and grasp of thought, not wanting in strength of will and power, not wanting in honesty and stern integrity, not wanting in a deep sense of his God-given mission, that man, however many and varied his faults, was great, not in position only but in nature. But this human greatness, felt at home, and beginning to be acknowledged everywhere abroad, this human greatness which under God had solved the problem which the nations had proclaimed insoluble, could not save its envied possessor from death-sudden and fearful death!

The glory of the hour of triumph, when that triumph is the success of a nation, of freedom, of humanity, of justice and of God, could not stay the mighty and universal conqueror. While the flag of freedom was being flung to the breeze again at Sumter, to assure blood-stained treason of the of the ascendency of the national authority on the very birth-grond of this wicked, treacherous rebellion, and while the news of the discomfiture and destruction of mighty rebel hosts was being borne on the wings of wind and lightning to the nations of the earth, this nation was roused by the news of his most horrible assassination. The grandest magnanimity of soul cannot save from death. There must have been a grandeur of soul about the man who could pass through four years of such a struggle, and then come to a second inaugural address with those wonderful words, "with charity to all and malice for none," and so illustrate this in his

life as did Abraham Lincoln. Four years, during which no day passed in which the organs and leaders of this rebellion, which is now passing away as chaff before the breath of Almighty justice, did not ferociously assail and malign, and strive to fix his name along with everything that is basest in nature and in history, in earth and in hell, and yet four years in which he did not utter one word of vindictiveness! Four such years, when the least demand of justice was death to every traitor, were crowned by that act of clemency which may well astonish the world, in which he showed how ready he was to forgive! Yet such magnanimity could not save him from death, and death too by so foul a murder, at the hand of those against whom God has written himself the eternal foe, though he had shown himself so ready to forgive and overlook the crime which cried out to heaven.

The deepest affection of a great people cannot save from death. Here is one before us, who against the strongest opposing influences, and in spite of all the bitterness of a great strife, had won his way to all honest hearts, adding, we trust, the Christian to the man. Here is one whose life had conquered political and partizan prejudices and made his love a delight to the nation. More and more unitedly, more and more firmly this people have gathered round him through the years of tumult and conflict, until the man who had emptied his coffers in the great and glorious

cause, and the soldier who had faced death in a hundred battles, and the father and mother who had laid their son upon the altar of liberty, to be sacrificed and then buried in a nameless grave, and the widowed wife and the fatherless children who looked tearfully and anxiously into the darkened future, until all felt that in him they had a friend and son and brother and husband and father. At such an hour came the fearful blow, and it fell upon the nation like a death in every home. Even a nation's heart overflowing so with love, could not avert the blow. Death is an omnipotent and remorseless conqueror.

What a lesson of death then to the nation to-day. Death loves a shining mark. Nothing can guard against it, when the hour comes: no position, neither the lowliness of the hovel nor the exaltation of the president's mansion, neither the helplessness of the child nor the strength of the man: no earthly love, not a wife's with its tenderness, not a father's with its strength, not a mother's with its depth, not a nation's with the tenderness and strength and depth of all these. Death awaits you. It may come in an instant without leaving time to ask, "Am I prepared to die?" It should impress this solemn thought upon every one in this nation. God has come into the high places that he might speak to each and all. Oh! will this people give heed?

But God has come to teach us the vanity of man, even at his best estate. "Altogether vanity!" How empty

a trust is he. O people, "put not your trust in . princes, nor in the son of man in whom is no help." What are all the great ones in God's plan after all but the most insignificant instruments? To-day there lies cold and low in yonder capital of the nation, one of these chosen instruments of the great King. God himself seemed strangely to point him out and to cling to him through the years. Selected as candidate. for the chief magistracy in preference to our wisest statesman, called to fulfil a work to which a nation would have shrunk from calling an untried man, led on in ways the wisdom of which it has taken time to justify-Providence had seemed, like the nation, so to cling to the man! But suddenly he is cut down by the hand of a brutal murderer. The news flashes with lightning wings across the nation. A wail goes up to heaven from every house, and all eyes fill with blinding tears. Yonder where we looked upon our great and honored, and trusted, and beloved President, there is only dust and ashes-only dust and ashes! O nation, put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man in whom there is no help! God's mighty work- the triumph of truth and justice and freedom and humanity, does not in the least depend upon any of these. The workmen perish but the work goes on on on through the ages-on through the nations,-on-on to final, complete and everlasting triumph. Whatever oppose, the day shall come when the grand principles of the gospel shall be

on

everywhere acknowledged with their freedom, and no foot of earth be cursed by error, injustice, tyranny or oppression. These great ones at best are little more than dust and ashes, at most but the frail reeds with which God's omnipotence smites down the wicked and the oppressor. Of them we may say with the divinely inspired preacher, "Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.”

But in speaking of mortality and vanity, God's voice to-day calls again to repentance. God forbid that we should forget that He has been chastising us for sin. Universal corruption added to the vow to consign man, made in God's own image, to perpetual bondage, called for Divine justice. The corruption which has fattened on even these million deaths demands rebuke. God has been smitting us as well as this iniquitous rebellion, smiting us on all these thousand battle fields. Now, again to-day He comes by this most startling voice, and demands of the nation, "Have you repented?" Oh! have we repented? God's heart is full, but, O! justice will have her way—eternal justice until we repent. This event may teach us that God's storehouse is full. We know not what may await an impenitent people. God's ways are a mighty deep. Repent-repent at His fearfully solemn command.

But God speaks to us to-day of justice, as well as of death and nothingness and repentance. The innocent blood cries out to heaven for vengeance, not simply against the miserable, misguided, besotted tool of the