YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY,
NEW HAVEN, CONN.

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A DISCOURSE

IN COMMEMORATION OF

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DELIVERED IN

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THE UNION P1RK CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH,

BY THE PASTOR,

REV. FREDERICK A. NOBLE.

Sunday Morning, September 25, 1881.

CH ICAGO :
Brown, Pettibone &. Kelly, 194 & 196 Dearborn Street.

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A DISCOURSE

IN COMMEMORATION OF

DELIVERED IN

THE UNION PARK CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH,

BY THE PASTOR,

REV. FREDERICK A. NOBLE.

Sunday Morning, September 25, 1881.

CH icago :
Brown, Pettibone & Kelly, 194 & 196 Dearborn Street.

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" §^ub one of %m sfjall not fall on % grounb fott(jonl goar Jfa%r." —
Matt. 10 : 29.
" f fje '"goto knohjjcflj % bags of % upright, anb %ir inheritance sfjall be
foreoer." — Psalm 37: 18.
" Come, anb let us return unto % |torb ; for |pe fjalli torn, anb |§e foill
beal ns: fit fjatjj smitten, anb ^z feill binb ns an." — Hosea 6: 1.

It WOULD be treasonable folly to breathe one word of despair
of the Republic. No single life, no matter how precious and
exalted, is indispensable to the stability of our free institutions,
and to the successful development of the resources of our
people. As has been so often said, any hundred of the most
conspicuous lives in the land might be suddenly blotted out, as
candles are extinguished at night, and there would be no appre
ciable disorder in the state, and very little stagnation in the
great currents of our industries and duties. This is the large
advantage possessed by communities whose interests are com
mon, and who are trained in the uses of liberty. They have the
courage and the self-control to meet adversity.
All the same, it is blindness not to see that the nation suffers
measureless loss in the death of the President. Not in any con
fusion that comes ; not in the shrinkage of material values ; not
in any shock given to commerce and trade and the round of daily

life. Men keep on with their harvesting of fruits and golden
grain. The furnaces and forges flame with their fierce heats.
There ismo hush in the sound of the steady grinding in the mills.
Ships come and go. Trains, heavy freighted with the products
of farms, and mines, and shops, and fofests, and seas thread their
way back and forth across the continent, and up and down
every valley where there are thrifty homes. Pitched for a brief
moment to a lower key, the voice of traffic still continues ; and
markets and homes and schools, and all the machinery of life,
move forward in the old grooves. Nature is beneficent and
healing ; but even sweet nature shows little sign of sympathy
in our deep- and general sorrow. Longfellow has a fine recogni
tion of this undisturbed calm of earth and sky in the presence
of a national bereavement, in his tribute to " The Warden of
the Cinque Ports : "
" The sun rose bright o'erhead,
Nothing in nature's aspect intimated
That a great man was dead."
In none of these spheres wili there be any yery deep sense and
clear registry of our loss. It is not in any threatened subversion
of the law, nor in any arrest of the flow of outward prosperity,
that we shall suffer.
The loss is something finer and more precious. It is loss
in the realm of moral force and dignity and instinct. It is
loss in aspiration, and in the enthusiasm which is born of seeing
great opportunities about to be realized. It is loss of foothold,
gained after long and patient climbing on the loftiest round
this Nation has ever touched, and of guidance along, the paths
nearest the summits when the light falls in on men from other
suns than ours. ,It is loss in those higher elements and aims
of statesmanship which in the future, much more than in the
past, are to make nations illustrious. This is the pity of it.
Only now and then along these ages has any nation ever

found itself represented before the world by an ideal man — ideal
even after its own standard. From William the Conqueror to
Victoria, how many ideal men — how many men who were in any
sense exponents of the highest intelligence, and the noblest
aims of the people, have even wielded the scepter of supreme
authority in England ? How many in the long centuries in
France ? How many in Spain ? How many in any nation ?
How many prime ministers of a really exalted type has the
partiality or exigency of sovereigns.or the free choice of parties,
called into place anywhere in the last hundred years ? What a
task it has been to keep a majority of the English voters up
to the level of Gladstone ! Bismarck holds his place, not in vir
tue of his high moral ideas, but because he stands for German
unity and is the incarnation of German force. Gambetta's com
mendation to the French is that he is brilliant, loves liberty, was
once an open Communist, and knows no God. Cunning men —
men of greed and hate — men of exceptional foresight and with
the grasp of iron in their right hands ; men whose conceptions
and economies and policies lie level to the prejudices and coarse
hungers of their time ; men with but little conscience in their
make-up, but of much self-assertion and overweening ambition,
are advanced ; but the large true men ; the men whose outlooks
are afar ; the men whose skies are domed with shining stars
and whose souls are temples in which great thoughts walk and
worship ; the men who have the minds to apprehend and the
hearts to cherish, and wills resolute to follow the voices which
speak in the supreme revelations of justice and right and duty ;
have but little occasion for official robes. It is not easy to get»
a nation up to the point where it is ready for the b.est to be its
servants ; not easy to get the best to be the best and to do their
best in the high places of law makers and rulers. Great souls
are compromised away for men small enough and morally facile

