBT. B. Potts, 
 P. J. Gray, 
 J. R. DuNHAJr, 
 Azael Roberts, 
 M. B. Taylor, 
 J. N. Troth, 
 Maurice Browning, 
 Geo. S. Wardwell, 
 Wm. E. Lapferty, 
 
 Chas. p. Stratton, 
 W. D. Cooper, 
 Henry Ackley, 
 H. Genet Taylor, 
 S. H. Grey, 
 Joshua L. Howell, 
 T. Chas. Merry, 
 Jno. R. Stevenson, 
 Clinton M. Ackerman, 
 F. B. Odrnheimer, 
 S. C. Harbert, 
 
 Camden, April 21, 18fi5. 
 Gentlemen :—Yonr favor of the 20th inst., requesting the publication of the 
 adlress delivered on tho occasion of the funeral service of President Lincoln, is 
 before me. 
 
 Hoping that it may be useful, at this great crisis, in what I believe to be the cause 
 of " God and our Country," I place the manuscript which you request, at your disposal. 
 Very Respectfully Yours, 
 
 J. F. GARRISON. 
 Messrs. 0. II. Taylor, 
 
 T. P. Carpenter, 
 
 R. B. Potts, 
 
 S. H Grey, 
 
 Wm. D. Cooper, &c., &c. 
 
®j)e ®eHtl)ings of tlje Crisis 
 
 HEBEEWS XI : 6. 
 
 He being Dead yet Speaketh." 
 
 A nation is to-day assembled for a funeral. And never, 
 save wlien God himself laid Moses in the valley of Beth- 
 Peor, had mortal man so grand a burial. There have 
 been larger piles of stone heaped up than we shall rear for 
 our murdered President; there may have been more of 
 the pomp and circumstance of gilded majesty around, and 
 on the bier ; but never before was man laid in his tomb, 
 wdth twenty millions of true hearted sorrowers standing 
 by to do him honor. A nation gathers at the grave, and 
 the sad tokens, and yet sadder ceremonials have spread a 
 pall of mourning over half a continent. In every Town 
 and City, in every Church and hamlet, there is a throng- 
 ing to the funeral ; it l)cgan on the cold :N'ew England 
 hills, where the spring violets have not yet peeped beside 
 the winter snow, it moves on down through the great 
 cities of the seaboard States, a thousand miles across the 
 
Alleglianies, along the great Father of Waters, far away 
 over the distant prairies, only to cease where no flash of 
 the magic telegraph can carrj' its sad tidings farther ; and 
 then, for days, weeks after, these will come, one by one, 
 into the solitary homes of remote settlers in the wilder- 
 ness, and make them all the more sorrowful, that they 
 could not have had the sad joy of mingling their sorrow 
 in the great ocean of the nation's grief. But more im- 
 pressive, even, than the mighty host who gather around, is 
 the- tribute of the feeling which has brought them here; 
 the nation is not assembled for this vast solemnity as a 
 mere looker-on, to share the mourning of a stricken few; the 
 nation is itself the mourner. It mourns the man; it mourns 
 the President ; men feel it as an individual sorrow, as well 
 as a national calamity ; and they have reason to do both. 
 
 Called to the Presidential Chair at the most momentous 
 crisis in the history of the country, Aeraiiam Lincoln had 
 a task entrusted to his charge, such as God has seldom 
 given to the lot of man. He found the nation tottering on 
 the verge of anarchy and hojjeless ruin ; treason had 
 paralyzed the government ; its treasury was bare ; its 
 navy scattered ; its army unavailable ; Rebels had already 
 entrenched themselves within its forts, driven out their 
 garrisons, seized their stores and armaments, had robbed 
 its mints, defied its officers, and equipped their soldiers 
 in the plundered munitions of its arsenals ; And thus, 
 with traitors swarming in every department, and sympa- 
 thizers with the rebels — if not with the rebellion — all over 
 the nation, Mr. Lincoln took on him the immense, the 
 terrible responsibilities of the Presidential office. Untried 
 in higher statesmanship, unknown among the leading 
 names who were regarded as the thinkers of the nation. 
 
with less of means, and more of peril thau ever man was 
 called to undertake so great a work before, lie set himself 
 to enter on his duties. The tempest which had been so 
 long gathering burst, and what a storm ! — who that lived 
 through it, ever can forget that fearful morning, when the 
 news thrilled through the land from Sumter, that traitor 
 hands had plunged the nation into the fiery hell of civil war? 
 
