E .8 ,MS3 Lincoln Glass. Book EVIL ITS OWN DESTROYER. A DISCOUESE DELIVERED BEFORE THE UNITED SOCIETIES OF THE CONGREGATIONAL AND BAPTIST CHURCHES AT THE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, IN THE CITY OF EAST SAGINAW, APRIL 19TH, 1865, ON THE OCCASION OF THE DEATH OIF PRESIDENT ABRAHAM LINCOLN. By H. L. MOREHOUSE, Pastor of the First Baptist Churcft, East Saginaw, Mich. PUBLISHED B^" REQUEST. 18(3 5. — » ENTERPRISE PRINT, EAST SAGINAW, MICH. EVIL ITS OWN DESTROYER. A DISCOURSE DELIVERED BEFORE THE UNITED SOCIETIES OF THE CONGREGATIONAL AND BAPTIST CHURCHES AT THE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, IN THE CITY OF EAST SAGINAW, APRIL 19TH, 1865, ON THE OCCASION OF THE DEATH O IF PBESIDENT ABBAHAM LINCOLN. By H. L. MOREHOUSE, Pastor of the First Baptist Church, East Saginaw. Mich. ■♦> ■ ■» ♦■ ♦ ♦ » 1865. ENTERPRISE PRINT, EAST SAGINAW, MICH, >, East Saginaw, April 19th, 1865. Rev. H. L. Morehouse: Dear Sir: — We, the subscribers, having listened with deep interest to the Discourse you this day delivered on the occasion of the death of our lamented President, Abrau'am Lincoln, and believing that the truths and principles therein expressed are such as should be known and read in every household in this Valley, respectfully request that at your earliest convenience you will furnish us a copy for Publication. Very Respectfully, Yours, E. W. MORLEY, GEO. B. BOARDMAN, L. R. LEGGITT, W. R. BURT, W. K. HAWKINS, L. P. MASON, J. M. LUTHER, J. S. STEVENS, H. M. FLAGLER, H. S. COLLINS, L. II. EASTMAN, GEO. J. VAIL, B. H. YORK, C. B. JONES, J. S. ESTABROOK, CHAS. STRAW. East Saginaw, April 20th, 1865. To Messrs. Geo. B. Boarpmin, W. R. Burt, and others, Gbntlbmbn : — Your unexpected request is before me. Coming from thoso whose opinions I have learned to respect, though from several personally unknown to me, I feel that out of deference to your strong ex- pressions concerning the desirability of giving greater publicity to the remarks uttered yesterday, I can not do otherwise than comply with your request : hoping that what was necessarily hurriedly prepared may be over- looked in its defects and accepted in its truths ; firmly believing that the sentiments touching the relation of the state to the offender and our proper attitude towards the cause of our troubles, are consonant with the Eternal truth of God and fundamental to the perpetuity of our Government. Confidently hoping that the day of our deliverance is at hand and praying that the people of this land may never again be called to mourn as we mourn to-day. I am, Yours in support of the Truth, H.L.MOREHOUSE, DISCOURSE. f 'This is your hour and the power of darkness." I#uke 22: 53- Truly it was their hour to whom the Saviour spoke. — Long had they cherished the bitterest feelings towards him ; once in their rage had they attempted to thrust him from the brow of a hill, but were foiled ; soldiers had been ordered to seize him, but returned empty handed, saying, " Never man spake like this man ;" the Sanhedrim bad taken counsel together to put him to death ; but uip to this time, fruitless had been their endeavors to secure him whom they so deeply hated. They would have laid hands upon him as he taught in the temple, but they feared an uproar because of his popularity. But now they had ascertained his whereabouts,, and about ten o'clock at night you might have seen a company of men going out of the gates of Jerusalem armed with swords and bludgeons, some bearing torches, some lanterns, wending their way down the hill, across the ravine, out towards the garden of Gethsemane. While they are passing over the half mile between the walls of the city and their place of destination, let us go to the garden. Although the moon, now nearly at its full, is in the zenith, yet its rays scarcely penetrate the thick foliage of the trees and we almost need a light. We pass eight men near the entrance. It is in spring time, nearingr summer ; and a little farther along, upon the grassy plots, 4 fanned by the soft breezes of Judea, three other men, evi- dently of the same company, have fallen asleep. Some of them have been fishermen and are accustomed to out-door life. Farther on a solitary man is praying. These are the words, and they come forth from a soul in agony : " 0, my Father ! if it be possible, let this cup pass from me ; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt." Three times is the prayer repeated. And now the band from the city reach the place ; the little company gather in a group at the strange and unexpected sight. One of that number who but an hour or two before was with them in the upper room at Jerusalem, and who had gone out they knew not whither, is Judas. With a