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Our National Crisis. 
 
THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENTS PROPER FOR OUR 
 
 NATIONAL CRISIS. 
 
 A SERMON 
 
 DELIVERED ON SABBATH EVENING, APRIL 23, 1865. 
 
 By HENRY SMITH, D. D., 
 
 Pastor of the North Prenbyterian Church, Buffalo, X. V. 
 
 BUFFALO: 
 
 PRINTING HOUSE OF MATTHEWS & WABEEX, 
 
 Office of the Buffalo Commercial Advertiser. 
 
 1865. 
 
 
.6- 
 
 
Buffalo, April 26, 1865. 
 Rev. Henry Smith, ]). 1)., 
 
 Dear Sir: — The sermon of last Sabbath evening', devoted 
 
 to the consideration of the sentiments proper to be cherished by 
 
 our citizens in the present crisis of the nation, was listened to by a 
 
 a large and intelligent congregation with profound respect. 
 
 Appreciating the importance of those religious and civil truths, 
 
 enunciated and so eloquently enforced by you upon that occasion, 
 
 and being desirous that society may profit from a more extended 
 
 diffusion of sentiments so elevated and honorable to humanity, 
 
 thereby promoting the great interests of Christianity and good 
 
 government, we respectfully solicit a copy of the discourse for 
 
 publication. 
 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 LEWIS F. ALLEN, I>. TAYLOR, F. W. BREED, 
 
 GEO. R. BABCOCK, JAS. SHELDON, C. W. BUTLER, 
 
 PASCALL P. PRATT, O. P. RAMSDELL, OSCAR COBB, 
 
 E. P. BEALS, O. ].. NIMS, F. P. WOOD, 
 
 JAS. D. WARREN, C. V\". HARYEY, GEO. WADSWORTH, 
 
 H. R. KETCHUM, II. STILLMAN, .1. V. W. ANNIN, 
 
 WM. B. FLINT, JASON SEXTON, R. S. BURROWS, 
 
 i:. D. SHERMAN, A. J. RICH, S. M. CHAMBERLAIN. 
 C. E. FOUN'G, 
 
 Buffalo, April 26, 1865. 
 
 Hon. Mkssks. Allen, Babcock, Sheldon, and others, 
 
 Gentlemen : — The sermon to which your note refers, though 
 
 rapidly written, in the discharge of the ordinary weekly duties of 
 
 the preacher's work, contains sentiments which have long held 
 
 with me the authority of fixed principles. I am happy to find them 
 
 substantially endorsed by gentlemen so well qualified as yourselves 
 
 to judge of the duties and responsibilities of American citizenship. 
 
 In compliance with your request, I place the manuscript in your 
 
 hands. 
 
 1 am, very truly yours, 
 
 Henry Smith. 
 
A SERMON. 
 
 Speak Lord, for thy servant heareth. — 1 Samuel, in: 9. 
 
 You will not tail to remember tlie occasion on which 
 this solemn appeal to Jehovah, invoking a divine com- 
 munication, was made. It was the dictation of the head 
 of the Hebrew hierarchy, and the Chief Magistrate of 
 the nation, to that consecrated child who was destined 
 by God hereafter to become the leader and prophetic 
 teacher of the people. The period was one of univer- 
 sal popular, political, and religious corruption. Nay 
 more, this corruption had reached the very fountains 
 of power. The springs of the national life were tainted 
 by the reckless violation of the constitution of the gov- 
 ernment, civil and ecclesiastical, at the hands of the ac- 
 credited rulers of the land. The cup of the divine 
 patience was full to overflowing. The tempest of God's 
 wrath hung black and heavy over the guilty nation. 
 The fiery bolts of retribution were just ready to break 
 
