"Be still, and know that I am God. If Abraham Lincoln is dead, I live. If you loved him, love me, and trust him in my hands. Mourn for yourselves, but rejoice for him. His work was finished, nobly finished.

And I have removed him from the turmoil and confusion of earth to the peace and rest of heaven."

2. We are liable to indulge in murmurings. Why should such wickedness be permitted to break in upon the order of society? Why should a wretch like the leader of this rebellion be endowed with such executive power and the ability to employ, directly or indirectly, the black-hearted assassin to invade so noble a life, and rob a nation of its polar star? "Be still, and know that I am God. Suppress all murmurs. Suffer, weep, but do not murmur. Clouds and darkness are round about him, but justice and judgment are the pillars of his throne. My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways. For, as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." Wisdom, rectitude, power, is the trinity of attributes on that eternal throne which presides over all human affairs. We not only should not complain of the divine government, we should cheerfully acquiesce in its decrees, and in its permissions; for it gives the Devil the length of his chain, and makes him, in doing his own work, accomplish the purposes that infinite wisdom and love had formed.

You remember that Job anticipated the very features of the divine government to perplex himself, that now perplex us. And you remember God's method of reply.

It was essentially just this, —Be still, and know that I am God. "Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up now thy loins like a man ; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding." If God walks on the waves of the sea, only faith can follow him there. Murmuring unbelief must remain on the solid shore, and lose sight of his footsteps. Faith alone can walk on waves, and sing amid the tempest, “In God is my salvation."

Look, for instance, at this fact. He informs us in his word that he chastens us for our good, though we cannot always see how the end is secured. Faith believes his statements and assurances. Sometimes it is obvious that his chastisements are directed expressly to removing that master-passion, the pride of our hearts.

If you are conversant with the history of Israel, you will have discovered that a very prominent aim of the Divine Providence is, to abase the pride of man. Man has an utterly false standard, which teaches him to admire most of the forms of pride in others, and all in himself. Just study that history with this clew in your hand; God's providence is rebuking the pride of men's hearts. That is what he is doing to-day among us. We had doubted Mr. Lincoln's ability at first. But now we have proved it, and trusted him. We placed him the second time at the head of our affairs, with the most unreserved confidence, and a fulness of joy and thankfulness to God. We felt secure when the decision was announced that he was re-elected. We were sure of four

years of wise administration, of integrity at the core of the government. But there was one thing we did not make sufficiently prominent; the uncertainty of human life. We forgot every morning when we arose that Abraham Lincoln's breath was in his nostrils. We forgot that his own clemency was harboring the villains that were plotting his destruction. But this was all virtually written in God's word; and we should have retained an humbler spirit had we kept that word in more vivid remembrance. It bade us not to put our trust in an arm of flesh, because, however strong to-day, to-morrow it may be crumbling back to dust. It bade us not to put our trust in man, for he is "crushed before the moth." A pistol-ball closes his history, annihilates his strength, turns him to dust. We were bidden not to put our trust in princes, for their breath is in their nostrils. Abraham was a prince, and we were proud of him,- so proud that we hid God behind him. And now we hear a voice in providence, echoing the voice in Scripture, Be still, proud heart, and know that I am God. Boast no more of thy strength, of thy generals, of thy brave defenders, of thy magnanimous leader; but he that boasteth, let him boast in the Lord." This terrible event proclaims, Man is frail, God is eternal. There is another natural feeling now called into active exercise, but which we must attemper by the power of a higher religious sentiment.

3. Revenge is in man a perverted instinct, but as really an instinct as the love of life. It was placed in man as the sting was given to the bee, to resist aggression from superior force. But it has now become so

mingled with our selfishness, and so perverted we cannot properly exercise it at all in personal matters, and scarcely in public affairs. But it is impossible to look on a dastardly oppressor or an act of cruelty, on any wrong to another, without feeling an intense desire to make the wrongdoer suffer.

How intensely this feeling is working to-day in the length and breadth of this outraged country! But to that feeling to-day a voice from heaven speaks,“ Be still, and know that I am God. Vengeance belongeth to me, I will repay, saith the Lord." We have a duty to perform; a solemn duty, a stern duty. We are dealing with men who wear much of the image of their father, who was a liar, and a traitor, and a rebel, and a secessionist, and a murderer, from the beginning. The magistrate must deal with them by the stern decrees of law and justice, the soldier by the sterner decrees of military usage; but we, as men, as citizens, have no personal or party revenge to gratify. All we have to do in this matter is this; that as we are citizens of a republic, and the magistrate must be guided by two codes, the statutes, and the public sentiment that sustains or modifies them, we must form a correct public sentiment, which is with us the backbone of law. Let traitors carry personal revenge into their treatment of us. We must let our revenge hear that voice, Be still, and know that I am God.

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Another sentiment is outraged by recent events.

4. Justice. The outbreak was a high-handed act of injustice. The robbery committed on the government, the robbery not only of forts, and ships, and arms, but

of the territory purchased by our common treasury, and of the men the government had trained to the art of war at its own expense; the enlistment of the selfishness of foreign nations against us; the treatment of our brave soldiers, when made prisoners of war; the treatment of men who retained among them loyalty and allegiance to the government that had always blessed them,—all arouse the sense of justice more profoundly in this nation, than any events of our history. Yes, if there has been found in all that horrid region where rebellion has scorched the very air men breathe, and withered all the finer sentiments of the human soul, and turned the very fountains of religious life into poisonous springs; there, if an Abdiel has been found, "faithful among the faithless, among innumerable false, unmoved, unshaken, unseduced, unterrified," that one has been marked out for scorn and cruelty, for rapine and for murder, even though the reverend crown of age was on his brow.

A thousand times in this war has the sentiment of justice within us called for fire from heaven to fall upon the monsters. To-day it calls for the extermination of a miscreant race, that prove themselves unfit to breathe the air of heaven. But even that sentiment must be restrained; for we hear another voice. It proclaims to us, "Be still, and know that I am God. I will judge nations, communities, individuals, bringing them to my bar, to make every man answer for the deeds done in the body. Ask no more, wish for no more than that. When the time comes for your tribunals in my name to try each man by the laws of his country, then stand by