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THE NATIONAL SACRIFICE. 
 
 J± SEEMON 
 
 PREACHED ON THE SUNDAY BEFORE THE 
 
 DEATH OF THE PRESIDENT, 
 
 AND 
 
 TWO ADDRESSES, 
 
 ON THE SUNDAY AND WEDNESDAY FOLLOWING, 
 
 IN 
 
 St. Clement's Cljttrdj, |pteMp|p, 
 
 Rev. Treadwell Walden, 
 
 THE RECTOR. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 
 SHE EM AX & CO., PRINTERS. 
 
 1865. 
 

 
Rev. Treadwell Walden. 
 
 Dear Sir: Desiring to have in permanent form the Sermon 
 preached by you on the evening of the 9th instant, and the 
 Addresses of the Kith and 19th instant, we respectfully re- 
 quest that you will furnish us with copies for publication. 
 With much respect, we remain yours, &c, 
 
 John Lambert, Jno. A. McAllister, 
 
 H. Henderson, George X. Allen, 
 
 P. P. Morris, H. C. Thompson, 
 
 S. S. Moon, Henry Norris, 
 
 Ephraim Clark, Edward H. Eowley. 
 
 Philadelphia, April 25, 1865. 
 
 Philadelphia, May 1, 1865. 
 GENTLEMEN: 
 
 I have hesitated a good deal whether or not to give you 
 the Sermon and Addresses you so kindly request, as they all, 
 under the circumstances of their composition, have too much 
 of an impromptu character to be worthy of a permanent form. 
 
 However, as a memorial of an extraordinary moment, and 
 as a true reflection of the feeling of the congregation which 
 heard them, I venture to place them at your disposal. 
 
 With much respect, sincerely yours, 
 
 TEEADWELL WALDEN. 
 
 Messrs. John Lambert, John A. McAllister, 
 
 Henry Henderson, George N. Allen, 
 
 P. Pemberton Morris, Henry C. Thompson, 
 
 Samuel S. Moon, Henry Xorris, 
 
 Ephraim Clark, Edward H. Rowley. 
 
A SERMON, 
 
 Preached on Sunday Evening, April 9, 1865, being the Sinhav 
 following the capture of richmond, and preceding the 
 Death of the President. 
 
 "It is expedient for us that one man should die for the people, and 
 that the whole nation perish not." — john 12 : 49. 
 
 This hallowed day has witnessed a strange conflict 
 of emotion in the religions mind. A new incident has 
 unexpectedly entered it, which has no doubt seemed 
 to many at unfortunate variance with the feelings to 
 which, for years, the Church has been moved on this 
 especial Sunday of all the year. It is the Sunday 
 which opens upon Passion-week, — the week of dark- 
 ness and sorrow, which contains the day when our 
 Saviour was crucified, and became the one offering 
 for the sins of the world. Every sympathy and 
 emotion of the Christian heart comes to the surface 
 now. Even the thoughtless world feels the over- 
 shadowing gloom of the approaching period. The 
 faces that fill the sanctuary are grave and sad. The 
 ritual moves like a funeral train shrouded in black. 
 Only one object fills the imagination, — the innocent, 
 
6 
 
 sinless, disinterested, devoted Son of Man, suffering 
 punishment for sins He never did, hanging on the 
 cruel Roman cross, and dying in unutterable agony of 
 body and mind, in order that we might live. 
 
 This is the spectacle that occupies our hearts, and 
 yet, in the very midst of these gradually darkening days, 
 there has been such a public joy abroad, such a won- 
 derful deliverance vouchsafed, and such a triumph 
 achieved, that we have been enjoined by the civil au- 
 thority, and moved by our own impulse, to sing hosan- 
 nas to Almighty God, and acknowledge, in joyful and 
 grateful prayers, that it was His right hand and holy 
 arm which hath given us the victory. 
 
 The sad face and the glad face, the sad heart and 
 the glad heart, are they compatible'? Or shall the 
 close reality of a national victory eclipse the remote 
 reality, but most near and tender memory, of a conflict 
 in its intensest hour of suffering and of blood] 
 
 But are you really called to engage in services that 
 are incompatible, and to the expression of opposite feel- 
 ings \ I think not. I think that if you put the merely 
 superficial feeling aside, and descend into the deeper 
 considerations which underlie the jubilee, that, while 
 the joy will last, it will be such a joy as will add 
 strength and definiteness to the annual sentiment of 
 this day. Doubtless it appears strange to you that I 
 venture to declare as much, and yet I shall hope, be- 
 fore I close, to show, and without recourse either to 
 fancy or ingenuity, that hardly any other Sunday could 
 
have been so appropriate as this. More than that: I 
 shall hope, by the simplest evolution of my subject, to 
 deepen your love for the Saviour of your soul, even 
 while trying to deepen your gratitude to God for being 
 the Saviour of your country. 
 
 I take you back, therefore, to the events which sur- 
 round my text. 
 
 The life of Jesus was drawing to a close. The final 
 day of His life-long sacrifice was at hand, and His suf- 
 ferings increased as they drew near the period of their 
 culmination. The contradiction of sinners was now ap- 
 proaching the moment of personal violence. He had 
 just performed the most startling and wonderful of all 
 His miracles, by raising Lazarus from the dead. The 
 event took place in close neighborhood to the Holy 
 City, and at the very moment when the dense multi- 
 tudes of the Passover season were beginning to assem- 
 ble. At no time in the year was Jerusalem so astir, and 
 the Hebrew heart under so much excitement. This 
 excitement was not only religious, but patriotic. The 
 temple was theirs, but the city was under the Roman 
 yoke. For several years, however, their spiritual leaders 
 had been under strange and increasing apprehension 
 of danger from a different quarter. The growing influ- 
 ence of Jesus of Nazareth, and His absolute antagonism 
 to them, shown oh every occasion, ahd always to their 
 exposure and discomfiture, for awhile diverted their 
 thoughts from the present usurpation to the fear of a 
 more legitimate but not less dethroning power. But 
 
8 
 
 this last miracle, in the very midst of the Galilean and 
 Jndean throng, on the verge of their most sacred season, 
 compelled them to take instant measures, as they 
 thought, for their safety. 
 