forth, when the Majesty of heaven summoned the at- 
 tention of the prophet-child by that mysterious call, 
 to which the words of the text are the reply dictated 
 by the aged high-priest and judge of Israel : — " Speak, 
 Lord, for thy servant heareth." Listen to the response : 
 " Behold I will do a thing in Israel, at which both the 
 ears of every one that heareth it shall tingle." "What 
 that thins: was, you remember well. The land was 
 drenched in blood ; and the high priest and chief ma- 
 gistrate of Israel fell dead under the stroke of God. 
 I shall attempt to run no parallel between the moral 
 condition of the Hebrew commonwealth under the ad- 
 ministration of Eli, and our own to-day. In some par- 
 ticulars it fails. In others it is strikingly similar. God 
 has often spoken to us as a nation in the soft and per- 
 suasive accents of his mercy, and Ave have refused to 
 hear. Now he has spoken to us, as he did to them, 
 in the thunders of his righteous indignation. He has 
 done to us already that awful thing, at which both the 
 ears of every hearer have tingled. The whole land is 
 draped in the weeds of mourning. Every temple of 
 God in the loyal States bears, or has borne, within 
 the last week, the sable livery of ayoc. The heart of 
 the nation is broken. The voice of the whole people 
 has burst into one loud Avail of lamentation. There is 
 not a loyal man or AA r oman in the land whose bosom 
 this last arrow from the quiver of the Almighty has 
 
9 
 
 not pierced to the core. Are we ready at length to 
 listen to tlie voice of God \ True, indeed, we have 
 hardly yet recovered our equanimity. This tempest of 
 grief has burst suddenly upon us, like a tornado upon 
 a populous sea-port. The great waves of emotion have 
 driven us from our moorings ; some, it may be, in one 
 direction, and some in another. But the storm has 
 passed. The mountain billows are subsiding. Is it not 
 time that we at least begin to make the effort to come 
 to our anchorage? Taught by this fearful calamity, it 
 may be that we can find a firmer bottom, a safer hold- 
 ing ground, for the flukes of our national faith. In ad- 
 dressing you last Sabbath morning, I raised the ques- 
 tion: "What are the Christian duties which are indi- 
 cated by the present circumstances of the nation?" 
 The topic was deferred to a calmer moment. I recur 
 to it this evening. But as all right action is preceded 
 and conditioned by right sentiment, let me change the 
 form of the subject and ask your attention for a little 
 while to, 
 
 THE SENTIMENTS PROPEE To BE CHERISHED IN THE PRES- 
 ENT NATIONAL CRISIS. 
 
 Stunned and prostrated by this last terrible blow 
 from the hand of God, it may be we have hardly yet 
 sufficiently recovered, distinctly to understand his voice. 
 Nevertheless, while the awe of his Divine Majesty is 
 
10 
 
 yet upon our spirits, it surely behooves us to present 
 ourselves before the holy oracle of his Truth, saying: 
 Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth. 
 
 What response do we begin already to hear? If I 
 do not altogether misunderstand the voices of God's 
 providences, interpreted by the light of the Holy Scrip- 
 tures, they may be summed up in one great word — 
 
 Faith. 
 
 My friends, that series of great and terrible events 
 which for the last four years has engrossed the heart 
 of the nation, and which has just culminated in the 
 brutal murder of the Chief Magistrate of the Repub- 
 lic, summons our attention to-night not so much to 
 those aspects of Christian faith, which stand connected 
 with the question of personal salvation, as to those as- 
 pects of it which bear upon national ethics and our 
 civil duties. The entire secular and religious press of 
 the land recognizes now, as never before, the great 
 truth that God is speaking to the whole nation. What 
 we are summoned, therefore, to do, is to endeavor to 
 catch the articulate accents of that awful voice, as in- 
 terpreted by the teachings of his holy word. The voice 
 which Ave all have heard from heaven, audible and dis- 
 tinct, is this: Have faith in God. We believe that 
 God has spoken. We admit that this is the solemn 
 utterance of the oracle of the Divine Providence. But 
 
11 
 
 what does it mean I What are its applications ? These 
 questions remain to be considered, and to be answered 
 by the responses of divine revelation. Let us endea- 
 vor to elicit at least a portion of these responses. This 
 awful voice, then, seems to me to say to us — 
 
 I. First of all, Have faith in your Institutions of 
 National Government. 
 
 By this is not meant that our institutions of national 
 government are absolutely perfect; much less is it meant 
 that they can work themselves. They are simply an 
 instrument in the hands of an intelligent, virtuous, and 
 God-fearing people for the accomplishment of the very 
 highest ends of civil government ; and in this aspect 
 they are worthy of our most hearty confidence. 
 
