Moses and Joshua : a discourse on the death of Abraham Lincoln, preached in the Winthrop Church, Charlestown, Wednesday noon, April 19, 1865

MO^SEH AND JOHHUA,

A

ON THE DEATH OF-

ABRAHAM LINCOLN,

PREACHED IN THE

WLNTHROP CHURCH, CHARLESTOWN,

Wednesday Koon , Apfil 10, 1863.

BY

REV. J. E. RANKIN.

BOSTON:
PRESS OF DAKIN AND IklETCALF,

No. 3 7 CORKHILL.

MOSES AND JOSHUA.

isr0um

ON THE DEATH OF

ABRAHAM LINCOLN,

PEEACHED IN THE

WINTHROP CHURCH, CHARLESTOWN,

Wednesday Noon, April 19, 1863.

BY

EEV, J. E. RANKIN.

BOSTON:
PRESS OF DAKIN AND METCALF,

No. 37 CORNHILL.

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Rev. J. E. Rankin :

Dear Sir, — Having listened with great interest to your fiermon,
preached on Wednesday, April 19, 1865, in the Winthrop Church, on
the occasion of the death of Pt-esident Lincoln, we respectfully request, in
behalf of ourselves and many others, who were present, a copy of the
same for publication.

Respectfully and truly yours,

H. S. DOANE,
A . WHITNEY,
WM. CARLETON,
GEO. HYDE,
JAMES ADAMS,
ARTHUR W. TUFTS,
CALEB EMERY,
NATHAN A. TUFTS.
Charlestown, April 20, 1835.

Chaelestown, April 20, 186.5.
Dear Friends, —

Your request has taken me entirely by surprise ; and I fear that the
hastily-prepared manuscript which I place at your disposal will only
disappoint you when printed.

Wishing it were worthier of the occasion, your kindness, and my
own feelings,

I am yours trulj^,

J. E. RANKIN.
Deacon Heman S. Doane, and others.

DISCOURSE.

Joshua i. 1, 2 : " Now after the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord,
it came to pass that the lord spake tnto joshua, the son of nun,
Moses' minister, saying, Moses my servant is dead; now, therefore,

ARISE, go over this JoRDAN, THOU AND ALL THIS PEOPLE, UNTO THE LAND
WHICH I DO GIVE TO THEM,"

The Bible contains the history of the human race in
epitome ; is the mirror in which every age and every
generation may see reflected its own features and com-
plexion. The prophecies of the Bible have a germinant
fulfilment; have a manifold application. Its historical
portions furnish illustrations and analogies for almost every
type of character and event.

Nothing can be more' beautiful or appropriate than many
of the parallels which the American people have traced
between their own recent history and that of the children
of Israel in their exodus from the house of bondage ;
and, doubtless, the parallels are far more striking in the
history of that oppressed race, whose deliverance has
been a literal one, than in our own. And no parallel of
this kind could be more appropriate or touching than that
suggested by the melancholy passage in our national ex-
perience which is now transpiring.

From poverty, obscurity, and untold social disadvantages,
God raised up Abraham Lincoln to enact a part, second
to none in importance, in the history of the world ; whose
consequences are to afi'ect the condition and happiness of

unnumbered millions. While living, and enacting his part
with characteristic simplicity and fidelity, none of his con-
temporaries could appreciate it. Like the unfinished work
of the artist, which needs only the slightest touch upon
eye or mouth to round and complete the likeness, so the
work of this patient and unpretending ruler needed Hbut the
touch of death to render it immortal. There are documents
written by the hand that now lies nerveless in the nation's
capital ; there are words prompted by that great heart,
whose kind beatings have been so rudely hushed forever,
uttered by those lips, upon which the people nevermore will
hang in expectancy or delight, which can never die.