 The Sanhedrim assembled to see what could be 
 done. Caiaphas, the High Priest, heard the debate, 
 and at last interposed his counsel with the whole 
 weight of his personal and official influence : and it 
 instantly prevailed. It would seem, from the record, 
 that he was inspired like. the old magian Balaam, to 
 utter more than he comprehended, and yet to utter 
 the very thing that appealed most to an indefinite but 
 powerful sentiment in the Hebrew mind. To him it 
 came like a sudden thought of his own wisdom, a 
 subtle political measure, which would remove all fear 
 or hesitation from the Priests around him, and bring 
 about at once the destruction of Jesus. Indeed, to use 
 a very familiar phrase of to-day, he succeeded in "firing" 
 the Hebrew "heart." 
 
 "Ye know nothing at all," he exclaimed, after hear- 
 ing them say "What do we"? This man doeth many 
 miracles. If we let him thus alone all men will 
 believe on him, and the Romans shall come and take 
 away our place and nation." "Ye know nothing at 
 all," said he, "nor consider that it is expedient for us 
 that one man should die for the people, and that the 
 whole nation perish not." 
 
 To his auditors it was the enunciation of a great 
 and overwhelming truth, one inwrought with their 
 
9 
 
 very constitution. From the clays of Adam and of 
 Abraham they had been familiar with the thought of 
 sacrifice. Millions of animals had died in their stead, 
 and now, this seditious opponent of their present pre- 
 tensions, this man, so full of what they chose to think 
 diabolic power, and so rapidly gaining influence over 
 the masses, to their most certain undermining, if sacri- 
 ficed, could prevent the destruction of the nation. 
 To Caiaphas it was an unscrupulous use of a mere 
 expedient close to his sacerdotal hand, but to St. John, 
 who recorded the incident many years afterward, it 
 was the release, and bursting forth of the fact and 
 sentiment of sacrifice which had been slumbering in 
 the Hebrew ritual for two thousand years. 
 
 Now, through a High Priest, it had found, uninten- 
 tionally, its unsealment. At last the High Priest, full 
 of a political, not a religious, purpose, had opened, with 
 unwary hand, the chambers of prophecy, and, behold ! 
 the real sacrifice appeared, and the true High Priest 
 was revealed. Caiaphas unwittingly disrobed and 
 deposed himself by using the divine intelligence of his 
 office to advance a political object. In a few days from 
 that perversion of his calling, the vail of the temple, 
 which he alone was allowed to draw aside, was rent 
 from the top to the bottom. The priest, the sacrifice, 
 and the holy place disappeared together. 
 
 But you observe the identity in the mind of the 
 priest, and in the mind of the council, of two things, 
 never separate, never incompatible, either in the He- 
 
10 
 
 brew mind or in the Divine mind. Their church and 
 their country were interchangeable names for the same 
 thing; their religion and their political constitution 
 were identical and intertwining systems. One was 
 never thought of without the other. Body and soul 
 were not more absolutely one. To save the nation was 
 to save the people, to save the people was to save the 
 nation. The error of Caiaphas began in his incapacity 
 to appreciate or to sustain this original divine unity. 
 His religion had lost its true character, and his patriot- 
 ism its true object. He was neither truly a priest of 
 God nor truly a friend of the people. His mediator- 
 ship had passed away. And, therefore, while he spoke 
 the truth, he spoke it in the dark, and brought about 
 a result which he never desired and never anticipated. 
 His short-sighted material counsel in the temporary 
 interest of a people occupying an obscure corner of the 
 world, has turned out to be in the interest of the whole 
 world of mankind forever and ever. 
 
 But you must remember this one thing : that it was 
 in the anxiety of a national solicitude, and in the stress 
 of a national danger, that the spiritual cross was up- 
 reared, and the spiritual Christ was hung thereon. 
 
 Tliere teas a divine principle at ivork, — a principle 
 which could bring about the salvation of a state or of 
 a soul, — a principle which could work in either tempo- 
 ral or eternal things — a principle for the world or for 
 the universe, for an individual or for the whole mass 
 
11 
 
 of mankind. It held its place equally in all. It was 
 not to be omitted in anything. 
 
 I mean the principle of sacrifice. 
 
 On this principle is everything in nature built, and 
 by virtue of it everything in nature grows; Yon 
 already know 7 that the Gospel which has been preach* d 
 for ages, which appeals to your hearts, which appeals 
 to your minds, which has readied yon in every possible 
 form, in a form that yon have respected, and in a form 
 that yon have shrunk from, and in a form that you have 
 been tempted to despise, that has sometimes come to 
 you through natures unrefined, and through intellects 
 uncultivated, which has had expressions abhorrent to 
 you, and yet a spirit withal most powerful, which has 
 come to you in all the prismatic colors of the divers 
 human minds through which it has spoken, — you 
 already know that, whether w r eak or strong, dull or 
 brilliant, true or false in minor things, the terrible 
 vitality by which it lives, and by which it moves you, 
 despite yourself, is this divine principle of sacrifice. 
 
 But, perhaps, you have never thought of the same 
 thing as underlying your own daily life, and accounting 
 for so much that is strange in it. You have beheld the 
 great doctrine as it was supremely illustrated in Christ, 
 but never dreamed that you had your share of it in your 
 own nature, and that you were also made to illustrate it. 
 
 Whenever you live in a relation to another by 
 which you arc impelled by your own heart, or com- 
 pelled, by the circumstances of the case, to <jio tip 
 
12 
 
 something, yield something, devote something, which 
 is your own and which you value, to Mm, that is sac- 
 rifice. Turn wherever you will, and instances enough 
 will appear to further define this general definition. 
 No man lives entirely to himself, he is obliged to live 
 for others ; others live upon him, and he lives upon 
 them, and that sustenance which is thus mutually de- 
 rived comes from each individual by depleting him. 
 There is no use in resisting the principle. We are made 
 as much to give as we are made to receive, and that 
 life is noblest, therefore, which moves as earnestly and 
 generously outward as inward. 
 
