hast enough suffered. Thou hast beheld Him who invariably led thee in this great wilderness. Thou standest among the elect; around thee are the royal men that have ennobled human life in every age; kingly art thou, with glory on thy brow as a diadem, and joy is upon thee for evermore! Over all this land, over all the little cloud of years that now, from thine infinite horizon, waver back from thee as a spark, thou art lifted up as high as the star is above the clouds that hide us, but never reach it. In the goodly company of Mount Zion thou shalt find that rest which so many have sought in vain, and thy name, an everlasting name in heaven, shall flourish in fragrance and beauty as long as men shall last upon the earth, or hearts remain to revere truth, fidelity, and goodness. Never did two such orbs of experience meet in the same hemisphere as the joy and sorrow of the same week in this land. The joy was as sudden as if no man had expected it, and as entrancing as if it had fallen from heaven. It rose up over sobriety, and swept business from its moorings, and down through the land in irresistible course. Men wept and embraced each other; they sang or prayed, or deeper yet, could only think thanksgiving and weep gladness. That peace was sure that government was firmer than ever—the land was cleansed of plague—that ages were opening to our footsteps, and we were to begin a march of blessings-that blood was stanched, and scowling enmities sinking like spent storms beneath the horizon-that the dear fatherland, nothing lost but much gained, was to rise up in unexampled honor among the nations of the earth-these thoughts, and that undistinguishable throng of fancies, and hopes, and desires, and yearnings, that filled the soul with tremblings like the heated air of midsummer days— all these kindled up such a surge of joy as no words may describe. In an hour, joy lay without a pulse, without a gleam or breath. A sorrow came that swept through the land, as huge storms swept through the forest and field, rolling thunder along the skies, dishevelling the flames and daunting every singer in the thicket or forest, and pouring blackness and darkness across the land and up the mountains.

Did ever so many hearts in so brief a time touch two such boundless feelings? It was the uttermost joy and the uttermost of sorrow -noon and midnight without space between. The blow brought not a sharp pang. It was so terrible that at first it stunned sensibility. Citizens were like men awakened at midnight by an earthquake, and bewildered to find every thing that they were accustomed to trust wavering and falling. The very earth was no longer solid. The first feeling was the least. Men waited to get strengt'ı

to feel. They wandered in the streets as if groping after some impending dread, or undeveloped sorrow. They met each other as if each would ask the other, "Am I awake, or do I dream ?" There was a piteous helplessness. Strong men bowed down and wept. Other and common griefs belong to some one in chief, they are private property; but this was each man's and every man's. Every virtuous household in the land felt as if its first-born were gone. Men took it home. They were bereaved, and walked for days as if a corpse lay unburied in their dwellings. There was nothing else to think of. They could speak of nothing but that, and yet of that they could speak only falteringly. All business was laid aside, pleasure forgot to smile. The city for nearly a week ceased to roar, and great Leviathan laid down and was still. Even Avarice stood still, and Greed was strangely moved to generous sympathy with universal sorrow. Rear to his name monuments, found charitable institutions, and with his name above their heights, but no monument will ever equal the universal, spontaneous, and sublime sorrow that in a moment swept down lines and parties, and covered up animosities, and in an hour brought a divided people with unity of grief and indivisible fellowship of anguish! For myself, I cannot yet command that quietness of spirit needed for a just and temperate delineation of a man whom Goodness has made great. I pass, then, to some considerations aside from the martyr President's character, reserving that for a future occasion, which are appropriate to this time and place. And, first, let us not mourn that his departure was so sudden, nor fill our imagination with horror at its method. When good men pray for deliverance from hidden death, it is only that they may not be plunged, without preparation and all disrobed, into the presence of the Judge. Men long eluding and evading sorrow, when suddenly overtaken, seem enchanted to make it great to the uttermost—a habit which is not Christian, although it is doubtless natural. When one is ready to depart, suddenness is a blessing. It is a painful sight to see a tree overthrown by a tornado, wrenched from its foundation and broken down like a reed; but it is yet more painful to see a vast and venerable tree lingering with vain strife, when age and infirmity have marked it for destruction. The process of decay is a spectacle humiliating and painful; but it seems good and grand for one to go from duty done with pulse high, with strength full and nerve strong, terminating a noble life in a fitting manner. Nor are we without Scripture warrant for these thoughts: "Let your loins be girded about Blessed are those servants whom the Lord, when He cometh, shall find watching." Not those who die in stupor are blessed,

but they who go with all their powers about them, and wide awake as to a wedding. He died watching. He died with armor on. In the midst of hours of labor, in the very heart of patriotic consultations, just returned from camps and council, he was stricken down. No fever dried his blood-no slow waste consumed him. All at once, in full strength and manhood, with his girdle tight about him, he departed, and walks with God. Nor was the manner of his death more shocking, if we will surround it with higher associations. Have not thousands of soldiers fallen on the field of battle by the bullets of an enemy, and did not he? All soldiers that fall ask to depart in the hour of victory, and at such an hour he fell. There was not a poor drummer-boy in all this war that has fallen for whom the great heart of Lincoln would not have bled; there is not one private soldier without note of name, slain among thousands, and hid in the pit among hundreds, without even the memorial of a separate burial, for whom the President would not have wept. He was a man from and of the people, and now that he who might not bear the march, the toil and battle, with these humble citizens, has been called to die by the bullet, as they were, do you not feel that there is a peculiar fitness to his nature and life, that he should in death be joined with them in a final common experience? For myself, when any event is susceptible of a nobler garnishing, I cannot understand the nature or character of those who seek rather to drag it down, degrading and debasing, rather than ennobling and sanctifying it.

