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blood is the reconciliation. Here is the emblem of the greatest suffering and the greatest wrongs, borne with the highest possible patience, and best conceivable meekness and spirit. Come, then, eat this food, drink this blood. It will strengthen you to put under your feet this temptation to sin, and make you more than conquerors in the sublime victory of faith over self.

Daily Union Press, Louisville, Ky., April 19, 1865.

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NATIONAL HUMILIATION:

A SERMON PREACHED ON THE LATE FAST DAY, JUNE 1, 1865, at the CHURCH OF THE ATONEMENT, PHILADELPHIA, PA.;

BY REV. BENJAMIN WATSON, D.D., RECTOR.

2 SAM. xxiii. 3, 4: "The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake to me, He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God. And he shall be as the light of the morning when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds; as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain."

IT

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T is befitting that we should meet together this day. Amidst the sublime and terrible events of the day, - events terrible in their sublimity, and sublime in their terribleness, it is meet that we should stand with uncovered heads, and look up to that heaven where He dwells who sits upon the throne, and judges righteously. It is meet that, turning from all the accidents and phenomena of events, we should recognize and contemplate that Hand which shapeth all things according to its will, and holds in its control the destinies of nations and of men. It is meet that there should be a day consecrated for us and which will be memorable through all coming time- to the outpouring of a nation's sorrow; to the commemoration of the virtues of him for whom we mourn, and to lay to heart the lessons which Supreme Wisdom and Righteousness is teaching us by his dealings.

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Ours are no affected tears of grief. The stroke that fell upon us only a few weeks ago is still too fresh in its smart to allow

this day of public mourning to be either formal or heartless. If, for a moment, it subsides amidst the busy and crowding scenes of the present, we have but to touch the chords of our hearts with that sacred and venerable name-the name of Abraham Lincoln -to make them vibrate through all our frames, and awaken anew the sorrow and terror which crushed us all, when the sad intelligence flashed upon us, that he who bore it, our high and illustrious Chief, was DEAD.

Gather we then again to-day, as it were, around his bier. We surround ourselves afresh with the signs of woe which then overspread the land. We hear once more the voice of wailing and lamentation; and behold the mourners as they go about the streets, and bear his body to its burial.

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The grave has indeed closed upon him; but he is buried, not alone in the bosom of the earth, but in the bosoms of the people that he ruled; and there they will ever bring fresh flowers to adorn his tomb, — the flowers of affection, and of loving sorrow that he is no more. He is gone from among us; the judgment of the Lord, which is "true and righteous altogether," has removed him from our sight: but he still lives in the virtues that adorned his life; in the works that he has wrought; in the memorial that will be raised up (ever, we trust, to remain); in the regeneration, in part at least, by that life and those deeds, of the nation's character, and in the higher exaltation of its destiny.

Many heroes have fallen, many great ones have been taken from us, but we have never seen the world has never seen such a day as this; when, in all the homes of a great land, there will be felt a mourning "as if for an only son;" when in all its temples one voice will go up, of heartfelt bewailing for the sins which made such a judgment necessary, of tearful remembrance for the dead, and of grateful thanksgiving that such a life was lent us, to do its work, and to shed forth its light.

Is it for the departure of a great statesman that we mourn, and make our solemn confessions to Almighty God? Is it that a Chief Magistrate of our Republic was cut off in the midst of his honors and his work? For these, indeed; but not for these alone. Rather, because the friend and father of his people has been slain, and left them as bereaved children around his tomb. It was not pride in lofty genius that was humbled in that stroke. It was not confidence in eminent leadership that was tried by it. But it was affection, evoked by all that was generous and wise and patient in a life that a nation called its own, and which was consecrated to its welfare. Nothing but wounded affection could have drawn forth such tears from eyes all unused to weep. A voice which comes to us from a foreign land is but the echo of a universal one at home, "That man has lived himself wonderfully into my heart." The mourning of America for her Chief is only such as could be called out by that sublime devotion to his country, which we know as patriotism, a word of whose true use we had almost lost sight till he arose; who, casting away all selfishness, embarked himself, with all the powers of head and heart that God had given him, in his country's cause, for the redemption of that high pledge of duty which, before God and men, he had pronounced.

Born in lowliness, and reared amidst the rude blasts of adversity, this man had just such a training as fitted him for the place and the crisis he was to fill. A more refined life, or one more absorbed in intellectual pursuits, might have enervated too much a frame upon which such gigantic labors were to be imposed. A gentler birth and rearing might have equally unfitted him for that peculiar position which he assumed as the people's representative. A previous condition more elevated and commanding might have unfitted him for becoming, as he was, the popular mouth-piece; following, rather than leading, sentiment; himself taking shape

from, rather than giving shape to, the popular mind and will: but, when he had received it, giving it that expression in words which is ever the mark of genius; saying that which all felt, when said, they might have said as well as he, but which a common mind never could: for his was an intellect, if not of the highest order, yet, as we now look back upon it, truly great. See how his utterances stand out, stamped with his own pure individuality. In all of them, there was nothing re-echoed of other men; nothing commonplace; no mere platitudes, conveyed in pompous terms, such as too often form the staple of our public deliverances. His words went right to the mark, as winged arrows. With him, logic was almost an intuition; his thoughts naturally arranging themselves with the clearness and compactness of a syllogism. Just such a mind he had, as, with strong native powers, had grown through its own unaided efforts, by self-revolving thought, and by the massing within itself of its own strong convictions. We can fancy this mind ever educating itself; bringing into form and order, and strengthening, what God had given it, or when he plied the oar, or swung the axe, or, admitted to the councils of his fellows, labored for the truth, and by patient effort sought after it till he found it. By such training, not so much in books, as through patient thought, and deeply wrought conviction, he reached that culture which, through four long years, gave us so much sententious wisdom and practical truth, and which flowered at length in that second Inaugural, which men abroad have styled the finest State-paper that was ever written, and some of whose sentences are worthy to be copied in gold, and emblazoned on every temple of liberty, and every house of justice, throughout the world.

But such a mind as his could never be separated from his moral qualities. They helped to make the intellect. One may be a great poet, though a bad man. He may be an acute and profound philosopher. But he whose intellectual greatness lies

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