kiss he salutes the Saviour. — - Are those accompanying him friends ? The doubt is re- moved by the question of Jesus: " Be ye come out as against a thief ?" The truth at once flashes on their minds that these are men delegated by the Sanhedrim to arrest Jesus, whose favorite resort had been disclosed by the treacherous Judas. Now indeed is their "hour." Now they have their victim. The alarmed disciples fly in all directions ; while he who had all power, who said that by asking it, the Father would give him more than seventy thousand angels — angels perhaps such as slew the haughty hosts of Senne- charib — but who, with all his power put it forth, never to destroy, but always to save, even now refrained from using it to save his own life ; and was " brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth." It was their hour of triumph when they led him back to the city ; when they procured his condemnation by suborned witnesses ; when they scourged him ; when they led him out to Calvary and cru- cified him ; and when they wagged their heads in ridicule, crying out tauntingly at his supposed helplessness : " He saved others, himself he cannot save." " If thou be the King of the Jews, save thyself." And growing bolder as he still hangs there, they cried in mockery, " Hail ! King of the Jews." And the soldiers and one of the thieves take up and repeat the cry, " Hail ! King of the Jews." In the afternoon he died. At dusk they saw his pierced body taken from the cross, placed in a tomb guarded by Roman soldiers ; and then they congratulated eacli other that they never should be troubled any more by him. It was their hour of triumph ; and it was as well the hour of the power of darkness, for the terrified disciples were scattered as sheep without a Shepherd. Wicked men rejoiced. The prince of the power of the air, who through their instrumentality had accomplished his end, was exult- ant. Darkness ruled, casting its shadow not only over the face of nature, but over the hearts of good men. It had what men call victory. There seemed to be an end to the agitation which for three years had been produced by that man ; for his friends had entombed him, while his disciples had again returned to their nets and ordinary avocations. John the Baptist was dead ; Jesus was dead ; the disci- ples were dispersed or dejected as they said one to another, "We trusted that it had been he who should nave re- deemed Israel." The work seemed effectually done. Such was man's judgment ; not so, God's. Their dom- ination was temporary. The hour of their greatest appar- ent triumph was the hour of their greatest disaster. The Jewish nation supposed it had destroyed Jesus ; but in- stead he lived, his principles lived ; and they had destroyed themselves, and to-day are a wandering race upon the face of the earth, loved by none, honoied by few, watched by all. The blow they struck, though it hit the mark intended, returned like the boomerang to inflict a fatal wound upon those who aimed it. And the power of darkness, then so in the ascendant, finds that the very means which it used to stay the progress of the truth, were those which were the best adapted to procure its own overthrow : thus be- coming in the hand of God the most effective agent for the crippling of its own powers and for its final destruction. This is the thought which forces itself upon us to-day in connection with the terrible calamity which has befallen this naiion with the suddenness of the lightning's stroke, viz : That the greatest apparent triumphs of evil are its greatest disasters ; or, in other words, that evil is the most effective a^ent in defeating its own ends. A deep gloom rests on nearly every household of the land. Words seem cold. Men utter short sentences, bufe earnest, and want to be left alone. They look southward and feel to adopt the language of the Saviour in its appli- cation to a different enemy, but the same power : " This is your hour and the power of darkness." Light and dark- ness have been struggling for dominion these four years, and darkness now has thrown a death shade over the nation. At times the daybreak seemed near ; again it was dark night. Long had been the day of our prosperity, but wise men thought they detected indications of its close. They were right. Plainer appeared the signs, until the most in- credulous were compelled to believe it. Then we entered the twilight, then the thick darkness. Evil beasts of prey howled on every side. Owls hooted their mournful prog- nostications. Sounds of carnage tilled our ears. Men stood still and wondered. Statesmen groped. Paths en- tered upon had to be abandoned for others. Men's souls quaked for fear. u Lord ! how long ?"