The sorrow of a nation : a sermon preached in the College Chapel at Princeton, N.J., Sunday, September 25, 1881

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THE SORROW OF A NATION

A S E R M 0 N

PRKArilKI) IN IHI

COLLEGE CHAPEL AT PRINCETON, N. J

SUNDAY. SEPTEMBER 25, 1881,

Rev. JAMES O. MURRAY, D.D

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l-Ul.Mtl) IIV r. S. KUUINSUX Jl CD.

1881.

COLLEGE »)E NEW JEKS^EY,

rRiNcinoN, N. J., Ski'T. 271I1, 1881.

l»HOFESS()K .lAAIES (>. MliniAV, D.D..

Rev KR END AND Dkak Sir :

At the close of iho appro]Miate and impressive services in the College
Chapel on Sunday morning last, a general desire was expressed both by members
of the Faculty and by students, that the eloquent discourse on our national
bereavement to which we had listened w illi so much interest and profit should be
published. Meetings were accordingly held on Monday, at which the under-
signed were appointed a Committee to rec[uest of you the discourse for ]-)ubIica-
tion as a fitting tribute frtnii the Ct)llegc to the memory of our lamented Presi-
dent.

JOHN T. DUFFIELD.
HENRY C. CAMERON.
EDWARD B. CRITCHL(JW,
GEORGE F. GREENE,
JAMES S. HARLAN,
LAWRASON RIGGS, Ju..
ROBERT K. PRENTICE.
J NO. Y. BOYD,
ALEX. HARDCASTLE,
F. W. SCOTT.

COLLEGE OF NEW JERSEY,

Pkinckton, Sei'tember 29, 1881.
Gentlemen of ihe Committee: —

It seems not unfitting that a college, which has given to the country
so many pul)lij men, should render some public tribute to the memory of
President Garfield. 1 accordingly submit the discourse for publicatii)n, thank-
ing you for the ver\ kind terms of your note reciuesling it.

With great respect,

\'uurs truly,

J AS. (). .MURI.'AY.

Isaiah 5 : 30. " And if o?ic look unto the land, behold
darkness and sor?'ou\ and the light is darkened in
the heaz'ens thereof

There are two days in the calendar of our Ameri-
can history so darkened by portentous crime, so
clouded with mighty sorrow, so fateful to the national
welfare, that they can never be recalled without bitter
pangs and shudders of dread. One of them is that
14th day of April 1865, when amid the exulting joys
over the ultimate triumph of the national arms, Presi-
dent Lincoln fell by the hands of a malignant and cruel
assassin. Some of us can recall that woful morninor
after the terrible deed, when, mute with horror we felt
that the last and dreadfullest vial of anguish had been
poured out on the suffering country.

The other is the 2d of July, 1881, a day still fresh
in all memories for its awful shock, when for the sec-
ond time the bullet of an assassin sped its fatal course,
and President Garfield was its shining mark and victim.
But when Lincoln was assassinated, the country was
familiar with sorrow. The long agony of war had
convulseil countless households. The mourners over
their dead fallen on fields of honor had gone about our
streets. Not even final victory could efface from the
hearts of men, the aching sense of loss. It was the final
and greatest anguish, but it was one of a long and dark
line of woes.

How differently came this last fearful blow ! The
wounds of our civil war were fast healing. Men of
the North and men of the South were coming into

kindlier relations, doing willing homage to valor which
was alike the heritage of the South and the North.
Commerce was rising. The land was busy in great
enterprises. The skies were peaceful. The early
summer w^as arrayed in all its wonted beauty, when
suddenly like a shock of doom, we all stood face to
face with the horror of a second assassination of the
Chief Magistrate of the United States.

The records of history show that in most instances
the weapon of the assassin has done its fell work
speedily.