 1. We are to have faith in their essential righteous- 
 ness. We are not left without a light from God's 
 Word, reflected upon this very point. Our national in- 
 stitutions were framed around the great idea which 
 has been so admirably expressed by our incoming Pres- 
 ident, that " Government was made for man, and not 
 man for Government." This governmental frame-work 
 has been pronounced by the most intelligent and phi- 
 losophic, as well as sympathetic and admiring foreign 
 observer, who has yet attempted to analyze the forces 
 of our political life, to be not a federal, but an incom- 
 plete national government. In the sense intended by 
 
12 
 
 him, this is perfectly true, and I shall have occasion to 
 refer to it again. I allude to it now simply to direct 
 your attention to the fact, that this so-called incomplete 
 national government is the very form and frame-work 
 of human government prescribed by God himself, for 
 the accomplishment of the very end had in view by 
 the framers of our own institutions. Loot at the struc- 
 ture of the Hebrew Republic, as it came from the hands 
 of its divine architect. Twelve distinct, and, in some 
 sense, independent states, each having its own distinct 
 territory, with perfectly defined geographical bounda- 
 ries; each having its lands distributed among the fam- 
 ilies composing it and possessed in fee-simple by the 
 tillers of the soil; each having its own rulers, elected 
 by the free suffrages of the people; each having its 
 own system of jurisprudence, connected by the principle 
 of appeals with the very highest judicatory in the land. 
 From the elders of his city to the elders of his tribe ; 
 from the elders of his tribe to the great national 
 council of the Seventy, every man might carry his 
 claim for justice to the highest judicatory in the land. 
 I can not vv> into details. But above all this sys- 
 tem of personal and tribal freedom and justice, sat the 
 Supreme Government of the land, possessed of a writ- 
 ten constitution, sovereign within its own limited sj)here 
 of sovereignty, with God as its executive head, charging 
 itself witli the education of the nation, with the incul- 
 
13 
 
 cation upon the minds of the whole people of the great 
 principles of the National Constitution, civil and religi- 
 ous; holding the balances of national justice, and 
 through the responses of the Urim and the Thunnnim, 
 claiming also, I think, as well, the right of making- 
 peace and war. Such in substance was the frame-work 
 of the Hebrew government, as it came from the hand 
 of God. Well has a clear-headed writer said of it, " It 
 preserved in the hands of the people as much personal 
 liberty as ever was or can be combined with a perma- 
 nent and efficient national government." This land of 
 ours was settled by men who believed in God. Free- 
 dom! — "Freedom to worship God, 1 ' was the great sen- 
 timent which peopled this new world. Is it any won- 
 der that fleeing from the edicts of the star-chambers 
 and blood-councils of Europe ; from the feudalism and 
 despotism of the old world; from countries whose ani- 
 mus was not " government for man, but man for gov- 
 ernment," these men should have carefully investigated 
 the principles of Bil.de liberty \ that they should most 
 anxiously have inculcated upon their children those great 
 principles of civil and religious freedom which they 
 found everywhere in the word of God ? Is it any won- 
 der that their descendants, taught by their precepts, and 
 breathing their spirit, when the great task of framing 
 a national government was devolved upon them, should 
 have turned their eyes reverently to these venerable gov- 
 
14 
 
 ernmental institutions of the Hebrews? So far as the 
 differing circumstances of the times seemed to permit, 
 the framework of our national government, in its great 
 essential features, was a reproduction of that of the He- 
 brews. The spirit of justice, righteousness, liberty and 
 equal rights is its animating spirit. The word slave 
 was odious to the framers of our national constitution. 
 It is not to be found in that venerable instrument. 
 And if the local institutions of some of the States 
 forced upon it a tacit recognition of the existence of 
 slaver)' in the country, it is a matter of devout thanks- 
 giving to God, that the great bulwark of our national 
 life needs no alteration to adapt it to that condition 
 of universal liberty which the act of God, overruling 
 the madness of Treason inflamed by the spirit of op- 
 pression, is giving to the whole land. Even the lam- 
 entable omission of a direct recognition of God, in con- 
 secpience of which the document has been charged with 
 political atheism, can not convict it of atheism. It 
 breathes the spirit of God's own teachings, as touching 
 the frame-work of civil and religious liberty; and it is 
 no violation, but rather an outgrowth, of the spirit of 
 the American constitution that the coin of the United 
 States is henceforth to 1 tear the great legend, " In God 
 Ave trust." The frame-work of our national institutions 
 is essentially righteous. The institutions of government 
 which have legitimately sprung from it are essentially 
 
