THE UNITER AND LIBERATOR

OF AMERICA.*

"THY GENTLENESS HATH MADE ME GREAT." Ps. xviii. 35. "HE SAVED OTHERS, HIMSELF HE CANNOT SAVE.' Matt. xxvii. 42. "ALL NATIONS SHALL CALL HIM BLESSED. Ps. lxxii. 17.

HE appalling deed of the last Good Friday begins to put on the fixed lineaments of the past. As that face and form, then so full of life, are frozen in death, so he who animated them is fast becom

ing solidified and shapen in the unchanging marble of history. Still standing in the horrible shadow, how can we carve the features of the immortal dead? The chisel shakes in our In

trembling hand. The rain of sorrow blinds our eyes. the ghastly darkness, we but faintly discern the spiritual form that has so suddenly and forever vanished from the eyes of man. He, who but yesterday was the center of all human observation; whose every word, as he himself declared but three nights before his death, was in no unimportant sense a national decree; from whom were the issues

* A Memorial Discourse on the Character and Career of Abraham Lincoln delivered in the North Russell Street M. E. Church, Boston, on the Occasion of his Assassination, Sunday, April 23, 1865.

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of life and death to the imperious leaders of the rebellion and their too willing subjects; upon whose course foreign potentates fastened watchful eyes, and foreign peoples were yet more intent; the foremost man in all the world, lies he low in his shroud of blood. A nation weeps around his bier. The world bemoans his fate.

now

Never before did so wide and bitter a cry pierce the skies. Never before were the heads of so many millions waters, and their eyes fountains of tears, weeping day and night for the slain of the daughter of their people. The great day of the Church has become yet more solemn in the annals of America. Let not the 15th of April be considered the day of his death, but let Good Friday be its anniversary. then the fatal blow was struck. He died to the conscious world ere the day had died. We should make it a movable fast, and ever keep it beside the cross and the grave of our blessed Lord, in whose service and for whose gospel he became a victim and a martyr.

For

That crime I cannot dwell upon in such an hour. The criminal is not the object of my revenge. Justice will demand his death, to whom no less would it be a mercy; for it would shut him from the sight of the race he had dishonored and the earth he had polluted. Not the awful transgressor nor his crime, not even the gigantic abomination of which this deed was the natural and inevitable fruit, shall becloud the hour. Let us look the rather upon him whose earthly work is done; not upon his form, laid out in "longstretching death," that is slowly moving amid tearful myriads, through mighty cities, by the side of inland seas, across yet vaster seas of billowy or level green, to its beloved home in the heart of the land, fit resting-place for him who shall ever live in the heart of the nation; but upon the features of his life, that we may learn why he grew to such a hight, and how we may, in our humbler sphere, attain an equal perfection.

The character and career of Abraham Lincoln will therefore be the appropriate subject of our mournful meditations. These are harmoniously united. His career was but the flowering of his character, his character the seed and germ of his career. Extraordinary circumstances gave that nature a fulness of opportunity for its development such as has most rarely, probably never before, fallen to the lot of man; but they did not make the man. The most fruitful ground does not create the character of the seed it multiplies. It imparts a possibility of richness and fulness that inferior earths cannot afford. Still their own nature abides, and the oak is an oak, the ivy an ivy, in the richest as well as in the poorest soils.

His character was as complete when wrapped in the vesicles of his early privacy as in the grand uplifts of its wonderful consummations. As a child, a youth, an industrious, studious, obscure workman, a lawyer and politician of Illinois, he displayed the peculiar qualities which in his higher sphere bore such abundant fruit. His first speech was as brief, as witty, as compact, as simple-minded, and as good-natured as his last.*

For these traits he is not to be praised. He was created in the frame of soul that he ever exhibited. For their culture he alone merits eulogy.

God needs various workmen for his varied work. And as a wise master-builder uses a great variety of material for his manifold edifice, and works this material into a yet greater variety of forms, that the whole may be a unit of perfection, so does the Divine Master-builder in His infinitely grander structures of soul, erected on earth for time and for eternity.

The stately cathedral has its massy stone, lying in huge boulders under its visible foundations, rising in shapen blocks to its roof and pinnacles, carved in daintiest delicacy

* See Note XX.

around its pillars, doors, and altar. This solid earth it lightens with graceful forms of wood, as though the heart of oak blossomed like the gentlest flower into fragrant beauty. These are yet more relieved by tints that flush the cold face of stone with life, and this vitality puts on its highest expression in the scenes, sacred and divine, into which the walls change under the touch of the great masters, as the shapely face of death becomes radiant with life and love under the inspiration of its Creator.

Thus

Thus does God build up the nation and the world. does He use every style of character, every quality of spirit in His sublime cathedral of man, which He is patiently and persistently erecting, in truth and love, out of a redeemed and regenerated humanity, on the earth and in the heavens.

I. What, then, were the traits of soul which this eminent agent in the plan divine received from God, and faithfully, usefully, and rewardfully developed ?

1. We should only respond to the sentiment of every heart, hostile or friendly, when we place at the foundation of his character, honesty. This was his familiar appellation in obscurity. It has been none the less so in the greatness of his exaltation. Yet it fails to express the whole idea which it strives to embody. It is the rude, ungainly trunk, which, despite its rough exterior, is both the upholder and the nourisher of all the attractions that rejoice above it. It branches out in graceful boughs, with their rustling robes of green. It turns under the smiles of spring into an orb of odorous flower. It hangs in an autumn ripeness of golden fruit.

Honesty in him was not the calculating wisdom of the world as shown in its favorite and unworthy employment of that word. It was not from selfish policy that he was honest. Such honesty is really most dishonorable. It meant in him its true and original signification. It was sincerity, simplicity, impartiality, honor; in fine, the scriptural conception of this

nature, guilelessness. Look down as deep as you may into his profound nature, you will see that it is clear as a moteless fountain. It may seem to be shallow, it is so pure; and yet a second sight convinces you that though your eyes are sounding deeply, they touch not the bottom. As you look skywards on a clear day, you first fancy that you sweep the whole depth of the dome with your glance; a second and more penetrating gaze shows you that you have only caught its lowest outlines. As it rises hights above hights, you exclaim,

"The chasm of sky above my head

Is Heaven's profoundest azure,

an abyss

In which the everlasting stars abide.”

It is as

Thus do you gaze into this pellucid nature. simple and open as a child's, yet you cannot penetrate it; not because it interposes barriers to your gaze, but because your vision fails. It is none the less clear because it is so deep. Could you look farther, you would find the same nature, honest, unselfish, child-like; "an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile."

The soul of this characteristic is absence of selfishness. That is the root of guile. Though not without the temptations common to all men, he was remarkably free from this propensity. This freedom from self-seeking is the more noticeable in contrast with the characters of most great men. Milton declares ambition "the last infirmity of noble minds." This passion implies a subtle love of self, and frequently mars the most exalted natures. Only one President before him seemed almost utterly free from it. Jefferson talked indifference, but was a ceaseless schemer and mover of political wires while professedly absorbed in his laboratory, study, and farm. Adams, Franklin, Jackson, Clay, were men of great parts, but a sense of their necessity to the movements