events, and bought gold for a rise. On Monday gold was ten per cent lower than on Saturday.

Another lesson we have learned is this: that in our Government no one man is essential. The Harpers have just published a book by Louis Napoleon Bonaparte on the life of Julius Cæsar. Its object is to teach the world that it must be governed by its great men; that they make epochs and not merely mark them. How suddenly that book has been refuted, and what a blow has been given to this gospel of Napoleon, by the assassination of Lincoln and its issues. Here is one greater than Cæsar struck down as Cæsar was, and yet the pillars of the Republic are unshaken. What a pitiful anachronism does the Imperial plea for Cæsarism appear, in presence of the dead Lincoln, and the mourning, yet living and triumphant Republic!

Let us now gather one or two practical lessons for ourselves and our children. Hatred of assassination is one of these lessons, if, indeed, we needed to learn it. The work that Brutus did to Cæsar was just as bad a work as that of Booth to Lincoln. It was centuries before humanity recovered from the poisoned wound it received from the stroke of the dagger that pierced the breast of Cæsar. Teach your children, moreover, not only to hate assassination, but treason as well; for treason breeds assassins, as it breeds all other forms of crime and wrong. You cannot be too severe upon it in your thoughts or in your talk; you are severe upon the robber and the assassin; shall you be lenient towards the treason which has begotten both robbery and assassination?

Remember, too, that as treason is the parent of assassi

nation, so slavery has been the parent of treason. Is it necessary for me to exhort you to teach your children to hate slavery too? In this one thing I ask you to join with me this day. Let us bow ourselves before Almighty God, and vow that so far as in us lies, none of us will ever agree to any pacification of this land, until slavery be utterly extirpated. Watch your editors, then; watch your clergy; watch your generals and soldiers, your admirals and sailors, watch even Andrew Johnson, though of that I apprehend there will be no need. Watch them all, if need be, and see to it that this sprout of hell never shoots up again in the American soil.

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One more lesson, and not the least. If anything I have said, or anything that you read or hear in these sad days, breeds within you a single revengeful feeling, even towards the leaders of this rebellion, then think of Abraham Lincoln, and pray God to make you merciful. Think of the prayer of Christ, which the President said, after his Saviour, "Father forgive them, they know not what they do." Let there be no place for revenge in our souls; justice we may and must demand, but revenge, never. Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord." I counsel you also to discountenance all disorder, all attempts by private persons to avenge the public wrong, or even to punish sympathizers with treason. I have been sorry to hear from the lips of generous young men, under the pangs of the President's assassination, sentiments of bitterness and indignation, amounting almost to fierceness. It is natural, no doubt, but what is natural is not always. right. Indulge this spirit, and you may hear next that this man's house or that man's should be mobbed. Mobs

are alien to our northern soil; they belong to another atmosphere than that of free schools and free men. The region of slavery was their natural home; let us have none of them. And soon, when the last shackles shall have fallen, and throughout our land, from sea to sea, there shall be no master and no slave, the blessed Peace shall come, for which we have looked, and prayed, and fought so long, when the Republic shall be established upon the eternal foundations of Freedom and Justice, to stand, we trust, by the blessing of God, down to the last syllable of recorded Time.

SERMON VIII.

REV. A. N. LITTLEJOHN, D. D.

"Know ye not there is a prince and a great man fallen this day in Israel." -II SAMUEL iii. 38.

BRETHREN, you know the event which has called us together amid these badges of sorrow. All sights and sounds proclaim it. The very air is full of it. Its mingled horror and sadness may not be uttered. The grief that hangs so heavy upon us moves a continent to tears. We are but a small company of mourners in the vast multitude who will to-day bend in anguish over the bier of the nation's head. We were just beginning to see the bow of peace wearing out from the vapor and settling over the troubled waters. We were just beginning to feel that the last chapter had been written in the record of blood. The disappointment is bitter and terrible. Without question we have at last reached the Marah of the nation's journey through the wilderness. The sword that was to pierce us through, God has reserved for the hour of victory. The land is a fountain of tears, and the hearts of the people are bowed as the heart of one man. There could be no sorer lamentation, though every house had in it one dead. It is made the duty of the pulpit, beyond any other organ of public sentiment, to deal with the overwhelming sorrow of the hour, to guide and temper the nation's grief, to

teach it how and for what to weep, to interpret the sober philosophy of the grave, and to press home upon the softened, pain-stricken sensibilities of the people those gifts, privileges, and destinies which the world can neither give nor take away. Certainly our century, with all its intense and changeful life, has witnessed no such impressive instance of the sudden ruin and intrinsic vanity of earthly fortunes in the high places of power. Yesterday, Abraham Lincoln stood upon an eminence which the wisest and the best might have envied. His word was clothed with the force of law. His hand was upon the secret spring of a nation's energies. His opinions were scanned and weighed as the foreshadowing of the settled policy of a redintegrated republic. On his will and purpose largely depended the peace of the world. He had but to speak, and two continents gave him audience. To-day, he is

still in death. He lies where each of us must lie. He fills no more space than that allotted to the humblest member of the race. Yesterday, he was of good cheer at the approaching reward of four years of honest, anxious, patriotic toil, with an out-look upon honors manifold, and with an assured release from the bitterness of days of darkness and fields of blood, his own unexultant but manly smile reflecting the profound joy of a redeemed and triumphant country. To-day, he is gone, as the rest of us shall go, to give account of his stewardship to God. Alas! the brevity and uncertainty of the noblest earthly career! Let us know and feel that we can mourn intelligently over this terrible bereavement only as we shall individually see in it a new and more pointed admonition from our final Judge.