even now may stab us as we lean confidingly upon them. There is room for honorable magnanimity and for christian mercy, without risking the very cause for which our armies have fought and our victories been gained. We want no unholy passion, no vindictive wrath; let the majesty of law be maintained; let there be no belittling of the great occasion by any assumption of the powers of retribution by private hands; but there are eternal laws of divine justice to be nationally vindicated for white and for black; and when we talk of magnanimity, we must not forget the race that has been waiting in patient suffering these many years for the magnanimity of this nation, and by whose help we have been lifted to a position where we have now the power to be magnanimous.

Is it possible, my friends, that we needed this awful calamity to teach us this lesson? to urge us to some duty that we were shrinking from? to push us to the full completion of this dire work of war by the establishment of absolute and impartial justice?. Is it possible—is it not possible that even now we could not build a true and lasting Union without this sacrifice, the greatest and highest that we could make? that, even with these gates of victory open, we could not enter the temple of perfect peace, unless the blood of our president should sprinkle the threshold and consecrate the altar? Let each ask and answer for himself; and answering, heed the promptings of solemn duty. Christianity was only a partial reform of Judaism until its leader was put to death by the hands of wicked men on Mount Calvary. Then it was transfigured, and became a new religion. Jesus lived a holy and wonderful life, but not till

he was led to the cross did the hour come in which he was to be glorified. And this, O friends, may be the hour in which this nation is to be glorified. It may be, and God grant it, that half-measures of justice will now be swallowed up in absolute and complete equity; that partial reform will give way to thorough regeneration; and that the nation henceforth will be no more the same, but transfigured and impelled by a new spirit. Through our great leader, we are crucified. God grant that we may also be glorified, even as he is glorified! Of all the days in the year, the assassins chose Good Friday to strike their fatal blow,—the day that their brother assassins, eighteen hundred years ago, put to death the Redeemer in Judea. Auspicious omen! The tomb shall not hold him. The stone shall be rolled away

from this sepulchre also. And he shall appear among us again in another form, pleading for truth and justice and humanity, so that our hearts shall burn within us by the way; and in closet and council he shall still come to us, and speak "Peace" to our troubled souls. One duty also, chiefest of all, will he enjoin: "Lovest thou me? Feed my lambs; feed my sheep,-the weak and little ones, the poor, neglected, oppressed, whose bonds I loosed."

Friends, this is Easter Sunday. Already it is time we were at the door of the sepulchre to await his 'coming, to listen for his higher bidding. Let the night of darkness and distraction and fear vanish. Lift up your eyes; behold the glories of the resurrection morning.

April 16, 1865.

II.

DISCOURSE ON THE DAY OF THE FUNERAL RITES.

MY FRIENDS, this is not the hour for long or elaborate speech. We have come together by a natural and spontaneous impulse, that we may join, even at this distant point, in the funeral solemnities of our late honored President. Our hearts are too bitterly shocked and grieved, our souls too full of sadness, for many words: a sadness, not only for the great loss that our nation, and the world even, have sustained, but a still deeper sadness because of the infamous crime and lasting shame to our country through which this sudden loss has come; for not, in the ordinary course of nature and Providence does the nation suffer this bereavement, but through the agency of a deed of the most atrocious wickedness. Providence permitted it, but only as it permits, only as it does not interfere with, the freedom of the human will, even though, swayed by satanic purposes, that will should lie in wait for innocent blood, or lay its murderous hand upon the Lord's anointed. Providence permitted it: and the infinite Providence will neutralize and transform it, as it does all evil, into final good and blessing,—we cannot doubt that: and yet divine Providence, for the very reason that it is infinitely good and holy, must

shrink in utter aversion and horror from the sight of such a crime. The whole race of humanity is stained by it, and the very heavens are blackened, and weep for shame.

But I would not use this hour to utter even the just indignation and anguish of horror that fill us at the cause of this national calamity and grief. Justice to society, the honor and progress of humanity, may in such a case demand that there be no act of human pardon; but with God-with God-while He looks down with a keenness of paternal sorrow, that we can have no conception of, upon the crime,— with God, there is yet always some way of forgiveness for the criminal, because, what is not always the case with man, there is with Him always some way, at some time, in some world, for bringing even the greatest criminal back, through the path of repentance, to newness and purity of life. With Him also, with God, is almighty power in some way to overrule all evil, even the blackest and most grievous, to draw from it its poisonous and agonizing sting, and to transmute it by degrees into the pure gold of truth and integrity and holiness. None but the Infinite One has this power: and so to Him we turn in this hour, seeking through this thought, on the wings of this faith, to mount up, up, above all this earthly darkness and woe and sin and despairing grief—up to the unshaken, eternal, unchangeable wisdom and might of the Infinite,—up to such point of spiritual elevation that we can see how, amidst all the conflicts, and perplexities, and complexities, and evils, and crimes, and sorrows of our finite lives, an overruling, universal Law, holding them all firmly in its grasp, works out unswervingly its wise designs; and how, over all special

wills and deeds, with their warrings and weaknesses and aberrations, there is one general will and providence, aiming always at the utmost possible good, and never moved from its path, never thwarted for a moment, by what passes on this little planet, among our little race.

Yes, my friends, in this hour of all hours do we need faith in God,—in a God who is a present Providence and Ruler in the earth, and whose designs cannot be circumvented by any wandering will, or disobedience, or even heaven-defying crime, of man. In God is our trust, our refuge, and our hope, in the eternity of His Laws, in the eternity of His Love. Over all the failures and sins and crimes of men, the great Law still works on, taking up and solving all these lower disturbances in its higher spiritual harmonies. Look up, O friends, even from out of this depth of national humiliation and grief, — look up into the heavens, above the earth, above its clouds and ills, and see ever "beauty for ashes." See how, in the pure vault above our heads, the eternal stars come out, and take our little earth into their company, take it with all its disorders into the harmony of the celestial spheres, its very perturbations being provided for and cancelled in their grander revolutions. And so we may ever read in the wise beneficence of the great providential laws, even in the midst of our strifes and wars and deeds too black to name, the everlasting gospel of "Peace on earth, good will to man." All things are transformed for man's eternal welfare, and the evil doers themselves are compelled to nullify their own purposes; their crimes, however black, and though wholly the result of human will and human depravity, and never foreordained by God, are yet