Secondly. This blow was but the expiring rebellion; and as a miniature gives all the form and feature of its subject, so, epitomized in this foul act, we find the whole nature and disposition of slavery. It begins in a wanton destruction of all human rights, and in the desecration of all the sanctities of heart and home. It can be maintained only at the sacrifice of every right moral feeling in its abettors and upholders. It is a two-edged sword, cutting both ways, desolating alike the oppressed and the oppressor, and violently destroying manhood in the victim, it insidiously destroys manhood in the master. No man born and bred under the influence of the accursed thing can possibly maintain his manhood, and I would as soon look for a saint in the darkness of perdition as for a man of honor in this hot-bed of iniquity. The problem is solved, its demonstration is complete. Slavery wastes its victims, it wastes estates. It destroys public morality, it corrupts manhood in its centre. Communities in which it exists are not to be trusted. Its products are rotten. No timber grown in its cursed soil is fit for the ribs of our ship of State or for our household homes. The people are selfish in

their patriotism, and brittle, and whoever leans on them for support is pierced in his hand. Their honor is not honor, but a bastard quality which disgraces the name of honor, and for all time the honor of the supporters of slavery will be throughout the earth a by-word and a hissing. Their whole moral nature is death-smitten. The needless rebellion, the treachery of its leaders to oaths and trusts, their violations of the commonest principles of fidelity, sitting in the senate, councils, and places of trust only to betray them -the long, general, and unparalleled cruelty to prisoners, without provocation or excuse their unreasoning malignity and fiercenessall mark the symptoms of the disease of slavery, that is a deadly poison to soul and body. There may be exceptions, of course, but as a rule malignity is the nature and the essence. Slavery is itself barbarous, and the nation which upholds and protects it is likewise barbarous. It is fit that its expiring blow should be made to take away from men the last forbearance, the last pity, and fire the soul with invincible determination that the breeding-ground of such mischiefs and monsters shall be utterly and forever destroyed. It needed not that the assassin should put on paper his belief in slavery. He was but the sting of the monster Slavery which has struck this blow, and as long as this nation lasts, it will not be forgotten that we have had our Martyr President," nor while heaven holds high court or hell rots beneath, will it be forgotten that slavery murdered him.

Third. This blow was aimed at the life of government and of the nation. Lincoln was slain, but America was meant. The man was cast down, but the government was smitten at. The President was killed, but national life-breathing freedom and benignity was sought. He of Illinois, as a private man, might have been detested, but it was because he represented the cause of just government, liberty, and kindness he was slain. It was a crime against universal government, and was aimed at all. Not more was it at us than at England or France, or any well-compacted government. It was aimed at mankind. The whole world will repudiate it and stigmatize it as a deed without a redeeming feature. It was not the deed of the oppressed stung to madness by the cruelty of the oppressor; it was not the avenging hand against the heart of a despot; it was the exponent of a venomous hatred of liberty, and the avowed advocacy of slavery.

[Mr. Beecher illustrated the point by a report of the interview between Governor Pickens and Lieutenant Talbot, a few days prior to the attack on Fort Sumter, wherein Pickens admitted that the South really had no cause of complaint; but that the leaders, hop

ing to deceive the people, had manufactured the necessary indignation at Northern insults, and were determined to separate, even though confessedly without good grounds.]

Fourth. But the blow has signally failed. The cause is not stricken, but strengthened: men hate slavery the more and love liberty better. The nation is dissolved, but only in tears, and stands more square and solid to-day than any pyramid in Egypt. The government is not weakened, it is strengthened. How readily and easily the ranks closed up! We shall be more true to every instinct of liberty, to the Constitution, and to the principles of universal freedom. Where, in any other community, the crowned head being stricken by the hand of an assassin, would the funds have stood so firm as did ours, not wavering the half of one per cent.? After four years of drastic war, of heavy drafts upon the people, on top of all, the very head of the nation is stricken down, and the funds never quivered, but stand as firm as the granite ribs in the mountains. Republican institutions have been vindicated in this very experience. God has said by the voice of his providence that republican liberty, based upon universal freedom, shall be as firm as the foundations of the globe.

Fifth. Even he who now sleeps has, by this event, been clothed with new influence. Dead, he speaks to men who now willingly hear what before they shut their ears to. Like the words of Washington will his simple, mighty words be pondered on by your children and children's children. Men will receive a new accession to their love of patriotism, and will for his sake guard with more zeal the welfare of the whole country. On the altar of this martyred patriot I swear you to be more faithful to your country. They will, as they follow his hearse, swear a new hatred to that slavery which has made him a martyr. By this solemn spectacle I swear you to renewed hostility to slavery, and to a never-ending pursuit of it to its grave. They will admire and imitate his firmness in justice, his inflexible conscience for the right, his gentleness and moderation of spirit, and I swear you to a faithful copy of his justice, his mercy, and his gentleness. You I can comfort, but how can I speak to the twilight millions who revere his name as the name of God? Oh, there will be wailing for him in hamlet and cottage, in woods and wilds, and the fields of the South. Her dusky children looked on him as on a Moses come to lead them out from the land of bondage. To whom can we direct them but to the Shepherd of Israel, and to His care commit them for help, for comfort, and protection? And now the martyr is moving in triumphal march, mightier than when alive. The nation rises up at his coming. Cities and States are