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m MEMORY OF 

E687 JAMES A. GARFIELD 

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PRESIDENT 0F THE UNITED STATES. 



A SERMON 



PI! K ACHED IX THE 



SOUTH CHURCH, IPSWICH, MASS, 



SEPTEMBER 25, 1881. 



BY THE PASTOR, 



RET. 


T. 


FRANK 


\\ ATERS. 


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S A L E M 




) OBSERVER 


STEAM PRINTING ROOMS, g 


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18 8 1. 





4 



IN MEMORY OF 

JAMES A. GARFIELD 

PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. 



A SEKMON 



PREACIIED IN THE 



SOUTH CHURCH, IPSWICH, MASS. 



SEPTEMBER 25, 1881. 



BY THE PASTOE, 



REV. T. FRANK AVATERS. 



SALEM: 

OBSERVER STEAM PRINTING ROOMS, 
1881. 






G-'lV 






Dear Sir : 

Your discourse in memory of our late lamented President, James A. 
Garfield, deserves a recognition beyond the passing hour. Its inherent 
merit, and the occasion and the man it commemorates, entitle it to pres- 
ervation, and therefore, we, for ourselves and numerous other hearers, ask 
it for publication. 



Yours with esteem, 



Rev. T. Frank "Waters. 
Ipswich, October 29, 1881. 



ABRAHAM LORD, 
JOHN J. GOULD. 
EDWARD P. KIMBALL, 
EVERETT K. BROWN, 
CHARLES PALMER, 
JOSEPH I. HORTON, 
ARTHUR W. DOW. 



Ipswich, Nov. 1st, 1881. 
To Abraham Lord, John J. Gould, and others. 
Dear Sirs : 

It gives me pleasure to comply with your request, and I will plaee 
it in your hands at once. 

At the same time I am fully aware that much of the interest the 
discourse aroused, was due to the place and the occasion of its delivery, 
and that when separated from those accessories, and read from the printed 
page, it may give you far less pleasure. 

Fraternally yours, 

T. FRANK WATERS. 



SEEMOK 



All chastening seemeth for the present to be not joyous but 
grievous ; yet afterward it yieldeth peaceable fruit unto them 
that have been exercised thereby, even the fruit of righteous- 
ness.— Heb: 12:11. 

This Sabbath day is a day of peculiar solemnity. For 
weeks and months our minds have centered on that sick 
room where our honored chief magistrate lay in pain and 
sore weakness : — our hearts have cried out to God to raise 
the sufferer to health and strength. We have come to the 
sanctuary feeling that the one petition that must be uttered 
was for this end, we have gone from the sanctuary anxious 
lest tidings should have come that he was already beyond 
the reach of prayer and sympathy. 

To-day no prayer is offered for that beloved ruler, no 
hopes of recovery beat within our hearts. Our fears are all 
realized. The poor, pain-racked body lies in more than 
royal state, in a distant city, whither it has been borne, at- 
tended by the honors that have been lavished by a stricken 
and sorrowful people. The struggle is over and death has 
gained the victory. The wondrous physical strength, the 
heroic fortitude and patience of the sufferer, the skill of tha 
most eminent physicians, the sympathy and prayer ofthe 
nations of the earth have at last been overcome, and he 
sleeps the placid sleep of death. 

This people knows the awful truth of the inspired word ; 
" this chastening seemeth for the present to be not joyous 
but grievous." 

There is a sense of personal affliction that oppresses the 



hearts of all. It is not merely a great official, it is one whom 
we have reckoned among the number of our friends, almost 
of our family circle, whom death has snatched away. 

Strong ties of sympathy bind the hearts of this nation to 
the widow, who suffers in this the final stroke of months of 
bitterest trial and suspense, to the fatherless children, bereft 
of so noble a parent, to the aged mother, bowing under the 
crushing sorrow that treads so closely upon the rapture, 
caused by the sight of the high honor that the son of her 
love had won. 

We think of the misfortune that has befallen the nation. 
His voice has been so wise to counsel, his hand has been so 
strong to guide through the years past, that we hoped under 
his leadership to overcome existing troubles and push on to 
a place among the nations that had never before been 
gained by any people. We thought we saw the promise of 
a strong and brilliant and pure administration of govern- 
ment, and well may we toll the bells of our churches and 
display the habiliments of sorrow, seeing that the same 
grave that receives his form, holds the nation's hope and the 
object of the nation's love. Unspoken fears for the future 
disturb our hearts, for we fear what may be the outcome of 
an administration which is regarded with such peculiar lack 
of confidence, and may be guided by such inauspicious in- 
fluences. 

