0hir Mecand ^Htim, 
 
 
\ 
 
Our Second Martyr. 
 
 A DISCOURSE 
 
 DELIVERED IN 
 
 The Thirty-Fou[|th St. Reformed Church, 
 
 NEW YORK CITV, 
 
 Sabbath Evenings Sept. 2^th, 1881. 
 
 Rev. CARLOS MARTYN, 
 
 'I 
 Pastoiof the Church, and CJiaplaiii of Ihc jisl Regiment, 
 , fl"^ N. G. S. N. V. 
 
 ^cto IJorh : 
 P. I'. xMcHreen, Printer, 16 Beek.m.xn St, 
 
 1881. 
 
J7 ) ^ '^ 
 
 2BG15 
 
OUR SECOND MARTYR. 
 
 " Know ye not that there is a prince and a great 
 man fallen this day in Israeli — 2 Samuel, Hi., 38. 
 
 The long suspense is over. The silver cord is 
 loosed, the golden bowl is broken, the pitcher is 
 broken at the fountain, the wheel is broken at 
 the cistern. The dust returns to the earth as it 
 was : and the spirit returns unto God who gave 
 it. 
 
 Fifty millions of people catch their breath and 
 sigh and mourn, feeling the loss of the great 
 chief as a personal bereavement. Fifty millions? 
 Two continents walk as mourners in that funeral 
 train. The London Times ^ reviewing the demon- 
 strations declares: "Such a spectacle has never 
 been presented as the mourning with which the 
 whole civilized world is honoring the late President 
 
of the United States. Emperors and kings, senates 
 and ministries, are in spirit his pall-bearers ; but 
 their peoples, from the highest to the lowest, claim 
 to be equally visible and audible as sorrowing 
 assistants." These streets clothed in the "trap- 
 pings andthe suits of woe," the newspapers stereo- 
 typed in black, the voices, like "the sound of 
 many wateis," uttered from puljjit and court, from 
 hearth and shop, from sidewalk and counting- 
 room, from prairie and savannah, telegraph and 
 cable electric with condolence, all Europe echoing 
 the sorrow of all America, peer and peasant uniting 
 in one expression of love and sympathy, our beau- 
 tiful flag at half-mast in London, Paris, Berlin, 
 Vienna, as in our own cities, nations and peoples 
 drawn together as never before : why, it is an un- 
 heard-of thing, this universal outcry of interest 
 and grief ! 
 
 Death did not produce, it has only intensilled 
 this feeling. You remember those weary weeks, 
 that nervous strain, the alternations of hope and 
 fear, the eager lips that asked every where as the 
 first question, what the last word was from him in 
 whose massive breast the heart of Christendom 
 throbbed. 
 
 Well, well, he deserved it all ! Was ever suf- 
 ferer more patient, more cheerful, sweeter, braver? 
 
What wonder that the world was melted into 
 admiration. Such a career, inspiring as the white 
 plume of Navarre, and beyond all, sucli a sick- 
 bed, might well stir all men and women to a sense 
 of personal kinship, and now, alas, of individual 
 loss. 
 
 It has been admirably said by Mr. Froude — a 
 questionable historian, but the most brilliant pam- 
 phleteer since Daniel De Foe — that "in every depart- 
 ment of human life there is always one type of man 
 which is the best, living and working a radiant way 
 to heaven in the very middle of us." This type he 
 holds it to be our duty to find,— to see what makes 
 individuals of this type the best ; and to raise up 
 their excellence into an acknowledged standard, of 
 which they themselves shall be the living witnesses. 
 Just as Catholicism has its saints,— models in 
 whose mold those whom it controls are run and 
 shaped, so politics, science, art, literature, should 
 have their orders of nobility laid out in the name 
 of God, of whom we should say : Look at these 
 men; bless God for them ; and follow them. 
 
 He adds: " Place before a boy the figure of a 
 noble man ; let the circumstances in whicli he has 
 earned his claim to be called noble be such as the 
 boy sees around himself ; let him see rhis hero 
 rising above surrounding temptations, and follow- 
 
6 
 
 ing life virtuously and victoriously forward, and 
 you will kindle his heart as nothing else will 
 kindle it." 
 