■ was the cry, and we thought God had just said : " Thus far and no far- ther." The morning dawned ; the clouds began to dis- perse ; the day of peace seemed about to gladden our sor- row stricken land. Indeed, we began again to walk confi- dently. But suddenly every man stops and asks : " What means this ? Where are we V* And all the reply he re- ceives is a repetition of the question by his neighbor. To what shall we liken this hour of darkness ? There was no premonitory shadow. It is like a total eclipse of the sun at noon-day, spreading far and wide an unearthly gloom, bringing out again the birds that flit in the shadows of night, and filling the land with horror. Saturday morning, people greeted each other with cheer- ful salutations ; talked hopefully of the future ; statesmen and rulers were sanguine ; generals, confident ; soldiers, full of joy ; the reverberations of our celebrations had hardly died away ; flags were flying from the top-most staffs, — when, in an hour, what a change ! Over the wires the tidings came : " President Lincoln and Secretary Sew- ard were assassinated last night." Business stopped ; hearts throbbed almost audibly ; knots of men congregated on the streets ; telegraph offices were thronged by anxious faces ; and all were incredulous that such a stupendous, nefarious transaction had occurred in America. Oh ! what moments of suspense were those ! The nation held its breath alternating between hope and fear. Again the wires click: " President Lincoln is dead." Then it was the dark- ness of midnight. It is midnight yet. Laughter ceased. Trembling lips, tearful eyes, saddened countenances, and suppressed tones, evinced the unspeakable emotions of the soul. The heart of the nation had been pierced and every member became numb. Commercial life, social life, every thing was stagnant; and then the nation went into mourn- ing — " a day of gloom and darkness." Flags everywhere hung at half mast ; bells everywhere tolled their mourn- ful sounds ; the land was hung in black — its homes, its places of business, its public buildings, its houses of wor- ship. The bonfires of exultation which the night before lighted up the streets of many of our cities, as if in antic- ipation of the terrible event had left their ashes and blackened embers, emblems of mourning and disappoint- ment, to be in readiness for the general sorrow. America mourns as she never mourned before. In her profound grief she almost forgets the triumphs of her arms, which at any other time would have filled her with joy. She mourns not only the loss of her noble President, but also, that on her soil was ever raised a miscreant capa- ble of such an act of darkness. For the first time in our history, as far as we are aware, has a Chief Magistrate, either of a state or of the nation, died by an assassin's hand. Oh ! that this might have been spared us. We expect assassinations in such a land as France, but we did not expect them in Republican America. But, having oc- curred, it adds strength to those vague rumors which were afloat when Harrison and Taylor died. "Assassin!" How that word sounds in an American ear! " Traitor," we had become accustomed to ; must it be that this word, too. shall be as familiar ? We cannot believe it. These men shall stand alone in an immortality of infamy. " Quos Dens vult perdere, prius dcmentat" 8 Is an old Roman adage full of truth — " Whom God wishes to destroy, He first makes mad." Evil, in the madness of desperation, commits acts which it fondly imagines will re- move the hindrances in its path, but which the calm, right reason discerns are to defeat their own ends. The papacy thought to exterminate the opposition of Huss by the burning of his body. But Huss lived then in a thousand hearts, and soon Rome discovered it to her sorrow. But, we ask, what means this blow of evil, and how is it to be destructive to the cause in the interest of which it was done ? Why was it permitted ? To us it seems the worst calamity that could have befallen us ; but as we grasp at the purposes of the Almighty, we are constrained to say, u Thy will be done/' We believe God has permit- ted it that the power of evil arrayed against us may be the more quickly and effectually crushed. Let not any man say that Abraham Lincoln was impeding the fulfillment of God>s plans ; let not any one say that he was an enemy to the race ; let the man who has called him a tyrant speak it in a whisper now, and that to himself ; let no man say that he was carrying us backwards, that he was not an hon- est, upright man, or that he was bringing the nation into disgrace by public or private acts ; no true man can say this. Not for this reason was he cut down. No ! We feel that in the spirit of those