 There are occasions when the impulse is wanting and 
 duty alone compels the act, but there are conditions, 
 also, when nature impels too ardently for hesitation to 
 be thought of. What does the mother refuse her child 
 in the days of its helplessness and utter dependence'? 
 She gives of her life-blood, to save it. Through hours 
 of weariness and pain that inexhaustible love pours 
 out its bodily strength, and endures the extremest ten- 
 sion of mind and heart, rather than one little need 
 should not be supplied, or one instant of suffering be 
 felt. And in any other and lesser form of love the 
 same thing takes place in its proportion. We are al- 
 ways giving up to one another, and even the smallest 
 act of the kind is part of the great law of sacrifice, 
 and part of the great duty of self-sacrifice. 
 
 Carry this also into the great things of life, and see 
 men expending themselves soul and body in some great 
 
13 
 
 cause, living in utter engrossment of feeling and faculty 
 in it, an enthusiasm burning away their vitals, and a 
 strength given to that for which they labor, taken for- 
 ever away from themselves. All this giving forth, this 
 giving forth is sacrifice. 
 
 But I come to a deeper part of the principle. Sac- 
 rifice, whether voluntary or involuntary, is vicarious. 
 Vicarious means in the place of done for or suffered 
 instead of another. And here we open the books of a 
 terrible law. There is so much and no more given in 
 this life. All cannot have it or share it. Some one 
 must yield in order that another may receive. Two of 
 you are equally anxious to do the same thing. Under 
 the circumstances both cannot. The one who yields, 
 offers the sacrifice; the one who indulges, enjoys by 
 virtue of the other's deprivation. 
 
 Can you think of anything that does not stand on 
 this pedestal of suffering, that does not root itself in 
 this soil of pain"? I have but little time to delineate 
 the principle further — the circumstances of every one 
 will furnish abundant illustration. But you have prob- 
 ably little thought that the great principle of vicarious 
 sacrifice on which your conception of Christ is formed, 
 actually lives among you, and in such minute forms as 
 this. 
 
 In things of destiny and necessity, also, it is the 
 great fact of God and of Nature. So much is to befall 
 us, and the question is,-ow whom shall it falU If it 
 fall on one, it cannot fall on another; that other is re- 
 
14 
 
 lieved. So many thousand missiles will be flung into 
 the bosom of an army of a hundred thousand men on 
 a certain battle-day. The heart that receives a bullet 
 is a sacrifice instead of some one else ; on account of 
 its outpouring blood, another life remains untouched. 
 The two or three thousand men that lie prone on the 
 field, dead and cold, are they who died that the rest of 
 the army might live. 
 
 So in everything — great or small. There is so much 
 to happen, so much to be endured, so much to be un- 
 dertaken, and we are drawn up before the impending 
 thing, whatever it may be : on whomsoever it comes, on 
 one or on many, it expends itself there ; the remainder 
 are released; they stand free, because another has re- 
 ceived what equally threatened all. And so we advance 
 in this life, as over a battle-field. We step over the 
 fallen. We, in our turn, fall, and others step over us, 
 but the battle goes endlessly on. It is the one condition 
 of possession, of success, of achievement, of progress, 
 of safety, in fact of everything we value, that some 
 one or something be sacrificed. If the operation of 
 that tremendous principle were to stop, everything 
 would stop, an insurmountable bar would hold all 
 things back. Something in the present must give, or 
 something in the future will fail. Something here must 
 make room, or something else cannot literally " take 
 place." Something must suffer or die, or suffering and 
 death will be felt where it will work universal ruin. 
 Unless either finds its true object upon which to centre, 
 
15 
 
 the bewilderment of irregularity ensues. " It is expe- 
 dient for us," said Caiaphas, " that one man should die 
 for the people, and that the whole nation perish not." 
 If, as we are now able to interpret him, such a being 
 as Christ would go before, and receive into His own 
 heart the fate ordained for all men, if it could but ex- 
 pend itself upon Him, then the race was saved, the 
 world was redeemed. The catastrophe of the future 
 would be anticipated if He were to advance in front of 
 all humanity, and let it fall upon Himself. And this 
 was that very thing which He came to do. Caiaphas 
 and his council thought that they had dragged Him to 
 the judgment-hall and the cross against His will. How 
 little did they comprehend the Being whom they en- 
 compassed and delivered ! How little did they dream 
 that the sacrifice was His own, not theirs — His volun- 
 tary act, brought about by His supreme knowledge of 
 our condition ! He saw our necessity, and met it Him- 
 self. He saw what we needed, and He yielded that we 
 might receive. He saw us in danger of perishing, and 
 He perished Himself. He took the fatal and inevita- 
 ble missile into His own heart. When He knelt that 
 night, on the moonlit ground in Gethsemane, He bowed 
 under the great and terrible law of sacrifice ; and when, 
 on the cross, His sacred head dropped upon His breast 
 in death, " It was finished," — the terrible law was en- 
 tirely obeyed, and the race was free! Mankind was 
 redeemed! 
 
 And, therefore, while our tears come, they are 
 
16 
 
 mingled tears of sorrow and of joy, of grief and of grati- 
 tude. We cannot but feel our relief and exemption, 
 even while we realize how much was suffered to obtain 
 it. Dark and full of dread as Good Friday is, yet 
 Easter is behind it; we cannot help seeing the light 
 of Heaven beyond the Cross. 
 
 I know very well that this exposition of a great 
 principle does not explain all its mystery, nor develop 
 all its truth, so far as it finds a supreme example in 
 Him who redeemed mankind. But the fact that it 
 was enunciated in the interest of a nation, and was 
 given its opportunity to compass the infinite result it 
 did under the apparently finite form of a national 
 sacrifice, although, " not for that nation only," brings 
 it to the very doors of our hearts to-day. 
 
 By a singular coincidence of time and circumstance, 
 we are looking at the stupendous redemption of our 
 nation, worked by this self-same principle of vicarious 
 sacrifice. And so deep is the issue involved, and so 
 great is the salvation we feel, that it is not an irreve- 
 rent association to put the sacrifice which has saved our 
 country beside that which has saved the world. They 
 are both in the line of the same Providential order, 
 although one is an immeasurable distance behind the 
 other. For it has not been the cause of an empire 
 intent upon conquest, or upon saving itself from de- 
 struction. It is a cause which stands alone in history. 
 There is no precedent for it but one, — the cause of 
 that very nation for which the High Priest would have 
 
17 
 
 had Jesus to die. It is a cause in which not only our 
 own present interests are concerned, but on which the 
 hope of all humanity hangs. Everything most dear to 
 suffering millions, everything most near to human en- 
 lightenment and progress was brought up to the front 
 and ventured when this nation breasted the onset of 
 war for its life. The Hebrew Commonwealth "in 
 which all the families of the earth were to be blest," 
 was not more a part of the whole world's concern than 
 is this Republic. There has been no other people and 
 no other cause, save one, for which Christ himself 
 could so soon have come and died. 
 