 James A. Garfield supplies us with such a type. 
 In the words which Shakspeare puts into the 
 mouth of Antony in " Julius Cffisar" : 
 
 " The elements 
 So mixed in him that Nature might stand up 
 And say to all the world, This was a Man." 
 
 His intellectual gifts and moral worth were recog- 
 nized on every side. His public career was the 
 pride of both parties : American in the best sense. 
 As citizen, as soldier, as Congressman, as Chief - 
 Magistrate, he was tried and not found wanting. 
 Although he held his last high office only about 
 six months — spending three of the six in the battle 
 with death — his methods and the spirit of his 
 administration gained him the respect and confi- 
 dence of the whole nation. One of the youngest of 
 our Presidents, he had a larger personal acquaint- 
 ance than an}^ of them, except, perhaps, Gen. 
 Grant. 
 
 Hume's decription of the Saxon Alfred may be 
 repeated almost without the suspicion of exag- 
 gerating his merits: "He knew how to conciliate 
 the most enterprising spirit with the coolest 
 
moderation ; the most obstinate perseverance with 
 the easiest tiexibility ; tiie most severe justice with 
 the greatest lenity ; the greatest rigor in commantl 
 with the greatest affability of deportment ; the 
 highest capacity and inclination for science with 
 the most shining talents for action. His civil and 
 his military virtues are almost equally the ob- 
 jects of our admiration, excepting only that the 
 former, being more rare among princes, as well 
 as more useful, seem chiefly to challenge our ap- 
 plause. Nature also, as if desirous that so bright 
 a production of her skill should be set in the 
 fairest light, had bestow^ed on him all bodily ac- 
 complishments—vigor of limbs, dignity of shape 
 and air, and a pleasing, engaging and open coun- 
 tenance. 
 
 And yet how inadequately we knew him until 
 the assassin's bullet disclosed his grandeur. Then 
 the plodding work-boy, the struggling student, 
 the patient scholar, the gallant soldier, the states- 
 man weighted with public cares, ever as he 
 wrought at some great purpose, hampered by 
 poverty— emerged into the hero of his age. Suf- 
 fering, innocently brought on him, crowned him. 
 He was long enough, sweet-souled enough, forgiv- 
 ing enough, heroic enough in dying to win such 
 a place in the aflections of the human race, as 
 
8 
 
 it has rarely been permitted any human being 
 to gain. And he has left behind him the memory 
 of his grand Christian manhood as an enduring 
 monument. 
 
 Was ever man more singularly happy and 
 fortunate in his home life ? I know of nothing 
 finer than those scenes on which we have looked 
 through that sick-room door. The wife and 
 mother, tearless with grief, full of feeling, yet 
 with too much Christian courage to vent her 
 feelings in useless lamentations, ministering like 
 an angel beside her husband, yet neglecting no 
 other claims, ever present, always felt, the soul 
 of the house ; calm when all others were con- 
 vulsed, hopeful when even the physicians de- 
 spaired, lifting herself unconsciously, by heroic 
 purpose and Christian grace, to be the typical 
 matron of the age, and giving her sex a new 
 title to love and veneration ; poor little Mollie, 
 her father's pet; the young man over his books 
 at college ; the two boys away in the Ohio home ; 
 the dear old mother, bowed beneath eighty 
 years, waiting for "her boy, James," who should 
 never come back to her longing arms : God 
 bless them all ! With the good English Queen, 
 in her touching message to Mrs. Garfield, we 
 
9 
 
 commend them to "■ the husband of the widow 
 and tlie father of tlie fatherless." 
 
 It is a mighty consohition to know that our 
 second martyr was prepared to die. He had re- 
 membered his Creator in the days of his youth. 
 Once, when a student at Amherst, he was out 
 with a party of his chums on the sides of old 
 Greylock— that superb mountain at whose feet 
 the college nestles. With the rest, he was full 
 of fun and frolic. Suddenly, looking to the 
 Avest, he saw tliat the sun was about to set. 
 "Boys," cried he, "I have been taught by my 
 mother always to read a chapter in the Bible 
 at this hour. Excuse me for a little." He 
 withdrew, and, throwing himself upon the ground, 
 he took out a pocket Testament, and was soon 
 lost to the world. Such an act, in such com- 
 pany, reveals the hero. 
 