immortal first words of our Declaration of Independence, he was the friend of the w h o 1 e race, and with the substitution of his name for that of another we can say that Freedom shrieked when Abraham Lincoln fell. 1. If we read aright, this is the way by which national unanimity is to be speedily secured. There were questions on which we were divided. What we needed was a wel- ding together, and nothing so unites men as a common sor- row. A mawkish humanitarianism advocating plenary pardon to the men whose councils let loose and have caused to flow this great cataract of blood which has deluged our land, was beginning to find expression in high quarters. There was danger that men who ou^ht to forfeit their lives it ever men deserved to forfeit them, should go " scot free." 9 Hanging, is a word which shocks some ears. Treason in the highest, and rebellion against God shock mine. The rank and file of the South would gladly have gone to their homes long ago; but the dictatorial powers which held them against their will, are responsible for this bloodshed, and particularly that of the last few months. Every bullet that let out the life of a northern boy defending his country, was aimed by those in authority. Every home darkened by the shadow of death, was darkened by those in authority. And with these ghastly corpses before you ; with these thousands of newly made graves ; with these desolated homes and mourning friends — Rachels weeping for their children because they are not — can you stretch forth the right hand of fellowship to the authors of all this ? Do they not deserve to die ; though their lives be but the shadow of an offset to the desolation they have made ? In no vindictive spirit, I trust, are these words uttered. There are times when leniency towards flagrant wrong is burning injustice to the right ; and is not the present such a time ? Shall subordinates suffer and the principals go free ? Were Governments, like God, no res- pectors of persons, the course of justice would be different from what we often witness now. But, responds some one, " Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord." True, but how does he do it ? — No longer does he open the windows of Heaven and sweep away wickedness with a deluge ; no longer is fire rained down upon the Sodoms of the earth ; no more does the earth open and swallow up the disobedient Korahs. These days of God's miraculous punishment of evil are ended. — Vengeance upon wickedness is taken through human in- strumentality. And when according to eternal principles of justice, wicked men, irrespective of position should be pun- ished, thenit is the duty of Government to do it. If, from whatever reason, it refuses to do this, then it must suffer ; even as the Lord through Elijah said to Ahab, the King of Israel, when he released Benhadad, King of the Syrians : " Thus saith the Lord, because thou hast let go out of thy hand a man whom I appointed to utter destruction, therefore thy life shall go for his life and thy people for his 10 people." And the prophecy was fulfilled. Paul declare s that the civil power " is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil/' And woe to that Government that fails to do the mission of God. We do not say that failure in this respect is why the President was taken away ; but it is certain that if he erred, it was in be- ing too lenient. God may have wanted a sharper cutting instrument, and a stronger arm in the people to wield it, and may have suffered this act in order to secure these things. Certainly the chief conspirators have less leniency to expect from Andrew Johnson than they had from Ab- raham Lincoln. 2. This act will also unite all classes more closely than ever before, for the effectual eradication of one of the greatest evils which ever cursed a nation ; a result, which, it may be, God foresaw could not be produced so speedily, if at all, in any other way. And thus has he not permitted evil in wounding another to cut its own throat? But, says one, this act had not official sanction, and thus is not properly chargable to the system, and hence will not produce the result of which you speak. How do you know it had not official sanction ? There will be startling disclosures when the plot is traced out to its inception. Against what are the utterances of the men of the North? Against the man or the system which produced the monster ? Deep against the man, but deeper against the system. It was this system which stood ready four years ago to do the same dark deed. And now it is done. Fitting climax of that spirit which began with violations of oaths, with theft and treason in a thousand forms ; which advanced by incendiary attempts to burn our houses