SERMON VII.

REV. JOHN MCCLINTOCK, D. D., LL. D.

"Remember them which have the rule over you, follow."-HEB. xiii, 7.

whose faith

IT is the LORD; his will be done. The blow has stunned the nation. Had we no trust in him who conquers even the last enemy, "the victory of the grave" which calls us together to-day would fill us with despair. And even with all the light which the word of God affords, and with all the strength which our faith in God gives us, we can still only say, "His way is in the sea, and his path in the deep waters." We shall know hereafter what he doeth; but we know not now.

"Remember," says our text, and "follow."

There is little fear of our forgetting-there is little fear of the world forgetting the name of ABRAHAM LINCOLN. It was the remark of Heine, the German poet and satirist, that "men preserve the memory of their destroyers better than that of their benefactors; the warrior's name outlasts the philanthropist's." There is some truth in this, taking the world's history as it has been. But it is one of the best signs of the times that men's hearts are, more than ever, attracted by moral greatness, and that all laurels are

not stained with blood. The day is dawning, even though its rising sun be dimmed by clouds, and struggles up amid gloom, and tears and blood, in which the glory of the reformer shall outshine that of the conqueror-in which the

Saints of humanity, strong, yet tender,

Making the present hopeful with their life,

shall be held the true heroes in men's thoughts, as they are the true heroes in the progress of humanity, and before the eye of God. And to this heroic class belongs the name of Abraham Lincoln, who fell, if ever man did, fighting the battles of humanity.

A voice came to us ten days ago from beyond the sea. Here is what it says of Abraham Lincoln: "When the heats of party passion and international jealousy have abated, when detraction has spent its malice, and the scandalous gossip of the day goes the way of all lies, the place of Abraham Lincoln in the grateful affection of his countrymen and in the respect of mankind, will be second only, if it be second, to that of Washington himself." When Robert Cairnes penned those prophetic words, how little did he dream that in a few weeks his prediction should become history! "When the heats of party passion are abated!" A work of long and weary time, no doubt. Yet it has been done in a day. The fame of Abraham Lincoln has not had to wait for the revolving years to set it right. The bullet of the assassin has done the work of an age. To-day that name stands as high before this whole people, of all parties, of all sects, of all classes, as it would have stood in a half a century, had the blow of the assassin never fallen. Party spirit, for the

time at least, is dead. Who thinks of party now? There are doubtless, in this congregation, many men who voted against Abraham Lincoln; is there one of them who does not mourn him to-day? When you heard that Abraham Lincoln was dead-you, who a year ago, perhaps, made his name an object of abuse and calumny; you, whose lips were accustomed to speak of that brave, noble, loving man as a usurper, perhaps, or at least as a foolish imbecile, and an unfit tenant of the highest place in all the worldI ask you, when you heard on Saturday morning that Lincoln was dead, did not your heart throb as never before; did not your throat become husky and the damp gather in your eyes in spite of you, as you spoke of it? Party spirit for the moment is indeed forgotten. Do not forget the lesson; and when your party journals begin, as they will begin very soon, to assail Andrew Johnson, as they have in the past assailed Abraham Lincoln, do not be led away; let not opposition be sullied with calumny or embittered by hate.

The streets of the city of New York, and of every city in the Union, from Portland to San Francisco, are clad in mourning. I have been struck, in going through the poorer streets of this city, to find the emblems of sorrow more general, if possible, on the abodes of the humble and the lowly, than on the stately dwellings of the rich in the grand avenues. All over this land, and over all the civilized world, I dare say, there shall be grief and mourning in the hearts and homes of those who are called the "common people"-of whom was Abraham Lincoln. The "ruling classes" abroad will grieve also, but for a very different reason. The Tories and aristocrats of England

have watched, with fear and wrath, the later progress of the Republic towards triumph; and they will feel the tremor of a new fear when they learn that this good and generous man-so tender, so merciful, so forgiving, so full of all peaceful thoughts, that revenge or cruelty could find no place in his heart; this noble, steadfast man of the people, at whose feet all their taunts and gibes had fallen harmless, whose simple dignity of nature achieved for him that serene indifference, that high superiority to abuse and calumny which have been claimed as the peculiar attributes of what are called high birth and breeding—has passed away from earth. For they were just learning that he loved peace next to justice, and, in the vague terror of their conscious guilt, as abettors of the slaveholders' rebellion, they looked to the gentle ruler, whom they had so vilely traduced, to avert the war which their consciences told them ought to come.

But while, for this reason, there will be real grief among the ruling classes, there shall be sorrow of another sort among all the liberal hearts, among all who have hoped and struggled for the future equality of the race, and who, these four weary years, have been watching the issues of our great war for freedom, with an intensity of feeling only next to our own. As for the working classes, everywhere through the British islands, and on the continent of Europe, the name of Abraham Lincoln had come to be, for them, the synonym of hope for their cause; for

Love had he found in huts, where poor men lie,

not only in every slave cabin in the South, where he is canonized already, but in many a shepherd's lodge of

Switzerland-in many a woodman's cabin of the Black Forest-in many a miner's hut of the Hartz Mountainsin many a cottage in Italy, for there, as well as here, the poor had learned to look upon him as the anointed of God for the redemption of the liberties of mankind. It is but lately that Garibaldi named one of his grandchildren Lincoln, little dreaming how soon that name was to be enrolled among the immortals. Oh! how his great heart will throb, how the tears will roll like bullets down his seamed and furrowed face, when to him shall come the sad message, "Lincoln is dead!"

And now let us ask why all this sorrow? Whence this universal love? Certainly it was not intellectual grandeur that so drew all hearts towards Lincoln. And yet I do not sympathize with much that has been said in disparagement of his intellect, although mere mental gifts, of the highest order, might well have been eclipsed, in the popular estimation, by the sublimity of that moral power which overshadowed all his other qualities. But it is stupid to talk of him as a man of mean intellect. He had a giant's work to do, and he has done it nobly. Called upon to steer the ship of state through the mightiest and most rapid tide of events that ever swept over a nation, he guided her safely, and was within sight of the harbor, when he was struck down at the helm. Even in his speeches and writings, where defects of form reveal the want of early culture and give room for the carping of petty critics who can see no farther than the form, I do not fear to say that the calm criticism of history will find marks of the highest power of mind. Do you remember his little speech over the graves of our martyrs at Gettysburg? I remember