 For twenty years no life was busier and more 
 hiirried than his. Yet he always made time 
 each day to build a solitude around his heart 
 in which to commune with God. Who doubts 
 that this habit developed the manhood Ave ad- 
 mired Certain it is that his piety, modest and 
 unobtrusive, but thorough and genuine, enabled 
 him to live clearly and to die gloriously. "I 
 have faced death before," said he soon after 
 
10 
 
 he was shot, remembering the ghastly scenes of 
 the civil war, in which he had been a promi- 
 nent actor — "and I am not afraid of him!" 
 
 Friends, if we would not fear death, let us do as 
 he did. Let us regard our relations to God as 
 paramount. Let us bestir ourselves to make our 
 peace with God through His dear Son. We are as 
 likely as he to be cut down suddenly. Dis- 
 ease, accident, violence, any one of ten thousand 
 mishaps may stretch us on a death bed. How un- 
 happy, if we have made no preparation for the 
 dread hereafter ! How terrible to plunge unready 
 into death ! The pain and daze of a fatal sickness 
 afford a poor opportunity for preparation. I hear 
 a voice sounding from his coffin. It says, to you, 
 and me, and all of us: "Be wise to-day. 'Tis 
 madness to defer!" 
 
 Let no one in this hour of depression lose faith 
 in prayer. At the first thought some may be 
 tempted to feel that there is little efficacy in it. 
 Christ said: "If two of you shall agree on earth 
 as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall 
 be done for them of my Father which is in 
 heaven." Such assurances abound. 
 
 Well, not two of us, but millions, belieyers on 
 both continents, wrestled with God for the life 
 (if this man. Multitudes prayer! as n^vpr before. 
 
II 
 
 with tears and agony. Nevertheless he is dead. 
 Through all the untold anguish of liis sufTerings, 
 terrible as the rack of the Spanish Inquisition, he 
 seemed to be saying : 
 
 " I hear a voice you cannot hear, 
 Which says I must not stay. 
 I see a hand you cannot see, 
 Wliich beckons me away." 
 
 Brethren, we are not to conclude that God has 
 not heard and answered our prayers for our dead 
 chief, because he has not done precisely what we 
 craved. He liafi heard. He has answered. 
 
 Reflect a moment. Why did we ask Grod to 
 prolong President Garfield's life I Was it not 
 because we believed his life would prove a bless- 
 ing to his age and nation % because we esteemed 
 him able to do a great work for God and for 
 men ? Now, if God saw that He could accom- 
 plish more in the death of that dear man than 
 in his liffc, would not the spirit of our prayers 
 be answered ? 
 
 Consider the result. Through our common 
 affliction, the North and the South lock hands 
 to-day over his bier in a truer brotherhood than 
 we have known since Washington of Virginia 
 and Greene of New England cantered side by side 
 over the battlefields of the Revolution. The 
 
12 
 
 country exhibits its self-poise and strength, by 
 imitating in the midst of profound feeling, the 
 patience and faith of the President's family, and 
 endures the crisis without either political or 
 industrial disturbance. The face of Liberty is 
 is veiled, but her heart beats strong and calm 
 and true as ever. The voice of party rancor 
 loses its venom. In that presence, there are no 
 Democrats and no Republicans. The attention of 
 fifty millions of people is directed to the causes 
 which might be expected to produce such ghastly 
 fruit. 
 
 All this is so plain that a European critic em- 
 phasized it, remarking: "America has gained the 
 credit and profit which great nations win by 
 breeding men worthy to live and die in their 
 service. She has gained golden opinions from 
 civilized mankind, who have watched with ad- 
 miration, even with envy, the intense, invaluable 
 spirit of nationality which has made the xvhole 
 Republic suspend its quarrels and stand with 
 one thought, hope, prayer, united in brotherly 
 love, first around the sick-bed, and now around 
 the coffin, of him who represented each and all. 
 The bullet of the assassin has slain the Presi- 
 dent. It will also kill, let us hope, the political 
 abuses that made Guiteau possible.'' 
 