 How eagerly, how achingly, doubtingly, almost despair- 
 ingly, all eyes were turned toward the President. Would 
 he be equal to the emergency ? Had he the nerve ? The 
 wisdom ? Was he, untried and inexperienced, the man 
 to guide the nation in this hour of peril ? It was a time 
 to test the very uttermost of all that is in a character, and 
 Mr. Lincoln met it in a spirit equal to the time. I know 
 not anywhere in all the records of great governors and 
 statesmen, a higher, nobler sentiment, than the concluding 
 sentence of his first message to the special Congress of 
 1861, and after events have shown, that this was the 
 spoken impress of his real nature : " Having thus chosen 
 " our course, without guile, and with pure purpose, let us 
 " renew our trust in God, and go forward, without fear, 
 " and with manly hearts." 
 
 On the fierce conflict raged, and he did " go forward." 
 He had to prepare an army, to fill a treasury, to create a 
 na^^', to hold down factious malcontents at home, to 
 ward off threatened intervention from abroad, to build 
 up credit when ever}-thing seemed crumbling into ruin, 
 to save the nation's hfe when all was dark within, and all 
 without was cheerless. Everything was to be done at 
 once; each several thing was imperatively needed at the 
 instant; there were no precedents ; no one had any knowl- 
 edge or exi)crience : his soldiers were undisciplined civil- 
 
ians ; liis ministers -antanglit, and ignorant in the immense, 
 unprecedented duties of their new position ; hut in all these 
 discouragements, with all these dangers, he never wavered, 
 never faltered, nor despaired : through many long, dark 
 months — years they appeared to us — of toil and painful 
 agony, order hegan to grow out of chaos, and light to 
 hreak upon the darkness. And he not only huilt his navy, 
 hut used it so efficiently, that before he died, it rode in 
 triumph over every fortressed harbor from Cape Henry to 
 the Rio Grande ; and he so wrought his armies to the 
 work they were to do, that ere he passed away, he saw 
 their banners wave victorious in the capital of treason, and 
 knew the mightiest forces of the Rebellion all broken or 
 surrendered before their serried columns. What enemies 
 had long pronounced impossible, was gradually done ; 
 what half, or whole sympathizers with the rebels, had 
 tauntingly paraded with derisive jeers, as hopeless 
 barriers were swept or worn away. 
 
 And although, on many points of governmental policy 
 there were wide differences of opinion, although, as must 
 ever be the case where so many and so complicated ques- 
 tions are at issue, his principles of constitutional interpreta- 
 tion were disputed, yet day by day his hold grew stronger 
 on the nation's heart, his place more settled in the people's 
 confidence, and never did he stand so high in almost uni- 
 versal estimation, as just at the moment of his death, when, 
 in the very flush and glory of the triumphant progress of 
 his armies, he showed a noble magnanimity of soul to- 
 wards the vanquished, which stands as solitary in the his- 
 tory of rebellions, as our Republic does among the family 
 of nations. He needed but one honor more, to write his 
 name upon the topmost scroll of earthly immortality ; and 
 
when lie died, a victim to tlic traitor's hate towards the 
 nation he had loved, and saved, that honor was awarded ; 
 and he who ranked hefore among that high historic names 
 of human glory, will henceforth stand among the higher, 
 chosen few, who are deemed worthy to he martyrs for the 
 cause of right. It rohs him of a few short years of troul )led 
 life. It consecrates him to the never-dying reverence of a 
 nation's loving honor. 
 
 But great as was the work performed by Abraham 
 Lincoln in the deliverance of this nation from the threat- 
 ened danger of its anarchy and ruin, his place in history will 
 not he hounded by the narrow limits of one nation's 
 gratitude ; his name will mark, throughout all after time, 
 one of the epochs, from which the world will date the 
 opening of a new era in the onward progress of God's 
 providential leadings of the race of man. Two facts in 
 human history are linked inseparably, with the name and 
 work of Abraham Lincoln, and by them " he being dead 
 yet speaketh." The first was demonstrated by his life ; 
 the second was established in his death. 
 
 I. The history of this country under the Administration 
 of Mr. Lincoln, has demouvstrated beyond reasonable cavil, 
 the capacity and fitness of a people for self-government. 
 This was the problem given our nation to decide ; so we 
 have understood it ; so has it been unc\prstood, and can- 
 vassed by the world without. 
 