 And yet it did not require such a stupendous and 
 superhuman sacrifice. Human nature was equal to 
 the effort. There was not wanting among us that mao-. 
 nificent spirit which went forth willingly and eagerly 
 to suffering and cruel wounds and bloody death, in 
 order that " the whole nation should perish not." 
 There were not wanting tens of thousands who, if it 
 were " expedient," would " die for the people." It is 
 they who went in the great advance, and breasted the 
 inevitable fate that was rushing upon us, and bowed 
 before the storm of lead and iron, and received the 
 whole force and virulence of treason and rebellion into 
 their own hearts. The power to injure and endanger 
 has spent itself upon them! 
 
 Oh, see the cross! the cross of our country's sacrifice 
 and salvation! A thousand blood-stained battle-fields 
 scattered over the land. Trenches piled with dead. 
 
18 
 
 Graveyards as newly and thickly sown as the fields 
 of spring with corn. Whitening bones nnsepnlchred. 
 Gaunt skeletons of famine. Hospitals in endless pa- 
 vilions, roofing countless numbers of broken and dying 
 men. Streets filled with the maimed and the muti- 
 lated. Houses full of bereaved and bleeding hearts : 
 mothers mourning their sons unreturned, wives weep- 
 ing for husbands lying in bloody graves, sisters wailing 
 the loss of brothers, the little infant playing with its 
 dead father's sword. Behold our cross of sacrifice, a 
 cross borne also for all humanity. 
 
 And yet contained within it all is national salvation, 
 the redemption of our people, their resurrection to a 
 yet greater life, their inspiration to a yet nobler pur- 
 pose. The Easter Sun of the Republic is already 
 dawning. The day of peace and joy and prosperity is 
 at hand. The Kingdom is come ! Let it bring heal- 
 ing to the broken-hearted, deliverance to the captives, 
 sight to the blind, liberty to the bruised. Let it grow 
 till every throne is made to fall, and every people is 
 lifted out of the mire. Let it grow " till all men 
 everywhere are free." 
 
 Let our country and our cause grow till humanity 
 itself can go no further, till it develops that nobility in 
 man which will ally it with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 
 Let our Republic grow, let its spirit of humanity and 
 of sacrifice expand, till Christ adopts it for His own, — 
 His very people, of whom He was ideally born, and for 
 whom He suffered and died, — the people of His choice 
 and His love, — the people not of His disappointment, 
 but of His glory. 
 
AN ADDRESS 
 
 Delivered ox Easter Morning, April 16, 1865, the Day after the 
 Intelligence was received of the President's Assassination. 
 
 I have no heart to speak, — nor have you to hear. 1 
 put aside all that I had prepared to say, and turn to 
 that which has filled us with such unspeakable grief 
 and unspeakable consternation. Our day of jubilee, 
 our Easter, so auspicious for our country, so bloodily 
 redeemed, a day when hearts were to be happier and 
 faces brighter, because the Prince of Peace had so 
 really come, our day of jubilee is a day of tears, lamen- 
 tation, and great mourning. The emblems of sorrow 
 and death accompany the emblems of joy and life. The 
 interests of the temporal and the interests of the eter- 
 nal here mingle together without incongruity, bat with 
 added beauty, because they are not incongruous inte- 
 rests. Our hearts love our country, even while they 
 hope for eternity. 
 
 Little did I think, my brethren, last Sunday night, 
 as I laid before you the great and pervading principle 
 of sacrifice, and tried to show that it was the terrible 
 law of nature that no advance or progress could be 
 
20 
 
 made but over a field of blood, and that our country had 
 moved on to its new epoch over the bleeding forms of 
 so many hundred thousand men, little did I think that, 
 before the week was out, we should have to pass over 
 the bleeding, lifeless body of our President. Little did 
 I think that words only accommodated to the crisis of 
 the day, and only in principle coincident with it, would 
 have such a literal fulfilment : 
 
 " IT IS EXPEDIENT FOR US THAT ONE MAN SHOULD DIE FOR 
 THE PEOPLE, AND THAT THE WHOLE NATION PERISH NOT." 
 
 In the decree of that Providence which has carried 
 us so far, even this unexpected concentration of the 
 principle upon one in whom every interest of the nation 
 had centred, has become necessary, and the only con- 
 solation we have is, that in some mysterious way the 
 death of Abraham Lincoln will work a greater result 
 than his life. 
 
 But the consummate sacrifice of the war has been 
 reached. No higher price can be paid. We have lost 
 our President — lost him just as the mind of the whole 
 people at last understood, appreciated, and approved 
 him — lost him just a& the heart of the whole people 
 began to love him, and all consciously began to lean 
 on him. 
 
 In this whole land there was no such centre and 
 cynosure as that one man. The doubts, the suspicions, 
 the contentions, the strifes of four political and dis- 
 tracted years had at last subsided and disappeared. 
 The unfolding of our history had justified the choice of 
 
21 
 
 the people. It had proved to be a choice influenced 
 by something above mere human wisdom. It had 
 proved to be an inspiration of God. Nothing else had 
 carried us through, the fast-occurring critical moments 
 of this period but the moral qualities of the chosen 
 Executive. No one had dreamed of their depth ; no 
 one knew how wonderfully they would control and 
 sustain his judicious mind. 
 
 But the event developed and manifested him. Par- 
 ties and policies became bygones. He went on in ad- 
 vance of them, and stood before us all in the sweet 
 atmosphere of Peace. We looked with astonishment 
 upon his modest, unostentatious, undated figure, sur- 
 rounded by the greatest of historic triumphs. But he 
 acted on the instinct of his character and of his posi- 
 tion. He was only the man of the people, not their 
 monarch. 
 
