the friend of the oppressed, the sun of the benighted, the messenger of a resurrection to all the slumbering hopes of humanity, the great benediction of God to the world. Oh! if this picture may be a reality, and if this awful catastrophe which has clothed us in mourning shall but help on the grand consummation, then, indeed, our lamented President will have blessed his country and the world far more in death than in his life, and this last climax of agony and blood will not have been reached in vain.

SERMON XIV.

REV. S. D. BURCHARD, D. D.

"And by it, he being dead yet speaketh."-HEBREWS xi. 4.

THE chapter from which our text is taken contains a record of the achievements of faith in the days of the patriarchs—a record designed to stimulate us in these far-off ages of the Christian Church.

"By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts; and by it he being dead yet speaketh."

Abel, the accepted worshipper and martyred brother, still lives in his faith and speaks in his example, declaring that sin can be pardoned only through the propitiation of Christ, of which his offering was the appropriate and sig nificant type. Though this is the personal and primary reference of this brief sentence, it may be regarded as containing a general principle-a lesson to the living, as well as a touching memorial of the dead.

The world is full of voices-the voices of those that have lived, but are gone.

Their utterences did not cease when their voice was no longer heard.

They have a continuous oratory, awakening emotions. and memories in the nursery, around the family hearthstone, and in the places of public concourse. Does not the voice of the little child still linger in your dwelling, though its form is no longer visible? Do not its familiar toys, its unused dress, its well-remembered smile, its last kiss speak in a tone of pathos such as no living voice could articulate?

Our fathers and mothers may be gone. Long years may have passed since the tie of affection was sundered, and we wept disconsolate orphans over their graves, but the father speaks still in his manly words and deeds, and the mother in the closet of her devotions.

The great-the good-the loving live; they are invisible, yet life is filled with their presence. They are with us in the sacredness and seclusion of home-in the paths of society, and in the crowded assemblies of men. They speak to us from the lonely wayside-from the council halls of the nation, and from the sanctuaries that echo to the voice of prayer.

Go where we will and the dead are with us. Their well-remembered tones mingle with the voices of nature— with the sound of the autumn leaf-with the jubilee shout of the spring time.

Every man who departs leaves a voice and an influence behind him.

The graves of the peasant and of the prince are alike Vocal. The sepulchral vault in which the remains of our beloved President were laid the other day, as well as the cold, wet, opening earth in which the humble laborer was buried, utters a silent yet all-subduing oratory. From every one of the dead a voice is heard in the living circles of men, which the knell of their departure does not drown, which the earth and the green sod do not muffle,

which neither deafness nor distance, nor anything that man may devise, can possibly extinguish. The cemetery often speaks more thrilling accents than the senate house, and the chamber of the dead is often more eloquent than the council hall of the living. You perceive the sentiment then, which we gather from the text, that the influence of a man in his deeds and words while living survive him, so that he being dead yet speaketh, and his words and influence may abide forever through the ages.

Let this thought engage our meditations and give us fresh incentives to virtue and usefulness. It is a thought which may well mingle in the solemnities of this hour.

The nation weeps over the tragic end of its chief magistrate, but his kindly words and well-remembered deeds are left us as an imperishable legacy. They are enshrined in our hearts, and will live in our lives, and will help to form the nation's life and character.

Does not the principle thus stated find illustration in our daily life and experience? Do not the sayings and doings of your departed friends often arrest you in the stir of business or pleasure, imparting a new impulse either for good or evil? Do not their words often echo in the chambers of memory, stirring the heart to its deepest depths? Do not their features and forms start into bright contrast with the darkness of actual absence, and make the present radiant with the light of early recollections? Do not the sounds of the one and the sight of the other daguerreotype themselves upon our moral life?

Can we isolate and divest ourselves utterly from the impressions made upon us by those who have ceased to move in the throng of living men?

We are shaped and moulded in our characters, not less by the memories and forces of the past, than by the surroundings of the present. We are checked and stimula

ted by the example and teaching of those who have rested. from their labors, and which now come to us like a prophet's voice from out the dark and dreamlike past.

A young man, for instance, who has been trained under the best maternal influence, becomes restless and discontented, and leaves the home of his childhood and the restraints of former years, and yields himself a victim to passion and to crime. In the lapse of time, and in the far-off land of his prodigality, the ghosts of departed scenes of innocence flit before him, and the voice of the heart-broken mother rings amid his heart's emptiness, and though dead, she yet speaketh with an emphasis and effect she could not command when living.

We may vary the illustration and take that of a departed minister of Christ. He stood as the ambassador of God, and his eye kindled with the fires of inspiration, and his face glowed with rapture as he gave utterance to the great messages of truth and salvation. He shunned not to declare the whole counsel of God:

"Yet he was humble, kind, forgiving, mild,
And with all patience and affection taught,
Rebuked, persuaded, solaced, counselled, warned,
In fervent style and manner. Needy poor
And dying men, like music, heard his feet
Approach their beds, and guilty wretches took
New hope, and in his prayers wept and smiled
And blessed him as they died forgiven; and all
Saw in his face contentment, in his life
The path to glory and perpetual joy."

But he died! the voice that brought consolation to the mourner's heart has become silent. The tongue which poured forth the irresistible stream of sacred eloquence has become mute and still. The eye that kindled with almost insufferable lustre has become rayless, and the lips on which hundreds hung with breathless attention