If ever grief is becoming, it is in such an extremity. If 
a nation should ever give way to sorrow now is the occasion. 

But words of mine, or of any man, are not needed to rouse 
such emotion as this. No lengthy eulogy, no high-colored 
and harrowing portrayal of the suffering and death are re- 
quired. 

There is need rather of reminding you of the latter words 
of the text, that although no chastening seemeth fur the 
present to be joyous, but grievous " yet afterward it yieldeth 
peaceable fruit unto them that are exercised thereby." The 



grief that we feel may tend to become bitterness, the regard 
we had for the dead ruler may tend to make us forget the 
duty due the new ; the righteous indignation at the foul 
deed of the assassin may have developed into a blood-thirsty 
demand for revenge. It is not wise or right that we should 
be thus carried away by the flow of our feelings. It is not 
fitting that we should conduct ourselves in any way that 
will afterwards seem weak and blameworthy. It is not 
seemly that we should forget that an all-merciful God has 
spoken the word that has made us sorrowful. It is not all 
dark, some bright spots already relieve the gloom, and we 
may hope for a growing brightness as the future unfolds 
itself. Let us dwell upon them a little that we may gain 
some good cheer in the midst of the nation's grief. 

I. We cannot ask a nobler fame for ourselves or for any 
one we love, than posterity will certainly bestow upon the 
name of our illustrious dead President. Fame may be a 
bauble, but it is a bauble that is counted very precious, 
nevertheless. There is a proud satisfaction in realizing 
that your deeds and words are not only regarded by the 
hosts of the living, but will also be regarded by generation 
after generation long after your form has crumbled back to 
dust, and that the destiny of the race is to be affected in 
greater or less degree through the influence you wield. 
Such power makes its possessor more than a king in honor. 
It is truly a great matter to be thus a councillor in the as- 
semblies of State, a leader in the thick of the battle, a 
teacher in the schools, a familiar and honored name in the 
homes of the people fur ages. 

But fame once achieved is not a certainty. Sometimes 
life lasts too long. The early brilliancy does not attain the 
full meridian splendor of which it gave promise. The great 
deeds of the prime of life are overshadowed by the foolish 
and weak efforts of old age. Qualities, the very opposite of 



8 

those which gain glory may develop with after years, and 
turn the glory into shame. So far as the getting of fame is 
concerned, it is surer for a career to be completed at its 
zenith than after it has waned to its setting. Keats died at 
26, a mere youth, but the world will always think of him 
as a poet of the finest genius, because of the bright promise 
that was cut short by his early death. Had he lived four 
score he might have uttered such weak babblings as have 
marked the decline of many a master-mind before and since 
his day. 

The philosopher Schelling died late — at seventy-nine, but 
at thirty-five he had reached his highest, and lived to be 
out-grown, and comparatively forgotten. 

When death comes suddenly, in the prime of a man's 
power, there is a great expectation of still greater attain- 
ments that is cut short. But there is an unconscious adding 
of what he was expected to attain, to what he has already 
accomplished in our estimate of his power, and particularly 
when there is anything specially sad or touching in the 
manner of the death ; our sympathetic admiration not only 
adds imaginary future deeds, but clothes his past career 
with brightest honor. 

Had Mr. Garfield lived till to-day in full health and 
strength, and with the same promise of life that we all 
cherish, we know well that in our estimate of his character 
we might find flaws, and that in the case of many of his 
official acts, we might not only question the wisdom of his 
course, but perchance some suspicion of his motive might 
creep upon us. We know full well that had he lived he 
might have disappointed his friends, his country, and the 
world by unsuspected weakness and newly developed faults, 
for James A. Garfield was only a man. No single trait of 
character was other than human. No angelic patience or 
God-like purity was his. As a man he was not free from 
human fault, he was not above the reach of human frailty. 