enough to be available, and fine instincts go unvoiced, and
sacred truths go unrepresented. Sometimes there is a compro
mise, not down but up, and the men of broad brows and quick,
wholesome instincts, and cultivated convictions are chosen and
crowned. There is compromise, not down, but up ; and vic
tory — and victory then means much ; — it means uplift, and a
.bound forward for the whole nation.
Our dead President was impressively near to the ideal. In
him American manhood came into full fruitage ; and sitting
there at the head of state, we could all point to him and say :
" This is the type of man we are trying to grow here on our new
republican soil, and this is our conception of a ruler suitable to
execute the laws and guide the destinies of a great free people."
In his character there was gathered, and in his daily walk he illus
trated for us the old homely virtues of purity, and simplicity,
and gentleness, and all fidelity. He loved liberty better than7 he
loved his life ; and he was so faithful to the value and to the
forms of law that he would not see statute books overridden,
even though their defense might cost him his reputation, and
make havoc of all his political prospects. He had learning and
culture, and large share of the knowledge which gives breadth
and wisdom to statesmanship; and scholars in this land and
other lands, and prominent leaders in parliament, and highest
councillors of sovereigns feel a peculiar bereavement in his death.
He walked with his face upward, and his heart beat ever with a
pulse of aspiration ; but his aspirations were always healthy,
and he desired fitness for place more than place itself. In his
estimation, fitness was to place as the apple of gold to the picture
of silver. He had moral ideas, and he was loyal to them ; and
large as was his understanding, and subtle and wide-reaching as
were his thoughts, conscience dominated his soul, and no tempt
ation could swerve him from duty. He believed in God ; and

amidst the leaden rairi at Chickamauga, and on the couch at
Washington to which the fatal bullet of the assassin had hurried
him, and in the weakness and weariness of that last day by the
sea, when the fogs and clouds had lifted, and the ships had come
back, as for some precious freightage to bear away to climes
remote, he was not afraid to die. In the darkness, when the
bells were about to catch up that last accent of suffering — " It
hurts" — and to throb the awful tidings out upon the startled ear
of night, that all was over, he was met by One with whom he
had walked before, and in whom he had a trust which was
unbroken and complete. So large — so true — so loyal to every
best idea known to human souls, is it a mistake to call this man
very nearly ideal ?
He was a leader strong and worthy to lead. He had an
ear to hear the voice of the ages gone and the voice of the ages
to come, and he walked abreast of his great hour. It is not
that we see him exaggerated and glorified through the mists of
his eighty days of heroic suffering ; his pain and patience have
touched all hearts and made them tender toward him ; but aside
from all this, he was of the stuff of which majestic and royal
natures are made, and he knew the highways along which nations
might be conducted to a safe and abiding renown. Placed by
the suffrage of the people on the exalted heights of the presi
dency, he did not need, and he would not have needed, to be
pressed by public opinion to the adoption of good measures ; he
himself would have educated the nation to higher views and
standards — he would have quickened the moral perceptions of
the people, and every good thing would have received forward*
impulse from his directing hand. What messages he would.
have written ! What an oration would that have been at York-
town ! What wise and stirring utterances would have fallen
from his lips from time to time, as he spoke to the gathered

