SERMON XVI.

REV. SAMUEL T. SPEAR, D. D.

I MEET you to-day, my friends and fellow-countrymen, under circumstances of the greatest public grief and sorrow. I had risen early Saturday morning to complete the first of two sermons, having for my theme "Victory and its Duties," and expecting to have preached that sermon to you at this time. I waited for the morning paper, and when it came it brought to me, as it did to you, the intelligence of the most awful event in the history of this country. The carrier greeted me with a tearful and saddened countenance, exclaiming: "Sad news this morning! The President is shot!" I could scarcely believe it true; yet I opened the paper and read the dispatches, and saw that it was so. Ere this the news has spread through all parts of the land, kindling emotions in in the hearts of the nation which no words can describe. But yesterday we were joyous and hopeful, thanking God for his mercies, and congratulating each other upon the bright prospects of the future. Our recent victories gave promise of a speedy and lasting peace. We saw, as we supposed, the end of this terrible war. How suddenly and how awfully have our emotions been changed into those of the deepest sorrow! Who can refuse

to weep? Who can withhold his tears or command his feelings at such a moment? And is it so? Has the President of these United States; the personal representative of the honor, glory, and dignity of this nation; the man of the people's choice; the man who has guided the ship of state with consummate wisdom and unfaltering integrity during these stormy years; the man whom God seems to have raised up and signally qualified for the duties of this great crisis—yes, has Abraham Lincoln, good in his greatness and great in his goodness, fallen the victim of murderous assassination, just in the moment of our triumph? And has his honorable Secretary of State been assailed with the instrument of death for a like purpose? We pause in the profoundest astonishment. Our indignation in one direction, and our sorrow in the other, are past all utterance. The American people never felt this as they do to-day. They never before had such an occasion for feeling. We all feel the dreadful blow. It has fallen upon us like a thunderbolt in the midst of our joys. To the deep and pungent thrill of the national heart no human words can do any adequate justice.

1. Looking towards earth, and at man, one instinctively inquires, why has the assassinating hand sought the life of Abraham Lincoln and that of William H. Seward ? Why has the President of these United States been marked for death? The answer is a plain one. It consists in the fact that he was the President, officially entrusted with the executive duty of administering the military power of this government for the suppression of a wanton and wicked rebellion against the constituted authorities of the land. This was Mr. Lincoln's sole offence. The murderous weapon was not aimed at him as a man, but as the President of these United States-as God's minister for the punishment of evil doers and the

praise of them that do well. It was therefore aimed at you and at me at every man, woman and child living under the protection of this government; at public order, at the sanctity of law, at the integrity of the Union, and at the God who commands our subjection to the powers that be. This is the true interpretation of the blow sought to be struck; and this it is that gives significance to the act. We look upon Mr. Lincoln as a murdered President, and not as a man falling in the private walks of life, the victim of a purely personal vengeance. The blood that flowed from his lacerated brain was in the circumstances official blood. The pistol-shot that hurried him to his doom was fired into the heart of the nation. 1 do not wish to stir either your passions or my own to undue violence; yet I think it best in this dreadful hour to look at facts as they are and speak of things as they are. Abraham Lincoln will go down to posterity as a murdered and a martyred President-slain for discharging his duty, honored by God, and trusted by a grateful people. In his death we all feel the pangs of death. Well may the nation bow in grief. Well may all party feeling and rancor subside, while a whole people weep before God under an oppressive sense of the calamity which has befallen them.

2. Looking at the circumstances attending this sad event, we inquire: Whence came the blow? It was on the evening of the day when the flag of the Union again floated in triumph over the war-scarred walls of Fort Sumter. It was when the nation had flung her proud flag to the breeze in the fulness of grateful joy; when victories had seemingly extinguished the last hope of the rebel insurgents; when Jefferson Davis, the traitor and the tyrant, was fleeing from the hand of avenging justice. It was at a time and in a place when and where our great

military commander was expected to be present, who was doubtless marked for the same fate. The thing was done under circumstances that clearly imply plan and concert of action, and more parties than one as involved in this stupendous guilt. Why was Mr. Seward assaulted at the same time and in a different place? And who held the horses of these fiends in human shape, while each proceeded to the work of death? I know not, my friends, who these men are; but I cannot well resist the conclusion that they represent a class-and, I must add, a very large class of those with whom we have been contending in this war, who will rejoice when they hear the news, and laud these murderous wretches as distinguished heroes. I do not say that a large number of persons were directly privy to this assassinating conspiracy; yet, you may depend upon it, the agents thereof had their ac complices. This, let me tell you, is the work of traitors, coming from the same impulses and inspired by the same hellish motives which have governed traitors in seeking the destruction of this government. It is one of the dread incidents of their treason, accomplished in the moment of their extremest desperation. It is the work of men the same in kind as those who sought to wrap the city of New York in one universal conflagration; the same in kind as those who refused all quarter to our colored soldiers at Fort Pillow; the same in kind as those who sacked the city of Lawrence, in Kansas, and murdered its helpless citizens. It is a work proceeding from the same spirit, the same style and temper of humanity, that has, by the precess of slow starvation, deliberately murdered our prisoners of war by thousands and tens of thousands.

Jefferson Davis, the head of the rebel Confederacy, has not personally assassinated the President, I am aware-per

haps he had no direct connection with this atrocious murder-yet, by his authority, by his agents, with his knowledge and approbation, thousands of our soldiers have been literally starved to death in rebel prisons. General Lee may be a Christian gentleman-some people say he is— yet he is a traitor to his country, who richly deserves to be hung for his crimes. Libby Prison and Belle Isle were directly under his eye at Richmond; he knew how our prisoners were treated in those dens of death as well as elsewhere; he was, too, the man of great influence in the Confederate government; and when and where did General Lee ever lift his voice, or do a solitary thing to mitigate these outrageous enormities? I am speaking in a plain way. My soul is stirred within me. These are serious times. Let me tell you, my friends and fellow countrymen, that this act of assassination does not stand alone by itself. It is one of a series. It has a common basis with other acts of kindred character. It represents and identifies itself with a class of acts, as it will crown them with an immortality of infamy. It is the creature of treason; and this treason is the child of slavery; and this slavery has made the traitors barbarians, who would rather rule in hell than submit in heaven. The history of this war proves it. We may as well understand first as last with what kind of men we are and have been dealing in this dreadful contest of arms. They are desperate men. slavery has made them insensible to the rights of our common humanity, ruined their moral sense, and just fitted them for the work of treason and death. Our excellent President, for whom we have so often thanked the God of heaven, who in his life so beautifully recognized the providence and the grace of the King of kings, from whose past wisdom we have received so many blessings, and in whose future we had hoped so largely, now lies in