Qass. 
 Book. 
 
 rD^^ 
 
^rief and Butg. 
 
 
 A DISCOUESE. 
 
 
 BY HENRY DARLING, D. D. 
 
 
GRIEF AlffD DUTY. 
 
 DISCOUESE 
 
 DELIVERED IN THE 
 
 FOURTH PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ALBANY, 
 
 APRIL 19th, 1865, THE DAY OF THE 
 
 FUNERAL OBSEQUIES 
 
 PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 
 
 By henry darling, D. D., 
 
 !Pastor or the Chnrch. 
 
 ALBANY : 
 
 S. R. GJ-RA.Y, JPUBIjISHKR. 
 1865. 
 
.8 
 
The time of the delivery of this discourse is sufBcient to indicate the 
 haste of its preparation. It contains nothing more than the expression 
 of some of the first thoughts that our great national bereavement 
 suggests ; and it is only in deference to repeated solicitations that the 
 author consents to its publication. 
 
 The discourse was repeated at the United States Military Hospital of 
 this city, on the afternoon of the Sabbath April 23d, 1865. 
 
DISCOURSE. 
 
 Genesis xxxv, 19, 20, 21. 
 "And Rachel died, and was buried in the way to Ephrath, which is 
 Bethlehem. And Jacob set a pillar npon her grave : that is the pillar 
 of Rachel's grave unto this day. And Israel journeyed, and spread his 
 tent beyond the tower of Edar." 
 
 The affliction recorded in these verses, has been 
 the portion of not a few of our race, in every age of the 
 world. Earthly affinities that we deem perpetual, are 
 suddenly dissolved ; and worldly ties that we imagine 
 are ot cable strength, are in a moment, and forever 
 sundered. Friends are but loaned to us by the Giver 
 of every good gift, and often at the moment of our 
 highest expectations are taken from us. Feiv families 
 can be found that have no vacant chair at their table, 
 and fewer hearts in which the death of some loved 
 one has not left an aching void. The people of God 
 are rapidly striking their tents in this wilderness, and 
 entering into the palace not made with hands. They 
 are going up from this gloomy crypt below, to the 
 grand cathedral above ; and putting off this earthly 
 house of their tabernacle, are being clothed upon 
 with that house which is from heaven. The home of 
 many a man in this world, like a dissolving view, is 
 
6 
 
 gradually vanishing from earth, and is daily develop- 
 ing itself in the skies. Heaven is rapidly becoming 
 colonized from earth, and a man need not himself to 
 have been long in this vale of tears, to have seen so 
 many that he loved successively emigrate to that 
 other land, as to make it, even for the earthly friends 
 that dwell there, the home where his heart is. 
 
 In a word, few are the travelers to eternity who 
 do not pass on their way thither through the land of 
 Bochim. How, in this passage, it becomes us to 
 demean ourselves, is to all an important inquiry, 
 and one to which we may, by an examination of my 
 text, find a beautiful answer. 
 
 During a journey, undertaken by Jacob at the 
 express command of Jehovah, from Succoth to Bethel, 
 Rachel, the wife of his youth and of his love, died. 
 In the strange city of Ephrath, the j)atriarch was 
 constrained to consign to the grave, the precious 
 remains of one who had endeared herself to him by 
 years of faithful affection, and by a cheerful and happy 
 participation of his sorrows, his companion, amid all 
 his wanderings, and the light and charm of his dwel- 
 ling. " And Eachel," says my text, " died, and was 
 buried in the way to Ephrath, which is Bethlehem." 
 
 But what, in the experience of this affliction, were 
 the feelings, and what was the conduct of this emi- 
 nently devoted servant of God ? Was Jacob stoical 
 and indifferent ? Did he fail to mourn that a holy and 
 beloved object of his affection had been removed by 
 death? On the contrary, Jacob was deeply sen- 
 
sible of tlie loss that he had sustained, and his heart 
 was thereby filled with anguish. He did not in death, 
 forget one who in life had so constantly ministered 
 to his happiness. As a testimony at once for his grief 
 at her sudden decease, and his high appreciation of 
 her character, upon the cold earth beneath which slie 
 was sleeping he erected a monument to her memory. 
 " He set," is the language of my text, " a pillar upon 
 her grave," so permanent in its nature, and conspicu- 
 ous in position, that it remained, and was called the 
 pillar of Rachel, not only until the time of Moses, 
 but even to the day when Saul was anointed King 
 of Israel. 
 