The Emancipation Proclamation will always be classed
with the Declaration of Independence, as its suitable com-
plement and fulfilment. Take the state papers of this Illi-
nois lawyer, all of whose common-school education did not
exceed a single year, and how clear, how direct, how sa-
gacious, how cogent, they are ! — how exhaustive of the sub-
ject in hand, how overwhelmii^g to antagonists, how oppor-
tunely put forth, how satisfactory to the people ! How
thoroughly this man understood and was master of the situ-
ation ! Watching every pulse of the nation, watching every
providence of God, — now radical, now conservative, now
moving with the grand progress of the people, now waiting
for the people to move, — during four j^ears of civil war he
has kept united upon his policy the sound judgment, the keen
moral sense, of the most intelligent, the most thinking, peo-
ple upon the face of the earth I Nay, more ! Every time the
tide of feeling has in any measure ebbed away from his ad-
ministration, it has only been to come back from the great
bosom of the nation with increased fulness and volume I
And when he so suddenly and so sadly fell, this tide of af-
fection and enthusiastic trust had reached its highest point.

In the admiring view of the whole nation, he stood upon that
Pisgah to which his own fidelity to God and to the princi-
ples of truth and justice had elevated him. He stood there,
and looking northward, all was industry, thrift, and success.
The axe of the woodman still rang from the forests of
Maine ; the white wings of commerce still sought the har-
bors of New England ; the din of business still rose from the
mighty centres of manufacture and of trade ; the husband-
man followed his shining plough afield, and scattered his
seed with the certainty of reaping an undisturbed and abun-
dant harvest. He looked toward the prairies of his own be-
loved Western home, the scene of his early struggles and
achievements. He saw the great artery of the nation's sys-
tem pouring its unshackled currents into the waiting Gulf.
The broad prairies were putting on their spring attire ; the
children, as they played about the distant cabins of the set-
tler, mingled his name with that of their fathers', who were
fighting under the country's flag ; and off to the Pacific
coast, the virgin soil of mountain and of valley was forever
free. If there was sorrow all over these portions of the
land, it was not the sorroAv of those who mourn without
hope. The people felt that every soldier's life had given
years of immortality to the republic ; that what had been
" sown in weakness " on so many hard-fought fields would
be "raised in power ; " and every flag was flung to the breeze,
'and every vale was made vocal with cheer and cannon and
bell ; and even the soldier's widow mingled the colors of the
republic with her weeds, and his children knew no music
like the fife and drum. And when our ^Moses turned his
gaze southward, he saw Ethiopia — a nation born in a
(Jay — stretching out her liberated hands to God, and in-
voking his richest benedictions to descend upon her deliv-
erer. He saw Treason vacating her capital and strongholds.

in the vain attempt to flee inland to the mountains, ensnar-
ed on every hand, and, finally, surrendering her sword, and
sending her disarmed minions to proclaim at their own
homes their final discouragement and discomfiture. This
was the vision that blessed the gaze of Abraham Lincoln ;
and all this success and prosperity and freedom was hence-
forth and forever to be associated with his own name. Ah,
when he passed through the streets of Richmond an unarm-
ed conqueror, was not his cup of happiness filled to the
brim ? Was it not enough to satisfy the purest and highest
earthly ambition of the soul ? And upon this summit he
died, — died with this vision still lingering in his memory,
with these acclamations of gratitude and trust still ringing
in his ears !

" Thus always to tyrants ! " muttered the lips of the cow-
ardly assassin, as the fatal bullet sped to its mark. And the
nation, as she drapes her proud mansions and her humble
dwellings, her places of business, her sanctuaries, and public
offices in mourning, — as her banner droops, as the brazen lips
of bells and the sullen mouths of cannon syllable her grief,
— the nation, as clothed in widow's weeds she stands at this
hour by the open grave of the man twice-honored with the
highest position in her gift, takes up the word, " Thus al-
ways to patriot martyrs ! So will we ever mourn the ruler
thus true to his country and his country's God ! "

Never had a President such a hold upon the afiections of
the people ! Every loyal man, woman, and child in the na-
tion has felt, since his death occurred, as though the form
of a cherished one lay unburied within their own dwellings,
as though it were wrong to think or speak of anything else.
The instincts of the people are true. Here was a man that
did not surround himself with stately formalities ; that did
not disguise his sentiments l)y putting them into courtly