 And how deeply the people appreciated it! How 
 loud were their shouts and hosannas ! It was a sud- 
 den recognition of intrinsic greatness and goodness, 
 as it passed over the crest of a great epoch, and drew 
 near the glorious end, and they connected it properly, 
 but vaguely, with the Providential aspects of their 
 cause. They were ready to spread their garments in 
 his way. A new feeling took possession of them. A 
 religious impulse seized them. Never were a people 
 or their ruler so devout, or so full of touching ascrip- 
 tions of praise and thanksgiving to God. The air re- 
 sounded with hymns to the Almighty as their Saviour 
 
99 
 
 and Deliverer. A solemnity of feeling grew, as if they 
 stood in the presence of a stupendous miracle, and be- 
 held the evolution of a distinct and conspicuous Provi- 
 dence. 
 
 And all this gathered round one who seemed to bear 
 in his innermost heart the simplicity and honesty of a 
 child, even while, as we now perceive, he was carrying 
 out the purposes of God. 
 
 It used to be said that the peculiar sentiment of love 
 and loyalty which is felt by a nation for its hereditary 
 king, as the representative of a perpetual dynasty, and 
 as the invested of God with a right to rule, could not 
 be felt for an ephemeral and political President. He 
 was only an official, — an almost abstract executive, — 
 an honorary excellency only, — no supreme, permanent, 
 or universal object of regard. In a brief period he 
 would sink out of sight into private life, with no fur- 
 ther claim upon his country than as having been its 
 faithful servant. 
 
 But what do we see to-day 1 Our once official and 
 merely executive President has become so identified 
 with our hearts that we cannot separate him from our- 
 selves. It is among the strangest of the many strange 
 developments of the democratic principle. The man of 
 the people can grow so close to the heart of the people 
 that he would become the unconscious inmate of every 
 household, an invisible member of every family, one 
 whom it is the instinct of all to love, and the habit of 
 all to lean on for support. 
 
23 
 
 It was even this that our President had become. 
 Through four years of dreadful peril, uncertainty, and 
 conflict, he had pursued his simple, dutiful, and faith- 
 ful course, and at last the moment arrived when he had 
 vindicated the cause of his country, and the majesty of 
 its government. It was confirmation enough. It was 
 occasion enough for gratitude and love. 
 
 And then appeared that touching exhibition of 
 mercy and magnanimity, which has moved us all, and 
 which has so ennobled our cause. He held out the 
 arms of the government and people in an invitation to 
 return. He held out the promise of forgiveness and 
 restoration. He uttered the sweetness of his own 
 earnest, generous heart, till he carried our hearts with 
 his, and it seemed as if even the heart of the alien 
 could no longer withstand or refuse. 
 
 We were prepared by him for everything that was 
 noble, merciful, and magnanimous. Our own unembit- 
 tered spirit, despite all our sacrifices, coalesced round 
 his. He became the expression of our feeling and our 
 wish. We lived and breathed, nationally, through him. 
 We were not aware, I repeat, how close a personal 
 affection had grown in us toward him. We did not 
 realize how every interest we had centred in him. Un- 
 consciously, as I say, he had become a part of our family 
 ancl household. And, therefore, when yesterday morn- 
 ing we rose from our beds, roused by the alarming note 
 of evil news, and we were told that the President was 
 dead, dead by violence and murder, we felt sick, and 
 
24 
 
 stunned with consternation and grief. Each one took 
 the sorrow into his own heart. Each one was over- 
 whelmed in his own consciousness. No one looked to 
 the next one to interpret the catastrophe. There was 
 no contagion of a common sorrow. The husband sunk 
 down by himself in bewilderment and despair. The 
 wife wept alone by herself in equal astonishment and 
 grief. Every household mourned. Every family was 
 bereaved. It seemed as if a near sorrow had de- 
 scended upon every one. The feeling was felt under 
 every roof that a death had occurred in the house, and 
 that a member of the family had gone. " There was 
 not a house where there was not one dead !" 
 
 Oh, the sadness and sorrow of yesterday ! Who can 
 forget it \ Everywhere men acted like the stricken and 
 bereaved. They closed their offices and stores ; they 
 gave up their business; they wandered restlessly about; 
 their reddened eyes told of the hot tears of recent weep- 
 ing ; their depressed and yet excited, often fierce faces, 
 told of unutterable grief and indignation. Least of all 
 as an indication were the emblems of mourning that 
 were almost instantly hung out amid the folds of the 
 flag and the twinings of the national colors. One needed 
 not to look up at the windows, and their sable decora- 
 tions, for evidences of the universal sorrow. It was 
 more apparent in every face that passed by than in all 
 that array of flags at half-mast, and all that gloomy 
 upholstery of woe. 
 
 The garlands and rejoicings of Palm Sunday had gone, 
 
25 
 
 — the cross, the blood, the sacrifice, the darkness, and 
 the despair of Good Friday had come. Treason and re- 
 bellion had taken a Judas shape. They had come up 
 again, but stealthily, like Satan discomfited. The spirit 
 that could take pride in holding four millions of human 
 beings in bondage forever ; the spirit that could strike 
 down a helpless Senator in the national halls, and ap- 
 plaud the act; the spirit that could so wantonly rebel 
 against rightful and constituted authority ; that could, 
 for so little reason, turn against a once-beloved Repub- 
 lic ; that could rejoice in firing upon its flag and in 
 trampling the holy symbol under foot ; the spirit that 
 could mutilate the dead, massacre garrisons, mine pri- 
 sons, and set fire to cities in the night ; the spirit that 
 could starve to death uncounted thousands of prisoners 
 of war, — is the self -same spirit that stole into the hea- 
 ven of our peace, and struck the unsuspecting, con- 
 fiding President from behind, — and that struck the 
 Secretary, when lying broken, wounded, and helpless 
 in his bed. 
 
 That was our Good Friday as a people. We were 
 astonished, and suddenly cast down. For not to other 
 and untried hands were we yet prepared to transfer 
 what had become so entirely his individual work. All 
 day yesterday it seemed, as it did to the disciples of old, 
 that all was over ; that our cause had been committed 
 to hopeless burial.* For no more than they could we 
 
 * It will be borne in mind that the disciples themselves had nol identi- 
 fied their Master with anything higher than a material kingdom. 
 