people ! It is as though Gladstone had died on the threshold
of his career as prime minister, and with his master, work
unwrought. It is as though Lincoln had fallen before, he had
set his immortal seal to the Proclamation of Emancipation, and
his words at Gettysburg had been spoken. No man but must
feel the poorer for the breaking of this golden bowl, and the
loosing of these silver cords.
Nevertheless, is it all loss ? Was it all loss when they gave
the fatal hemlock to Socrates, and he went quietly and bravely
out into the beyond ? Was it all loss when our first great mar
tyr President passed through the thin " veil that separates mor
tals and immortals, time from eternity, and men from their
God," and the nation stood bewildered and shocked at the mon
strous crime of it ? Good men pass Trom our sight and go down,
but they do not altogether die. Being dead they still speak.
There is a law by which moral influences are preserved and per
petuated, and words with truth and life in them linger on as
factors of the world's progress, and great examples grow greater
and more serviceable with the advancing ages. To force rare
and brave men into untimely graves is often to canonize them,
and make them secure in an immortal renown, and perennial in
power. The martyr fires which burn up their victims, if their
victims are worthy of crowns, do not go out, but help to warm
the world. Tribulations experienced in the high spheres of
duty, and groans and tears wrung out in the holy services of man
kind are inspirations forever. The man perishes under his woes
and burdens ; but there is a subtler pulse than that which beats
in the physical form ; it is the pulse of the thought which moved
the man ; it is the pulse of the truth to which he was loyal and
for which he made sacrifices, and that pulse beats on from gen
eration to generation, and by so much is all life broadened.
It is not all loss. Gains of a precious sort have already come

to us through this sore chastening of our representative and
head. We are still under the shadow of the valley. The grave
has not yet received its deposit of sacred dust. Not yet has it
drunk the tears which are to'be poured into it. Not yet has a
single sprig of cypress or myrtle taken root in its consecrated
soil: But East, West, North, South, at the seaside, on the prai
rie, along every valley and mountain slope, in every heart, at
every hearthstone, how the sufferings of this sufferer have
softened and sanctified life. For eighty long and weary days
we have been holding this illustrious and beloved patient up in
what we thought, were our stout arms, and beseeching the All
Merciful that some healing breath from out the land where there
is no sickness and pain might touch him and restore. Is it not
rather true that for eighty long and weary days this illustrious
and beloved patient has been holding us up in his arms — the
arms which seemed so feeble and are now folded in a final rest —
that this same healing breath might kiss our cheeks, and the
chrism of a high and holy annointing from God touch and glorify
our whole being ? Not since Calhoun, singularly enough, back
at almost the very year when Mr. Garfield was born, began to
advocate Nullification, and to scatter broadcast through the
South the seeds of discontent and alienation and secession, have
we seen the hearts of this people, in all the length and breadth
of the land, beating in such oneness of thought and sympathy
as at the bedside and in the death-chamber of the President.
Is it not something divinely beautiful to see this whole nation
bowing in acknowledgment of a common sorrow at the fatal
hurting of our chief? Something divinely beautiful in the mids£
of the solemn trappings of death to breathe the odors of flowers.
which have been grown and plucked by loving loyal hands
under Southern skies, and woven into delicate tributes for his
bier and his grave ?

10
Not even within our own wide boundaries does this hallow
ing influence find its limits. The royalty of this man's nature ;
the cruel brutal blow with which he was struck ; and the heroic
struggle he made for life and the awful agony he endured, have
¦brought all the civilized nations of the earth to our side, to bow
with us in our prayers and grief. How touching the attitude of
England, and how above price her interest and sympathy.
As I have read from day to day in the crowded papers
stories and incidents of this man's worth, and especially stories
and incidents illustrative of the love in which he was held ; and
as I have walked the streets and caught sight of some unique and
exquisite suggestion of regard or appreciation, I have said to
myself: " How this, and this, and the other would have
touched his heart!" But I think nothing would have moved the
deep of his large soul like these tokens of bereavement which
has come across the seas from the old mother country.
How strange ! Twenty years ago only here and there one
outside the circle of his immediate associates and comrades had
ever heard this name which is now so cherished and revered.
He had no wealth. He had no social advantages. He had np
powerful backing of friends. The party with which he had cast
in his lot had just carried a national election it is true, but it
was by no means certain it would ever carry another ; it had its
record to make. The brief period of twenty years ends, and he
dies. Lo ! the old cathedral bells of the old fatherland which
have tolled for Pitt, and Peel, and Burke, and Mansfield, and
Nelson, and Wellington, and Clyde, and have helped to wail out
the sorrow of a loyal people over a long line of sovereigns carried
to their graves, heard the groanings and the sobs of a stricken
people three thousand miles away, and tolled once again in sym
pathy with a loss which had touched the universal interest. The
Queen speaks tenderly out of her woman's heart, and lays her