But the moment lie fell beneath the assassin's hand, all 
thought of any misjudgment or error, or fault in the past, 
was banished ; all possibility of such in the future was for- 
gotten. A deep and generous sympathy moved every 
heart; of a sudden, his brilliant powers, his unquestioned 
fidelity to duty, his unshrinking veracity, his skill in the 
intricacies of state craft, his devotion to a widowed mother, 
and his own family circle, his Christian heroism in the face 
of death, these engaged the notice of all, and as the long- 
anxious weeks have worn away, and no murmur has escaped 
the sufferer's lips, no harsh, petulant complaint, but the 
same steadfast patience has ever been manifest ; and even in 
the wanderings of his fevered brain his thoughts have been 
so pure, and lofty, and large, the hearts of the people have 
been drawn not only to admire him, but to love— to love 
him as the generation now living has never loved any man, 
and as it is not likely to love again. And in his death that 
admiration and love have become at once elevated into the 
homage and reverence that is the glory of the martyr, for 
in the eyes of this nation our dead Ruler is a martyr for 
his country^s good. Martyrdom always works wonders. 
Cranmer was a weak, ambitious time-serving, cruel ecclesi- 
astic, not devoid of excellencies, but of great and conspicu- 
ous faults ; but having in his old age, when calamity had 
overtaken him, manifested hearty contrition, and having 
suffered death at the stake, we wonder when we find that 
the same fire which destroyed his life, purged away the dross 
of his fair fame as well, and the world honors him to-day 
despite his faults. Much more then, in the case of a life 
so fair and lovable as this life has ever been, does martyr- 
dom put its seal upon it, and fix its fame as preeminently 
good and sweet and manly, for all coming time. 

No, I say, this event is not all dark, nor inexplicable. 
Follow him from his humble home, see him at fourteen at 
work at a carpenter's bench; at sixteen a mule-driver on 



10 

the tow-patl) of a canal ; at eighteen working - his way 
through the Chester seminary; at twenty-one teaching in 
one of ( Hiio's common schools, and at the same time pushing 
forward his own studies so successfully that at twenty-three 
we find him entering Williams college in the sophomore 
year; at twenty-six graduating with the first honors ol his 
class: at twenty-seven a tutor in Hiram college ; at twenty- 
eight President of the same ; at twenty-nine a member of 
the Ohio Senate, the youngest member of the body; at 
thirty-one a colonel in the volunteeer army, and the same 
year in command of a brigade, and engaged in conspicuous 
and successful operations against the enemy ; at thirty- 
two promoted to the rank ot Major-General for gallantry in 
the held : at thirty-three in Congress; at forty-eight having 
been for fifteen years continuously re-elected, elected to the 
Senate; at forty-nine elected President of the U. S. ; and 
in his fiftieth year, after five months in the Presidential 
office, shot by an assassin. 

If we cud thus, it reads strangely ; it seems a strangely 
tragic and unfortunate end for such a career ; hut the rec- 
ord does not end there. To he complete, let there lie 
written after all this, for eleven weeks the object of the 
most solicitous and anxious interest to two continents; the 
object of continuous and universal prayer to two great 
nations: the absorbing object of attention, which caused all 
political animosities to he forgotten, and all strife of fac- 
tions to cease ; the peer and equal of kings and queens and 
emperors, and all the world's great ones ; at his death, 
occasioning sorrow in every heart which ever knew his 
worth, filling the whole broad area of his own land with 
deepest urief, and rousing a re-echoing knell upon the 
church hells in distant Britain : home to his burial amid 
the most solemn expressions of a nation's grief. 

From the humble frontier cabin, up through all the stages 
of political honor, up to the highest place a man can gain in 



11 

this land, up to the place in the Heaven above, in a way 
almost as glorious as the whirlwind and horses and chariots 
of lire, in which Elijah went up on High. Is it not a glori- 
ous end after all? Despite the sorrow, the disappointment, 
the prospect of greater things h\ coming time, is it not 
glorious to leave a record so splendid, a fame so sure. If 
we wish our hero fame. — a bright and glorious fame,- -a 
name that will be associated with the purest and greatest 
names of our land, our wish is gratified most signally. 

II. Our country, though chastened, is blessed. There is 
always a call to serious thoughtfulncss in every death. 
Pre-eminently in the ease of a death like this, a nation is 
moved. This nation has been made to realize, by this sore 
calamity, let us hope, the danger that lies in many of the 
existing methods, popular in political circles. Orators have 
spoken their most eloquent and logical appeals, graceful 
writers have penned their assaults upon the evils of oar 
systems, the best sentiment of the land has been fully in 
sympathy with any efforts toward securing a reform ; still 
the spoils system, the personal favor system, the bribery 
system, the intimidation system, have each held sway. The 
whole machinery of government has been regarded as a con- 
venient gift by those in office rewarding political services by 
their henchmen. It has made the civil service largely orna- 
mental and useless, and far more expensive than is requisite. 
It has compelled our Congressmen to give seven-eighths of 
their time to merely private concerns. It has overwhelmed 
the chief executive with a load too great for the strongest to 
carry. Ultimately, this system tends to subvert all true 
democratic government, to elevate the worst men to the 
highest place, and to imperil the safety of the nation. 

