SERMON.

Know ye not that there is a Prince and a great man fallen this day? The Lord shall reward the doer of evil according to his wickedness.-2 SAM. iii. 38, 39.

WHEN Massillon came to preach the funeral sermon of Louis the Fourteenth of France, he chose these words of Solomon, "" I communed with mine own heart, saying, Lo, I have become great! And, slowly repeating them over, as if to recollect himself, "Lo, I have become great!" then fixing his eyes on the assembly in mourning; next surveying the funeral enclosure, with all its sombre pomp; and lastly, turning his eyes on the tomb erected in the midst of the cathedral, after a solemn pause, he exclaimed, "God alone is GREAT, my brethren!" The immense assembly was breathless with solemnity and awe.

With such a thought as this, we come to the house of God to-day. Such an occurrence as that which we now lament was never before known in the history of our land. It belongs to the incredible tales of the dark ages. It is out of place in such a land as ours. It hardly entered into our hearts to think it might occur; and this has been the very cause which left our nation's ruler defenceless, and gave the assassin opportunity to execute his plans, and yet to effect his escape boldly.

Short, hasty, and unsatisfactory were the details of the blow which at first reached us, a blow which filled every true heart with sadness, deep and solemn, while it nerved it anew to

*"J'ai parle en mon cœur, et jai dit, Voici, je me suis agrandi."-Eccl. i. 16.

a firmer purpose of loyalty and unconditional patriotism. But scanty as were the items we received, their character was such as to leave no doubt of the execution of a fearful tragedy, in the very heart of the nation's capital, among a concourse of thousands of people. Yes, it is true, the man on whom all our eyes have been centred for the past five years, whose labors for the public welfare were almost crushing, and, but for the happy power which he possessed of casting them off in his hours of leisure and amusement, would have crushed him, the man who, calm in the consciousness of an unbending integrity, a proverbial honesty, met the gaze of the nation by a look, not of pride, but of kindly, earnest, faithful devotion to our welfare, the man who had just received, from a grateful people emerging from the clouds of war, the laurel wreath, to wear -the man whose open

most worthily for another term of years, ness of heart made him accessible to all classes, so that every citizen had the consciousness that he was his personal friend, this man, Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth President of the United States, fell by the hand of the assassin on the evening of April 14th of the present year.

The outline of events that presents itself is the following: Over-worn by the fatigues of office, and the importunities of selfish office-seekers, the President sought relaxation and relief in visiting places of public amusement. Relaxation of some

He

kind was absolutely essential to a mind so overstrained. was himself conscious of it; for while the great battle of the Wilderness was yet undecided, he remarked to a friend, who knew of his intention of going to the opera that evening, "The people will wonder, if they hear of it; but the truth is, I must have a change of some sort, or die." It may well be believed. that these scenes were but little in his mind, always fertile in thoughts for the welfare of the nation in all its portions, whether the Western frontier, the Canada coast, or the status

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of the Freedmen and the interests of Louisiana and other States. about to return to their allegiance. In company with the Lieutenant-General, he had announced his intention of being thus present on the fatal evening. Circumstances called Gen. Grant away, and with his usual complaisance, unwilling to disappoint any who might wish this opportunity of seeing the leader for whom they had cast their votes, he went with his family to the place designated. At about half-past nine o'clock, during a slight pause in the entertainment, the report of a pistol was heard. It roused but little attention, many supposing it had accidentally been fired behind the scenes. In the interval of suspense a man is seen to leap upon the stage, to flourish a dagger, and exclaim, "Sic semper tyrannis!" then, darting away, is beyond reach, before the audience can recover from their surprise or guess his meaning. But soon cries of anguish from his family attract attention to the President, who is found dangerously wounded and insensible. Thenceforward all is confusion. The best medical help is summoned, but in vain; and in a few short hours the end of earth is reached. Meanwhile a murderous attack is made upon the Secretary of State, already in feeble health, and utterly helpless, and which, but for the haste of the assassin, must have resulted fatally, if indeed it do not yet.

For this act; in all its atrocity, no personal motive seems possible. There was no wrong to be avenged, no wealth to be clutched, nothing to be gained. It does not appear (so far as I am aware) that the murderer had ever so much as spoken with the man he sought to slay. The only clew to his motives is found in his outcry, "Thus let tyrants always perish!" It was the simple act of wanton rebellion one act showing us its full enormity, and the spirit which actuates it.

I shall enter on no elaborate disproval of the assassin's charge. It needs to be stated only, to evince its falsity when applied to

the late head of the nation. A TYRANT, we are told, is "a ruler who uses his power to oppress his subjects." Too great leniency is never the mark of such a man. But this was the most serious fault alleged against the President's personal acts, that he was too fond of pardoning. It was his very leniency that permitted open traitors, known to be in favor of secession and among them this very assassin to walk the streets of Washington unharmed. This leniency has terminated in a way has proved itself unsafe, and full of

we shall not soon forget, danger: let us hope its days are numbered and finished. We have heard much of the injustice of arbitrary arrests: to-day the nation suffers because the open, avowed, and rabid treason of one man through all our conflict was suffered to be unmolested.

The name of tyrant, then, will never rest with the memory of that brave heart now low in dust. The voice of the nation in freely intrusting its affairs again so recently to one who had never abused them, effectually dispels the stigma—a shot of malice which fell harmless from the mail of honesty in which Abraham Lincoln was clad. Would that he had only been as invulnerable to the wound over which this day a nation weeps!

In this act, then, not dictated by any personal motive, but by the misguided theories and passions by which this rebellion has been engendered, God has permitted the nation to feel the woe and wickedness of treason. Treason has stood ready for the commission of this act whenever it should find an advocate sufficiently bold. It has aimed its blows at the innocent and unsuspecting before, in its late attempt to fire our cities. It has revealed the merciless character of its brutality in that ferocity which broke through the barriers which surrounded the bedside of the painful sufferer to inflict on one of the chief lights of statesmanship deep and murderous wounds. It is the same spirit which has made possible the barbarities of Southern pris

ons.

No talents, no station, no condition, not even that of suffering, could appeal to its mercy; for it had none. No tie of honor, no tie of religion, binds it; for honor and piety were dead names in its heart long ago. If any have been disposed to treat it lightly, to be lenient towards it, look at this example, and decide now what it merits from you!

It is this spirit of treason and rebellion which we judge and condemn. For the unhappy criminal we have no severer doom than that which is given for a far less aggravated crime. We cannot more than execute the death penalty. We cannot descend to the penalties of pagan Rome or even unenlightened Europe of the middle ages. We have no rack, no wheel, no crown of red-hot iron, no quadruplicate team of horses to tear him limb from limb, as was done at Paris to Ravillac, the assassin of the King. We are above the infliction of such barbarities, which, after all, only add notoriety to the criminal, and even excite for him the sympathy of the weak-minded. We have but the death penalty, pure and simple, which even the Governor of this State must in this case approve, sanctioned as it is by Jehovah's command to Noah, the world's second great progenitor, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God made he man." (Gen. ix. 6.) The vengeance, hot and furious, which every one sees due, for which this innocent blood calls, is not ours to inflict. "Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord." (Rom. xii. 19.) "The Lord shall reward the evil-doer according to his wickedness a measure which we cannot understand, but which He shall fill to its uttermost. And let us, rather than desire this work, be glad that it does not rest with us to perform.

In the shadow of this great sorrow a gloom which makes the very heart heavy a loss which seems the most severe which in the person of one man the nation could receive,