0

phrases ; that heard their petitions with a paternal car ; that
drew their heart up to his own, that he might feel its heat.
We have had many a Chief Executive whose memory the
people will honor; but here was one who, though compelled
by his imperative duty to call hundreds of tliousands of our
brothers and sons into tlie field from which they never re-
turned to gladden our homes, — here was a President whose
memory the people love, and will love forever! Place his
dust wherever you may, they will make their hearts his
shrine. Pile up proud monuments to his memory, put
his figure into bronze or marble, there shall be a memorjal
more enduring than these. They will always remember the
pensive and sympathizing look of that deep-set eye, the
honest angles of that homely face.

Abraham Lincoln is dead! but his work lives, his mem-
ory lives. It is a rich inheritance for the American people
to have the memory of one public man in modern times
who has achieved such greatness as his, without a stain upon
his personal character. There are men who have risen fast-
er than he, — men of eminent intellectual alSility, who
have had their eye upon the presidential chair, w^ho have
schemed and intrigued and contrived until they have suc-
ceeded in sitting there ; and others who have failed, and
died disappointed. But Abraham Lincoln attained the po-
sition which he occupied while living, and which he will oc-
cupy in history, by the strictest integrity, by old-fashioned,
downright honesty. " Honest old Abe," inelegant as is the
phrase, was no unmeaning sobriquet. It was written all
over him, — in gait and feature and dress. He had a sin-
cere purpose to serve the people, and not himself or his par-
ty; and so the people trusted in him, filled his armies, and
bought his bonds. I believe, also, that he had a sincere
purpose to serve his God, and so God accepted him as his
2

10

servant, even as he did Moses ; honored him as his servant ;
permitted him to do — nay, raised him up to do — a work
almost as marked, in its political aspects, as was that of Mo-
ses himself. It is his sovereign prerogative and method to
adapt the man to the work which he would have accom-
plished ; and having accomplished the work, and all the
work, which he had for Abraham Lincoln to do, he has taken
him to himself.

Abraham Lincoln fell a victim to his own lenient and un-
suspecting nature. He knew there were as black-hearted
ti^iitors in Washington as anywhere in the South ; and yet —
because he loved that peculiarity of our institutions which
surrounds the Chief Magistrate with no military escort, with
nothing which privileges him above, or distinguishes him
from, an ordinary citizen — he who will hereafter be re-
garded the most eminent ruler of modern times, the repre-
sentative man of this epoch, came and went as though the
thrust of a dagger or the ball of a revolver might not at any
moment terminate his life, and leave the nation in mourn-
ing-
• Every Christian man must deeply regret that the Chief

Executive of the nation was assassinated in a theatre. The-
atre-going is too likely to train up just such desperate men
as become assassins, and the frequenters of such amuse-
ments are never too select. Indeed, his probable assassin
had been educated in this school of morals. But there is
reason to believe he was there, because he would not disap-
point the people, though one of them who Avas enjoying the
benefits of his benignant administration was even then plot-
ting to take his life. I do not regard his presence there as
any evidence of a taste for such places or such pleasures ;
but surely, his example had been better, his life had been
safer, elsewhere. And this is all that need be said.

11

Our Chief Executive fell by the hand of an assassin.
Thus to terminate the life of the humblest and meanest citi-
zen in the land is a most wicked 'and cowardly act, and is
deserving of the most ignominious fate. But what shall we
say of the creature who can delil)erately plan and deliberate-
ly arrange and execute the murder of a nation's great and
beloved ruler ; who can shoot an unsuspecting, an unarmed,
victim, whose greatest weakness has been his tenderness and
clemency toward his own and his country's foes ? It may
well be said

" Besides, this Duncan
Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been
So clear in his gi-eat office, that his virtues
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against
The deep damnation of his taking olf."