" Even at the base of Pompey's statue
Which all the while ran blood, o-re(7^ Cesar fell''

William the Silent knew but few moments of agony
after the bullets of Balthazar Gerard had entered his
body. The second stab thrust by Francis Ravaillac
into the heart of Henry IV. of France, " the most gal-
lant and loving heart of Christendom," and the king
fell back dead. The aim of Booth, more deadly and
more merciful than that of his successor, soon ended
the Hfe of President Lincoln. Dynamite in the hands
of an accursed Nihilism mangles horribly the body,
but soon releases the suffering soul of Alexander,
Czar of Russia. But we turn our thoughts to eighty
days of heroic suffering at Washington and Long
Branch, to eighty days of fluctuating hope, when some-
times our fears belied our hopes and our hopes in
turn belied our fears, day by day the sorrow of the
nation growing, struggling for relief in prayers to
God offered on all altars, till the anguish on the heart
of the whole people swelled like the waves of the sea.
There is something majestic in a great sorrow\ The
woes of communities devastated by fire, or famine, or

pestilence, the grief of whole churches when their pil-
lars have fallen, the strong staff and the beautiful rod
broken — these appeal to the deepest emotions of our
natures. They send a hush out upon the storms of
life. But I think it may be safely said that the sorrow
which to-day broods over the land is unique in history.
Not only for the numbers that feel it, though they are
fifty millions of people, but for the character, the spe-
cial quality of the grief, is this sorrow a spectacle of
deep moral meaning and grandeur. The voice of our
land to-day to all the world is the majestic plaint of
Constance.

" I will instruct my sorrows to be proud

For grief is proud and makes his owner stoop.
To me, and to the state of my great grief
Let Kings assemble, for my grief's so great
That no supporter but the huge firm earth
Can hold it up : here I and sorrows sit.
Here is my throne, bid Kings come Ijow to it.

This then is the theme for discourse this morning :
The sorrow of a great nation, so vividly portrayed in the
prophetic language of Isaiah in the text, '' And if one
look unto the land, behold darkness and sorrow, and
the light is darkened in the heavens thereof"

Before attempting to analyze its sources, or to
point out its lessons, a more vivid, a more adequate
view of the sorrow itself should be sought. All sum-
mer long it has brooded over us. Scattered in our
paths for rest and recreation by mountain sides, or
shores of sounding sea, there was no charm in nature
to make us forget the impending woe. The first shock
of despair yielded to buoyant gladdening hope. That
was soon shaken by ominous tidings. Then hope re-
vived, and sickened again like the suffering patient, and

so the wearino- suspense dragged on the lingering weeks.
Consciously or unconsciously the nation's sorrow has
been deepening every hour since the fatal morning.
The sorrow has reached all classes. It has hushed
party strife. It has touched the hearts of children and
they have come under its shadows. It has evoked
from all religious communions, the sympathy which
overleaps all creeds, and binds Roman Catholic and
Protestant, Jew and Gentile, in this bond of common
grief It has found no where fuller, sweeter, nobler
expression from first to last, than in the South, on
whose fair fields the dead martyr once stood fighting
to the death her sons. Nay, it has swept over Christ-
endom, over civilized mankind. From all lands and
all powers have come the messages of sympathy, which
reveal far more than official and decorous routine.
They express a grief which is felt. Kings have bowed
to it. There is no great nation of Christendom, there
is no high potentate, civil or ecclesiastical, who has not
conveyed to our national authorities the sense of sor-
row. It is, more truly described, the sorrow of a world.
And nothing in recent history has so revealed the fact
that our human progress is tending to knit mankind
more closely together in bonds of brotherhood. We
have had our International Expositions. We hold our
International Congresses. These a few centuries ago
would have been impossible. To-day it is a great
sorrow lifted and borne on the heart of a world which
shows us how the world is slowly but surely becom-
ing one, at least in those great interests which give
our life here its deepest significance. Conspicuous
however above all the rest has been the sympathy
of Encjland and the Oueen. The voice has been

heard there from all classes. Pulpit and Press, Lords
and Commons, Churchmen and Dissenters, all feel the
grief and haste to its expression. They ollowed, as
we did, with the same anxiety, the last bulletin from
the sick room at Washington or Lone Branch. No
sooner had the tidings of the removal been flashed across
the sea than a leading journal of literature prints in its
columns lines like these : —

'^ The hush of the sick-room ; the imitllecl tread :

Fond, questioning eye; mute lip, and listening ear ;

Where wife and children watch, 'twixt hope and fear,
A father's, husband's, living-dying bed ! —
The hush of a great nation, when its head

Lies stricken ! Lo, along the streets he's borne,

Pale, thro' rank'd crowds, this gray September morn,
'Mid straining eyes, Sad brows unbonneted,
And reverent speechlessness ! — a ' people's voice I '

Nay, but a people's silence ! thro' the soul

Of the wide world its subtler echoes roll.