 Those who desired that government should bo admin- 
 istered for the blessing of the people, and not fl>r the main- 
 taining of a caste, have looked to us to show the world 
 that this was possible, and was actually done ; the bur- 
 dened and starving masses who have o;roaned for some 
 
10 
 
 place of refuge, where tliej miglit give their children bread 
 and feel themselves were men, have thanked God when 
 they heard what our land was doing, and with one 
 heart turn here, as to the only hope on earth, of the op- 
 pressed and destitute ; and those who have for ages ruled 
 the world on the acknowledged principle, 
 
 " Thus it hath been, shall be, beneath the Sun, 
 " The many still must labor for the One." 
 
 They too looked here and hoped — but hoped that all our 
 mighty work for man would fail, that we should soon dis- 
 solve in anarchy, or degenerate into despotism, have 
 prophesied what they desired, and prayed to have their 
 prophecies fulfilled, have loathed our very name and never 
 ceased to vilify our principles and policy. And when at 
 length, in the embittered feud on slavery — a feud which 
 they had fed, and fanned, and nursed to its malign maturity 
 — a fierce and terrible rebellion broke upon our land, the 
 sneering coldness, and derision of the titled classes of all 
 Europe, told the settled bitterness which they had always 
 felt towards the great experiment of governing a nation 
 by, and for the people; and all their hopes and prophecies 
 were now declared to be fulfilled ; the day at last had 
 come, when " Democracy was proved a failure;" the 
 troublesome and vexing cry of suffering multitudes, was 
 thenceforward to be stilled by the conclusive answer, " The 
 " great Republic of your admiration, is a vile abortion, 
 " henceforth remember, that we rule by right divine, and 
 " learn to suffer, and be silent." Thus, upon every hand, the 
 problem was distinctlj^ recognized, and our work was set. 
 In our long years of peace, there was but little to decide 
 the question; "you have not yet," we were continually 
 
11 
 
 told, " had any real testing of a people's fitness for self- 
 " government ; your boundless country gives abundant 
 " room for labor, you have no need of taxes, you make no 
 " call upon your people for self-sacrifices, you arc not even 
 " governed ; wait, until some crisis when you are com- 
 " pelled to these demands, and then see what a rope of 
 " sand your unrestrained democracy will prove; then will 
 " your laws be powerless, then will your cities flame with 
 " riot, your people rage to anarchy, and your whole sys- 
 " tem show itself— however beautiful in theory — a prac- 
 " tical impossibility." We hardly dared to trust an answer, 
 where there were so many, and so real dangers threatened, 
 our hope was mainly, that our place, and territorial relations 
 would never give us the occasion to bring them to the trial. 
 
 But our work was to decide the problem. God does not 
 raise up great nations without a purpose in the course of 
 history ; each has its contribution to bestow, in the grand 
 work of God for the advancing education, and elevation of 
 the race of man. And the capacity of a people under the 
 influence of Christianity to be free, and to maintain their 
 freedom as a blessing, is one of the questions to which our 
 nation was to give an answer ; and God sent the trial 
 which was to force it to a solution ; and it was a trial 
 worthy of the principle at issue. Oh ! how our nation 
 shook and reeled beneath the blinding fury of that awful 
 testing ! — we do not wonder that the world prepared our 
 epitaph, and taunted us with our doom. But God had not 
 held out the cup of promised blessing to the people of the 
 earth, to dash it down in mockery. 
 
 The very fearfulness of our trial was only to make its 
 triumph all the more apparent. The storm was met, our 
 Government was not a paltering hial »ility, the loyal people 
 
12 
 
 did not disintegrate to anarchy, they not only bore the 
 burdens first required of them, but when, in the very dark- 
 est and fiercest of the struggle, the question was asked 
 them, by a Presidential canvass, "Will you, "without fear, 
 " and with manly hearts go toward" through this ? "Will 
 " you pour out, more lavishly, your treasure ? Will you 
 " lay dowai upon your nation's altar, more, and more, and 
 "more, if need be, of yourselves, and sons, and fathers ?" 
 The answer cam^ back in a single night, not in a voice of 
 lawlessness and riot, not from streets run with blood, nor 
 cities wrapped in howling conflagration, but in the silent 
 majesty of a bloodless ballot-box — " So help us God we 
 will." It was sublime ! History has no such scene ! The 
 trial had been fearful, but the triumph was complete. A 
 people could be free, and a free people could maintain 
 their own self-government. 
 