and wrap us in a general conflagration ; which fiendishly man- ufactured the bones of our dead heroes into trinkets ; which hunted refugees and escaping union prisoners with blood-hounds ; which murdered men for looking through a grated window, or unconsciously in the staggering weak- ness of starvation stepping over " the dead line ;" which deliberately starved to death, with filthy water and corn- cob meal, and putrid meat, with little or no fire to cook the wretched iare, tens of thousands of the bravest and noblest II boys our land has ever produced ; which had prepared^ as the records of the Confederate Congress show, to blow into "eternity six thousand prisoners at once, in case our gun- boats reached Richmond; and which, maddened by the failure of all these plans, now stealthily takes the life ol our Chief Magistrate, and sends its messenger with a Ju- das pretence to stab with the assassin's dagger the Secretary of State, lying helplessly upon his sick bed, — a spirit ut- terly diabolical, and which could have been produced by no other system than that which was declared to be the foundation stone of the new government, but which coi- ner stone is being pounded to powder by the ponderous blows of God's providences, while the architects who built thereon are fleeing every whither to escape from the toppling super- structure. All these -exhibitions of malignity are the fruits of that one spirit engendered by the system of human slavery, and whether having official sanction or not, cer- tainly have official sympathy ; and are as inseparable from the system as the fagot, the rack, and the Inquisition, are from the spirit of Rome. And when the people charge it to the system rather than to the individual, the people are right And will not the effect of this act be to snap some of the links which have bound men to this system ; and is not the determination deeper, stronger, more general to- day than it was last week or has ever been before, that this system shall be dug out, cut up, destroyed root and branch, not a vestige of it being left save in its past deso- lations; never again to thrive on American soil, never more to be a distracting element in our social, political and re- ligious life ? 3. This act, if we read aright, will be regarded abroad much as it is at home ; and in this fact we see one mode ot God's punishment of the supporters of this unholy rebel- lion. Has not He suffered it, that a load of opprobrium might be heaped upon their heads which would at once and forever render them and their cause infamous among the people of the earth ; which would knock away every prop of sympathy and respect, and leave them to be refer- red to henceforth as a by-word and a hissing ? God pun- 12 ishes terribly, and men will be detested because ©f their 1 political connection with the cause which produced this crime. Will it not henceforth be said of every leader and co-adjutor of this rebellion as they wander among other nations : " There is a countryman of the murderer of Ab- raham Lincoln?" And, though it would be impious to in- stitute a comparison between the death of the Saviour of the world and that of our President, yet may we not say that as to the Jews cleaves the curse of crucifying the Lord of Glory, so in a somewhat similar manner will the taint of this assassination cleave to the people of the South wherever they go ? Will not that people, at least for this generation, be a people of Cains, bearing about on the loreheads of their characters an ineffaceable stigma ? Thus do we believe, that in the present instance, the hour of the triumph of evil is the hour of its disaster; that the act m which it is proud, is that by which it shall be bit- terly punished. O, God! we do believe that even the wrath of man shall praise Thee and that the remainder of wrath Thou wilt restrain. The excesses of evil shall be its own annihilation. Yes, Satan ! this is your hour ; exult while you may, but brief will be the period of your exulta- tion, for God's hour is close at hand, and when the c^eat day of His wrath comes who shall be able to stand? ° We believe then that this event will result in particular pun- ishment to the surviving fomentors of this rebellion ; in a general punishment to all concerned in it by affixincr an- other stigma to their already blackened name ; in the re- moval of all sympathy from abroad; and in the total ex- tinction of human slavery in this Republic. Time alone can reveal all its bearings. The South has destroyed itself most thoroughly. South- ern pride is in rags and glad to eat the bread of Northern charity ; Southern " chivalry" has earned for itself the title of barbarism ; Southern civilization— the boasted par- agon of