26 
 
 understand it. But the third day explained that in- 
 finite catastrophe, and a future day will explain this. 
 Our national Easter will surely come. Our cause will 
 rise again more beautiful, more noble, for the sacrifice. 
 We know not what Providence intends that we shall 
 suffer, nor what disappointments may come, nor how 
 many hopes will be deferred. But the past is the 
 guarantee of the future. The same Providence who 
 has so conspicuously guided us thus far, will do for us 
 and for our country all that is best. Remember, and 
 take the consolation of the Divine coincidence — your 
 greater anniversary is yet to come, perhaps it has 
 already come. Let us wait in patience and in faith. 
 Such an event as this has not occurred for nought. 
 Let us hold our breath and wait. Let us watch the 
 terrible vengeance, not of the people, but of God. Al- 
 though we may pray, as our Master did, "Father, 
 forgive them, for they know not what they do !" yet it 
 was long ago they invoked the blood of our sacrifice, 
 whatever it might be, upon themselves and their chil- 
 dren. May it not be visited upon them further. May 
 peace come without the price of their doom. May 
 happiness come to us, to humanity, to the race, with- 
 out the world beholding their Jerusalem a heap of 
 stones, and their children perishing within it. 
 
 But the judgments of God are stern and terrible. 
 If there is still venom and vitality enough in a crushed 
 cause to strike such a fang as this into the heart of 
 a just and merciful man, the incarnation of a people's 
 

 27 
 
 kindliness, patience, and forbearance, if there is madness 
 enough in an evil cause to strike down the very friend 
 who would interpose forgiveness, what can we expect'? 
 what can we not fear'? 
 
 But oh, in the spirit of Christ, let us pray that the 
 doom be averted, that its lightnings may pass harm- 
 lessly from the cloud that overhangs us, and that 
 the day will soon come when the skies will be clear, 
 and . our people, under another Easter sun, will be 
 found living together in unity, happiness, and peace. 
 
ADDRESS 
 
 Delivered on Wednesday, April 19, 1865, at Noon, at the Fu- 
 neral Service held in Unison with the Solemnities ok the 
 Same Hour, in the National Capital. 
 
 We are attending the funeral of the President of 
 the United States. This service, in this crowded 
 church, is as much his funeral service as that immense 
 ceremonial attended by multitudes in the capital of 
 the nation, immediately around his body. In every 
 city, village, and hamlet of the land, as the hour of 
 twelve has struck to-day, the people will have assem- 
 bled in their temples of worship to observe the self- 
 same expression of respect and sorrow which is being 
 observed at Washington. It is a national funeral, and 
 as the noon hour will advance westward, that gathering 
 of the people will take place at successive stations, till, 
 like a great forerunning preparation, it has made ready 
 the way for the melancholy train which will bear his 
 body westward to his home. 
 
 The President returns for the first time after his 
 setting out upon his great duty, with that duty per- 
 formed ; but he returns a martyr. He will sleep in 
 
30 
 
 the midst of his neighbors and friends unconscious of 
 his work. It is among the most touching of the cir- 
 cumstances attending his death, that it has occurred so 
 instantly after his success had been achieved, and be- 
 fore the well-earned compensation had come for so 
 much labor, anxiety, patience, and courage. A feelino- 
 of personal sympathy has gone out of every heart on 
 this account, as well as the feeling of personal bereave- 
 ment which every one has experienced. 
 
 But who can measure our bitter disappointment as a 
 people 1 The exclamation of the old prophet, under 
 unexpected national calamity, would seem to have an 
 equal meaning now: "We looked for peace, but no 
 good came; and for a time of health, and behold 
 trouble ! " 
 
 During four years we have lived in the very din and 
 confusion of one of those periods when the history of 
 the world concentrates itself upon a single spot. For 
 awhile we saw no order, and no development. We 
 could only wait : chaos had come again. Misfortunes 
 were thick about us. The nation was involved, before 
 it knew, in a struggle so terrific, and in an undertak- 
 ing so stupendous, that if the immensity only of the 
 enterprise and the effort had been foreseen, no human 
 counsel would have advised the course it took. But 
 God led it on by its hopes and by its illusions till it 
 could not go back, till it had awaked the latent powers 
 of the people to an extent that the wildest dreamer of 
 a democracy had never thought, till the cause grew 
 
31 
 
 holier and holier as the pillar of cloud began to lead 
 its hosts by day, and the pillar of fire by night. 
 
 But for a long time the wisest brain at the head of 
 the Government could see nothing but darkness, could 
 feel nothing but that tense anxiety which the helms- 
 man feels at night when he plunges with his ship into 
 the dense gloom, and receives the heavy blows of the 
 invisible surges, and knows not for how long, nor how 
 enduringly, and there is only the tender gleam of the 
 binnacle-light, beneath his hand, between him and the 
 bottom of the sea. But the night ended, the darkness 
 lifted, the day began to break, the light on the needle 
 was no longer the light of reason and of hope, but the 
 light of God. 
 
 There came a moment when, instead of the slow 
 and painful progress of the Government armies, en- 
 veloping a city here and there, and redeeming terri- 
 tory now in the east and now in the west, there came 
 a moment when the whole Atlantic coast was swept 
 into our possession almost in an instant, when the capi- 
 tal of the counterfeit Republic fell, when its armies 
 capitulated, when the chieftain, in whom lay their 
 whole military hope, was a prisoner, when the Confe- 
 deracy could nowhere be found. It had evaporated 
 away _it had broken like a bubble— and, "like the 
 baseless fabric of a vision, left not a wreck behind !" 
 
 What could we do in the hour of such results, and 
 the sudden collapse of what had vaunted itself a 
 mighty government, a separate country, and an uncon- 
 querable cause, but stand and stare with breathless 
 
32 
 
 awe, and say as we grasped our neighbor's hand, 
 "What hath God wrought!" 
 
 How full our hearts were of joy and expectation! 
 " We looked for Peace!" How beautiful was the word 
 to us! All we asked was to go back to the halcyon 
 days of awhile ago, and never see a military figure in 
 the street, nor read of a battle or siege in the news- 
 print. After all the heroism and excitement which 
 has stirred our blood, we could desire even this, that 
 all should subside into quiet, that our armies should 
 dissolve, and our soldiers turn from the weapons of 
 strife to the implements of industry and peace. We 
 felt as if an angel's wing had swept over our land, and 
 the smile of love and reconciliation was upon our faces 
 as we turned them toward the South. 
 