 And yet, there are those, so blind to the true stake at 
 issue, that they see nothing ennobling or inspiring to 
 humanity in all this, who say there is no patriotism in our 
 country now, that all this is nothing, and means nothing 
 but mere party politics, that all this vast uprising of a 
 continent, this giving up in agony of heart their loved 
 and needed, this quiet, settled purpose, calmly uttered, 
 still to bear and do, is only selfish, hireling work for 
 money wages. No patriotism in all this ? only money ? 
 mere party bitterness ? Oh no ! Oh no ! Such have not 
 read the nation's heart aright ; they have not rightly 
 weighed the value of the issue, nor know^l how deep a 
 hold its vital principle had fixed upon the soul of our 
 people. ]^o human work can be without some selfish 
 and unworthy aspect, so it has always been, is now, and 
 will be to the end, but never did the pen of history, 
 
13 
 
 ill any age, portray, a higher, purer love of country or 
 a more glorious spirit of self-sacrifice, than fill the records 
 of our country, in this its noble struggle for its own 
 existence, and the universal good of man. 
 
 The living instinct of the people felt the true import of 
 the crisis, and with a zeal and patriotic fervor which 
 esteemed no price too great, for the immeasurable interests 
 at stake, they bore, and carried through, the contest. And 
 we may now feel, although we have yet much to do 
 and learn, that by the help of God, a final and decisive 
 answer has been given to the question, of the capacity, and 
 fitness of a people for the government of a nation. I 
 know — no one can be more painfully alive to the convic- 
 tion — that we, as a nation, have many and grievous faults, 
 evils in our modes of thinking, ofteu great wrongs in 
 our methods of administration, that we have bad men, 
 unworthy legislators, many, corrupt in principle, too many, 
 vile in conduct, that sin abounds in our land, and 
 wickedness brings misery to multitudes, and I know — and 
 with all solemn earnestness proclaim — that if we go on in 
 our sins, God's judgments, soon or late, will come for our 
 utter desolation. But with all our faults, and wrongs, 
 when, or where, had any nation fewer ? Where one, in 
 which there was less crime and misery ? England, Wales 
 and Ireland with five millions less population, report in 
 their courts of record, ten thousand more criminals 
 annually, than we ; their own reports announce that in a 
 population of twenty millions there are every year, from 
 eight hundred thousand, to nearly a million and a half of 
 paupers, an average of one individual in every twenty of 
 the entire nation, named upon its poor list. 
 
 "We have indeed, our sins and crimes, and in the present 
 
14 
 
 suffering we would liave you recognize, a punisliment and 
 discipline for our wickedness, as well as an assertion of tlie 
 vital principle of our nationality, but notwithstanding, we 
 have an heritage, than which, the world has never seen a 
 nobler and a better. Thank God that I am an American ! 
 I want no higher title, I know no higher name among the 
 nations of the earth, of past or present history. There 
 was a time, when to say " I am a Roman Citizen," was 
 nobler honor than to be a king ; but Rome in her loftiest 
 glory could give no title to her citizen, so worthy to be 
 honored, as that of " an American" to-day. Rome 
 claimed her greatness in making millions, slaves, and 
 tributaries: America is great, in witnessing through blood 
 and agony, that man, as man, is able to be free. 
 
 The second fact linked with the name of Abraham 
 Lincoln, and by which " he being dead yet speaketh," was 
 established in his death. And this is, that slavery no 
 longer shall retain a place among the institutions of a 
 civilized community. There was, from the beginning of 
 our government, a glaring contradiction between the 
 principles which it avowed upon the subject of human 
 rights, and human lil^erty, and its actual practice. "We 
 called ourselves, and claimed it as our highest honor, that 
 we were a land of liberty ; the l)irth-throe of the nation 
 was the declaration, which proclaimed this as our 
 fundamental principle ; we set apart, one only day, of all 
 the year, as our universal and symbolic festival, and on 
 that day we were to read, and teach our children, as our 
 national birth-pledge, " We hold these truths to be self- 
 " evident, that all men are endowed by their Creator, with 
 " certain unalienable rights, that among these are life. 
 
15 
 
 " liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" — self-evident," 
 our Revolutionary Fathers thought them, not needing 
 proof, too plain to ask an argument, only to he named, to 
 be acknowledged. 
 