perfection— has shown itself to be a whited sepul- chre full of corruption within ; the grass which was to grow in the streets of our commercial centres has grown in those of its own ; it has burned its own cities ; destroyed its own cotton ; impoverished its own people ; ruined its favorite in- IS stitution, even offering conditional freedom to those whom it originally intended more deeply to enslave ; while in the last stroke by an assassin's hand it has struck itself a death blow and finds a stronger grip upon its throat than ever before ; and all this wretched wreck, morally, socially > financially, and politically, has come chiefly through its own action, be- cause it madly lifted its evil hand against the best govern- ment of earth. Verily, it has been made in the hand of God, its own Nemesis. -—Abraham Lincoln ! A nation mourns his tragical and untimely end. Never until our blessings are taken away do we appreciate them. In looking over the land no other man appears in whom we feel to place such implicit confi- dence. We could trust him, for he had been tried and ever proved true. His sagacity and strong common sense won the respect of officials. Among foreign nations, those who laughed at the " village attorney" in 1861, with unaffected reverence will do him homage now. We feared, at times, lest in his conferences with our enemies he might be inad>- vertently betrayed into some remark which would com- promise our honor, or furnish to them some plausible pre- text or ground of justification for their continuance in crime; but never was he outwitted by the shrewdest, or hood - winked by the most designing. His honesty and integrity of character are forever inseparable from his name ; and should the abbreviation of " Honorable" ever stand before that name, men will attach to it a meaning which it could not properly bear if applied to many public men, for they will say it means Honest Abraham Lincoln, and Pope says " An honest man's the noblest work of God." He won the love of the masses by his cordiality, his frankness, and his Republican simplicity, which perhaps has not been equalled by any of our statesmen since the days of Franklin. Too slow for some of his friends, too fast for his enemies, to me it is an evidence that he was pursuing that " golden mean" so extremely difficult of at- tainment. Men are naturally extremists. But, with deep convictions of the justness of our cause and the correctness of his own views, yet he chose rather to await the fulness of the times when the people were prepared for his policy, 14 than to drag them into it as many a ruler prompted by am- bition would have done. Mildness, cautiousness and firmness characterized all he did. But mine is not the tongue to pronounce his eulogy.—- When years have passed, and the clouds of prejudice and passion have been brushed aside, when the fragments of his history now reposing in the hearts of those whom he befriended, in the hearts of his associates in council, in of- ficial actions and state papers, have all been brought to- gether by a competent hand, then will his character appear brighter and brighter, surpassed among Americans only by that of Washington. Then too will the men of the South see that Abraham Lincoln was the best friend they had in this nation, and in time they too will mourn his death. He was a loving parent, an upright citizen, a good ruler. But above all, God be praised that he was a Christian. In reply to a gentleman, who asked him whether he loved the Saviour, he said, u Yes, I do- love Jesus*." He was a man of prayer. Recently a prominent clergyman called by ap- pointment of the President at an early hour in the morning Arriving a little in advance of the appointed time y and hearing the voice of the President in an adjoining room r he requested of the servant an immediate interview. It was refused on the ground that it was the hour in which the President engaged in the reading of the Bible and in prayer. Man of business, you who say you have no> time in the morning to ask God's blessing to* attend you during the day because of your pressing cares, think of Abraham Lincoln and his cares, and will you ever offer that excuse again? Thank God that he was a man of prayer. Would that there were more like him in places cf public trust. May he, to whom the reins of Government now fall, be compelled to go to the same Almighty Power for strength and guidance, and govern as did his lamented predecessor in the fear of the Lord. Tears flow from all eyes. Many who could find no hear- ing from officials will remember with deep emotion how they were listened to and befriended by the President. — Millions mingle their tears with those of that anguish 15 stricken, bereaved