15 
 
 righteous. And the voice of God's Providence, which 
 for four long and terrible years lias been waxing 
 louder and louder, and which to-day is sounding in 
 our ears as with the blast of trumpet, seems to me 
 to say: Have faith in the righteousness of these in- 
 stitutions; beware of violating them; beware of corrupt- 
 ing them. 
 
 2. But again that voice says to us: Have faith in 
 the permanence of these national institutions. 
 
 Our national government has been called an experi- 
 ment. It is so. It is an experiment testing the ques- 
 tion whether popular liberty and political equality can 
 exist on earth. It is an experiment testing the ques- 
 tion whether a government founded in the spirit of 
 the principle that " government was made for man, and 
 not man for government," can possibly bear the strain 
 to which the evil forces of ambition and despotism will 
 subject it: whether in the long procession of the ages 
 v\e have yet reached the point of human civilization 
 in which, under an organized human government, man 
 as man, all men, of all shades of color, of all types of 
 intellect, of all grades of wealth, can stand before the 
 common Father of the Universe, possessed of equal 
 civil and religious rights: can each one of them, with 
 no slave-drivers lash brandished above him, with no 
 ensign of civil or ecclesiastical despotism waving over 
 him, look up to God and say, Father, I am a man : 
 
16 
 
 I am a freeman ; made in thine image ; bound by my 
 conscience to thy holy government : Speak, Lord, for 
 thy servant heareth and will obey? My friends, it 
 is useless to deny it, we have all had our fears touch- 
 ing the issue of this great exjoeriment of popular lib- 
 erty. We have had occasion to fear. I have heard 
 men in Buffalo say this government can not survive. 
 And the rise and fall of gold, following the disasters 
 and successes of the national arms, have spoken these 
 fears when the tongue has not uttered them. Perhaps 
 the fears of the most intelligent thinkers anions; us have 
 gathered chiefly around the most apparent point of 
 weakness in our civil institutions : I mean the point of 
 a Divided Sovereignty. I have already referred to the 
 remark of De Tocqueville, that our general government 
 is not a federal, but, in distinction from it, an incomplete 
 national government. It is easier, he says, to invent 
 new things than new names. The American govern- 
 ment is a new thing under the sun. It is a new thing 
 with an old name — a Federal Jlejndlie. In all other 
 confederations, as for example the Swiss, the central 
 government has acted not upon the people, but upon 
 the states. In this it acts directly upon the people. 
 Forgetting, it would seem, the Hebrew Republic, he 
 pronounces the American Government a new thing in 
 the world. It is not, therefore, what it calls itself, a 
 Federal Republic, but an incomplete nationality. Find- 
 
17 
 
 ing the idea of sovereignty in tlie power of enacting laws, 
 and finding this power divided between the states and 
 the central government, he recognizes in our institu- 
 tions the existence of a divided sovereignty. That is 
 not our idea of sovereignty in America. But, neverthe- 
 less, here he finds the point of our national weakness ; 
 a weakness, in his opinion, so great, that in case of a 
 foreign war, the government would be unable to cope 
 with the power of a consolidated monarchy, of equal re- 
 sources, in its immediate vicinity. The states, he thinks, 
 whose interests should be impaired by the war, would 
 find pretexts, as did Connecticut and Massachusetts in 
 1812, for disobeying the mandates of the central gov- 
 ernment, and the government would go to wreck. But 
 happily, he says, we have no such war to fear. Sepa- 
 rated from the consolidated governments of Europe by 
 a wide and stormy ocean, we are safe. Having noth- 
 ing to fear from abroad, he pronounces our national 
 institutions, impossible elsewhere, admirably adapted to 
 our peculiar geographical position on the globe. Little 
 did he foresee the tremendous strain which was to be 
 put upon our government by this same perverted doc- 
 trine of a divided sovereignty; yea, more, from the 
 claim of the handmaid to be the mistress, reducing the 
 general government; from the rank of a sovereign to 
 that of a mere commercial agent. This, as you well 
 know, is the pestilent theory of Secession. We have 
 
