controlling and directing all these results. We looked to his experience and wisdom to conduct the war to a successful and honorable termination, and to guide us to a happy and permanent peace. We expected his wisdom and sagacity to settle the remaining difficult questions of restoration and reconstruction. God is saying to us by this dispensation, that the work is not man's but God's, and is teaching this nation not to trust in an arm of flesh, nor in the wisdom of men, but in Him. He brings to the helm of the ship of state one without executive national experience, through whose instrumentality He will accomplish His work.

I believe that God designed also, by this dispensation, to teach us not to invade the sanctity of the sabbath. He has frequently taught us, in our own bitter experience, that we cannot violate and desecrate His Holy day with impunity. This war has taught us, on many a battle field, that God will not succeed that army, that disregards the claims of the sabbath. This seems to be a lesson of the same import― a judgment sent, because we as a people had been guilty of disregarding the claims of the sabbath. When the news of the victory of our arms over the confederate forces and of the surrender of Lee's army, flashed along our telegraph wires on that sabbath evening, what was the conduct of our citizens? We know what the proceedings were here, and saw from the journals of the country that the same demonstrations were witnessed in other sections of the Union. Notwithstanding it

was the holy sabbath when the news reached us, the people became intoxicated with excitement, and, in their uncontrolled enthusiasm, proceeded to such lengths in their rejoicings as ill became the sacredness of the day which God has set apart as a day of rest, to be kept holy unto Himself. Appropriate as such proceedings might have been at another time, they were a shameful desecration of the Lord's day. When I heard these demonstrations and remembered that it was the sabbath, and reflected that God is a God of justice as well as a God of compassion, I trembled for the consequences. I felt that there was yet in store for us, a more dreadful retribution, a more awful judgment. God will not suffer the sins of a people to go unpunished, he will not suffer us in our rejoicings over victory, willfully to profane his day, or violate his law and command.

Another design in this judgment - a lesson plainly taught is to show the enormity of the crime of slavery, the wicked spirit it excites and fosters in the hearts of its abettors, and God's detestation of the system and the men who have endeavored to uphold and propagate it by the instigation of rebellion. That God brought about this war and directed it so as to destroy the system of slavery, the logic of events has convinced the most sceptical. In this matter, the leadings of this providence are unmistakable. But how does God teach his abhorrence of this system by suffer

ing its greatest antagonist, the champion of human rights and liberty to be cut off? He evinces His detestation, by showing that the spirit that supported and upheld slavery, prompted the assassin to murder Abraham Lincoln.

God designs also, by this event, to measure out the punishment due to traitors, a severer punishment than they would have received had our president been spared. Lincoln was compassionate and merciful, and would doubtless have been disposed to pardon, or to mitigate the punishment of those who have been in rebellion against our government. God is a God of justice. To extend mercy to those who have been guilty of instigating and carrying on this bloody and cruel rebellion, would be to sacrifice the justice of God. The justice of God will not be satisfied if the leaders in this rebellion escape unpunished. He would not be with Joshua and the children of Israel, unless they should mete out justice to the guilty; neither will he be with us until we destroy the accursed from among us. The man who deliberately murders his fellow man, forfeits his life under the law of God, and the law of the country. There is something inherently criminal in murder that cannot. be expiated save by the blood of the murderer. "The land cannot be cleansed from blood, but by the blood of him that shed it." So may God have ordained that our land shall not be cleansed from the blood of this war, except by the life and blood of

those who instituted and supported this war. Mercy to traitors would be injustice to the nation: it would be cruelty to humanity, and would grant a license for murder and rebellion in all time to come. That justice may be meted out to those who are deserving of punishment, God has placed at our head, a man of sterner nature—one who will be disposed to bring them to condign punishment, and suffer the law to visit the crime of treason with its unmitigated penalty

-one who has been made to feel the severity of rebel barbarity, and will be the better qualified to determine, when punishment is commensurate with crime. That is a morbid sentiment, existing in sosiety, which transfers our sympathies from the murdered to the criminal, and demands that mercy be extended to him, and that justice be not vindicated. Such a sentiment our better judgment will not approve, and God in his word, and now by his special providence, seems clearly to condemn it.

In conclusion, let us learn this lesson, that men may pass away, but principle and truth will never decay. The enemies of truth and of free government may murder the defenders of truth and the supporters of free government, but the principles still live. Abraham Lincoln is dead, but, God be praised, the government is not dead! Our country and the Union survive. He was raised up for a special purpose, his work is finished, and he has been taken to his account. He was a martyr to liberty, to truth, and free

government. For the defence of these he devoted the energy of his life. Upon the altar of his country he yielded that life a sacrifice. The enemies of our nation may plot its overthrow, they may conspire to hinder the progress of truth, justice, and right, but all their schemes will be rendered futile by the God of heaven, and instead of being weakened by their opposition, the nation will be made stronger. God will raise up other defenders, who will support, maintain, and perpetuate it, until every nation upon the face of the earth will have guaranteed and secured to it, a free government, and every individual of which such government is composed, shall enjoy the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

"Truth crushed to earth shall rise again :
The eternal years of God are hers;
But Error, wounded, writhes with pain,
And dies among his worshippers."

OTHER SERVICES.

At the First Baptist church, the pastor, Rev. Dr. George C. Baldwin, preached a sermon from these words, "The just Lord is in the midst thereof," taken from the fifth verse of the third chapter of Zephaniah. The subject of his discourse was "God's law of retribution as illustrated in our late national history." "He pictured the barbarities of slavery, and showed how the south, in trying to secure the perpetuation of