 And similar feelings it is right that every individual 
 should have in affliction. If some one dear and 
 beloved, has been removed from earth, we ought to 
 sorrow. Humanity demands it, and the Savior weep- 
 ing over the tomb of Lazarus, allows it. Sorrow is 
 an affection, implanted by the Creator in the soul for 
 wise and beneficent purposes, and it should not be 
 unduly repressed. God has opened in our nature a 
 fountain of tears, and he who bids us restrain that 
 fountain when God has touched its spring, demands 
 us to act contrary to the very design of our constitu- 
 tion. If the gem that shone so beautifully by my 
 fireside, and in the rays and sparkles of which I 
 rejoiced so long, has been removed, it is natural for 
 me to weep, and the man who bids me dry up my 
 tears only mocks and degrades me. 
 
8 
 
 As God also intends, when lie bestows liis gifts, 
 that they should be received with smiles of gratitude, 
 so he desires that when they are recalled, they should 
 be surrendered with " drops of sacred grief." Tears 
 are the silent, pure, unsophisticated testimony of the 
 heart, to the excellence of the gift God in mercy gave, 
 and no doubt in mercy took away. We should have 
 no gratitude in the reception of blessings, if we had 
 no sorrow at their loss. 
 
 But though the Patriarch Jacob mourned at the 
 death of Eachel, and as a testimony of his affection 
 set, as we have seen, a pillar upon her grave, yet he 
 did not — it is fact worthy of special notice — suffer 
 his grief to prevent him from actively and faithfully 
 discharging every duty. "And Israel journeyed," 
 says my text, " and spread his tent beyond the tower 
 of Edar." 
 
 Jacob was called in the providence of God, to 
 act a very important part in the history of the 
 Christian Church. At the very time this sad 
 calamity overtook him, he was by the express com- 
 mand of Jehovah on his way to Bethel, the house of 
 the Lord, and the place where God had previously 
 revealed to him by vision the future triumphs of his 
 kingdom. The Patriarch had a great work given him 
 by God to perform. He had put his hand to the 
 plough, and although doubtless when this affliction 
 first broke upon him, his resolution trembled, and he 
 was almost persuaded to turn back, and seek to allay 
 the poignancy of his grief, by mingling in the famil- 
 
iar society of his old home, yet at length triumphing 
 over all these evil suggestions, with a wounded and 
 a stricken heart, he pressed on in the path of duty. 
 Having consigned to the earth the precious remains 
 of his friend, and erected over them an appropriate 
 monument of his grief, Jacob, in obedience to the 
 command of Jehovah, continued his journey to 
 Bethel — in other words, faithfully met every obliga- 
 tion that was imposed upon him as a servant of God. 
 
 The same should be true of us all in affliction. 
 When grief impairs the health and preys upon the 
 constitution ; when it paralyzes the energies, and 
 benumbs and stupefies the soul, so that incumbent 
 duties, personal or relative, civil or sacred, are 
 neglected, and the soul does nothing but lie down 
 upon the sepulchre and weep, then is it a sorrow 
 unworthy of the honorable name which the Christian 
 bears. 
 
 Indeed, so to mourn over an affliction as to be 
 thereby unfitted for the discharge of present and 
 future duties, what a complete perversion is it of all 
 the real designs of earthly trial ! Affliction is the 
 nursery in which God is training His people for a 
 more vigorous manhood. It is the gymnasium in 
 which He seeks to increase and strengthen their 
 moral and spiritual power. What a perversion of 
 His design, that, coming out from this nursery or 
 gymnasium, weary and worn out with the discipline 
 through which they have passed, they should lie 
 
 down in listless inactivity ! 
 