13 
 
 Add to all this the amazing display of love 
 and sympathy I'rom abroad. As electricity and 
 steam have annihilated time and space, making 
 Europe and America next door neiglibors, so 
 this common sorrow has overrun national boun- 
 daries, and unified the human race. The Eng- 
 lish Court goes into mourning ; an unpreceden- 
 ted honor when paid to one neither a relative 
 of the royal family nor a sovereign. The Queen 
 telegraphs her condolences again and again and 
 yet again to Mrs. Garfield, showing, as the 
 American Minister, Mr. Lovvell, said at the great 
 meeting at Exeter Hall, in London, on the 
 24th of September, " how true a woman's heart 
 beats under the royal purple," and stirring all 
 Americans to shout, " God bless Victoria ! " 
 and to sing, "God Save the Queen I " Parish 
 bells toll throughout the Kingdom. The grief 
 in Great Britain is unparalleled since the deatli 
 of the Prince Consort. The two great English 
 speaking nations are drawn together in closest 
 fraternity. 
 
 Witness France, Germany, Itah-, Spain, 
 taking bereaved America in their arms as we 
 lift our martyr into ours. Ah ! costly as is the 
 sacrifice, the compensation is swe^t. Can you 
 not hear those mute lips say: "And will my 
 
14 
 
 death purchase all this? Gladly would I die 
 daily to buy for my America one item in such 
 a catalogue of blessings ! " 
 
 I remember the private agony. I bear in 
 mind the untimely cutting off of life in its 
 prime, in the midst of grieving friends, sur- 
 rounded by honors hardly tasted, on the thres- 
 hold of what bade fair to be the halcyon ad- 
 ministration of modern times. Nevertheless, I 
 am certain that grand public uses are filled to 
 the brim by his death as they could not have 
 been by his life. 
 
 And who knows what he may have escaped ? 
 Now, his fame at the zenith, he moves from 
 life into history. He lays down the burdens 
 of his great position. He escapes its perils and 
 its pursuing cares. And dying, like Samson in 
 the temple of Dagon, he avenges himself and 
 his country by pulling down the two pillars of 
 American and European indignation upon the 
 Philistines of abuse and corruption. Does not 
 God hear and answer prayer? Has he not heard 
 and answered it in this case ? Surely, we may 
 sing of our martyr as Milton did over the dead 
 body ol" his friend Lycidas : 
 
15 
 
 " Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail 
 Or knock the breast, no weakness, no contempt 
 Dispraise or blame, nothing but well and lair 
 And what may quiet us in a death so noble." 
 
 If the dead President had a voice to-day, he 
 would urge us all to be true Americans. With 
 him patriotism was at once a principle and 
 a ]iassion. Himself the best fruit of our insti- 
 tutions, he prized them at their full value. He 
 lived, he died for America. One of his latest 
 utterances was this: " The people, the people 
 my trust." 
 
 We cannot look to fill the great place in the 
 public eye he occupied. But we can emulate 
 the patriotism which was his inspiration. This 
 grand, free country of ours— we can love and 
 serve it. We can do our whole duty towards 
 it. We can be jealous of its honor. We can 
 contribute something out of the storehouse of 
 our thought and time to the promotion of its 
 best interests. 
 
 There is need that we bestir ourselves. For 
 we can see in the flash of that ]>istol, and be- 
 hind the wretch who pulled the trigger, whole 
 regiments of conspirators, troops of unscrupulous 
 aims, pqnndrons of mercenary and mendacious 
 ambitions, nnd nrmies of villninous ngencies— 
 
16 
 
 all fully bent on possessing and perverting the 
 government of a free people to the upbuilding of 
 their own individual and corporate greeds. And 
 we can see good men drawing themselves away, 
 or sitting apart, in hopeless ignorance of what 
 to do, or in disgust at their helplessness, dis- 
 mayed by the prevalence of sellishness and cor- 
 ruption. 
 
