the promise of a new life, a glorious resurrection, is there not a winged but viewless Comforter, noiselessly fluttering in at the windows of all Christian homes, and gently stirring in the hearts that have inherited their fathers' faith, the blessed assurance of God's eternal love; of the soul's superiority to time and sense, to death and hell; of the supporting presence of a Saviour's love and care, with all the gracious invitations, encouragements, and comforts that breathe from the Gospels, vital with the spirit and life, the death and resurrection of him whose history they record? Can we read the New Testament to-day and feel that it is only common print that we peruse? Are Christ's living words only remembered phrases? or do we seem to hear them spoken from heaven by him who is the Word of God, and with a music and a meaning that all "the harpers, harping with their harps," could not intensify or sweeten, making our souls burn within us as when of old he walked and talked by the way, at Emmaus, with his disciples?

It is, dear brethren, the faith, and hope, and trust of hose inspired by the Comforter Jesus sent, that enables us to confront without utter dismay the appalling visitation that has just fallen with such terrible suddenness upon the country and the national cause! With a heart almost withered, a brain almost paralyzed by the shock, I turn in vain for consolation to any other than the Comforter. Just as we were wreathing the laurels of our victories and the chaplets of our peace in with the Easter flowers that bloom around the empty sepulchre of our ascended Lord; just as we were preparing the fit and luminous celebration of a nation's joy in its providential deliverance from a most bloody and costly war, and feeling that the Resur

rection of Christ was freshly and gloriously interpreted by the rising of our smitten, humiliated, reviled, and crucified country, buried in the distrust of foreign nations and the intentions of rebel hearts; a country rising from the tomb, where she had left as discarded grave-clothes, the accursed vestments of slavery that had poisoned, enfeebled, and nearly destroyed her first life; a country rising to a higher, purer existence, under the guidance of a chief whom it fondly thought sent from above to lead it cautiously, wisely, conscientiously, successfully, like another Moses, through the Red Sea into its promised land; just then, at the proud moment when the nation, its four years of conflict fully rounded, had announced its ability to diminish its armaments, withdraw its call for troops and its restric tions on intercourse, comes as out of a clear heaven the thunderbolt that pierces the tender, sacred head that we were ready to crown with a nation's blessings, while trusting to its wisdom and gentleness, its faithfulness and prudence, the closing up of the country's wounds, and the appareling of the nation, her armor laid aside, in the white robes of peace.

Our beloved President, who had enshrined himself not merely in the confidence, the respect, and the gratitude of the people, but in their very hearts, as their true friend, adviser, representative, and brother; whom the nation loved as much as it revered; who had soothed our angry impatience in this fearful struggle with his gentle moderation and passionless calm; who had been the head of the nation, and not the chief of a successful party; and had treated our enemies like rebellious children, and not as foreign foes, providing even in their chastisement for

mercy and penitent restoration; our prudent, firm, humble, reverential, God-fearing President is dead!

The assassin's hand has reached him who was belted round with a nation's devotion, and whom a million soldiers have hitherto encircled with their watchful guardianship. Panoplied in honesty and simplicity of purpose, too universally well-disposed to believe in danger to himself, free from ambition, self-consequence and show, he has always shown a fearless heart, gone often to the front, made himself accessible to all at home, trusted the people, joined their amusements, answered their summons, and laid himself open every day to the malice and murderous chances of domestic foes. It seemed as if no man could raise his hand against that meek ruler, or confront with purpose of injury that loving eye, that sorrow-stricken face, ploughed with care, and watchings, and tears. So marked with upright, patient purposes of good to all, of justice and mercy, of sagacious roundabout wisdom, was his homely, paternal countenance, that I do not wonder that his murderer killed him from behind, and could not face the look that would have disarmed him in the very moment of his criminal madness.

But he has gone! ABRAHAM LINCOLN, President of the United States during the most difficult, trying, and important period of the nation's history; safe conductor of our policy through a crisis such as no other people ever had to pass; successful summoner of a million and a quarter of American citizens to arms in behalf of their flag and their Union; author of the Proclamation of Emancipation; the people's President; the heir of Washington's place at the hearths and altars of the land; the legitimate idol of

the negro race; the perfect type of American democracy; the astute adviser of our generals in the field; the careful student of their strategy, and their personal friend and inspirer; the head of his Cabinet, prevailing, by the passionless simplicity of his integrity and unselfish patriotism, over the larger experience, the more brilliant gifts, the more vigorous purposes of his constitutional advisers; a President, indeed; not the mere figure-head of the state, but its helmsman and pilot; shrinking from no perplexity, magnanimous in self-accusation and in readiness to gather into his own bosom the spears of rebuke aimed at his counselors and agents; the tireless servant of his placeno duty so small and wearisome that he shirked it, none so great and persistent that he sought to fling it upon others; the man who, fully tried, (not without fitful vacillations of public sentiment, which visited on him the difficulties of the times and the situation), tried through four years in which every quality of the man, the statesman, the Christian, was tested; in the face of a jeering enemy, and foreign sneers, and domestic ribaldry, elected again by overwhelming majorities to be their chief and their representative during another term of office, in which it was supposed even superior qualities and services would be required to meet the nation's exigencies-this tried, this honored, this beloved head of the Government and the country is, alas! suddenly snatched from us at the moment of our greatest need and our greatest joy, and taken up higher to his heavenly reward! Thank God, he knew how the nation loved and reverenced him; his reelection was the most solid proof of that which could possibly have been given. He had tasted, too, the negro's

pious gratitude, and tearful, glorious affection! He had lived to give the order for ceasing our preparations for war--an act almost equivalent to proclaiming peace! He had seen of the travail of his soul, and was satisfied. He had done the work of a life in his first term of service; almost every day of his second term, not forty days old, had been marked with victories, until no good news could have been received that would have much swelled his joy and honest pride! And now, as the typical figure, the historic name of this great era, its glory rounded and full, the Almighty Wisdom has seen fit to close the record, and isolate the special work he has done, lest by any possible mischance the flawless beauty and symmetric oneness of the President's career should be impaired, its unique glory compromised by after issues, or its special lustre mixed with rays of another color, though it might be of an equal splendor!

The Past, at least, is secure! Nothing can touch him further. Standing the central form in the field of this mighty, providential struggle, he fitly represents the purity, calmness, justice, and mercy of the loyal American people; their unconquered resolution to conquer secession and break slavery in pieces; their sober, solid sense; their religious confidence that God is on their side, and their cause the cause of universal humanity! Let us be reconciled to the appointment which has released that weighty and patient head, that pathetic, tender heart, that worn and weary hand from the perplexing details of national rehabilitation. Let the lesser, meaner cares and anxieties of the country fall on other shoulders than those which have borne up the pillars of the nation when shaken with the earthquake.