The thoughts of our late President respecting the welfare, peace, and prosperity of the county, though they lingered with him to the last, have perished. He had done his work of subduing the rebellion. Other hands must do the work of punishing the rebels and reconstructing the government, and in this, as in the other, we need the Divine guidance and blessing.

Not Seward nor all the wisdom of the national council, but God, must help us to the end. And as his hand has been so obviously in the great struggle guiding our armies, may we not hope that he will be with us presiding over our councils in the restoration of peace and union? And in this work of pacification and reconstruction, in my utterance this day I think I have the mind of God. If I were the President I would show no mercy to traitors and rebels and assassins at the expense of justice. I would see to it that the majesty of law was vindicated and the government sustained, if it required a whole hecatomb of human victims. Shall we hate and punish theft and arson, and murder, and shall we fraternize with treason and rebellion? "Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon, lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph."

Again, had I the ears of the heads of this government, I would say, in its reconstruction, whatever else you do or fail to do, let not one vestige or germ of that accursed system, which has been the cause of all our trouble, remain. Let it be uptorn, root and branch, and thrown into the great dead sea of past time! Let there be no yielding, no concession, no compromise here, unless you would have history repeat itself in a second fratricidal, and still more desperate and bloody war!

The only remaining utterance or voice which comes to

us from the life and the grave of our lamented President, is in reference to the evanescent nature of all earthly good. He had reached the acme of human fame; he was the commander in chief of half a million of armed men; he was the ruler of a mighty nation; he was in the meridian of his days; he was esteemed for his personal character and worth; and yet in a moment how is the mighty fallen, and all the glory of his fame is to him as though it had never been.

But few of all the wrestlers reach the goal of their ambition, or realize their hopes. And such as do, have only stood for a short time on the giddy height, and then vanished like the passing meteor, or died a sudden and, perhaps, a violent death. Cæsar met with the assassin's dagger in the Roman senate. Charles the First, King of England, and Mary, Queen of Scots, were beheaded. Henry the Fourth, King of France, died by the knife of the assassin. Napoleon the First was banished. Alexander, after his brilliant career, died in a drunken revel, at an early age. And now our beloved President is added, as an illustration of the vanishing nature of all human greatness. He, too, has died by the hand of violence.

"Death sitteth in the Capitol! His sable wing

Flung its black shadow o'er a country's hope,
And lo! a nation bendeth down in tears."

It is

Never was grief so heartfelt and universal. said that death loves a shining mark, and often against such are his swiftest arrows hurled. All that we love, value, venerate, and press to our hearts, must bow to the inevitable decree, "Dust thou art, and unto dust thou must return." But when the end comes by violence, how doubly inconsolable is the grief! But still

this tragedy has its voice, and will answer its providential end.

"A thrill of horror through the nation sweeps,

And tears of anguish from the eyelids fall;

All party ties and lines forgotten are,

And thus in grief, if not in patriotic joy,

The nation is as one.

"Twere well to weep such tears,

They purge the heart, and to the soul give strength
To do great deeds, when deeds are needed most;
Who loves his country, therefore, shame not now
O'er her great woe, with me to weep.

For now each sigh is but a bitter oath,

Each tear a seal, which makes the oath a bond,
That every loyal heart doth feel and swear

Upon the altar of his country's cause,

Which, by the sacrilegious hand of one
Who would deface the noblest work of God
Without a sigh, hath been outraged,

As never did a fiend the laws of God
Or man outrage before!"

But the assassin, though he may elude the vigilance of the government for a time, cannot escape. The mark of Cain is on his brow, the murderer's guilt is on his soul, and the Nemesis of vengeance will find him out, and bring him to an awful retribution. But though justice may thus be satisfied, though the act may have been suffered in the Divine providence to tone up the public mind to a keener sense of retributive justice, still all this does not recall the people's favorite-the type-man of his time-our generous, noble, and patriotic President.

"Gone, gone, gone, to his blest and honored grave,
Gone, gone, alas! our noble, and true, and brave;

When fond hopes clustered around his life,

When every heart with love was rife,

Our brave, true chieftain fell.

Lincoln, Lincoln, beloved, fare thee well! Our country's flag around him fold, What shroud more meet for heart so brave, A nation's prayer shall bless his mould, A nation's tears bedew his grave.

And shall we bear one word of scorn? One rebel taunt, one hostile sneer?

No! freemen, no! his foes we spurn, And pledge our fealty round his bier. Freemen behold your murdered chief, His memory to your care we trust;

Let mercy mingle with your grief, But strike the traitors to the dust.

Sleep on, brave chief, the flag you bore O'er North and South, shall surely wave, And Union, peace, and love once more Shall meet and mourn around your grave."

SERMON XV.

REV. J. E. ROCKWELL, D. D.

"All ye that are about him bemoan him; and all ye that know his name say, how is the strong staff broken and the beautiful rod."-JEREMIAH xlviii. 17.

"The Lord's voice crieth unto the city, and the man of wisdom shall see thy name; hear ye the rod, and who hath appointed it."-MICAH vi. 9.

THE solemn providence which has called our nation to mourning in the very midst of its joy and exultation over the hopes of returning peace, finds a most appropriate expression in these words of inspired wisdom. For the third time since our existence as an independent government, we have been called upon to mourn over the death of our Chief Magistrate. Yet never before has the nation passed through such an experience as this. At the close of four long and weary years of bloody war against the foulest and most causeless rebellion that had ever stained the annals of the world, our nation was exultant over the tidings of victories which it was evident to all were soon to end the struggle. Our President, but lately taking the oath of office for a second term of service, had returned home from a visit to the city which had been the seat and centre of rebellion, and from which the grand and only important army in the interest of traitors had been

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