11
contribution of choicest flowers on his casket. The English
court puts on the garb of mourning ; and the Poet Laureate,
from his seclusion in the Isle of Wight, comes forward to tell
us of his own personal share in our national grief ; and all
tongues take on an accent of bereavement and sympathy.
Why is it ? If is not mere pity. It is the manifestation of a
unity which comes in the illumination of sorrow ; and it is the
closer drawing of heart to heart in a unity which comes through
the sanctification of sorrow. It is his long gazing upward into
the light which never was on land or sea that has enabled us
who linger to see more nearly eye to eye. Bending down over
that couch of pain, and trying to count the beatings of his heart,
has chastened us into a new tenderness, and made us more alive
to the beatings of all hearts.
Does it seem almost or quite a wrong to reap these great
moral harvests from his sowing of disappointment, and pain, and
heart-ache and death ? To sensitive, generous souls, doubtless.
But only so do men and nations make their way-upward. Only
through the agonies and sacrifices of the. best souls do we come
into the blessedness of new vision, and new love and light and life.
Low, bad men suffer, and our compassion is kindled ; but low,
bad men do not exalt us by the defeats they are forced to bear
and the pains they experience. But when souls of large mould
suffer ; when men of pure and exalted character suffer ; when
there is an element of undeservedness in suffering, it always
invests the sufferer with power to help us through his sufferings.
If there is to be salvation wrought out for the race, no one
less exalted than the Son of God can do it ; and even He must
drain His Gethsemane cups, and bear His Calvary crosses. In
His measureless love He must consent to be wonnded for our
transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities. If a nation is to
be saved — kept from rotting down with rankest corruption —

12
kept from going to pieces through the subtle poisbn of greed
and gain, and mean intriguing for place — kept and carried
forward into new perception of the will of Gbd, and new appre
ciation of integrity, and liberty, and justice, and all the condi
tions of progress, it must be largely through vicarious experience.
It must be lafgely through natures who choose to suffer, or who,,
in the creative fiat and providence of God, are so made and
set apart to these sublime uses, thattheir pains to others may be
medical and healing ; that their bloody battle-grounds to others
may be fair harvest fields, and that what are wails and sobs on
their lips may become joyous anthems when others catch up the
strains. So I venture to believe that the highest tribute it is possible
to pay to this man who has gone out from us by such a cruel
and untimely taking off, is to say that God thought him worthy
to, be used in sanctifying the nation — thought him worthy to
stand in the high place and to do the holy work of a nation's
martyr. It is npt the living who are mightiest ; it is the great,
brave dead. The scepter of visible power has fallen from our
leader's hand. He wears no longer the robes of his exalted
office. Some things we looked for and hoped to see accom
plished by him will not be done. But transfigured and glorified
by his long weeks of pain, and lifted above us into the calm of
death, his words shall still inspire and guide us, and his hand
shall still lead us, and his character shall lend us new concep
tions and awe us into new nobility of life ; and all mean things
shall seem meaner, and ail hates shall seem more hateful, and
all the noise, and confusion, jmd eager clutching of bitter
schemers and partisans shall seem more like echoes from the hot
strivings and wranglings of the pit.
As for him — the dead — it is well.

13
" He has outsoared the shadow of our night ;
Envy and calumny, and hate and pain,
And that unrest which men miscall delight,
Can touch him not, and torture not again.
From the contagion of the world's slow stain
He is secure, and now can never mourn
A heart grown cold, a head grown gray in vain;
Nor, when the spirit's self fms ceased to burn,
With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn."
It may be doubted whether any man ever realized more per
fectly than this man whom we now mourn, that this life is only
a gateway to the larger life of the hereafter, and that the
faculties which only just begin to unfold and discover their
powers under the limitations of earth, come into full play and
have free, full scope in that unutterably exalted sphere where
the mortal puts on ,immortality, and the seeing is no longer
through a glass darkly, but face to face. Eager here in his
search for knowledge, and stirred to lofty endeavor by every
bright example, and by^every^yoice which called to higher
attainments and manlier mofewes, what speedings there will be
by his now emancipated spirit along the paths of new-known
truths, and what ecstasy in the use of the finely-trained faculties
of his great soul ! He has gone out from us, but it is not into
night — it is into the presence of God, and the realm of endless
day. " Till the future dares
Forget the past, his fate and fame shall be
An echo and a light unto eternity."

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