The life of a ruler was intended by God to be regarded as
far more sacred than that of an ordinary man. Government
is his ordinance, and the ruler his representative. And
though our Chief Executive is chosen by the people, and
but temporaril}^ bears the responsibilities of state, yet no
ruler could have an anointing, a consecration, higher and
holier than his. And if the free millions of a great people
twice bestow their highest trust upon a man, his life is
doubly sacred. When, therefore, the assassin singled out
the man thus again selected by a singularly united nation,
thus again selected by God himself, and brutally murdered
him, he committed an act so cruel and inhuman and unholy,
so dastardly, that, had he ten thousand lives, he could
not expiate or atone for it. And yet, perhaps, the great
lesson which the people Avere to learn, were to be educat-
ed by poignant grief properly to appreciate, was this :
that to destroy the life of a nation is an infinitely greater
crime than to destro}^ the life of a nation's ruler. The ruler
dies, but the nation lives. And, to my own mind, it af-

12

fdi'ds the highest possible proof of the sufficiency of our po-
litical system for the most sudden and disastrous emergen-
cy, as well as of the moral strength and intelligence of this
great people and the favor of Jehovah himself, that the na-
tion, thus suddenly and disastrously afflicted, does not, for a
single moment, waver or hesitate as to the future, but with
new calmness and trust and determination, addresses herself
to the great work Avhich God's providence has thrust upon
her. Yes, the nation lives. But treason is only another
name for an attempt to take the nation's life. The same
spirit that prompted the starving of our prisoners at Don-
aldsonville and Belle Isle plotted against the life of the
President when first on his way to the nation's capital, and
consummated his death on Friday evening last. Every
cannon and gun discharged during the last four years has
been aimed by those in rebellion not against men ; is of
no such private interpretation ; has ])een aimed at the life
of the nation. And the time has come when, putting aside
all the mawkish seutimentalism which has been so preva-
lent, the people should rise up and insist, not upon ven-
geance, but upon the vindication of their government. I say
it deliberately : treason of such long standing, so intelligent,
so persistent, so destructive, so infernal, as that of the lead-
ing spirits in the South ought not to be forgiven by this
people. God does not intend it shall be forgiven. And
yet who will say that this was not the tendency of public
sentiment before the death of the late President? And who
will say that this sad event was not needed to furnish us
with a new standard for taking the dimensions of this
crime ? Is it not time that we cease shooting deserters and
let assassins go unpunished, if the men who have deluged
this land with blood arc to escape merely because they have
usurped the titles and worn the insignia of authority?

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Those who have been g'uilty of treason, those who have de-
liberately foi-esworu then- allegiaiiee to tbe governirKMit of
thch- fathers, who have waged four years of relentless war-
fare against their eountry, have not only forfeited all rights
as citizens, but have so vitiated and corrupted themselves
that they never hereafter can be trusted as fellow-citizens.
They have forever unfitted themselves for citizenship.
The men who have been cognizant of, and have never at-
tempted to discountenance, the cruelties inflicted upon our
captured soldiers, can the people receive them back again?
In Abraham Lincoln, God gave us just the man to take us
safely through the past stages of the rebellion ; just the man
to determine the true policy of the nation, to inaugurate it
and render it secure. But the nation had now reached the
Jordan, beyond which were sterner duties than any in the past.
God saw that to compromise with the surviving leaders of
this conspiracy against the existence of the nation, to give
back Arlington Heights — that beautiful spot where one
looks across the valley of the Potomac to the dome of the
capitol — to its former proprietor, and to permit him to en-
joy again the rights of citizenship, was simply to furnish oc-
casion and encouragement for other treasons in the future.
Rebellion had been subdued ; but treason had not been
touched. Its brands were only scattered again over the
land, waiting for another favorable opportunity to kindle
into flames. Rather, to have been one of the original con-
spirators, to have been among the leaders in these designs
which have so afflicted the nation, to have attained this bad
eminence in crime, seemed sufHcient to insure pardon and
release. Such might not have been the policy of the gov-
ernment ; but, surely, there was great reason to apprehend
it. We can never be secure against future treachery' among
our public men, whose ambition has been disappointed and

14

whose arrogance affronted, until the neck of this treason
bears the mark of the halter and dangles beneath the gib-
bet ! Had this been the fate of John C. Calhoun, Jefferson
Davis would have taken warning. But treason was per-
mitted to make its nest in the very Cabinet, to utter its
words of defiance upon the floor of the Senate, and then to
depart unquestioned, unchallenged.

