IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) L 1.0 I.I 1.25 lii|28 |50 ""^ M |||M 1.8 h£ IIIIIM rilUlUgiajJiiiU Sciences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716) 872-4503 V iV '% •sj§ \\ ^ BT tmm OBMGED- ANB AFEECTIONATl PASTOE, .•.Hi ;^., . ' • ♦ ffce f rwWent*!^ IJeatlu ^RD, IISTBY, lEiVDS_ 4,U " Thy hands wf-re not bound, nor thy feet put into fetters j as a man fallfeth before wicked men, io fellest thou ; and all the peoptu wept again over him.'* II Samuel, in, 34. ... The first part of the veJ-se now read, contains the simple, yet touch- ing lamentation uttered by King David ovor Abner, the son of Ner, after he had fallen by the murderous hand of Joab. As he was fly- io"' foora a bloody battle-field in Gibeon, Abner in self-defence had reluctantly killed the swift-footed Asahel, Joab's brother. The wild warrior-chief determines to be revenged. His young brother had been the darling of the family, and the idol of the rude soldiery. The revenge of Joab was postponed for a time ; but on hearing, that Abner had been received into the favor of David, a feeling of jealousy was mingleli with the passion of vengeance for his brother; and gained the mastery over him. He broke out into violent remonstrance with the king, and immediately sent a messenger after the departing Abner. With the unsuspecting generosity of a noble nature, the chieftain at once returned to Hebron. Joab met him in the gateway of the town, took him aside as if with a peaceful intention, and then treacherously smote him with deadly blow "under the fifth rib." Diawd burst into passionate grief and invective when he heard of tlje act. The assassin was too powerful to be punished ; but the king compelled him to appear at the funeral in sackcloth and torn gar- meota. David, over the rest of whose life fear of Joab, one of "tJ|eRe 4 men the .sons ofZoruiah," cast a A\:vV'. as r-. mirk of Wtpef t to flio memory uf Abncr, iblbweil Iho bier, and poured forth a si m pi l; dir-.- over the slaio, iiUichbas been rendered thus:— At a villain i*!cs, ou^tlit Abiter to die 7 It)/ huiidii, nut fettered ; Thy feel, not bound wiin chains; As oite falti befuie tbu uuHcious, feitest tbou I It U atniost unnecessary to state that these word:} bare not been chosen aa a text containing truth to be illustrated and enforced, but rather as a motto which strikingly depicts the sad end of him, the k'ssons of whose losa we are thi? night met to learn. A wail has gone throughout the length and breadth of this northern continent; aud tidings of the great sorrow will soon bo flashed, as oa lightning- wing through every corner of the civilized world. Thousanda of homes in the neighboring republic have been suddenly darkened : it ii as if one of their own household lights had been extinguished by the chill touch of death. In our own province, an electric touch of sympathy, that shows all the world to be akin, has awakened a uui- varsal grief. As with blanched cheek and bated breath, men read tho early telegrams of President Lincoln's assassination on that sad Saturday morning, it seemed to many like some terrible dream, froji which the sleeper would give worlds to awake, and find that it waa all unreal. And when at length the mind took in the dread reality, the sickened heart cried out. whereunto shall all this tend ? " How k>ng, Lord, how long ?" In reply there came to the ear of faith this voice of inspiration, " Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth." No apology is offered for the choice of this sad calamity as the suV joot of remark this evening. God, in revelation, finds a place for the names, and deeds, and death of the noble, the ruler, and. the king; and when in his providence, there has happened the death of one, whose acts for four years past, have claimed the attention of the civilized world, and whose name has been " familiar to tho ear as liousehold words," surely we cannot be wrong if we turn our thoughts to the sad and solcua event. Indeed, I hold it to be the* duty of the I it to IIm pie dirge not been rce<], but him, the wail has )ntineni; lightning- isandii of vcned : it lished by touch of id » uni* n read the that sad 3am, froj« Eit it wa3 d reality, f "How f of fuitli d; I will 18 the 8uV> ice for the the king; h of one, on of the he car aa r thoughtii uty of the to the «»uler:ii"e?•• " Howe'er it be, it seems to me 'Tia only noble to be good : Kind hearts are more than coror,«K Aud simple faith than Norman blaotf," It was not merely for what he was, however, but for what he did that the name of Lincoln shoul'^ be held in grateful remembrance. Although born in a slave state, he was a hater of slavery ftom tho beginning,— at least, he always held it to be a great and grievous e\i) ; and God in his providence made him the deliverer of the oppressed! As the author of the noted Proclamation of Emancipation, his name will be transmitted to generations yet unborn. Through many weary years the poor slave had b:en praying for deliverance. He felt that though a man in heart and soul, the dearest rights of manhood were all denied him. He had been whipped and scourged, robbed and imprisoned, and all for neither crime nor fault of his ! His children had been snatched away from him and frequently sold into a bitterer bondage than his own, among the deadly swamps oi' th^ CaroUnas ox the loil of u ion. Kntcr- unparalleleU irate resolve. f did he riee d esteem of In : but this ver filled th« I cnmc to be (lip of State all but un- ild stronger 1 and heart ? 