Can the people of this land fail to trace out the connec- 
tion between the irreparable loss sustained in the death of 
their President, and these crying evils? Not thai the 
unhappy spectacle of partisan strife that preceded the 



12 

sadder spectacle of the assassination is to be connected 
with the latter as its guilty cause, but will not the people 
see in the passions, the debates, the hot strife of the former 
the legitimate excitement of the insane purpose, which 
resulted in the President's death ? If this American people 
is aware of what its own interest demands shall it not be 
that, awakened from its indifference by this shock, it will 
utter its voice in thunder tones, and demand a purer and 
better system? Will not this people, that would now give 
its millions of gold and silver to rear up any memorial that 
might testify its regard for the lamented dead, see the fittest 
and most significant memorial in the instant resolution to 
complete the good work that our President began so well, 
and to carry that same spirit into the administration of all 
its affairs ? If this should result, it might be worth the 
precious sacrifice that has been made. But even if a senti- 
ment is impressed on the natiou that will lead ultimately to 
this, the blessing is great. 

It is a blessing to the nation that we have all been im. 
pressed by this career, by the practicability of preserving a 
Christian manhood in the foul pool of political corruption- 
There is need of good men, pure men, men of high Chris- 
tian principle, in office, from the lowest to the highest grade. 
Unless such are willing to do their part, the bad will carry 
all before them. It is worth much, then, that we see a 
good man in the political arena, and successful in his 
endeavors. 

It is a blessing that the rising generation has a fresh 
stimulus to self-endeavor, to overcome all the obstacles that 
poverty interposes in the way of ambition, to aspire to as 
honorable a place as the nation can bestow. The Amerjcan 
ideal of manhood has been filled so well by him that the 
youth of this and coming generations will find great profit 
in studying it. 

Finally, we learn a good lesson for ourselves. Many 



13 

lessons, indeed, arc taught us ; but I will speak only of 
one. That is, the attractiveness, the genuine worth, of 
simple, homely goodness. 

It was not the high official position merely, nor was it the 
tragic occasion of his suffering, that made his illness a time 
of such suspense to us all. There Avas something deeper 
than that, which took strongest hold upon us. It was the 
remembrance of that simple and natural filial affection which 
caused a place of honor to be reserved amid all the 
pageantry and dignity of the Inaugural ceremonies, for 
his venerable mother, and prompted that affectionate 
embrace of mother and wife in the face of the assembled 
thousands. It was the revelation of the simple, common- 
place home-life, in which the honor due a parent and the 
love due a family had such free exercise. It was the 
thought of that sturdy Christian character which clung to a 
small and obscure sect through all the years of prosperity ; 
and was faithful to its calls while occupying the highest 
place. " He was a good man," as his old mother has often 
said. He was a good man, is the response of the nation, 
and we loved him for his goodness, and we were grieved 
when he was called to suffer. 

The glitter of genius, the imposing display of strength, 
the attractiveness of statesman-skill, have power to engage 
our attention : but the fascination of simple, unaffected 
goodness, of kindliness of heart, broad sympathies, deep 
affections, is the strong clasp that bound the hearts of the 
nation to their President. The grandeur of the man far 
surpassed the accidents of place and circumstance. To us, 
the lesson of his life remains as a great and strong incentive 
to virtue. May we see that true greatness lies not in 
wealth, not in high place, not in tricks and stratagems, not 
in stern and hateful worship of self and Mammon ; but in a 
pure and simple and hearty devotion to God and the right. 
May we realize that the honor men pay to outward 



14 

greatness is as nothing compared with the homage they 
render to simple virtue. And may we each, in our own 
lives, see and see clearly, that though in talent and 
opportunity he surpassed any one of us as the sun surpasses 
the faint glimmer of a glow-worm, that in a little sphere 
that surrounds us, we, by living as he lived, may gain a 
similar hold upon the hearts of men, and thus mould and 
shape' them in an excellent way. 

God grant that we may thus learn good lessons from his 
life. God grant that this nation may he chastened and 
blessed in its dark hour, and on the morrow, when that 
poor, maimed, and emaciated body is laid to its last rest by 
those who have loved him so well, and all over this land 
the people gather in solemn sadness in their churches, hung 
with funeral drapings, to listen to the sad words that must 
be uttered, may God grant that an electric thrill may leap 
from heart to heart, from city to city, from east to west ; a 
deep and strong resolve to honor the blessed memory of the 
idolized dead by making this nation great enough, good 
enough, God-fearing enough to be worthy of the precious 
blood. 



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