 There is a class among us who stand aloof 
 from politics — wealthy men, literary men, com- 
 mercial men ; the very class that has most 
 at stake. Like the effeminate nobles of ancient 
 Rome, they sit high up in the political coliseum 
 and criticise the uiigraceful struggles of the 
 gladiators, and shrug their shoulders at the 
 harsh cries in the arena. "In the theatre of 
 man's life," says Lord Bacon, " Grod and His 
 angels should be the only lookers-on." 
 
 Our place is in the conflict. It has been said 
 that "sin is not taken out of man as Eve was 
 out of Adam, by putting him to sleep." 
 Neither are political abuses gotten rid of by 
 shutting our eyes to them. Rough work must 
 be done, and it is as much your business and 
 mine to do it as it is anybody's. 
 
 You remember the striking simile of Fisher 
 Ames: "A monarchy is a man-of-war — stanch^ 
 
17 
 
 iron-ribbed, and resistless when under full sail ; 
 yet a single hidden rock sends her to the bot 
 torn. Our Republic is a raft, hard to steer, and 
 your feet always wet, but nothing can sink 
 her." Don't be afraid, friends, to stand in the 
 water of democracy. Better catch cold than be 
 a slave. Woe betide the nation whose sons 
 are so given over to money-getting and pleasure- 
 seeking, so cankered and seltisli, that Mammon, 
 with his muck-rake, and Harlequin, with cap 
 and bells, have become the symbols of daily 
 thought and life. 
 
 I have nothing to say concerning the choice 
 we should make of parties and men. But some 
 conscientious choice we are under bonds to 
 make. Shame on the citizen who values his 
 citizenship so lightly that he can refuse to drop 
 a ballot. Shame on the recreant American, 
 who, inheriting royal prerogatives, abdicates his 
 sovereignty and un-kings himself. Children of 
 the men of 1776 ! Fellow-citizens, with the 
 martyr President ! as often as election day 
 returns, bear it in mind that we need no pistol, 
 no dynamite, because, as Whittier sings, we 
 have 
 
18 
 
 " a weapon firmer set, 
 
 And better than the bayonet; 
 A weapon that comes down as still 
 As snow-flakes fall upon tlie sod, 
 Yet executes a freeman's will, 
 As lightning does the will of God." 
 
 '' Le Roi est mort : Vhele RoiP' "The King 
 is dead — long live the King!" President Garfield 
 is gone. President Arthur succeeds him. The 
 new President needs, if mortal man ever did, 
 the kindly judgment and good will of the peo- 
 ple. The circumstances under which he assumes 
 the Government are full of pain and' difficulty. 
 His carriage through these dreadful weeks has 
 been admirable — reticent, dignified, and sympa- 
 thetic. Instead of watching for faults — instead 
 of searching the record of the past for blemishes — 
 instead of prophecying a book of lamentations 
 for the future — let us give him our hopes and 
 prayers. Chastened by this awful calamity, our 
 hearts should flow out warmly to him who stands 
 in the gap made by death. 
 
 Those who know President Arthur best, trust 
 and honor him most. We are all acquainted with 
 his generous nature and great ability. We are 
 bound to believe that he will discharge his sacred 
 trust in a way that shall knit to him the loyal 
 
19 
 
 allegiance of tliese mourning hearts. As he en- 
 ters the shadowed Wliite House, may the sun- 
 shine of public confidence kindle the gloom before 
 his feet. xVnd ma}' God enable him to be — as his 
 inaugural address indicates that he means to be — 
 the President, not of a faction, nor even of a 
 party, but of the American people. 
 
 For ourselves, dear friends, let us learn from all 
 this not to envy the great. Do not court place 
 and power. We are most of us, I fear, i)rone to 
 undervalue our present situation, and to imagine 
 that ha]jpiness is to be found in some different, 
 and especially some more exalted station. 
 
