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cessor in case of a President's death, and declared his joy that the nation still lives. The sermon of the evening related to the successful progress of the war and the recent victories of the union armies, and in these favors the preacher bade his people recognize the work wrought by the hand of God for this nation. Respecting the service at Christ Church, the rector, the Rev. J. N. Mulford, in a note says:

"As we met on last Easter Sunday for morning prayer, our hearts were sad with the nation's great affliction.

"Around that day associations of former years cast a feeling of holy joy, and the recollection of the great fact in Christian history which we were called to celebrate would have made it a day of gladness. But every heart was sick and suffering with a wound yet fresh and bleeding. Our great and good President lay dead-slain by the hand of an assassin. Though sad, we did not forget that light from the tomb of Christ shed cheerful rays even into the darkness caused by this event: for there is no page of human sorrow that is not brightened by the power of His resurrection. Therefore, we joined heartily in the services of the day, and sang our Easter chants with thankful, though subdued and chastened feeling.

"In the extempore address, I remember having remarked that this terrible shock which caused our nation to pause in the midst of its triumphal march, would do good if it drew us out of our self confidence

to put our trust more in God; that we were thinking too much of our own strength and wisdom in the toil and success of war; that while we could not see the meaning of this dark providence we were compelled to stand still and have faith in God; that two things were as clear as ever, viz:-God was still the ruler of nations-And our faith in Him should be as strong as when we were in the flush of prosperity; that while standing now in the dawn of peace by the body of our fallen leader, we appreciated as not even in the perplexities of war, the splendour of that calm judgment and determined will, that, under God, led us safely through the manifold dangers of the great rebellion; and that to-day, in the sudden and terrible death of President Lincoln, the people were crushed with a sense of sorrow and helplessness, as if the angel that cursed Egypt had slain the first born of every family in this land."

The Easter sermon of the Rev. Dr. J. I. Tucker, at the Church of the Holy Cross, was interspersed with allusions to the calamity the nation had sustained. He enforced the duty of a stronger exercise of religious principle, to enable all men and especially Christian men, to rise above the gloom of the occasion.

At the State Street Methodist Episcopal Church, Rev. Dr. E. Wentworth stated, that he had felt impelled, under an overwhelming sense of the awfulness of the occasion, to lay aside his previously prepared discourse, and devote his thoughts to the one great

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idea that absorbed the attention of the people-the sudden and tragical death of their Chief Magistrate. He selected as his text the eighth verse of the seventh chapter of Micah:-"Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy: when I fall, I shall arise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a light unto me."

He commented upon the facts that it was natural to rejoice in the calamities of an enemy and that foreign nations had rejoiced in our calamities, and expressed the belief that men would be found who would even rejoice in this last calamity that carries us back to the crimes of the dark ages. He noticed our successive falls as a nation, and our subsequent recoveries. "Truth and righteousness," said the speaker, "are often crushed, but they rise again. Abraham Lincoln falls, but in falling is exalted to the honors of martyrdom. No name in American history, not even Washington's, will occupy a more conspicuous place than that of Abraham Lincoln. His work is done. Others will finish what he had so nobly commenced and brought so nearly to a glorious termination. We sit in darkness to day, but God is our light. He teaches us in this event, that he will not allow us to trust in an arm of flesh." The speaker in concluding, recited the forty-sixth psalm, beginning "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble." In the evening he delivered the same sermon in the North Second Street Methodist Episcopal Church.

The Rev. R. R. Meredith, pastor of the North Troy

Methodist Episcopal Church, preached to a crowded audience in the evening, selecting as the basis of his sermon the fifty-third verse of the twenty-second chapter of St. Luke's gospel: "But this is your hour, and the power of darkness." He set before his auditors

their duty in this crisis of the nation, and drew inferences from the occurences of the time both appropriate and impressive.

The Rev. Marvin R. Vincent, at the First Presbyterian Church, introduced in a previously prepared sermon on the "Perversion of human judgment," some appropriate allusions to the mournful occasion, citing the foul murder of the President as the crowning illustration of his theme. Looking beyond the mere tool who fired the weapon, to the spirit that prompted the deed, he attributed the deed entirely to slavery.

At the Park Presbyterian Church, the Rev. Alexander Dickson preached in the morning from the twelfth verse of the fourteenth chapter of the gospel of St. Matthew, "And his disciples came, and took up the body, and buried it, and went and told Jesus." In the evening, his discourse was based on these words, "For he doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men,” recorded in the thirty-third verse of the third chapter of Lamentations.

In the Roman Catholic churches of the city, the impression produced by the addresses of the respective clergymen, served to temper the jubilant character of the Easter exercises.

At St. Mary's Church a very large congregation assembled at high mass. After the singing of the gospel, the pastor, the Rev. Peter Havermans, ascended the pulpit, and addressed the audience at considerable length and with much earnestness, respecting the public calamity that had befallen the country. He stated that he could not imagine any event that was more to be regretted at this time, than the death of President Lincoln, and that he looked upon his assassination, as one of the greatest crimes that could be committed; that he had no words at his command adepuately to give expression to his feelings. "Every one" said the speaker, "is horror-stricken at the tragic deed which has taken place at the capital of the nation. The wickedness of the act is heightened by every aggravating circumstance that can surround crime. The murder was committed on Good Friday, at a public entertainment, given partly as a compliment to the unsuspecting victim, at the moment that the rebellion had been crushed, and at a time when the magnanimity and goodness of the President had begun to be seen and was foreshadowing, as far as the public interest would permit, a lenient disposition toward his rebellious brethren of the south.

"The President's popularity had become so great during the critical time in which he had so wisely and humanely carried on the war, that he had been almost unanimously reelected, and had now succeeded in bringing the war to a close, in a way that challenged

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