PREFATORY.

TO OUR READERS:

We offer you a memento of times of greatest moment, of events of wondrous and tragic interest, of stupendous and successful crime, of unparalleled national grief.

April 14, 1865! Memorable day! impressed on the nation's heart as none other. Throughout the north the loyal of the people had been exultant as never before; the power of the Rebellion had departed; the legions of the Union were pressing, with victorious tread, hard after the defeated and flying foe; the tidings of victory, borne on the wings of the lightning, reached every town and village of the land; the starry banners were given to the breeze; the cannon of peace thundered echoes to the cannon of war; that for which all had sighed seemed to approach, and the patriotic and grateful hailed each other with glad voices and glowing faces. Who can tell what a day may bring forth! The sun set on happiness and rejoicing; the mantle of night fell on the land, and ere it was lifted a deed was consummated the intelligence of which should shake the world. Again the lightning courier sped on his way. Again tidings were borne to every town and village, and from happy slumber the people woke to horror and mourning, to sadness never to be forgotten in time-never to be told. The heads borne so proudly yesterday droop on the breast to-day; the springing footstep of yes

terday is the funeral pace of to-day. Friends met in silence and tears. When utterance was given, men talked of God— of His providence of His wisdom. The head of the nation was stricken and slain, and the nation turned to Him who is from everlasting to everlasting. In the centres of commerce and finance there was heard the voice of supplication. The Sabbath came-never more opportune-never more welcome —and in temples dedicated to Jehovah the heart-stricken gathered and waited while the ministers of God interpreted their feelings.

In time to come, this record of the religious sentiment of the people, as, stricken and sad, they gathered in their places of worship, will be influential in bringing the darkest hour of the nation's life, with its surpassing interest, within the reach of the sympathy of coming generations. When the flowers have many times bloomed and faded on the grave of our martyred President; when the banner of Peace floats over every acre of the broad territory of our glorious Union; when the hearts that felt the pangs of awful bereavement are still, men will assent to the facts recorded by the historian, but they cannot feel with the generation whose bosom received the fiery darts, unless they come in contact with their feelings.

This volume treasures up the utterances of those who were the mouth-pieces of the people, and thus .conveys to the readers of the future a better idea of the wonderful effects produced on the national heart by the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, than can be conveyed in any other way.

SERMON I.

REV. WILLIAM R. WILLIAMS, D. D.

"Verily, Thou art a God that hidest Thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour."-ISAIAH xlv. 15.

THE nation staggers, as if, besmeared and blinded with their own gore, and stunned with amazement and indignation, each of the people felt on his own front the bludgeon, and found delivered on his own brow or throat, the assassin's shot and the assassin's knife, which have been aimed at the chief magistrate of the land, and at the household and person of the statesman highest in position among the counselors who formed that President's cabinet. To calm, to guide, and to brace us, let us recur to the lesson of our text. It is a portion of Holy Writ, which was a favorite theme for meditation, and a frequent citation with Blaise Pascal, one of the brightest and profoundest intellects in the history of our race; and one too, whom the grace of God had made as eminently devout and Christian as he was great; leading him to consecrate the splendor of his genius and the fervor of his nature, in lowly and hearty service to Christ and His truth. Amid the lurid tempest of calamity that lowers and growls and howls around us, this great principle stands immovable and serene, that the God of Israel, the Saviour, rules yet;

and that, all-wise and almighty as He is, He shall yet yoke even the whirlwinds of carnage and civil war among the outriders of his own predestined triumph. He is hidden in a dim, untraceable majesty, but though thus invisible, is not aloof from the turmoil. In justice and in mercy, in faithfulness and in vigilance, He is hidden behind all this dun, crimson hurricane, which for the time casts its ominous shadow over all the homes, and activities, and charities of the land. The storm is but the dust of his feet. "Clouds and darkness are round about him;" yet none the less is it true that "righteousness and judgment are the habitations of his throne." Jehovah vailed-and vailed as the Bringer of Salvation—behind the commotions and distresses that most perplex and overwhelm a people is the truth of which we are here reminded. And it is a lesson that may well cheer and hearten us, under losses had they been even more sudden, more startling and irreparable than ours now are.

God hides himself. We could not, with our present organization, bear the full, bright blaze of His glories; and would be consumed, instead of being enlightened, by the blasting splendor of the vision. Even the favored Moses might not see Jehovah's full majesty and live. And yet he would not and does not leave himself without sufficient witness of his being and his constant power and supervision. The outer world of material Nature, and the inner witness of reason and conscience in man's own bosom, are more than intimations of the Maker's character and will. Hence there is no inconsistency between the sentiment of our text, on the one hand, of a withdrawn and shadowed Majesty, and the language of the context,

on the other hand, where in the same chapter,* our Maker and Ruler asserts: "I have not spoken in secret, in a dark place of the earth: I said not unto the seed of Jacob, seek ye me in vain: I, the Lord, speak righteousness. I declare things that are right." The hiding was not entire and absolute. Nature and history throb and palpitate evermore as in the conscious presence of their God. It was in no muttered, grovelling, and darkling oracle that the Most High addressed his Israel. In the centre of the world's ancient civilization, and not in any dark nook and remote corner of barbarism, was his revelation spoken. To prayer he turned no deaf ear, and gave no dilatory response. The Hearer of prayer who answered Jacob at Bethel, answered also Jacob's children as well, not at Shiloh and Mount Zion only, but wherever they kneeled. Nor were his edicts flagrant wrongs and palpable contradictions, that violated all natural equity, and which shocked all right reason, as was the character of the teachings of the forged and rival deities of the heathen. But yet, though an outspoken revelation, and a prompt response to supplication, and a righteous and wise government were evermore allowed to his people, on his part, no visible, outlined form shone out upon the Shekinah. And hence, the classical Pagans who worshiped carved wood, and chiseled marble, and molten brass, contemned in their supercilious ignorance the Hebrew as worshiping empty air, because his God was a Spirit; because the sanctuary at Jerusalem displayed no picture or statue like the shrines of the Gentiles.

And even in the word of Revelation, that he gave, there

* Verso 19.