O brother nation ! England, for her part.

Is with thee ; God willing, she whose heart
Throbb'd with thy pain, shall with thy joy rejoice."

And then those messages from the Queen herself
to that pale, anxious sister-woman, queenly by no
royal descent nor sceptre, but queenly in the dignity
of her carriage amid the aeonizine sorrows and sus-
pense, — those messages so graceful, so tender and
gracious, so freighted with sense of sorrow and answer-
ing sympathy. What is not that sorrow which called
them forth! The messages could not satisfy the full
desire of that royal soul. The Court is put in mourning.
On the bier at Washington, on the form so wasted,
once so proud, there rests the floral wreath, the last ex-
pression of a Queen's sorrow for the nation in its
mighty grief, quite as truly as a tribute to the virtues
of the departed ruler. We must note in all this not

10

only what should forever endear to American hearts
Victoria as a Queen, but also the greatnesf of our own
sorrow.

Nor can I pass from the consideration of this
topic without alluding to what has already been brought
to your notice in this place, the suffering of our land in
many of its portions. Fierce droughts have burned
our v<:'getation, dried our springs of water, kindled
awful conflao^rations, making hundreds houseless and
homeless. As the autumn wears on, it brings far more
than its wonted sadness. That may after all be but
sentiment, though the word of the Lord which abideth
forever assures us, " We all do fade as a leaf and our
iniquities like the wind have taken us away." But
the autumnal sadness is heavy and sore. The signs
of it are in the heavens above and on the earth beneath.
They are the accompaniments, the "trappings and the
suits " of the deeper woe which saddens all hearts
to-day. They are the voice of Providence bidding us
humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God.

From the greatness and extent of the sorrow we
turn to its sources. What is it which makes the mighty
grief, so poignant and so universal ? In considering
this, we touch the heart of our sad theme. It may not
be overlooked that there is a sense of humiliation to
the nation in the thought, that such a deed should have
been wrought among us. Sixteen years only, separate
from each other these two dreadful crimes by which
two Presidents have been assassinated. The child is
not yet grown to full manhood, who heard wonderingly
of President Lincoln's foul taking off. Nor can re-
lief be found in any theories of insanity on the part
of the assassins. Madness call it, but the public mind

Is well assured that It was responsible madness. This
Is In part the bitterness of our woe. We cannot shut
our eyes to the fact that the deed has In It and on It
the same damnable qualities that will brand forever
the murderous heart of Russian Nihilism.

Nor acrain Is It the fact that the awful deed was
perpetrated so soon after the President had assumed
the duties of his hieh office ; that he was cut off on the
very threshold of his great official career. Four short
months were all he knew of active duty in his high
position. Four short months, and then all ended by
the bullet of an assassin. But some of us can remem-
ber how President Harrison sickened and died after
only one short month of Presidency over the Republic.
President Taylor held the office longer, but he too was
cut off by disease running Its fatal course with woful
rapidity. These however died by disease. The nation
sorrowed over these heroes and burled them amid
sincere and deep lamentations. But to have two of
our Presidents slain by an assassin's hand within a score
of years, to have the deed repeated so soon, makes
thoughtful men pause and think. We had begun to
associate such crimes with the wild lawlessness ot mid-
dle ages. We had begun to say within ourselves,
such barbarism Is of the past ; Christianity has put It
aside forever. But human wickedness Is still rampant^
and the assassin of rulers Is still more than a possi-
bility. He is a living, working, dreadful reality. And
what elves to us as American citizens our humiliation
of crrlef, is the thouorht that we in our fond dreams and

o o

hopes for popular government Imagined, that in a land
where the nation chooses its own rulers, self-governed,
there could be no social nor political condition out of

12

which such crimes could spring. We dreamed it so.
Alas ! it was but a dream ! Must we face such possi-
bilities in the future? Must we reckon on them as
contingencies to be guarded against? Must we turn
to the world and say with shame and confusion of face,
" It was once our glad republican idea and hope that
institutions like ours made such crimes virtual impos-
sibilities. But our idea was visionary, our hope was
the baseless fabric of a vision, vanished, utterly
vanished under the double assassination of rulers
which stains our annals." Who is there that does not
feel the humiliation and bitter anguish of this thought?
It is no small element in the mighty grief under which
the nation is bowed to-day.

