from its performance. Our voices may be feeble, but we will raise them for justice, and do all that in us lies to sustain our newly-inaugurated President in the faithful execution of the laws. At least we will demand that the leaders of this rebellion shall suffer the extreme penalty of the law in death. This is duty. We owe it to ourselves, to coming generations, and to God.

LET US GO NOW TO OUR HOMES, AND TO OUR CLOSETS. Now, if ever, we need to pray. These are "times that try men's souls." Are we true men? Do we love our country? Do we love humanity? Do we love Jesus? This last question was proposed, not long ago, to our departed President. He replied with tears, "When I left my home in Springfield to come to Washington, though I felt my responsibility and asked my neighbors to pray for me, I was not a Christian. When my dear boy, Willie, was taken from me, I still was not a Christian, but when I stood on the field of Gettysburg and looked upon the graves of its heroes, I gave myself to God, and now I can say that I do love Jesus."

Great Emancipator! The whole earth is filled with thy fame, and millions will mourn at thy tomb, yet thou art our brother in the fellowship of Jesus?

In Jesus sleep!

SERMON XIX.

REV. WILLIAM ADAMS, D. D.

FEW are the words which are needed to-day. God has spoken, and we are dumb. These funereal emblems-this sombre, melancholy black-these pale faces of anxious, sorrowful men; this leaden weight at our hearts, announce the terrible affliction which has befallen the nation in the sudden and violent death of its honored President.

I had expected to address you this morning, in a joyous strain, on the most joyous event in the history of our world. I had prepared a discourse on the resurrection of our Lord, and the rising of individuals and nations' in him to a new life. But the circumstances in which we are assembled are so appalling that all ordinary topics are for the moment entirely superseded. When God speaks out of the whirlwind it would betray profane insensibility not to pause and consider. Never, I will not say in our history, but in the history of the world, was there such a conjunction of events as that which, in an instant, has thrown this nation from the heights of joy into profoundest mourning. This is not the first instance in which a public man has been assassinated to a nation's

dismay. William the First, Prince of Orange, the founder of Dutch freedom, was shot, when fifty-two years old, in his own house by a young man, hired for the purpose by a Jesuit priest, with the promise of eternal salvation. The universal lamentation of Holland on that occasion is one of the great pictures of history.

Henry the Fourth, of France, who, with all his faults and vascillations, was the best of all the French kings, in his fifty-seventh year, was stabbed in the streets of Paris when on his way to consummate alliances in favor of the Protestant interest against Spain and Austria. But these incidents furnish no parallel to the abrupt and terrible calamity which we deplore. Forty-eight hours ago we were in the highest exultation. Everything justified national joy. This Easter would have been celebrated as never before, amid spring blossoms and flowers, and doxologies, and anthems, and high throbbing hearts. The air was fanned with jubilant flags as the winter had passed and the time for the singing of birds was nigh. We were looking for the speedy termination of the war and the return of peace, when the plough would skip along the mellow furrow, commerce flap her long-folded wings, and the land would laugh with industry, plenty, and prosperity. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, we are brought down into the deepest affliction. A single night has wrought the greatest of changes. It was "a night long to be remembered." We have not yet rallied from the shock sufficiently to command thought or language. Our children and our children's children will speak of it, and read of it, as one of profound horror. The Chief Magistrate of the nation has fallen by the hand of an assassin. To lend all possible aggravations to the tragic event, an accomplice, simultaneously, with more than brutal, fiendish violence, invaded the chamber of the

Secretary of State, where domestic love was tenderly watching him, disabled and shattered by an accident, and endeavored to butcher him in his bed!

It is, indeed, a time for lamentation and mourning. It is not to be wondered at that strong men among us, as they met each other yesterday, grasped hands in silence and sobbed. So to feel and act was manly. All political partialities, all differences of opinion in regard to modes and measures, are merged, ocean-deep, in the astonishment and grief which this event has produced. We cannot believe that throughout all the loyal States there was a single man or woman who heard of this tragedy without a shudder of horror. Consider the circumstances. Assassination even of a private citizen is frightful. To assault a man when unsuspecting, unarmed, defenceless, whatever motive may have prompted the crime, is cowardly and dastardly. But this was the head of the nation-the lawful, chosen President of the United States. This was a blow aimed at the very heart of the country. It was a blow which was intended to exterminate you and your children. It reminds us of the frenzied passion of Nero, who wished, on one occasion, that all Rome had but one neck, that he might sever it at one stroke.

Consider the personal character of the man thus immolated. He was not a hard, rough-shod, truculent, stern, cruel man or magistrate. He bore no resemblance to Marat, gorged with blood, assassinated by Charlotte Corday. He was the mildest and most inoffensive of men. Called by Providence to solemn and painful duty, he was always inclined to leniency. He was most tenderbearted, as gentle, by nature, as a woman. I do not recall a word of his which was intended to insult, goad, taunt, or exasperate any man; not one act which looked like unnecessary severity, bearing any resemblance to