 " We looked for Health /" We thought we had cured 
 the disease by the cruel surgery to which we had been 
 compelled. We thought we had destroyed that can- 
 cerous affection which had eaten into the heart of many 
 a noble Southerner, and turned him away from the 
 Constitution of his fathers. We thought we had 
 awaked the spirit of true nationality, and developed 
 our people into a spirit of widest humanity. We 
 thought we had come to the hour for true ideas, and 
 divine conceptions of duty. Before this war had bro- 
 ken out, the splendid manhood which makes nations 
 great was latent and unknown among us, in danger of 
 being softened by prosperity and perverted by pride. 
 But now the very deep of the human heart had spoken. 
 
33 
 
 The noblest principle on earth, the principle of sacri- 
 fice, had sprung forth. In everything we were en- 
 larged and enlightened. We had been brought by 
 trial and suffering back to the era of the Revolution, 
 and were made to live that anxiety over again. The 
 bloody baptism was repeated, and we had been born 
 anew into a love of country so deep that it was the 
 nearest thought of every heart, and so universal that 
 the national flag floated from every house. " We 
 looked for health," — and felt the time was close at 
 hand when the regenerate South would thank the 
 Providence which had chastened it, and had removed 
 the house of bondage from its midst, and when, shoul- 
 der to shoulder with the North, it would advance to 
 the consummation of the work which both North and 
 South, as one Republic, had been given to do. 
 
 But were we in danger of " healing the hurt of the 
 daughter of God's people slightly V Were we crying 
 " Peace ! peace ! when there is no peace ?" 
 
 Let the recent experience of the people admonish 
 and warn. 
 
 We are never so far within the counsels of Provi- 
 dence that we can foretell anything with certainty. 
 This, at least, we had thought, that we had got beyond 
 the hour for reverses. But the mistake is nothing new. 
 God always visits with adversity in an unexpected form. 
 That member of the family dies with whom death was 
 never associated. That form of affliction comes which 
 was never apprehended. The image of a great battle, 
 
34 
 
 with whole square miles of soil drenched with blood 
 and strewn with dead, was the only form in which we 
 could put a calamity that would bereave the people. 
 And then, in the moment of our security and bright 
 expectation and happy feeling that the end had come, 
 one man among us, the very one whose office it had 
 been the effort of all these battles and all these lives to 
 uphold, falls forward dead, — killed by the alien cause 
 in the hour of its weakness, but unconquerable malig- 
 nity. To our speechless consternation our President 
 was dead ! " We looked for peace, but no good came, 
 and for a time of health, but behold, trouble!" 
 
 What can the calamity mean'? What is it for? 
 
 I suppose, after the first emotion of astonishment and 
 grief, that which took deepest possession of the public 
 mind was horror and indignation. And this, hereafter, 
 will be the permanent feeling, the characteristic and the 
 effective one. After the pain of bereavement has passed, 
 the conviction of injury and crime comes up and takes 
 its immovable station in the national heart. The nation 
 has been struck a blow more dreadful than all others 
 together in this long struggle with its assassinating foes. 
 All the collisions of more than a thousand battle-fields 
 have not shaken the country so much as this in the 
 midst of the capital. All the thunders of ten thousand 
 cannon have been empty noise beside that one pistol- 
 shot. All the blood of four hundred thousand lives 
 has not been grieved for so much as that which has 
 trickled from a single wound. If all the households in 
 
35 
 
 this city which have been privately bereaved were to 
 
 darken their windows, and drape their dwellings, the 
 symbols of mourning would be far fewer than they are 
 to-iiay. 
 
 The nation has been injured: the people have been 
 
 smitten. That one man, clothed and dignified by his 
 imperial office, was of more worth than a million lives. 
 not because of his personal greatness, but because of 
 his official position, — because the country and the cause 
 were represented, for the time, by him. It is not Abra- 
 ham Lincoln, only, it is the President who has been 
 murdered. Treason and rebellion would not have been 
 guilty of half their crime, had they fought on the bat- 
 tle-field and stopped short of this; but now their guilt 
 is consummate and inexpiable. Now an inexorable prin- 
 ciple is let loose, the majesty of the law rises up, the 
 righteous indignation of the people bursts forth. Not 
 only must the man be avenged, but the Pkesident! 
 Avenge does not mean revenge. Avengement is justice 
 done, the right vindicated. We stand and tremble us 
 we see this stern duty darkening the countenance of 
 the Government. We feel a fearful anxiety as we see 
 the beautiful development of forgiveness and concilia- 
 tion suddenly broken, and another and different de- 
 velopment smouldering in the secret counsels of the 
 nation. Whatever it be, God wills it in His infinite 
 wisdom. A greater good must be coming from this 
 than could have come from that. But this hour of sus- 
 pense is an hour of apprehension. It may be that less 
 
36 
 
 severity of measures will issue out of this than we fear, 
 but the dreadful character of this final result of the re- 
 bellion cannot but have its positive effect upon the na- 
 tion. The best result that we can foresee, and it is one 
 which a former policy could never have brought about 
 with such ungenerous foes, is not only the annihilation 
 of the rebellion, and the rebuke of treason, but the mer- 
 ciless extinguishment of the sentiment in which they origi- 
 nated. "Whether by execution, or expatriation, those 
 minds will be removed from our midst in whom the in- 
 fernal flame burns, and w T ill burn so long as they live 
 or remain. And this may be the great blessing which 
 Providence designs: a more perfect success, a more posi- 
 tive union, a more unanimous people than we could 
 possibly have expected or otherwise had. 
 
 "The something that was to astonish the world," 
 the plot for the simultaneous assassination of every 
 high officer of the Government, and the sudden over- 
 throw of its power in the confusion, has failed. It has 
 touched but one, and his place is instantly filled. All 
 the other great minds in whom the crisis lay, and from 
 whom the epoch was issuing, are safe, — safe beyond 
 peradventure or peril. 
 
 We do not realize the calamity we have been saved 
 from, nor the inextricable difficulties in which we might 
 have been involved. And we are not as grateful as 
 we have reason to be to Him whose protecting hand 
 has been so marvellously over and near us. 
 