18 
 
 lived it down ; we have fought it through ; and the 
 hydra of Secession will never again rear its hissing head 
 upon this continent. The nation has demonstrated its 
 perfect nationality. We have had for years nothing to 
 fear from abroad. We have no longer anything to fear 
 at home. AVhen the sun of peace, whose blessed beams 
 now gild and glorify our national horizon, shall reveal 
 to our eyes its full-orbed splendor, it will shine upon 
 the dishonored grave of the institution of American 
 Slavery: an institution whose lying appeals to human 
 cupidity, lust, and thirst for power, could alone have 
 seduced men, whom God had gifted with an intellect, 
 a heart and a conscience, to adopt and act upon so 
 absurd a doctrine. Slavery will be dead and buried, 
 and with slavery dead, the whole wide field of the nation 
 will be open to the action of free schools, a free press, 
 a free pulpit, and a free Bible. Corrupt indeed and 
 recreant to her high trust will the Church of God in 
 America have become if our national government shall 
 ever again be put in peril by the awful ferocities of 
 civil war. The voice of God's providence, then, inter- 
 preted by the blessed humanities of his holy gospel, 
 bids us to have faith in the permanence of our na- 
 tional institutions. Treason has done its worst upon 
 us. It has just dealt an expiring blow, which would 
 have thrown France into convulsions, and prostrated 
 its imperial government in the dust. What has it done 
 
19 
 
 to us ? It has pierced the heart of the nation with 
 an inexpressible sorrow. It has clad her in the weeds 
 of mourning, and brought her to bow herself in 
 an agony of grief before the Majesty of Heaven. 
 That is all. The government lives. Its regular action 
 has not been disturbed for a moment. Our free in- 
 stitutions still live. Let us believe it, they shall live 
 forever. 
 
 We will turn now to another interpretation of 
 the voice of God's Providence. It is this : 
 
 II. Have faith in your National Hitlers. 
 
 My friends, it is very difficult for us to have faith 
 in man. We know too well, from our own hearts, his 
 weakness and his corruptibility. " Let us fall now," 
 said David, " into the hand of God, for his mercies 
 are great, but let me not fall into the hand of man." 
 Nevertheless, men are God's instruments, and in cer- 
 tain relations faith in God necessitates and renders 
 imperative faith in man. Most conspicuous among 
 these relations is that which exists between subjects 
 and rulers. Civil government, of whatever form, is 
 from God. The powers that be, are ordained of God. 
 Even under bad and tyrannical governments, the word 
 of God counsels submission, and, so far forth as obe- 
 dience does not conflict with the claims of God's uni- 
 versal sovereignty and the homage of the individual 
 3 
 
20 
 
 soul due to him, it counsels obedience. Paul lost his 
 head under the tyranny of Nero, but he never lifted 
 his hand against it. Ignatius was torn by the lions 
 of the Coliseum under the despotism of Trajan, but so 
 far from rebelling, he blessed the hand which placed 
 upon his brow the crown of martyrdom. The very 
 slaves themselves are enjoined to be subject to their 
 masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, 
 but also to the froAvard. — What then ? Does God's 
 word sanction despotism ? No. But it commands those 
 who are subject to it, and who by no legal methods 
 can reach it, to leave the removal of it to Him. How 
 he can and will remove it he has taught us most im- 
 pressively in that great national tragedy which has now 
 reached its fifth act. He sends a spirit of madness 
 upon the despot and places in his hand a dagger, 
 wherewith to slay himself. God makes no provision 
 in his word for rebellion and regicide. It must needs 
 be under the Holy Providence of God that such of- 
 fences come, but woe be to those men by whom they 
 come. Passive obedience, and submission to wrong, is 
 the counsel of God's word, even under tyrannies. But 
 what shall we say of the sentiments of citizens to- 
 wards rulers, under a free popular government like our 
 own? This government, as we have seen, was formed 
 upon a model devised by the wisdom of God himself. 
 Its great principles are essentially righteous. Its foun- 
 
21 
 
 dations are laid in the great doctrines of justice, equi- 
 ty, equal rights, and universal liberty. The legitimate 
 action of such a government must be righteous. The 
 men who are placed in power under the legitimate 
 movements of such a government, should command not 
 only our civil obedience, but our hearty sympathy, 
 support, and confidence. All maligning of the private 
 character of Riders, all factious opposition to their 
 measures, are blows stricken at the heart of liberty. 
 Aye, but suppose they are bad men ? Suppose they 
 do not represent the principles of the government, and 
 our views of the policy which the exigencies of the 
 nation demand? What then? Are we then to ap- 
 prove ? to give them our confidence ? On this point 
 two words. 
 