 JSTo wonder, that the observance of the Fourth of July 
 as a national festivity had, a few years ago, well nigh died 
 out, when we not only held four millions men as slaves, 
 legislated for them as mere legal chattels, bought, sold, 
 worked and beat them as we did our horses and our 
 hounds, but boasted of it as an honor, assumed for it and 
 its supporters, peculiar eminence of caste, and consideration, 
 in silence acquiesced when they were vaunted as the 
 chivalry of our land, and feared to talk of liberty, lest it 
 might wake an echo in the bosom of a slave. What a 
 comment on our national consistency and truth ! we were 
 a living lie, and either our principle or our practice would, 
 soon or late, one or the other have to be abandoned. 
 
 And yet, although so flagrantly in contradiction to all 
 that our Fathers held as true and right, because they had 
 from motives of political ex|:>edieiicy, given slavery the 
 protection of the government, in certain of its features, the 
 Christian sentiment ? aud law-abiding spirit of the country 
 bore the contradiction, and accepted the inconsistency; 
 they maintained the institution as a part of our constitu- 
 tional requirements, checked all disturbing agitation of its 
 iniquities, ranked it as one of the things of Csesar, to be 
 rendered unto C?esar, made compromises to favor its 
 continuance, and poured the oil of soothing sympathy 
 upon the angry feelings of its jealous advocates, when 
 searching truths fell on the quick of their excited sensi- 
 bilities. But bye and hxe it was no longer satistied 
 W'th tliis; it would no longer rest content, to be regardoil 
 
16 
 
 as an arrangement of political expediency; it now claimed 
 to be an institution of divine ordainment, demanded that 
 men should close their eyes to all its evils, moral as well 
 as political, should seal their mouths against all mention of 
 its enormities; And as the contradiction between the 
 truths in which the nation had its origin, and the realities 
 of our actual condition, pressed more and more on slavery, 
 the inconsistency grew unendurable ; and slavery declared 
 its purpose to strike down the Government, to divide the 
 nation, and to build up another empire, in which the 
 " unalienable right" of slavery, was to be the vital 
 principle, and chief corner stone — " The first" says its 
 most distinguished advocate " the world has ever seen, in 
 which this was avowed" — and in this he was right; it was 
 the first, and it will be the last. 
 
 To carry out this hideous purpose, it arrayed itself 
 against the Government in armed rebellion; and at Fort 
 Sumter threw down the gauntlet of defiance. 
 
 In this first act of mad revolt, it sealed its own destruc- 
 tion; and then and there we date its fatal wound, and 
 the beginning of the deliverance of the nation from its curse 
 and ignomy. But it was to be borne with yet awhile, 
 that it might fill the measure of its own iniquity, and 
 bring upon itself the ruin, which it had thought to bring 
 upon the nation. And we bore with it when it stormed 
 our forts, and murdered our soldiers; we bore with it 
 when it marched its troops against our Capital; and while 
 its guns were thundering at the very gates of our Halls of 
 Congress, they passed a resolution, to propose as an 
 amendment to the Constitution, that it should never be so 
 altered, as " to authorize or give Congress power to abolish 
 or interfere with" slavery .n any State. AVe bore with it 
 
17 
 
 in tlie long dark days of l)loody battleH; even then liad It 
 been willing to return in peace, the brand would have been 
 buried, and the past forgiven. And when at length the 
 feeling had grown rooted in the nation's niind and heart, 
 that slavery must come to an end, and its destruction was 
 oiiicially decreed, still, many who desired its ruin wavered, 
 hesitated, would rather have borne on, and trusted to 
 the action of less stringent measures to work out the 
 final consummation. 
 
 It starved our captive soldiers, inch by inch, and day by 
 day, thousands on thousands, wasting them to haggard 
 skeletons, and pining them to death in hopeless agony, 
 with a brutality which has no parallel upon so large a 
 scale, in all the sickening records of earth's mocking 
 cruelty ; and still we felt to it, and dealt to it a mercy it 
 liad never shown to others. 
 
 But when its spirit fired the brain of an assassin, to plan 
 with limatic deliberation, and execute with fiendish 
 calmness, the murder of the nation's president, infused the 
 vengeful hate, which sought by lying fraud the chamber of 
 a wounded, well-nigh dying ofiicer of State, and stabbed 
 him in his helplessness, then the last drop in the cup of the 
 national forbearance was wrung out; and the cry went up 
 not loud and tierce, l)ut deep, and solemn, and inexorable 
 as the doom of fate, that "Slavery and treason, both and 
 together, were forever to be cleansed away from our land." 
 And thus, what long years of war had ftuled to do, what 
 right and r(>ason had not been able to a<-c<.mplish, wiiat 
 else— had AiiUAUAM Lincoln lived— might liavrlK'cn only 
 partially eflccted, was sealed and established in his dying 
 as clearly as the doom of Babylon was written, by the hand 
 of God, up(ui the palace of Belshaz/ar. 
 