 Ah, happiness must be looked for, not in the 
 world without, but h eve with in, in the heart, in "a 
 conscience void of offence towards God and 
 towards men." Least of all should we expect 
 to find happiness in an exalted station. Shall 
 not experience teach us wisdom ? Almost without 
 exception the great of earth have been the unfor- 
 tunate of earth. History is the record of their 
 sorrows. The thunder-robed old prophets lived 
 and died under the frown of their age. The 
 Apostles were all martyred, save one. The Caesars 
 were struck from the throne by assassination, 
 in red succession. Marie Antoinette was guillo- 
 tined. Napoleon died at St. Helena. In our day, 
 
20 
 
 the Czars, Kaisers and Bismarcks are targets for 
 conspirators. And even gentle and righteous 
 rulers like Lincoln and Garfield are martyred. 
 
 Ages ago, a woman of Shunein had put Elisha, 
 the prophet, under great obligation by her hospi- 
 tality. One day he sent G-ehazi, his servant, to 
 acknowledge the kindness, and to ask her, 
 "Wouldst thou be spoken for to the King, or to 
 the Captain of the Host?" Mark the reply: 
 "And she answered, 'I dwell among mine own 
 people.' " Her spirit, which could set bounds to 
 her desires and enjoy her present condition with- 
 out envy or repining, — would to God it miglit 
 descend upon us all ! 
 
 De Foe never wrote a wiser page than that in 
 the Oldening chapter of "Robinson Crusoe," in 
 which he paints the father as counseling his boy, 
 mad with ambition, to abide in the state wherein 
 he was born — the middle station. "He bade me 
 observe," says Crusoe, " that the calamities of life 
 were shared among the upper and lower part of 
 mankind ; but that the middle station had the 
 fewest disasters, and was not exposed to so many 
 vicissitudes ; that peace and plenty were the hand- 
 maids of the condition betwixt the extremes ; that 
 temperance, moderation, quietness, health, society, 
 all agreeable diversions, and all desirable pleas- 
 
21 
 
 nres, were blessings attending the middle station 
 in life ; that this way men and women went si- 
 lently and smoothly through the world, and com- 
 fortably out of it ; not embarrassed with the labors 
 of the hands or of the head ; not sold to a life of 
 slavery for daily bread, nor harrassed with per- 
 plexing circumstances, which rob the soul of peace 
 and the body of rest ; not enraged with the pas- 
 sion of envy, or the secret burning lust of am- 
 bition for great things ; but in easy circumstcinces 
 sliding gently through the world, and sensibly 
 tasting the sweets of living without the bitter." 
 
 Yes, friends, they that will climb high put 
 themselves in the way to fall far. If God calls 
 us by supreme abilities, or by the public choice, 
 into a high station, so be it. Inclination must 
 yield. But, surely, recent events counsel us 
 never to push and elbow our way to the upper 
 seat. 
 
 Some there are who seem ordained of God to 
 minister as high priests before the altar of the 
 nation. Without envying such, let us hear them 
 and honor them. Not long at best may we 
 hope to detain our high and holy ones on earth. 
 Ours, especially, appears to be a fatal epoch. 
 The great historic actors in the crisis of the 
 nation are fast leaving us. Already, the death 
 
22 
 
 list is long and startling. Chase and Seward, 
 Stanton and Greeley, Stevens and Garrison, Hale 
 and Wilson, Hooker and Burnside^so the sha- 
 dowy procession of the illustrious dead moves 
 on, with Lincoln in the van. 
 
 Last, but not least, our martyred Garfield 
 closes his radient career, and leaves to a grate- 
 ful country and to an applauding world, the 
 splendid legacy of his example and character. 
 
 " Take him up tenderly. 
 Lift him with care." 
 
 Bear him to the grave amid the proud tears 
 of the Reprrblic whose typical child he was. 
 And as we bend lovingly over his coffin to look 
 our last rrpon his face, let irs murmur : 
 
 ' ' Sleep in peace with kindred ashes 
 Of the noble and the true ; 
 Hands that never failed their country, — 
 Hearts that baseness never knew." 
 
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