it, in the interlacing gloom and glory, required, from the eastern sages who saw his star, and the Bethlehem shepherds who heard his angelic escort, and from the Roman sentinel at his cross, watching all the portents of his death, the acknowledgment that this was indeed the King of Israel and the Son of God. But the Day-dawn from on high, thus visiting us, was, both in its mortal sun-rising and in its mortal sun-setting, begirt with clouds. The first comers saw an infant laid in the manger of the inn, the feeding trough of the cattle. The earliest gossip of Hebrew newsmongers, about the visit of the wise men and the star guiding them, was soon intermingled with the tale of the butcheries that left the mothers of Bethlehem frenzied mourners. The attendants around the last scenes of our Lord's earthly career beheld and heard a bruised and plaintive sufferer, and in the cross where he hung saw probably but a trunk, in aspect quite like to the two contiguous stakes where writhed, on his right hand and his left, two ordinary, vulgar, and ill-favored malefactors.

And, as in the Scripture, and in the very Incarnation, the gloom lay, in broad, mantling folds, around and beside the glory, so, too, in his daily Providence, does he allow himself to seem, at times, withdrawn and concealed, in disappointment of our confiding expectations-in disar rangement often of the wisest human plans, and in what, at least, looks like. indifference to our highest interests. Like the disciples in their gloomy conference on the way to Emmaus, we are perplexed at the frustration, so rude, of what seemed hopes so blessed and so just. Why does Falsehood have for an hour currency, and even, not for weeks only, but for entire centuries, in the realms ruled

over by a God of truth? Why is Wrong ever allowed a span of impunity-however narrow be that span-under the very eye-lids of a God alike almighty and all-righteous? We may answer, without danger of presumption: Because a state of moral probation for our race requires the doubt and the trial, in order to test the fullness of our loyal trust in the Sovereign and Father; and in order to awaken and to reward the earnestness and importunity of our filial prayers. We walk by faith, and not by sight. Our hope must be fetched from the unseen; for, as the apostle argues, "What a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?" So, too, by sharp and sudden reverses, he weans us from self-reliance, and from undue confidence in our fellow mortal, and braces our trust, more directly and more firmly, upon his own all-sufficiency and unchangeableness. He stains, by disaster, the pride of all human glorying, and checks, by flickering shades of uncertainty and be reavement, the brightest of our earthly blessings, that man may find nothing beyond Himself-the All-in-All. Here the parent weeps over the child's empty cradle. There the orphan, through blinding tears, gazes on a parent's vacant place. He reminds us of sin, in the perpetual visits of death, and in the suddenness of its inroads; and he warns us against heedless provocations, and habitual sluggishness, by startling rebuffs, and unlooked-for humiliations and desolations. So, too, it comes to pass, that his richest mercies visit us often in the guise, or in the train, of heavy judgments; and so, on many a shore, his judgments upon a nation are made the forerunners of richest consolation and widest revival to his churches. His keen chastisements but plough and harrow the soil

for harvests of unexampled blessing, enrichment, and disenthralment. The darkness makes the light more vivid while it shines, but the returning shadows teach us that the light is heaven's boon, not man's perquisite. So, to his ancient Israel, amid the wonders of the Exodus, while the angel of the Lord, in the cloudy, fiery pillar, led them, there was a continuous admonition of the Divine inspection and control. And yet that captain of the Lord's host walked in darkness, nor let the sound of his footsteps be heard by the quickest ear in all the camps that he now broke up, and that he now again pitched. Yet occasionally and gloriously was the shout of a king heard, resounding in those same encampments. He was their Saviour, but, ordinarily, an unseen one. He was their Conductor, but, most commonly, an inaudible one. He was their Omnipresent Keeper, neither slumbering nor sleeping; but no eye was wont to catch sight of their guardian's feet, and no groping quest felt distinctly the pulses of the guardian's outstretched and guiding hand. Among them and before them—their van-guard and their rear-ward-he yet hid himself from them; constant, and watchful, and bounteous Saviour, though he evermore continued to be.

Now, in days of calamity and trial, we are prone to exaggerate this trait of the divine conduct towards us, as if it were on his part abandonment and desertion-as if, in the sudden lurch given by the ship of the state under the stress of the storm, the helm of the universe had swept out of the Divine Pilot's hand. We complain, with Job, of looking for the Most High on the right hand and the left, alike in vain; of failing, as we go forward, or as we re

trace backward our past steps, to discover any further proofs of his closeness to us, and of his interest in our concerns. Is the Mighty and the Just One, any longer, near to us, midst bereavement and disaster, and crimes that unite such cruelty and treachery to such seeming impunity?

A chief magistrate, chosen to his high post in most difficult times a man of the people, in his training, and tastes, and habits, and utterances, but simple, massive, sincere, kindly and patient, had filled his first term of four years. And now, but in the second month of his second term of four years, he is congratulating us on the apparent success of the gigantic conflict, in which he and we had embarked for the vindication of the national unity and life. Four years since had the flag of the Union been lowered at Fort Sumter in South Carolina, as the attempted revolution began its treacherous outbreak. On the very anniversary which completed four years of time from the descent of that flag adown the staff whence it had long floated, the noble officer who had been compelled to surrender the post is instructed to raise it again on the ruinous mound. He has probably done it on that fortress of our southern coast. But, unknown to him and to his associates who have been thus heralding the failure of Treason, bearded in its own den, and the return of Authority and Nationality to these their rightful outposts-that president, under whose orders they act, is, at the very centre and seat of the national government, himself smitten down. It is not in Richmond, the surrendered capital of the baffled revolt, that this occurs; but in Washington, where, for four years of what had almost seemed a garrison life, he had been each month of the preceding

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terin in greater apparent danger of such assault than now. And this, too, when in a recent visit to that recovered city of Richmond, this eminent victim had shown such disposition to welcome the return of the worsted and baffled insurgents, by a gentleness and magnanimity which four years of contumelious obloquy had not soured, and with a parental indulgence that many of his staunchest supporters blamed as extreme. Shrewd, apt, penetrating, and yet familiar, honest and firm, he had established himself—against strongest disadvantages-in the popular heart, and in the esteem of the friends of freedom in the Old World. was widely hailed as akin to our first President Washington in the simplicity, breadth, disinterestedness and integrity of his character; called of Providence, as he seemed to be, to become the Restorer over a wider territory and against a fiercer foe, where Washington had been the Founder. He fell, not by an open, manful attack, but under a shot fired without warning, from behind: not, in a collision waged upon equal terms, but by an assault marked with a ferocious disregard of all equality of risks, he is dispatched unawares. And the murderer mouths, with a flourish of his dagger, "Such be evermore the tyrant's fate," a motto borrowed from the escutcheon of Virginia, and, upon that State's shield, surrounding a presentiment of David with the head of Goliath. It was as if the cowardly stabber would plant himself, in his frenzied avenging of the cause of oppression, on the glorious plane of David, the fearless champion of Israel's freedom, and of Israel's God; and would fain make his victim a huge, lawless, godless Gittite, who had invaded a country not his own while actually that murdered magistrate was but