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that his spiritual temperament had been more ardent and hopeful; that the severe tasks of duty had been sometimes relieved by the prophetic imagination of coming glory. Yet, though not, by nature, of a peculiarly religious organization, he did come to a very sublime height of religious faith, came to it through years of patient toil and endurance and suffering and brave fidelity to duty. We have had presidents who were more punctual in religious observances; but we never had one who believed more really in God, or more truly walked with Him in daily life. In the speeches and official papers of no former president, has religious faith shown itself to be so vital an element of character and of official conduct. From the day that he took leave of his neighbors in Illinois and requested them to remember him in their prayers, to the morning that his soul, through ruffian violence, was released from its weary, toil-worn body, his life was inspired, and sustained, and borne up higher every day, by this firm trust in God. Literally, he believed himself to be president of the republic "under God." His utterances of faith are sometimes of the Cromwellian order. Still, there was no rapture of divine communion, no enthusiasm, no fanaticism. There was stern self-denial and selfconsecration; but no joyous abandonment of self to religious emotion. He made vows before God, and was in agony of travail until they should be accomplished. His will was utterly surrendered to the divine will; but it was the conscious self-surrender of a strong man to Almighty power and wisdom, rather than the instinctive nestling of a dependent child in the arms of Infinite love.

But, though with never ceasing strain upon his will, and

with a sense of duty never relaxed, he had to climb the whole rugged ascent to his height of faith, what a sublime height it was when once attained! His last inaugural address measures a majesty and comprehensiveness of religious faith of which we shall hardly find the like among all the great civil magistrates of the world, living or dead. It reminds us of Cromwell's official speech; but it surpasses the papers of England's Great Protector, since it rises above all taint of bigotry and all color and warmth of partisanship. Unique as a State paper, we shall with difficulty find for it a fitting comparison save in the utterances of Moses, Isaiah, and Paul. Here is a faith which has come "out of great tribulation," and washed its robes, and made them white in the blood of sacrifice; a faith which "through much tribulation" has climbed very close to the portal of the kingdom of God. Let the stealthy assassin strike when he will. Any moment will be too soon for the nation; but for such a faith, earth can never too soon pass away: for Heaven is already won.

The memorial of this man, my friends, is with us. Great in personal influence and power, great in logical and practical ability, great in all moral and humane faculties, great in religious faith, Abraham Lincoln takes his position by unquestionable right in the calendar of exceptional great men. The leader of one of the four greatest civil powers of the world in a triumphant contest against the most gigantic rebellion that the world has known; the representative of democratic liberty in a fierce struggle for national existence with aristocracy and despotism; the emancipator

of millions of slaves, and, through the connection of events, the practical destroyer of the institution of slavery throughout the whole territory of the United States; the martyr, slain in the hour of his triumph by the consummate wickedness of the cause he had contended against, and sealing his testimony to democratic liberty with his blood,—he will take his place in history, not only among the men of rare greatness, but among the great men who had also rare opportunities, and filled them with rare achievements. Great in endeavor and in power, great always in goodness, he was equally great in fortune and success. To his name the muse of history will affix the title,-the Preserver of the American Union; the Destroyer of American slavery; the Representative Man of American Democracy. The memorial of his virtue is immortal: being "known with God and with men." Present, it was our example and guide; gone, we desire it: "it weareth a crown and triumpheth forever, having gotten the victory, striving for undefiled rewards." National Fast, June 1, 1865.

F

IV.

THE DRAMATIC ELEMENT IN THE CAREER OF

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

For where a testament is, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator: for a testament is of force after men are dead. Hebrews ix. 16, 17.

I owe, perhaps, an apology for venturing to renew a theme on which so much has already been spoken, and for attempting to say to-day what might have been more appropriately said last Thursday, had not the subject grown under my pen into unforeseen proportions. But it is sweet to linger in the fragrance of a good man's memory. The part, moreover, that Abraham Lincoln has acted in our history can never become old or worn. It is a career upon which historians will ever love to dwell, and which will never lose its charm for the people. And after all that has been spoken and written concerning him, there is yet one phase of his wonderful life and tragic destiny which has great attractiveness, and which I have hinted at once or twice in previous discourses, but which, so far as I have seen, has not anywhere been fully developed or much noticed. Mr. Sumner, in his eulogy just spoken, touches more closely upon what I refer to than any other writer or speaker whose words have come

to my eye; but the object he had proposed to himself did not allow him to more than skirt the border of this phase of the great theme.

The point of view that I have in mind, is the perfect dramatic unity and progress of Abraham Lincoln's life;-the wonderful line of destiny, or of providence, by which his career, from his birth to his death, was unfolded, in all its parts and acts, and through all its shiftings of place and scene and time, on the thread of a single vital truth, and to a single moral end. This life moves across the stage of history with the dramatic march of one of Homer's heroes. The stern demands of ancient Grecian tragedy were not more observed by its great artists in their greatest works, than they have been observed in the actual life of this American president. Here must be no side issues; no confounding of moral lessons; no division and distraction of one prevailing moral purpose and force; no departure, amid whatever private or professional or domestic episodes, or whatever change and variety of action, from the one truth which this individual career from its outset was chosen to embody and to teach for humanity: from its entrance on the stage of earthly being to its exit, this life must be moved by one inexorable purpose and will, and march to one inevitable fate,-in order to print upon the heart of the world one of the grandest truths of human civilization and government and progress.

This is our theme. But why bring it here, and make it a subject of religious meditation? It may belong to the dramatist and the poet, it may serve the uses of the lectureroom and the magazine, but why bring it to the church?

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