 2 
 
10 
 
 The application of these principles, — pertinent to 
 every instance of affliction that ever visits men in 
 this world, — to that particular sorrow that has now 
 convened ns, and that lies to-day so heavily ui)on 
 every heart, opens to us, if I mistake not, the only 
 two channels in which our meditations can profit- 
 ably flow. 
 
 First : We do well to mourn the loss of our late 
 beloved President. His death is a great national 
 bereavement. It is meet that we to-day set uj) upon 
 his grave the monument of our warmest love, and 
 that the whole nation should bedew it with their tears. 
 But, secondly : called like Jacob to go up, as a people 
 to our Bethel, on the highway to lieaee and liberty ^ this 
 sore bereavement on the road, should not hinder or 
 impede our footsteps, but like the old Patriarch, we, 
 in the continued and faithful performance of every 
 duty, should "journey on, and spread our tents beyond 
 the tower of Edar." To the amplification of these 
 two thoughts, allow me, in what remains of this dis- 
 course, to invite attention. 
 
 The cliaracter of President Lincoln is a true occa- 
 sion for weeping over his death. Doubtless the time 
 has not yet come for us to weigh, this, in a perfectly 
 even balance ; and certainly our present position is 
 for such a work exceedingly unfavorable. In the 
 first gush of sorrow that our hearts feel for the loss 
 of any earthly friend, we are but poorly prepared to 
 form any critical estimate of his worth. Making, 
 however, every possible allowance, for the peculiarly 
 
11 
 
 tender feelings that we all feel for him, on account 
 of his untimely death, he must he a bitter partizan 
 indeed, that would not concede to our late President 
 a very rare combination of both moral, and intel- 
 lectual excellence. Called, in the providence of God, 
 to the chief magistracy of this nation, at the most 
 perilous moment that she has ever experienced in her 
 whole history, and with no precedents to guide him, 
 it must be conceded, that, as a whole, Mr. Lincoln's 
 administration has been conducted with remarkable 
 prudence, and consummate ability. Indeed, whatever 
 difference of opinion may have, at the time, been 
 honestly had, as to the wisdom of many of his im- 
 portant official acts, I suppose that they are few who, 
 in the light of our recent victories, and the present 
 position of freedom in our land, do not regard them 
 with favor. 
 
 Some have denied to our late President the appel- 
 lation of great, and, if a wide range of scholar- 
 ship, or brilliant genius is essential to constitute 
 true greatness, justly. But surely, he possessed 
 just those peculiar traits of character, that were 
 essential for the wise conduct of public affairs in a 
 season of great peril. He was characterized by great 
 calmness of temper. He was not a man of impulse. 
 His heart was not so governed by strong passion, 
 and tumultuous emotion, as to make his acts indis- 
 creet and hasty. Whatever he did, was deliberate 
 and well considered. 
 
12 
 
 He was preeminently a practical man. He had 
 no mere theories of government. With a remark- 
 able quick perception of the true relation of 
 things, his acts took their i)articular shape out of 
 ever-varying circumstances. Either naturally con- 
 servative, or made so by the consciousness of high 
 responsibility, he sought more to be directed by 
 Providence than to direct and govern it. And yet 
 Mr. Lincoln was a man of great firmness of opinion. 
 Naturally cautious, as I have just said, in assuming 
 a position, he was at the same time exceedingly 
 strenuous, after it was assumed, in maintaining 
 it. His whole administration is marked by a steady 
 progress toward one end. We see no flowing back 
 in the onward wave. Ground once fairly taken was 
 , never given up. Some men at his very side chided 
 him for sloivness, but it did not quicken his step, and 
 others equally near to him in influence, rebuked him 
 for his hastiness, but it availed nothing to check his 
 onward progress. Seizing, at the very moment of his 
 inauguration, the first link of that chain — if I may so 
 speak — which was to draw us out as a nation of that 
 horrible vortex of secession into which almost half 
 the states had fallen, Mr. Lincoln never once 
 relaxed his grasp upon it, but with a stalwort hand 
 gathered slowly, but in a sure succession, each other 
 link to himself, until at last our political salvation 
 was secured. 
 