But the nation's sorrow has elements of the most
subduing type in the loss from public life of such a
man. Anything like a complete survey of his career
I certainly shall not attempt to-day. It belongs to a
different occasion, and demands a longer study. But
there is a three-fold aspect in which that career may
be generally and cursorily viewed, which will disclose
the grounds of the wide lamentation which seems only
to gather volume in these passing days, instead of
spending itself in one outburst of grief. That three-
fold aspect is The Preparation, The Achievement, The
Suffering,

The American people always hold a man specially
dear to them, whose origin is humble. To this, our
popular institutions and traditions educate us. That
some of our ablest and worthiest chief magistrates
have sprung from humblest conditions of life, is what
our democratic notions proudly recognize. From such
conditions President Garfield sprang. The whole

13

story of his early life, like that of Lincoln, is the
story of poverty, strug-gle, and obscurity. Yet his
ancestry was of the best Puritan stock. It is "tol-
erably certain that the male ancestor of the Ameri-
can Garhelds was one of that picked company, '•'
'•• ■=' ''' '■'• which bore Governor Winthrop
to the shores of Massachusetts." Five orenerations
of that ancestry lie buried in and around Water-
town, one of Boston's finest suburban towns. It is
however the fact, that the early life in the forests of
Ohio was for President Garfield a school of hardship,
bravely encountered, cheerfully and signally mastered,
on which our thoughts may civvell to most advantage
now. There is here a great lesson for all young men
struo-orlinor for education, and for those also to whom
education comes as the easy gift of opulent or well to do
parents. From the outset an enthusiasm for knowl-
edgre made him an earnest student. It all comes out,
not less in the log school houses of Ohio, than in his
subsequent career at the college. But how litde of
the future brilliant career seems likely to happen, as
we see him at sixteen years of age, chopping by con-
tract his hundred cords of wood on the shores of Lake
Erie, and pausing in his toil to catch glimpses of the
blue lake, which seemed to start up within him long-
ings for a life of adventure on the sea. We recall by
sad contrast, the wounded, dying President propped in
his chair at Long Branch and looking wistfully out on
the waves of the ocean rollincr evermore. How little
of the high station that awaited him in after life seemed
likely, when he plodded along the tow-path of a canal
for three months, em.ployed as a driver. Yet all this
early hardship made him stronger for severer struggles.

14

An illness turned all his thoughts toward education.
And then ensued that laborious struororle for it. He
spent much of his time, through the winters, in teaching-
a district school ; during summers, he was in the hay
field. But he conqicei^ed all difficulties, of preparatory
study and of support. He conquered \\\^vci, this is the
significant part of the story, and entered on his college
course at Williams. So far in life, he was master of
himself and of his circumstances. It is a very trenchant
remark of Pres. Hopkins that Gen. Garfield was not sent
to college, that he came. He took from a good college
all a good college could give him, simply because he was
there to make his education a force in after life. '' There
was no pretense of genius, or alternation of spasmodic
effort and of rest, but a satisfactory accomplishment in
all directions of what was undertaken." Seeing clearly
from the very outset, what a well-trained mind is in
after-achievement ; seeing this as a boy in the district
school over his grammar and arithmetic; seeing this at
the academy over his Latin and Greek, seeing this at
the college in the broadening field of mental culture
and discipline, he has made a record for himself which
is significant to every young student in our country.
The motive-power in all this we may well believe
was christian earnestness. His christian life began
early. The whole life shows its power. The unfalter-
ing type of his christian profession, stands out clear
and distinct from the first. He joined himself, like
Faraday in London, to a humble denomination of
christian believers. It has no great name in eccles-
iastical history. It fills no high place in the thoughts of
men. Its work is confined to localities. He has made
it more widely known than ever before. And we