 1. By possibility we may be wrong. By possibility 
 they may not be the utterly bad men which a parti- 
 zan press, in a contested election, may have taught us 
 to believe them. By possibility their policy does not so 
 utterly misrepresent the will of God and the true and 
 fundamental principles of the government as our own 
 associations have led us to fear. Even if we do not 
 admit the truth of the maxim that the vox pqpuli is 
 the vox Dei, the presumption is that after all the light 
 which has been thrown upon the issues of a contested 
 election, by an omnipresent press, everywhere doing 
 its work among a reading people, the decision which 
 
00 
 
 is readied by the final suffrages of such a people will 
 be essentially right; at least that it can not be so far 
 wrong as fatally to compromise the great principles of 
 the government. The great struggle which has been 
 upon us has taught us the duties of minorities under 
 a government like this. It is to submit. Yea more, 
 it is to yield a cheerful support to the rulers who 
 represent the will of the people, and embody the 
 sovereignty of the land. All honor to those noble 
 millions, who, differing in their views of national 
 policy from that which found an expression in the 
 election of our present rulers, rallied around the 
 government in the hour of its supreme trial ; who laid 
 aside their political animosities, forgot their political 
 prejudices, and have stood for four long and terrible 
 years " a wall of fire around the ark of our liberties. 1 ' 
 Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and all sympathy 
 with it under such a government as this is a crime 
 against the last hope of human freedom, in a world 
 like ours. Eternal infamy, therefore, to that traitorous 
 element in our loyal states; to that nest of venomous 
 vipers, desperate and debauched in moral and politi- 
 cal character, and, let us hope in God, insignificant in 
 numbers as well, which from pot-houses, brothels and 
 theatres, has spit its traitorous sjnte at the constituted 
 authorities of the country; and which, at last, has 
 found an expression, faithfully representing its spirit, 
 
23 
 
 in the most enormous Ceime which stains tlie bloody 
 annals of our guilty world. 
 
 2. But again, by possibility we may be right. By 
 possibility tlie people may be wrong. What then is 
 to be done? Where is now the remedy to be found? 
 Certainly not in endeavoring to obstruct the wheels 
 of government, nor in a factious opposition to the 
 rulers, whom the free suffrages of the people have 
 placed in authority. A government like ours can not 
 possibly long stand among a people too ignorant to 
 comprehend its principles, or too corrupt to sustain 
 them. It will fall by its own weight. It will pass 
 away by the act of God. But when it Mis the last 
 hope of popular liberty will fall with it. This indeed 
 has been the expectation and the prophecy of despots 
 all over the world, as touching the fate of our own 
 Republic. It has found, as you know, during this 
 rebellion, a practical expression in European govern- 
 ments, from which we had expected better things. 
 But this government is not to fall. The hand of God 
 has been over it, and, so long as we remain faithful 
 to Him, will be over it forever. How awfully has he ad- 
 monished us of the high and solemn responsibility which 
 attaches to the character of an American citizen. How 
 solemnly has he admonished us to place our political 
 opinions, our civil action, and our judgment of the 
 moral character demanded in the rulers of a free re- 
 