 It will be as much the work of the historian here- 
 
37 
 
 after to count up our providences as to recount our 
 fortunes — so many, so peculiar, and so conspicuous 
 have they been. The fact has been seen by the people, 
 and it has touched the popular heart. We praise God 
 with our first breath of joy at good news. Praise Him 
 now, in this hour of calamity, that it is not as horrible 
 as it might have been. 
 
 There are certain ulterior consequences of this event 
 which we cannot clearly anticipate, because they will be 
 the peculiar development of a national system which 
 refers so much to the people. A public sorrow in such 
 a country as ours touches the whole people just as 
 poignantly as a private sorrow touches an individual. 
 And this is only one of the many new things which are 
 daily coming to the surface with us. We see what the 
 appeal of patriotism to the intuition and heart of the 
 masses has done. We see the many singular virtues 
 which have been brought to light in the passage of a 
 people through the ordeal of political strife and civil 
 war. We may expect, therefore, that this fearful visi- 
 tation will have a most extraordinary and secret work- 
 inff in the public mind. We know not, in the strange- 
 ness of the free human nature of this land, how it has 
 o-one or will go to the heart of the individual citizen 
 we never saw. We cannot foretell its mysterious 
 agency, as it will keep ramifying about under the sur- 
 face among twenty millions of people. But you may 
 rely upon it, that it will be a slumbering fire for many 
 years to come, stealing from heart to heart as the secret 
 
38 
 
 attendant of the Holy Ghost, and burning its way for 
 a good, we Know not what. 
 
 It will be the tragic story of our history. Mothers 
 will toll it to their children, and as the spirit of patriot- 
 ism has been instilled, from generation to generation, 
 by the traditions of the great Washington, so will the 
 spirit of simplicity and honesty and sacrifice be dis- 
 tilled into the hearts of the many millions yet unborn 
 who are to carry this Republic on, as the tradition of 
 the good Lincoln is dropped from the lips of the fathers 
 to their children. 
 
 The figure of that man who now lies dead in the 
 midst of his people, will be in the days to come, the 
 most symmetrical finish to the development in which we 
 live. His virtues will be remembered with astonish- 
 ment. His rude features will be idealized by art till 
 nothing but the greatness and beauty of his character 
 will shine through them. History will delight for once 
 in the romance of goodness, and in detailing the self- 
 devotion and triumph of principle. The blaze of this 
 wonderful era will surround him with a glory of which 
 he never dreamed, but which he has fully deserved. 
 
 And now our hearts recur to him as he lies at this 
 hour, embalmed and coffined, sorrowed and mourned, 
 by the high officers of the Government, its great states- 
 men and great generals, and a dense multitude of the 
 people- 
 He has left behind the benediction of his just and 
 patient spirit. He has left behind a country delivered 
 
and redeemed, I i< hn i lefl behind .1 < an *c triumphant 
 and glorious. At the close of this week, as his funeral 
 train moves slowly through youi streets, uw ovei youi 
 heads in reverence for him whom God rained up to be 
 the saviour <»i his country, and whom God has taken 
 away thai his people might be united, and his work 
 more mighl ily finished. 
 
 Look on that train, as if pasi es bj as il il were led 
 by the hand of Providence. Look mi [\ as the j mbol 
 and the reality together of the whole nation's mourn 
 ing and desolation, suffered now for four lona yeai 
 Look on it, and praj tlial it may be the end of the 
 calamity, the end of the sacrifice. 
 
 He will lie on Sunday next in [ndependcnci II. ill 
 The history of the tuition began in that room, and con 
 tinues to flow through it, to this day. Nothing na 
 tional occurs but that sacred chamber shari it It 
 has appeared in this very period almo 1 as con ipi< 11 
 ously as in the first war for Kberty. 'I hrough a popu 
 lar instinct, the President itood there in the dark 
 days before his on, but on an auspiciou 
 
 anniversary, and with hu trong hands n 
 
 the national ensign on high. Bi ftlmo I 
 
 prophet: lit of i 
 
 I 
 
 in that room, and - I 
 
 country/" said he. u cannot 
 that principle. I was abc I I 
 be assassinated on the spot tha 
 
40 
 
 said nothing but what I am willing to live by, and, if 
 it be the pleasure of Almighty God, to die by." 
 
 And now, by a most appropriate provision, the fune- 
 ral train will rest in this city on the coming hallowed 
 clay, and he will lie in his martyrdom in that historic 
 hall, sleeping amid the memories of eighty-nine won- 
 derful years, dumb and unconscious as the great bell* 
 at his head ; but the world will never forget that he 
 sounded the note of liberty, and rung out the joy of a 
 nation redeemed, before the strength of his honest 
 heart was broken. 
 
 In a new meaning of the old royal formula he will 
 " sleep with his fathers,"— the fathers of the republic,— 
 with their shades looking down from the walls upon 
 him, simple, devoted as chey, having given his life in 
 the cause for which they pledged their lives, their for- 
 tunes, and their sacred honor. 
 
 But he goes to his grave near by his humble home, 
 with no assemblage of bygone kings to keep him com- 
 pany, and therefore it may be better said of him, " he 
 sleeps with his children :"— the Mississippi flat-boatman 
 in a coffin worthy of a monarch,— the plain man of 
 the people thronged about and wept for by millions of 
 hearts! True instance of the genius of our Republic! 
 glorious instance of worth, first seen and first declared 
 by a majority, and now perceived and acknowledged 
 
 * Tlic original bell which was rung at the moment of the signing of the 
 great Declaration, hut which is now broken, stands on a pedestal in the 
 
 hall. 
 
41 
 
 by all! — terrible instance of that inevitable law of sacri- 
 fice under which he must fall who stands foremost for 
 the right, and who most earnestly opposes wrong ! 
 
 May this historic martyrdom make us a people loyal 
 to God, as well as to man. May we rise higher and 
 higher in character as a nation. Above all, may it 
 bring us closer to another and infinite Sacrifice, which 
 was for all nations and for all time, even of One who 
 fulfilled in His death the issues of eternity and of the 
 soul. And at last may it bring such an acclaim to 
 Him, the Lord of all, that His kingdom may fully 
 come ; and, as we lift and unfurl our country's standard 
 before men, in a grateful future, may it be to display 
 the Cross in the midst of the stars. 
 
My 13 
 
 
 1