15

in this christian college, should not fail to-day to mark
the characteristic quality of that life in its preparatory
stages, as christian. Undoubtedly the christian ele-
ment gave moral earnestness, large and serious pur-
pose in living, a high and solemn sense of accountable-
ness. And now, what is all our outward and decorous
garb of sorrow worth,if it does not also enwrap a fruitful
and blessed recognition of this preparation as having
meaning for us. By it, he being dead yet speaketh.
Gathered as a colleore we shall be on the morrow
to unite in the religious services appointed by the
Civic Authorities. Is it to be merely the sentiment of
grief, or is it to be something deeper and better ? It
will be, if young men catch enthusiasm from this
shining example of early struggle passed trium-
phantly, of educational advantages valued highly
and pursued christianly. That preparation amid
such hardship, pursued to such purpose, issuing in
such equipment for life, how it shames, how it re-
bukes all triflers in this hieh business of mental
training; how It encourages, how it ennobles all similar
struggles and strugglers in the course of education !

Of his life as an achievement, it will only be ex-
pected that I speak in the most general way. So large
a part is in the political sphere, as to make any other
mode of treatment Ill-timed. But in its broad, general
features, it may in any place however sacred, before
any audience however gathered or mixed, be pointed
to as fulfillinor the law of all hicrh achievement, — noble
aims fulfilled by noble effort, and reaching a splendid
goal.

His first year after graduation was spent as a
teacher in the Seminary which had nurtured him. That

j6

ended, he was sought for the Presidency of the Insti-
tution. In a year from the time he reached this post,
he was called to the Senate of Ohio. Then came the
civil war, and with the first reverse of the National
arms, he was found turning his back on his literary
life for the field of war. Beginning as a Colonel, he
rose by promotion to the rank of Major General. He
was taken out of the army to serve his State in the
National Congress. "There was no lack of generals
in the field, but there was lack of men in Congress
who understood the affairs of the army." Thus and
then began his great public career, which ended in the
unsought elevation to the Presidency of the Nation.
Almost the first thing that strikes the reader of his
biography is the fact, that he is conspicuous as one of
that select class of public men whom positions seek
but who never seek positions, as place-hunters in our
politics. His whole career from the position of teacher
in the Academy after graduation, to his nomination for
the Presidency at Chicago illustrates this principle.
Such a fact lifts him at once above, far above all the
low management, all the wire-pulling, all the machina-
tions by which place is won sometimes, and high place
too. He never had occasion in his life to stoop to a
trick. He may not have been tempted as some men
are. But on this high vantage-ground — -sought- for but
not seeking position — he rose to his great eminence,
and whether or no he reached the higher ideal of
statesmanship, he never sunk to the arts of the pol-
itician. It is indeed no crime in a ereat man to de-
sire rule over men. Who thinks meanly of any one
of our great triumvirate, Calhoun or Clay or Webster,
that he had ambition for the Presidency ? It was our

loss that they were not in the office. They knew, and all
discerning men knew, they were fitted for it. Still it is
better for men that positions seek them, than that they
seek positions. For this is the great fact on which all
young men may safely rely, that surely as the course
of human affairs runs on there will always be positions
calling for men. Let me in view of the great career
ended, in view of this great characteristic of that career,
deeply impress on my audience this morning the im-
portance of being ready when the call comes. Only
one thing makes any man thus ready, hard, conscien-
tious, painstaking endeavor. The call comes. You
shall hear it. But it never tarries. It must be^often
answered on the spot. Unanswered, it passes on
and the man is left behind forever in the race of
life. Again let me remind you that wherever that
call came to the departed President, in the sphere
of Teacher, Soldier, Statesman or Ruler, it was heard
and the voice replied, " Speak, Lord, for thy servant
heareth." Let us never fail to do honor to men whom
positions seek, who do not seek positions

