ducted this nation through a great war with a powerful foe, and within sight of returning peace, will ever be honored and held worthy of honor by those who consider the magnitude of his task and the magnitude of the results it has secured.

I think all candid men, of whatever shade of opinion, will concur with me in this estimate of the official career of our lamented President. That he did, or tried to do, whatever seemed to him right and expedient for the salvation of our government, will be readily admitted even by those who were free to censure particular acts. Mr. Lincoln was not a fanatic, nor a theorist. He had no hobbies. His mind was broad, comprehensive, and practical. His motto seemed to be that of Edmund Burke, "A true statesman must deal with practical affairs in a practical way." This furnishes a key to his policy. In the summer of 1862, I passed an hour with the President in his sunimer retreat at the Old Soldiers' Home. There were but three others present, and the conversation was free and unrestrained. He spoke of slavery as a thing which had grown up with the nation and grown into it— said that one section was no more responsible than another for its original existence here, and that the whole nation having suffered from it, ought to share in efforts for its gradual removal. His mind at the time was impressed with the necessity of adopting a scheme of gradual and compensated emancipation. That scheme, however, found no favor among the insurgents, and was violently condemned by certain organs of opinion at the North. When, however, foreign intervention became imminent, the President issued as a war measure the proclamation of freedom to the slaves. It was a measure concerning which men have differed—but that it was believed by the President to be necessary for the preservation of the

Union, I have no manner of doubt, and since the Southern people have themselves come to the conclusion that slavery as an institution is dead, and have by their own acts helped it to its end, there is no longer reason at this day to revive disputes, which have ceased to possess any practical utility. But whatever men may choose to think or say respecting the official acts or intellectual characteristics of our late President, one thing must be held as true by all -and that is, that the popular confidence in his moral integrity has well-nigh approached sublimity. That con/fidence has been as a wall of defence round about us. I shall not enter into particulars illustrative of this. You must all remember that the war has produced through all its vicissitudes a tremendous strain upon popular feeling of adverse kinds. There have been ambitious men not a few, planning and plotting for their own advancement, and they have built up little parties around them, whose interest could be subserved by destroying confidence in Mr. Lincoln. But while they had always some success, after all, the people would fall back upon that plain, unpretending, every-day sort of a man, who maintained his faith in God unimpaired, and trusted that the future would reverse all the misjudgments of the present. The lesson of such a political example of unimpeachable integrity is worth a great deal to this nation.

Several of our Presidents and statesmen have risen from obscure life. They were not born to the silver spoon and silken bed of luxury. Jackson, the son of a poor Irish widow; Henry Clay, a poor white of the South; Van Buren, a lad of humble means, have filled important pages in the history of the world. Mr. Lincoln was born in Kentucky, and passed all his early, and some of his maturer years in a hard conflict with poverty. This, by some, has been used to stigmatize and defame him. But

right-thinking men will find in it occasion to bestow upon him double honor. It is not difficult for the favored few

to gain a full share of worldly success. Born to wealth, to social position-surrounded by friends, ever ready to bestow or secure patronage-they have the current with them. They do but float down its surface to the harbor. they desire. But the many are poor, have few friends to help them, and they must not only struggle against wind and tide, but at the same time endure the scornful jeers and malevolent opposition of the more favored mortals. No poor boy is allowed to make his way unless he has heart, and courage, and purpose enough to disregard the contempt of supercillious wealth, the secret malignity of interested rivals, together with all the other common or uncommon obstacles in the road to success. Our free institutions embody the principles of a Christian democracy. The Bible favors no class distinctions. It teaches that all are required to use what talents they possess, and that each shall be compensated according to his fidelity in their use. And that is what our political system also says. In the world it is not so. The poor remain poorthe ignorant remain ignorant, and the rich heap up riches. This at least is the rule where aristocracy bears sway. It is, thank God, not so here. Our churches, our schools, our newspapers, our whole life, inculcate the doctrine of Christ, respecting the right of each man to rise in intelligence, virtue, dignity, and influence. Against this life, secession lifted its murderous hand in the beginning, and to add to the "sum of all villainies," has assassinated the President. I do not wish to employ the language of passion. But I hate, with a perfect hatred, this infernal spirit of rebellion which has plunged our land into mourning, filled hundreds of thousands of graves with the bodies of martyrs slain for their loyalty to principles taught us by

the Son of God. Can there be a doubt respecting this issue? The American people are to be executors of the unrecorded will and testament of their generous, humane and patriotic President. Let them be true to their trust. Do any undervalue the inestimable privileges of our American institutions, let them look abroad and see how "privilege" oppresses the many. The few are masters of the people. Here the many have advantages which assure them opportunity of being all they have capacity to become. Abraham Lincoln was the representative of popular rights, manhood, and liberty. The people weep because they loved him in character as a President, and as a man. The assassin who struck him, assailed every loyal citizen through him—and dealt a murderous blow upon the nation, in murdering its head. We have our duties. We must stand by the successor of Mr. Lincoln. Andrew Johnson is worthy of our support. He is now our Chief Magistrate-and as he wears the mantle of his immediate predecessor, so let us give him the support of our prayers and our loyal devotion to the cause he serves. Henceforth the name, fame, and virtues of each are in the keeping of so much of the world as delight to honor rare ability, unimpeachable integrity, and fervent devotion to the rights of all mankind. Washington was indeed the father of his country, and some future Bancroft shall record on the page of history that Abraham Lincoln was the political savior of what Washington and his compatriots had founded. We weep, but we shall dry our tears in the sunlight of Hope. The President is no more—but the Republic lives. Let it be perpetual.

SERMON XIII.

REV. A. P. ROGERS, D. D.

"Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?"—AMOS iii. 6.

"Be still, and know that I am God."-PSALM xlvi. 10.

the na

A SUDDEN and awful calamity has fallen upon tion. It has come like a thunderbolt from a clear sky. It has no precedent in all our history, and we reel and stagger under the unexpected and mighty catastrophe. In the midst or our grateful joy for victory, in the midst of our congratulations at the prospect of peace, the sad and startling intelligence which has flashed along the wires from the capital of our nation, has prostrated us in the depths of affliction, and pierced the great heart of loyal America with unutterable anguish. For the first time in the history of our fair country, the murderous hand of the assassin has been successfully lifted against the Chief Magistrate of the nation, and our strong staff is broken in a moment. Passing successfully through the tremendous ordeal of his first official term, bearing bur dens and meeting responsibilities such as none of his predecessors had ever known, with a manly courage, a genial patience and entire single-heartedness, a wonderful