pláce. But surely we cannot question the goodness and wisdom of the Lord. We cannot doubt the tender mercy of that Divine Providence which, has so wondrously preserved us hitherto, and has apparently brought us to the end of this unnatural and distracting war. Our Heavenly Father is not changeable as we are. If he has been kind in raising up for us a great and good ruler, He has surely been no less kind in suffering him to be removed from us. Certain it is that our President would never have been taken away, if he had not finished his appointed work. As for that work, the memory of it will live forever. A greater work is seldom performed by a single man. Generations yet unborn will rise up, and call him blessed. But, as for what remains, the true spiritual welfare of the country and of mankind, requires that it should be done by others. It may be that we need still further - discipline and trial before the full measure of national prosperity can be allowed to us. Or it may be that he who was the best leader in time of war is not best fitted We cannot Our present for the new exigencies which are arising. tell now, but we shall know hereafter. duty is to trust. He who has guarded us hitherto will not fail us in the time to come. In the hollow of His hand let us rest, doubting not that if we strive to do our part, He will do His; and though we now are sorrowful, our sorrow shall be turned into joy. The primary object in such services as these ought unquestionably to be, the effort to see and acknowledge as far as possible the guiding hand of our heavenly Father. But in the case of a public man, whose obsequies are performed by an entire nation, there is also the further object of paying respect to him and his office. In the present instance, the office has been foully desecrated by the impious hand of violence. For this reason, if for no other, the whole people would rise up as one man in the fury of their indignation. But now we have lost a magistrate, who, to the faithful discharge of his official duties, has added the most endearing of personal characteristics. His uniform gentleness of heart, his almost womanly tenderness, his unaffected frankness of manner, and straight-forward simplicity of speech, have brought him wonderfully near to the hearts of his countrymen. We all feel to-day as if a father had been taken away from us. I shall not attempt any minute analysis of his character. You all have a clear perception of the man; for it was his nature to make no concealment of himself. Indeed, he was so transparent, that it seems almost as if we had had a personal acquaintance with him, even though we had never seen him. His acts and words show what he was, more plainly than any labored eulogy can do; and I have thought that I could not show forth in any better way his purity of purpose, his disinterested patriotism, his genuine reverence for the Lord and the Word, than by reading to you the inaugural address, which stands, and will forever stand, as his last words to the American people : "FELLOW-COUNTRYMEN: "At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement, somewhat in detail, of a course to be pursued, seemed very fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have constantly been called forth, on every point and phase of the great contest, which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. "The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself; and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured. On the occasion corresponding to this, four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avoid it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war; seeking to dissolve the Union and divide the effects by negotiation. . "Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, - and the war came. 66 One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but located in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object, for which the insurgents would rend the Union by war, while government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease, even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any man should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing his bread from the sweat of other men's faces. But let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayer of both should not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offences; for it must needs be that offences come, but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh." If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of these offences, which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that he gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? 66 Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, that the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. "With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wound, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphans, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” 26* |