 And if to this you will now add the twin virtues 
 of an intense x>atriotism, and a lofty and noble per- 
 
13 
 
 sonal disinterestedness, the political portrait of our 
 murdered President is almost complete. 
 
 In leaving his quiet home, to assume the high 
 functions of state, you remember that our dear 
 departed ruler, publicly requested an interest in the 
 prayers of God's people. And never, at least since 
 the days of Washington, has such a request found 
 such a response. From the golden censer of our great 
 high priest, has the sweet incense of i)rayer in his 
 behalf, been constantly ascending. The intercession 
 of the saints have belted with a zone of holy influ- 
 ence, every day and hour of his whole administra- 
 tion. And if the grave has seldom closed upon an 
 American statesman, whose character was so resplen- 
 dent with virtue, we doubt not, but that many an 
 excellence heaven bestowed, in answer to her peo- 
 ple's prayer. 
 
 But, the time of our beloved President's death, as 
 well as his character, is a true occasion for sorrow. 
 The soldier's work in our terrible internecine war 
 seems almost ended. We have probably fought the 
 last great battle of this rebellion, and hereafter 
 the only flag that is to wave from the lakes to the 
 gulf, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific, is the red, 
 white and blue. Indeed, already does it float in tri- 
 umph, not only over the capital of the so-called con- 
 federacy, and of every seaport along the whole 
 Atlantic coast line, but over the very fortress where 
 it was first constrained to succumb to treason. But 
 where tlie soldier's work closes, there the task of the 
 
14 
 
 statesman commences. The first pnlls down, it is 
 the more difiicult province of the last to build up : 
 and Mr. Lincoln was not a warrior but a civilian. 
 And from his character as already described, as well 
 as from his peculiarly intimate acquaintance with 
 all our public affairs, how much did we naturally 
 expect from him in this great work of reestablishing 
 between the discordant sections of our country, har- 
 mony and good will. 
 
 If our late President was great in time of war, 
 I have a very mistaken idea of him, if he would 
 not have been far greater in a time of transition 
 from peace to union. He possessed the very charac- 
 ter of a iKtcifier. His heart was full of gentle- 
 ness and love. He was not able to cherish a 
 bitter feeling, or a vindictive purpose. The last 
 sentence in his last inaugural, reveals to us his 
 very heart. " With malice toward 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 wounds, to care for 
 him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow 
 and orphans, to do all which may achieve and cherish 
 a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with 
 all nations." 
 
 That very conservatism which iDCCuliarly charac- 
 terized Mr. Lincoln was, so far as we see, just 
 what at this time we needed. In that struggle 
 wliicli has just commenced in -this land between 
 j ustice and mercy, that neitlier may gain a complete 
 
16 
 
 victory, it was just such an evenly balancing intel- 
 lect as his, a firm but loving hand, that we needed. 
 Great peril will certainly here come to the state, if r«fZi- 
 cal views, on either side of this great question are to 
 prevail. 
 
 As free also from all theories, as regarding facts 
 as they are, and adjusting his policy to them, how 
 much in these days of reconstruction do we need 
 just such a mind to direct us ! To those who atten- 
 tively read a speech made by our late President upon 
 hearing the news of the surrender of Gen. Lee's army, 
 upon that much vexed question of the political status 
 of the states lately in rebellion, I need not allude 
 to his truly Baconian and common sense method of 
 disposing of the whole difiiculty. 
 
 Moreover, how invaluable in the pacification of our 
 great national troubles would have been the council 
 and policy of our late President, as seen in the almost 
 unbounded confidence that the i^eople reposed in him ! 
 What Motley says of William the Silent, we may with 
 hardly any less truthfulness say of Abraham Lix- 
 COLN. " There was such general confidence in his 
 sagacity, courage and purity, that the nation had come 
 to think with his brain, and to act with his hand." * 
 Surely at such a time, — amid the hosannas of vic- 
 tory and at the very moment when the warrior was 
 retiring from the stage, that the statesman might 
 take his place, — that he who was the foremost in all 
 
 " The United Netherlands, vol. 1, page 1. 
 