So too a strong emphasis must be put on the fact
that his career shows in him constant high ideals.
These are of different degrees, positive, comparative,
superlative. We need raise no question in which cate-
gory his ideals of public life are to be placed. All
candid judgment will concede to him the praise of high
ideals. They ruled him in college; they ruled him in
his vocation as teacher ; they ruled him in camp ; they
ruled him in congress. They were evidently to rule
his administration. To one at least of our great pub-
lic questions, he brought an amount of research, a
compass of severe, patient, discriminating, statesman-

i8

like service, which sufficiently marks this characteristic
as one to be emphasized. A writer in the Nineteenth
Century^ has said that '' The entire record of British
legislation on commerce and currency for two hundred
years had been so studied that he had all their most
important facts at command." And when the public
credit was threatened, '' the Secretary of the Treasury
had his speeches on the subject printed in pamphlet
form and sent to the leading statesmen and financiers
of Europe." They fell under the notice of such mas-
ters of the subject as John Bright and Mr. Gladstone.
On their nomination, he was chosen an honorary mem-
ber of the celebrated Reform club. So with all his
work. The influence of these high ideals shape all
his public utterances. Addressing young men, his
whole tone is that of a man who will have success won
only by having and following such. Nothing is further
from him than any doctrhzaire thinking. Possibly on
the great question of civil service reform, there was
not even enough of this. But to succeed on high levels
of achievement was his moulding, controlling aim.
And is it not certain that if public life is to be thor-
oughly renovated among us — if there is to be such a
thing in our history as American Statesmanship worthy
its high ancestry in the Fathers of the Republic, and
commanding the respectful homage of the world — his
method must be chosen. It may be the death of pol-
iticians. It will be the resurrection of statesmen — let
us also hope of christian statesmen.

And addressing as I do this morning an audience
of young men, I may be allowed to press home this

♦Nineteenth Century. August, 1881.

19

consideration. If high ideals do not rule men in the
period of Preparation, they are not likely to do so in
the period of Achievement. The trouble is like to be
most with the men of one talent. They, as our divine
Lord has taught us in the parable, are most like to
hide in a napkin, or bury in the earth of worthless,
aimless livincr, that one talent which needs the hi^^h
ideal as truly as the two or the five. And let no one
of you forget the solemn lesson from this great career,
of which Christianity was the root and mainspring. The
christian element here must be powerful. How can
it help being so, with a judgment to be passed when
every man shall give account of himself to God,
and when there remains to every good and faithful
servant the promise of the final award, " Well done,
enter into the joy of thy Lord." Shaped then by
these two forces, that course was finished. And
because it was so shaped there is such a grief in
all truly American hearts to-day. For we cannot
spare one such man from public life and not feel
the loss. But when he holds the high office of
our chief ruler and is smitten down, the whole land
mourns. Among the last words of David, King of
Israel, are these, most striking and most pertinent.
*' The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake to
me. He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in
the fear of God. And he shall be as the light of the
morning when the sun riseth, even a morning without
clouds." Christian statesmanship is the highest ideal
of statesmanship. And such, all nations need. The
loss of one such anywhere should cause profound griei.
We should be recreant to all our noble christian tra-
ditions if the national sorrow were less general, or less
deep.

20

Preparation and Achievement ended and trans-
figured by suffering, so our survey of the career must
come to its close.

So indeed it has been given to some of the noblest
human spirits to pass off the mortal stage. The active
ministry of the great apostle terminates in a passive
ministr}', bonds, imprisonment, shipwreck, death at last
by the headsman's axe, under a Nero. So the bright
memorable service of William the Silent ends by the
shot of an assassin. So the dagger of Ravaillac spills
the blood of Henry IV. of France. Death which ends
all careers, is seldom more than a close, a winding up
of the whole. But in the ending of that career over
which a nation is bowed in grief to-day, it is death pre-
ceded by months of suffering which sheds a strange
transfiguration over the whole. It adds nothing to the
Achievement. That was a finished chapter when the
pistol shot rang through the city of Washington on the
fatal morning. But there were days and weeks and
months in which the calmness of christian fortitude, the
brave determination to struggle for life, the patience, the
cheerfulness, the hopefulness — all maintained to the
last hour — shed a serene and holv licrht on the most
pathetic scene in our national history. The heart of
the nation was there throuorh it all — North and South
and East and West, watching, hoping, praying. It was
there in sympathy with the noble wife, now widowed
of her noble husband, and at times almost forgetting
its anxieties and suspense in admiration of her bravery
and cheerful hopefulness — bringing as she did to the
awful exigency all the ministrations of finest, complet-
est womanhood. It went out from there to that dis-
tant home in Ohio where the gray-haired mother of