 / 
 
18 
 
 Such we believe to be the two great fiicts, one demon-, 
 stratecl in the life, and the other established by the death 
 of Abraham Lincoln. And none, since the Reformation 
 made man's conscience free, and purified religion, will for 
 a moment bear comparison in actual importance, or after 
 influence, with these, in which our Martyred President, 
 though '^ being dead, yet speaketh," and to the end of 
 time will speak. They tell the coming ages that the 
 people of the nations must be governed, not by might and 
 tyranny, but right and justice; they ring the knell of 
 slavery, and wipe away its curse and stain from our 
 borders, and make our land in truth, as it has been in 
 name, a land of Liberty : And when, in after times, the 
 thoughts of men turn back to read the ways of God in 
 history, the name of Abraham Lincoln will forever stand 
 among the high historic landmarks of the race, to give 
 undying witness to the precious truths for which our 
 people struggled and for which he died. 
 
 We turn now in conclusion, for a moment, from this 
 broader Held of national, and universal history, to note 
 some of the lessons, which this solemn time shoukl teach 
 ourselves, as individuals. We name but two, one sugges- 
 ted by the nature of our government ; the other by the 
 event which has assembled us together. 
 
 I. If we are to continue as a free people, it can be only 
 as a moral, and religious people. The government of a 
 free people must, of necessity, be the expression of the pre- 
 vailing principles and character of those it represents. 
 If our citizens are in any large proportion dishonest, or 
 otherwise immoral, the ofiicers they choose, will be the 
 same ; and such men always will abuse the government, 
 
19 
 
 to further their own evil ])iir])oses, and in tlic end, will 
 bring it to inevitable iMiin. And no nation Avill rontinue 
 for a course of generations, so generally moral as to shun 
 these dangers, unless there l>e a constant, and pervading 
 influence of the higher power of religion. The life of our 
 country all depends on this. If we fiiil here, our national 
 prosperity will wither from the root ; no statesmanship can 
 save us long; no present strength can give us any 
 guau^ntee for our future. Here is a field where every 
 individual in the nation, however humble, can contribute 
 his proportion to the permanent prosperity, and life of our 
 Government. God lays on every one a part of this respou- 
 sibility. Mothers should train their children to tlie loftiest 
 patriotism, by founding it upon lieligion, by teaching them 
 that the bad man cannot be the good citizen ; and, as they 
 learn to love their country above all earthly things, making 
 them to feel, that they can only serve it rightly, when they 
 are inspired and guided by the higher love of God. Aiul 
 here too, young men, and old may work together, side by 
 side, in the same good endeavor, conducing to the nation's 
 health; by living as God-fearing men ; and in the practice 
 of a christian life displaying those pure, and holy principles, 
 wdiich at the same time are the truest ornament of 
 manhood, the highest duty of the citizen, and the most 
 vital need of their own present and eternal being. 
 
 II. " God's ways are not as our ways." In the presence 
 of his judgai3nt3 we can only stand in wondering silence, 
 and sob, "Thy will be done."' In such dark hours, we 
 feel the need of faith: and faith is our only comfort; the 
 wisest man, at such a time, is only 
 
 '• An infant crying in the night. 
 An infant crying for the light, 
 And with no language but a cry.'" 
 
20 r\^ 
 
 -'^ 
 All oiti' hope is tntst in God, belief tliat lie is wise iuid 
 
 good, and " doeth all things well." And tliougli we may 
 
 not see his plans, and cannot read his purposes, yet if we 
 
 trust his love, — we know that, 
 
 "Somehow good 
 Will be the final goal of ill"— 
 
 and in the darkness of our ignorance, we only draw 
 more closely to his side, and rest more firmly on the comfort 
 of his promises. Thus would we feel, and thus would we 
 have you all feel to-day ; and as we go abroad again, from 
 these sad scenes, to mingle in the busy crowd of men, may 
 we bear ever with us, tlie al/iding sense, that our only help 
 as iiidi\i(hi{ils, or as a nation is the sustaining lore of God, 
 our highest duty, heartfelt ohedieiu'C to the Saviour: to 
 whom be glory, now and ever, world without end — Amen. 
 
LB S '12