16 
 
 that company should hav^e fallen, is a large element 
 in our sorrow. 
 
 And then, to add poignancy to our grief, there is the 
 wretched manner of his death. So far, in our history 
 as a nation, we have been happily exempt from those 
 political assassinations that have so frequently dark- 
 ened the records of the old world. And from our 
 progress in a Christian civilization and refinement, we 
 had really supj)osed ourselves to have outgrown such 
 a possibility. We have not marveled much in see- 
 ing the princes of Europe, with their armed attend- 
 ants, Napoleon with the bristling bayonets of his 
 grenadiers, and the old Pope surrounded with the 
 stalwort forms of his Swiss guards, for we were in a 
 despotic country, and such men might well tremble 
 for their lives ; but surely, in this land of freedom 
 and equal rights, no such security for human life can 
 be needed, as no such peril can be felt. 
 
 But alas ! for that depth of wickedness to which this 
 ungodly rebellion has brought man. The murder of 
 the head of a great nation, of a man of the kindest and 
 most generous emotions, while sitting quietly in his 
 chair, surrounded by his family and friends, is only the 
 culmination of a rebellion that was commenced by 
 purloining public property, arms, ships, forts, navy 
 yards, and continued by the establishment at home of 
 a military despotism that gave the citizen no choice 
 between conscription and death ; a rebellion that 
 stripped the wounded on the battle field of every 
 article of clothing, made personal ornaments out of 
 
17 
 
 the bones of the dead, and starved, by thousands, 
 those who had, by the fortunes of war, become its 
 prisoners. True, our real loss would have been just 
 the same had our dear President died a peaceful and 
 natural death. But this terrible assassination ! this 
 passage, almost in a moment, by a ruffian's hand, into 
 eternity, of one whose life and health God so kindly 
 watched over and preserved, and who was seemingly 
 of such moment to our country, O ! it is this that 
 makes our grief so tumultuous ; and that, added to the 
 other considerations already noted, converts every 
 sanctuary in our land into a Bochim ; brings this afflic- 
 tion home to every bosom with the force of a personal 
 bereavement, and to-day causes this whole nation 
 tearfully to follow to the grave its venerated head. 
 
 But I must pass from this view of our occasion for 
 grief, to speak of the duties that, as citizens of this 
 great country, are still before us to be faithfullj' met 
 and performed. I have already said that this great 
 national bereavement has met us, just as Jacob's deep 
 personal affliction met him, on the highway of duty — 
 while journeying to peace and liberty as he was to 
 Bethel — and hence that, while with him we ought to 
 mourn, with him we should likewise continue on in our 
 way — " spread our tents beyond the tower of Edar." 
 Now what are some of these duties that the day 
 imposes ? 
 
 The first is courage. God's purposes never depend 
 for their fulfillment upon any human instrumentality. 
 3 
 
18 
 
 Men, to our purblind vision, seem oftentimes almost 
 essential for the accomplishment, either in the church 
 or state, of some great result ; they are in our esteem 
 the pivot upon which everything turns ; but when, in 
 his providence, God removes them, how easily by other 
 instrumentalities does he carry on his work ! Protes- 
 tantism did not die in Europe when William, the 
 Prince of Orange, fell in his own palace by the murder- 
 ous shot of a young Burgundian, nor when the 
 renowned Gustavus Adolphus was, by an Austrian 
 bullet, slain on the field of Lutzen. ^o, men die, 
 but not so those great interests of truth that they 
 may have lived to promote. Truth lives on, and 
 when one of her greatest champions may have fallen, 
 is sure to find another who will take up and plead 
 her cause. 
 
