EMMANUEL CHURCH. It being the Easter Communion, after an extended service, in which the liturgical and musical portions were very rich and solemn, the rector, Dr. Huntington, addressed the congregation from the chancel, substantially as follows: WE have finished a week of which it seems not too much to say, that, in the concurrence of public glory and public crimes, it is without precedent or parallel in the human history of the world. No doubt, as these strangely contrasted events have been announced to us, first filling the land with a joy that could scarcely find moderate expressions at the sudden prospect of an early, successful and righteous termination to four years of bitter alienation and bloody strife, and then overwhelming it with alarm, affliction, and indignation, equally sudden and even more unspeakable, at that appalling act of infamy that has struck the civil head of the nation from his seat and his life together,-many of us have inquired within ourselves whether there is any one thought, or truth, or doctrine, large enough, powerful enough, and reconciling enough to subdue this awful sense of discord, and to harmonize the terrible contradictions, under one benignant law of love. Is there any solid shelter, any holy pavilion, where we can take refuge, and find these distracting transactions falling into place as parts of one perfect plan of God? And probably many of you have already found a consoling answer to that question. The solemn path through which the holy evangelists, in their narratives of our Saviour's last days, and before he suffered, have led us, to his sacrifice, to the sealing of his grave, and to its miraculous opening as on this morning, has brought us to just that comforting and immortal truth, — deep enough, high enough, and wide enough to take in and interpret every one of these conflicting emotions. For there is no possible joy of deliverance, or jubilee of victory, where the feeling of both public and personal sin, and the need of a Redeemer, does not pursue us. Nor is there any secret heaviness, nor any national mourning, where the cross of Christ will not support us, and his resurrection from the dead re-assure us. Here, then, is the reconciliation. Here is the complete and sufficient declaration of our peace. Here is solid rock, be the earth never so unquiet! There is nothing we have felt, as citizens or as men, that may not find its needed ministry in the scenes where we have walked and lingered, Bethany, the Mount of Olives, Gethsemane, Calvary, and the broken sepulchre. In the most exultant emotion of triumph at a re-established government we have seen the Prince of Peace marching, with palms and hosannas, in front of the great procession of kings and commanders. The in tensest and most loyal patriotism is sanctioned by Jesus weeping over Jerusalem. Every bereaved household is solaced by going to Bethany, where Lazarus was raised, and by hearing the Son of Mary commend his mother to the beloved St. John, amidst the agonies of the crucifixion. When we lift up our hearty praises and thanksgivings, as we must day by day, that the God of Liberty has struck off the bonds from four millions of enslaved men, and set our whole country free from that wretched wrong, how can we help remembering that it is all the working out, at last, of his infinite mercy by Whom all the families of men are made of one blood, Who shed his own most precious blood in sacrifice for all alike,the poorest and weakest and darkest as much as any, and whose Christian service, as our daily collect says, is alone "perfect freedom"? Nay, more, we learn how to look on this appalling assassination, and every attendant enormity, leaving retribution to divine and human courts, when we hear the Crucified, who was anointed to be betrayed, praying for his murderers, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!" When we turn our eyes forward into the future, with whatever misgivings or anxieties, who can deny or doubt an instant that all our best and sure hopes rest on the one inestimable and transcendent fact, which we are now commemorating, that the Blessed and Holy and Almighty Lord has so loved us as to give himself for us, the just for the unjust, bringing life and immortality to light? Our only safety from coming evil, as a people, is in righteousness; and that not of our own obtaining, |