1 that whidi : of nil that ing finglidi rhut he did jmbrance. — y fiom the ievou» evi? ; ) oppressed, n, his name many weary Ele felt that nhood were robbed and lis children to a bitterer UaroUnas ox fftc canc-Bralcesr of iJouisTana. He had cried fd (Tod for help, and yet cried in vuin, while tears of blood were wrung from his breaking heart. Ho hud told his sorrows to Jesus ; and yet no helper came. But the day of his deliverance has dawned ! The year ,if ju>»iloe has eome ! And henceforth every lover of liberty ihronghout the world will hold in grateful and admiring recollection, the name of Abrahaui Linccln, the Emancipator of the slave, the true friend of freedom.— Can we'wonder that, when he was 'n Richmond a few days before his death, the negroes hailed his arrival with shouts of joy, and gathered around him, as he moved simply and familiarly among then». with reverence and admiration, such as they might have accordec! ' .- Some superior being ? True indeed, it may bo said that Mr. Lincoln';* views ot slavery were greatly changed during his four years of oflfico. It may even bo added that it was for the restoration of the Union an I not for the freedom of the slave that the N«)rth at first was fight- iiitr. Man's object in the war might be the perpetuation of national unity : God's object was the liberation of the down-trodden and op- pressed. Still, granting fully that God did teach the late President find his party by the progress of the conflict that the fetters of the alave must be stricken from off his limbs, ere the national breach could be healed ; were they not willing enough to learn the lesson, and honest enough to act up to it ? Every close observer of the struggle has seen, that during the past few months, the war had be- come virtually an anti-slavery one. Never was there an honest cr recognition of the fact that the origin of the war was slavery, — or rather that the history of the conflict has been the history of God's controversy with the nation on account of slavery — than is to be found in President Lincoln's late inaugural address, a brief state paper which for moral dignity, unaffected solemnity, and noble Chris- tian sentiment has never been e<|ualled : "Fondly," said he. "do we liope, fervently do we pray, that this miirhty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yot, if it he God's will that it continue until the wealth piled up by bondmen by two hundicii and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be eunk, and ui.til everj drop of blood drawn with the lash shall ho. repaid by ar.other drawn with the twoid, as was said three thousand years a^o, eo stiU ii \nm\ be sa.id \U\\ ^ 10 thi j.Klv,n^„t8 of l!,e Lord are iiue and ri-jh eous alto^other. \Yhh ma" l.ue .„.vaKls no.,e, wuh charity for all, will, firmness in the nVht as God jf.ves ns to see ih. right, let us strive on to finish the work wc are in to W;."'^u'.?iV'''.V''"T'''^'' '", "T for those who shall have borne the ■U ' T ! V'".''- '"'^^*'' ^"'' '^''''''*"**- ^"^ ^'^'' "" tfais let us strive Altcj c. just and lasUn« fieace among ourselves and with all nations." These golde.1 sentences arc not the utterances of a mere earthly potentate or party politician. Th^y are stamped with the seal of a deeper wisdom and a truer simplicity than any words mere states- man ever uttered. They seem to have been conceived more in tl^ spint of a prophet of the oldeu dispensation, or of a puritan of the seventeenth century, than of a nineteenth century statesman. It requires no prescient wisdom to foretell that they will be embalmed tor a-es in the memory and heart of Christians and lovers of liberty throughout the world. Devoutly tlxankful should we be to the Giver of all good, that great men have not yet died out from the earth ; that such a man was raised up by God at such a period-a man whose sole principles of action seeined to be, the good of his country, and, as far na he was given to know it, the glory of his uod. * There is just one event connected with his departure, that Chri* tiun men will vot desire to embalm in their grateful memories. Need 1 suy that I refer to his presence in a theatre, when he was shot by the cowardly assassin ? What Christian man, what thinking man would seek to meet his end in such a scene ? The very first thought that arose in ulmost every breast when the s^d news came was this ■ if he was to die, would he had died elsewhere ! I have no desire at pre- sent nor indeed is this the time for me to discuss the question as to the lawfulness or moral influence of the stage. I hold and am ready to prove, that the theatre is a place of vain and expensive amusement, a place unfriendly to piety, and hurtful to morality-a place, m short, wnost frequenters are " lovers of plea^sure more than lovers of God." True, I am willing to throw the cloak of