 The very structure, likewise, of our government 
 makes it almost impossible that the death of any one 
 man should seriously change its policy, or endanger 
 its stability. " If the Emperor IsTapoleon," says one of 
 the journalists of the day, " had been assassinated, 
 all France would have been in revolution before 
 twenty-four hours had passed, while the death of 
 President Lincoln, sudden and awful as it was, did 
 not interrupt, for an instant, the grand movements of 
 our republican government. Take courage, then, I 
 say, my dear hearers. Those great interests that you 
 have prized so highly, and that seemed a few days 
 ago so near, are not seriously jeoparded even by 
 
19 
 
 this crushiDg bereavement. It cannot be made to 
 galvanize any new life into the defunct carcass of 
 rebeldom. It cannot raise for them a new armj^ or 
 impart any fresh courage to the remnant that still 
 remains. It cannot open to their commerce a single 
 blockaded port. It cannot bring back into bondage 
 and manacle anew, a single slave that has already 
 breathed the fresh air of freedom. Nor can it annul 
 or in the slightest degree change a single edict of the 
 government. No, though the body of Abraham Lin- 
 coln may be mouldering in the dust, yet his soul will 
 — in him who has already assumed the responsibilities 
 of his office — be marching on and on, till the great 
 purposes of his administration accomplished, peace 
 and liberty will be enjoyed throughout the whole land. 
 Courage then I say, courage ! 
 
 But, with courage, the duties of this day demand 
 that all the bitterness and rancor of party spirit 
 should be forgotten, and that men of every possible 
 shade of political belief should now stand together 
 for the support of the nation. 
 
 Lord Macauley, in one of his lays of ancient 
 Eome, thus speaks of that people in the palmy days 
 of the Eepublic. 
 
 Then none was for a party ; 
 Then all were for the state ; 
 Then the great man helped the poor. 
 And the poor man loved the great. 
 Then lands were fairly portioned ; 
 Then spoils were fairly sold. 
 The Romans were like brothers 
 In the brave days of old. 
 
20 
 
 O ! that the affliction that God has sent upon this 
 people might here recall them to duty! Children 
 are very prone, you know, to remember their un- 
 kindness to each other, and to feel strongly attracted 
 toward each other when summoned from their far oif 
 wanderings to the old homestead ; together to bury 
 their common i)arent. It is an adage that affliction 
 makes brothers of us all. Would that this might be 
 the result of our great national bereavement. 
 
 Scarcely anything, I think, for the last half cen- 
 tury, has had toward this nation so threatening 
 an aspect as the extreme selfishness and passion 
 of party. Our public men, oftentimes, do not look 
 at the real desirableness of a proposed measure, 
 but entirely at its influence in securing the political 
 ascendancy of their party. They seek their own, 
 not their country's good. They belong, not to our 
 whole nation, but to some little clique, some poor 
 section or fraction only of our great brotherhood. 
 Would, I repeat it, that the affliction under which 
 we now mourn might lead us all nearer to the altar 
 of our country, and beget within us all a more noble 
 and unselfish patriotism. 
 
 And I cannot here refrain from expressing the 
 lileasure which I have felt in observing, since the 
 death of Mr. Lincoln, the tone on this subject of 
 the press, without any distinction of party. It has 
 greatly rejoiced my heart to see on every side the 
 exhortation, "Let us rally as one man to the support 
 of our government in this crisis." Let no man in 
 
21 
 
 an hour like this think, much less talk, of party or 
 partisanship. Let there be no crimination or recrim- 
 ination. Let us all sacrifice our preferences and our 
 prejudices upon the altar of our country, and rally 
 around the man ayIio rises in the room of a stricken 
 down predecessor, and make him feel that he has the 
 physical and moral support of the whole iDeople." 
 Should such a spirit prove itself to -be more than 
 words, should it manifest itself in appropriate acts, 
 and be more than ephemeral, well might this whole 
 nation exclaim : " It was good for us that we were 
 afflicted." 
 
 But this is not all. The act that calls us this day 
 to mourn, — the culmination, as I have already said 
 of that evil spirit which first broke out in treason four 
 years ago, and opened hostile cannon upon Sumter, — 
 is it not our duty to be led thereby to a deeper and 
 truer conviction, of the moral turpitude of a social 
 system that could beget and foster such a spirit? " By 
 their fruits," said our Savior, " ye shall know them." 
 