21

the stricken President, to whom in all stages of his
career he had ever shown a fihal love and veneration
as beautiful as they are impressive, sat waiting not for
her own departure, but in anxious care lest she should
outlive the son whom she had so nobly trained, and
whom she follows now to the grave. There is no
element of pathos wanting. Tragedy pales before this
scene of struggle, suffering, and at last death. But it
all throws a light, softened and pure and holy, around
the whole career. We see him now — not through the
record of a wise and pure and good administration of
his office, not through the eloquence of his oratory, not
through the statesmanship of his Congressional course,
not through the brilliant record of his military career,
not through early hardships and heroic struggle for a
thorough mental furnishing. We see him, we see it
all, through the unbounded pathos of the sick room at
Washington and Long Branch, and in all the sorrow
of the nation in which we all have our part, are yet
moved to say for Iiwi —

" Nothing is liere for tears, nothing to wail
Or knock tlie breast ; no weakness, no contempt.
Dispraise or blame; nothing but well and fair,
And what may cjuiet us in a death so noble.''

Are there now no lessons for us to heed in this
heavy hour? Whose heart would not tremble as he
seeks to point them ? I cannot attempt to read them
all as they are written for us by God's solemn provi-
dence. I shrink even from entering at all on this high
office. '' God is his own interpreter." But there are
one or two which in broken fashion I must essay. On
these I cannot be silent.

First of all we must be careful that no guilty un-
belief as to a true doctrine of prayer assail and seize
the national heart. If profane and ungodly lips say
to the christian world, " You have now fairly tested
the power of prayer and it failed in the awful exi-
gency ; " if from this there spring the atheistic notion
that there is no Divine Ruler over nations, no Provi-
dential eye watching our national welfare, no Provi-
dential hand shaping its course, we are in such peril
as a nation, as never before frowned on us. Nay, if
we think that prayer to God for national blessings is
not still our highest duty and most exalted privilege,
we are in jeopardy every hour of divine judgments
which will make men stand aghast. All we have to
do is to recall that prayer in Gethsemane, " Father, if
it be possible, let this cup pass from me ; nevertheless,
not my will but thine be done." That cup did not
pass. Ours did not. If we prayed aright, we prayed
submissively to God's holy will, and trusting all to His
Wisdom and His Love. He has not foro^otten those
prayers. If we hold fast the profession of our faith,
without wavering, a childlike, devout faith may an-
ticipate unnumbered blessings in years to come. We
prayed in our ignorance of a mortal wound. We
should have been false to our duties if we had not
prayed. Nay, we should with unfaltering lips cry to
God for blessings on him who succeeds in the hieh
office, who has borne himself so nobly through the
late crisis, and who so feelingly has set apart the mor-
row^ to the offices of religion.

But the closing word which must have utterance
is this. By solemn and terrible judgment we as a
nation are warned against the evil which had been for

23

years gathering head, corrupting the sources of poHti-
cal Hfe and entrenching itself in the basest passions of
men. Let me here disclaim any attempt to estimate
the degree of connection between the spoils system
and the awful deed which has clothed the nation in
woe. More remote or less remote — the offspring of
frenzy or revenge, with determining all this the
pulpit has nothing to do. But the connection
is too plain to be mistaken. It exists ; and all
educated men are bound to throw aside their par-
tisanship— to look at the one great duty — the puri-
fication of our politics, the redemption of our republi-
can system from a threatening evil against which dis-
cernino; men have lono^ been warning us, and which
must now with all ri^ht-thinkine rnen come to an end.

'' All is best, though we oft doubt
What th' unsearchable dispose
Of highest wisdom brings about
And ever best found in its close.
Oft he seems to hide his face,
But unexpectedly returns,
And to his faithful champion hath in place
Bore witness gloriously. * *

His servants he, with new acquist
Of true experience from this [dread] event
\Vith peace and consolation hath dismisse<l,
^\nd calm of mind, all passion spent.''

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