family. And adown the bronzed cheeks of Sherman's veterans, those glorious boys of whom many are from his native State, and adown the rugged countenan- ces of the heroes who capturod Richmond, will the tears flow, while muttered vows of vengeance and " Death to Traitors!" will come hissing hot through closed teeth. — - Ah ! it is well for those opposed to them that they have surrendered. And iVom the emancipated millions of the South whose fervent prayers these four years have ascended to the Throne of Grace lor him, Oh ! what a long wail will arise as they hear that he whom they loved next to the Saviour has been killed by an assassin's hand. At twenty-two minutes past seven, on the morning of the ever memorable fifteenth of April, Abraham Lincoln died. Oh ! for a Raphael to paint the touching scenes of that solemn hour. And yet it seems almost too sacred to touch. Around the bedside of the unconscious, dying President, sit the Surgeons, watches in hand, marking his declining pulse. Sumner, holding the right hand of the dying Chief in his own, with his head bowed upou the pillow, is sobbing like a child. Stanton, the man of war, goes aside and burying his face in his hands pours forth a flood of tears. Around the bedside stand other friends and cabinet offi- cers and the great tears rapidly chase each other down the cheeks of these strong men. Fainter grows the pulse ; the muscles re- lax ; now a stillness in which the ticking of the watches is audi- ble — and his spirit takes its flight. It is said, " The morning was calm and rain was dropping gently upon the roof of the humble apartment where they laid him down to die." Ah 1 did not the rery heavens weep when Abraham Lincoln died ? And to-day, as the body of our dead President is borne from Wash- ington to Springfield its path will be bedowed with the tears of mourning millions. Murdered in the East, buried in the West ; no power can sunder the parts of a land united by such a tie as this. And, henceforth, as men in the East visit the tomb of George Washington, so in the West will they stop to. shed a tear to the memory of Abraham Lincoln, — the one the Father, the other the Saviour of his Country. Near the Potomac sleeps the one, near the Mississippi sleeps the other — grand resting places for grand men. He was one of God's weak instruments whom He made strong to confound the things that were mighty. And now God has 16 {suffered him to be laid aside, as we believe, for the speedier over- throw of tho evil. Men die, right principles never. '* Troth crushed to earth shall rise again The eternal years of God are hers ; But error, wounded writhes in pain, And dies amid her worshippers." The truth of God is grandly marching on. "We are living in an age which is telling on the ages yet to come. To be living in an age like this is sublime. It is grand to hear the stately step- pings of God among the nations. And believing that He reigns, that He was with our fathers in the founding of this Republic, that He has signally been with us in our endeavors to preserve it, we will not suffer the shadow of a doubt to pass across our souls but that He will guide us safely through all our trials, ov- erruling the machinations of our enemies and granting speedy triumph to our cause, when white winged peace again shall re- visit the land from which she has so long been driven by the bloody vultures of war. With this abiding confidence in God will we endeavor to keep pace with the progress of His purposes which are hastening rapidly to their consummation. " Our eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. He has loosed the fitful lightning of His terrible swift sword, His truth is marching on. He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never sound retreat, He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat, Oh ! be swift my soul to answer Him, be jubilant my feet, Our God is marching on." To God alone can we look. No arm of flesh can save. Never before has God brought us to such a sense of our complete de- pendence upon Him. Never before have we cried as we cry to- day : " Lord save, or we perish !" That this is one purpose of our affliction, we cannot doubt. " His glory will He not give to another." So then, to-day, a nation of suppliants, we fall before Him in whom is our reliance. And those words which hence- forth are to be stamped on our national coin, those words which at the late celebration gleamed forth in great letters of fire from the rotunda of our National Capitol, beneath the shadow of which our lamented President was stricken down, we will adopt to-day and evermore as the sincere expression of our heart : "IN GOD IS OUR TRUST." 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