In Andrew Johnson, God has given us a man who, if we
may conlide in his repeated utterances, knows how to define
and to punish this crime against the life of a nation ; a suit-
able workman to stitch the shroud of this rebellion. The
leaders in this conspiracy lost all prospect of a nationality
on April 9th, when their hitherto invincible Lee surren-
dered to General Grant his surrounded and dispirited army.
Now — in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln — they
have lost all prospect of recovering their estates and their
citizenship, and if adjudged guilty of the crime of treason,
no executive clemency will interpose for their pardon. The
law must take its course ; the people will demand this.
And this is as it should be. The desperate men concerned
knew what they risked when they engaged in this contest.
If they had succeeded, they would have been regarded as
heroes fighting for their homes. They have failed. Let
them take the fate of felons.

There is an incalculable moral influence proceeding and
to proceed from this contest. We are a spectacle to the
nations of the earth, and God has a government to vindi-
cate as Avell as man. It is not the misfortune of failure
which sufiiciently punishes such unprincipled spirits as have
undertaken to destroy the sacred work of our fathers. The
world needs the exhibition of a justice more severe and ex-
act. When rebellion failed in heaven, there were everlasting
chains of darkness for those engaged in it :

15

*' Hurled headlong flaming from tli' otiicreal nky
With hideous ruin and coinbirHtion."

And I believe that God has ordained that what the world
calls "poetical justice" — justice in some measure adequate
to the crime committed — shall yet be meted out to the men
most guilty in conspiring against the life of this nation ;
whose bloody hands would

" The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red."

Some individuals find it difficult to distins^uish between
vindictiveness and a sense of justice. They are afraid to
urge the application of the divine law against murder, lest
they may be regarded vindictive. But God intended hu-
man government to be a terror to those that do evil. The
pardoning power is a dangerous one to the innocent. Can
our executive officers expect to escape assassination, when
they stay the processes by which the assassination of the
humblest citizen is prevented or avenged ? Let us beware
of those views of government, whether human or divine, in
which there is no justice, in which there are no penalties, in
"which there is no terror to evil-doers. And while we are
cautious not to transcend the limits and methods of the law,
let us not enervate and emasculate our national authority by
mingling in our moral decisions too great tenderness toward
the transgressor.

The mournful solemnities of this occasion, — the fourth
anniversary of the first shedding of blood in Baltimore, and
the ninetieth anniversary of the battle of Lexington, — upon
which a whole land, as one family, mingle their tears in
sorrow, only illustrate the spirit with which we have to
deal. Had treason at the capital been more severely pun-
ished, had a price been put upon its head, had it always had
the manacles and halter which it has deserved, perhaps the

16

nation had never experienced this heavy loss. But such
conjectures are unprofitable now. We bury our true-heart-
ed President to-day, tenderly and reverently as we would
bury a father. We wonder at God's goodness in raisiug up
such a man, and enabling him to accomplish so much in a
single term of office. We accept the proof that we are yet
under the guidance of the Lord of hosts, which this gift at
such a time afi"ords. We turn from the sun just set amid so
much glory in the west — to another man from the people —
to our rising sun in the east, trusting that what Abraham Lin-
coln, of Illinois, has not lived to accomplish God will enable
Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee, to do. We are disappointed,
but we are not discouraged. We have passed the Red Sea
and the wilderness, and have had unmistakable pledges that
we shall occupy that land of Union, Liberty, and Peace
which flows with milk and honey. The curtain has risen
for the last scene. Let us quit ourselves like men. Let us
g,o over this Jordan and take possession of what is before
us ! God changes the men, but keeps his purpose, to give
it to us and to our children forever ! And let us respond to
the appeal of our new President for sympathy and support
as the Israelites did to Joshua : ' ' Accordinoj as we heark-
enecl unto Moses in all things, so Avill we hearken unto
thee, only the Lord thy God be with thee as he was with
Moses."

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