Christian chanty over the President's presence there on that fatal ni-ht I make every allowance for the fact that he was present on tha't Good t nday evening (G-e^oc/ Friday-does not the name seem almost a moek- I i tlier. VTitli va&- the light as God 9rl{ \vc are in, to I have borne the this let us St live ill nations." a mere earthly th the seal of a Is mere states- ed more ia the puritan of the statesman. It II be embalmed vers of liberty we be to the d out from the ih a period — a he good of his lie glory of his re, that Chri* uiories. Need ^as shot by the ng man would ight that arose his: 0, ifhe desire at pre- juestion as to old, and am md expensive morality — a re more than of Christian tal night. I )n that Good most u meek- cry of a nation's grief?) rather to please thi pi^pulace than to ploase hiiusalf. Yet still the sad fact rewiiijis. No wonder that his po(»r widowed wife, as she wus led from the building where he breathed his last, should have exclaimed, as she looked across the street in sobs of hysteric;!! sorrow, " Oh ! th:tt horrible house ; take me awtiy from it !" The spot had not always been the site of a the.ttrc. Holy men had prayed there ; hymns of praise had been sung the*e ; souls had been born agjiiu there. The first Baptist Church of Washing- ton hid worshipped for ye irs on the very spot where the theatre nc stmds B.tt I gladly louve this, ia one sanse, the saddest as- pact of a std subject. More I do not desire to say : as a minis *r of truth and rigliteou-iuoss, Icis I htve not dired to say. And, tnen «ud brethren, is not this the lesson for every one, never to frcfjueut any sjono wliere we would not want death to find us ? III. The next lesson we miy leirn from the sad event, is one of si/mpiOuj with the bereaved. It is a christian duty to weep with those tiiat weep. So closely are we identified with our brethren across the lines in languago and laws, in commerce and instituiions, that what rejoices them must gladden us, and what afflicts them mu>it grieve us. The loss of a chief ruler at almost any time, brings home to every heart in a nation a sanse of sad bereavement. Were our own beloved Queen to be suddenly removed by death, (a calamity which may God long arresc,) what a wail of woe would arise throughout the length and breadth of her mighty empire! History tells us that when Mirabaau died, France groaned and wept as one man. For days nothing else was heard or thought of, but the inestimable loss of their sovereign mind, W^hen men met in coffee-rooms and at street corners, and one said to another, " fine weather, Monsieur," the sadly invariable reply was, *' yes, fine weather ; but JMirabeau is dead." Far intenser, and better founded is the grief, not of the United States alone, but of this whole Western Continent, and will be the sorrow of Europe at the sad loss of Abraham Lincoln. The sympathy will be general and genuine. The loss is not that of one country merely, bu*" of the civilized world. A great man has fallen ; a friend ot peaoe I ■i^ liberty and right his been remorcd; .i nation has been deprived of its heatI,--of one who had lived in more hearts than ever American President had lived in befbre,--of one whose memory will be handed down to posterity, as second only to VVashingion, the father of his country, if indeed he be secon i. What man, what lover of his kind, wh it christian can refuse the tribute of sympathy ? We j^ricve be-' cause hi w.is taken away at the time when his great work s'^eemed on the eve of completion, when national re-construction and liberty seemed well-nigh secured. We sympathize with the nation because there seemed no man better fitted than he, to heal the wounds of the conflict and repair the sad losses of war, to accomplish the great work of national re-union, to teach that people the heroic, Cliris- tian duty of forgetting injuries and forgiving enemies, and cultiva- ting pjico with all the nations of the earth. ' And who that has tbe heart of a man, could refuse the prayer and tear of sympathy to the bereave.! family, and especially to her who has been so suddenly and ruthlessly rendered a widow. Poor lady ! God pity and comfort her ! ^Vhat Christian heart would refuse to pray th.-it she may have the Hympathy of Ilim who was a man of sorrows and acriuainted with grief, and the consolations of his glorious gospel ? Will not Britain's Queen, our own loved Lad^?, who now sits a sad widow upon a lonely tlirone, shed tears and send words of sympathy to her sister in sor« row ? And when the cloud of this great grief drops its shower.^ of bitterness over the fatherland, will not every Christian heart that feels the thrill of sorrow pour forth its supplication to Ilim who relieveth the \ Idow, who proclaims, « thy Maker is thy husband ;'* and in who-u the fitherles* findeth morcy ? This general sympathy will cam-nt the nations more closely th m ever. There cannot be war now between the two greatest Christian countries of the world. If there should be, I could almost imagine that the blood of the mur* dered President '-ould cry out against it. But it cannot, must not bo. Civilizition— liberty— human brotherhood -«. Christianity ^all forbi