 Among all the men educated under the influence, 
 and in the midst of northern society, I do not believe 
 that you could find an individual who would delibe- 
 rately, and day by day plan, and finally execute, so 
 fiendish an act as that of Mr. LI^X'OLX's assassination. 
 Depravity does indeed ripen, even with us, fearfully, 
 but to attain so gigantic a growth as this, it must have 
 its roots in a more congenial soil. The most terrible, 
 and as it seems to me, wicked event of centuries, 
 
22 
 
 nothing but long familiarity and close contact with 
 that whole system of oppression, as it has existed at 
 the south for years, and with the spirit that it engen- 
 ders, could ever have made it possible. 
 
 I say this with no desire to intensify that passion 
 which has already gone down deep into the heart of 
 this nation, and which, in the revengeful spirit that it 
 may awaken, i.s in danger, perhaps, of exciting an 
 undue hate in loyal bosoms ; I allude to it only that 
 our eyes may be opened to see the enormity of a sys- 
 tem that could x)roduce such a character as its legiti- 
 mate fruitage — a system that has brought upon us 
 all those calamities that have afflicted us for years, 
 and to destroy which has doubtless been the purpose 
 of God, in constraining us to draw the sword. 
 
 " We prayed and hoped, but still with awe 
 The coming of the sword we saw ; 
 We heard the nearing steps of doom 
 And saw the shade of things to come. 
 
 We hoped for peace, our eyes surveyed 
 The blood-red dawn of freedom's day ; 
 We prayed for love to loose the chain, 
 'Tis shorn by battle's axe in twain. 
 
 A redder sea than Egypt's wave 
 Is piled and parted for the slave ; 
 A. darker cloud moves on in light, 
 A fiercer fire is guide by night." 
 
 I close with the simple remark of the vanity of 
 human greatness — a remark which, although it may 
 have no direct logical connection with what I have 
 said, — is too obviously suggested by the whole theme 
 u])on which I speak to-day, to be omitted. 
 
23 
 
 After Saladin, the champion of Islamism, had 
 retaken the holy city, subjngated numerous fortresses 
 in Syria, Arabia, Persia and Mesopotamia, and per- 
 formed so many exploits in the crusades as to be 
 designated " the great," he was seized with a disorder 
 which threatened to wither up in a moment all his 
 garlands of victory. Seeing that death was inevit- 
 able, he called his herald who used to carry his banner 
 before him, and taking the lance which he had so 
 often shaken in battle, tied his shroud to the top and 
 said to him. Go unfurl this in the camj) — it is the 
 flag of the day — wave it in the air and exclaim, 
 " This is all that remains of Saladin, the great, the 
 conqueror, the king of the empire." It is the othce 
 of this same herald that I perform to-day. I take the 
 shroud of our murdered President, and fastening it, 
 as it were, to the end of my trumpet, wave it before 
 your eyes, exclaiming, this is all that remains of his 
 hopes, plans, power, influence. 
 
 One week ago Mr. Lixcolx was the most powerful 
 man in this nation. Half a million of armed men 
 were ready at an instant to do his bidding. His 
 name was a tower of strength. Men everywhere 
 delighted to do him honor, and the long desired 
 object of his heart — that for which he had so 
 intently labored and prayed — an unbroken union 
 of all the states, seemed just within his grasp. 
 "With a happy heart and a buoyant step he left 
 his home. Loud acclamations welcomed him as 
 
24 
 
 he entered a public assembly. Crowds turned their 
 eager gaze upon one so highly and so deservedly 
 honored. To-day he is a lifeless corpse, and while 
 w^e speak, is being carried out, like any other man, to 
 his burial. 
 
 So ephemeral a thing is human greatness. And 
 will men then fasten upon this as the supreme end of 
 their being? Is it wise for any one to seek alone 
 that from which at death he must be eternally parted ? 
 O, no ; man has higher interests than those which 
 belong to this world. 
 
 " The wise man walks with God, 
 Surveys far on the endless line of life, 
 Values his soul, thinks of eternity, 
 Both worlds considers, and provides for both." 
 
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