24 
 
 public, under the instruction and guardianship of his 
 Holy Word ! That Word declares that : He who ruleth 
 over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God. 
 That Word declares: Thou shalt provide out of all 
 the people, able men, such as fear God, men of 
 truth, hating covetousness ; and place such over them, 
 to be rulers of thousands, and rulers of hundreds; 
 yea more, to be rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens. 
 In a government like this we can do without splen- 
 dor of intellect, without brilliancy of oratory, yea, 
 even without profound statemanship. One thing we 
 can not do without. We can not do without Honesty, 
 without moral integrity in our rulers. No Christian, 
 nay more, no man, who believes that there sits in 
 the heavens a just and righteous God, who watches 
 over the destinies of nations, has any right to cast 
 his vote, at the dictation of any party, or in view 
 of any scheme of self-interest, for a man as a ruler, 
 the soundness of whose moral character he has reason- 
 able occasion to question. If he does, let him close his 
 mouth in shame when he finds in office bad and 
 wicked men, who do not represent his own views 
 of national righteousness, or of a just line of na- 
 tional policy. He himself has sanctioned a principle 
 which utterly disarms him of every reasonable pre- 
 text for refusing a hearty support to the powers 
 that be. — But even if this is not the case, and if he 
 
25 
 
 has never thus profaned the high and solemn re- 
 sponsibility of the elective franchise, and Lad and 
 covetous men, nevertheless, by sophistry and chicane, 
 have grasped the reins of power, he would do well, 
 before he resorts to the delusive remedy of faction, 
 solemnly to ask himself whether he has folly dis- 
 charged his duty as a citizen : whether he has done, 
 and is doing, all that in him lies to purify the 
 fountains of power, by educating, enlightening, and 
 endeavoring to shape the popular mind, and by im- 
 buing it with a sense of responsibility to God and 
 to mankind, for the manner in which it dares to 
 exercise the high functions of American citizenship. 
 Here lies the true and effectual remedy for all the 
 evils which can arise in a free government like our 
 own. It is the only political remedy allowable to 
 a just, conscientious, and God-fearing man. God has 
 taught us to pray for kings, and for all that are in 
 authority. He has nowhere taught us to revile and 
 oppose them. On the contrary, he has taught us that 
 whosoever resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance 
 of God, and that they that resist shall receive to 
 themselves damnation. 
 
 It remains to say, before I conclude, that this voice 
 from heaven, interpreted by the voice of revelation, 
 seems to speak to us to-day, saying: 
 
26 
 
 III. Have faith in the Providence of God. 
 
 God lias delivered us in six troubles, let us be sure 
 that in the seventh no evil shall befall us, which shall 
 peril the life of the nation. lie has brought light out 
 of darkness, order out of confusion, victory out of de- 
 feat, inexhaustible national resources out of the perils 
 of national bankruptcy ; an ever waxing population out 
 of the immense and terrible slaughter of civil war. 
 The starry flag of the Union waves to-day, in the 
 triumph of God's holy retribution for treason, over the 
 very city where secession had its birth; over the very 
 fortress where the madness of treason struck it dowu 
 in dishonor. The spirit of God has waked in the 
 hearts of our peojue an intense loyalty, which Ave had 
 not even imagined to exist, sleeping as it did unseen 
 beneath the superficial guise of an apparently entire 
 national engrossment in the arts of peace and in the 
 pursuit of gain. "We have been called a covetous 
 and grasping people. It was always a libel on the 
 nation, and, God be thanked, now we know it to 
 have been a libel. The accumulations of years have 
 been poured out like water in the cause of the 
 country. Never has the earth witnessed such im- 
 mense and costly offerings as have been laid by 
 private citizens in this war upon the altar of an 
 imperilled country. Our chivalrous foes have stig- 
 matized us as a nation of boors, of hinds, of mud- 
 
Z( 
 
 sills; — they have been taught to know how much 
 valor lies hid beneath the rough exterior of the 
 sons of labor, who have breathed all their lives the 
 atmosphere of freedom; and been taught all their lives 
 to acknowledge and worship God. The nation was 
 never before so great, so strong, so free, so patriotic, 
 so rich in everything which constitutes national dignity 
 and national power as it is to-day. Its government is, 
 at this moment, I verily believe it, the strongest 
 government upon the globe. Who hath poured into 
 the heart of the nation this spirit \ Who hath poured 
 out upon us, as from a cloud bursting under its 
 freight of blessing, these immense resources of wealth 
 and of men? Can we have any doubt? It is the 
 God of our fathers, and our God. It is God, and not 
 man who hath gotten us the victory. And now, when 
 this last supreme agony is rending the heart of the 
 nation, how are Ave to interpret it i Are we to yield 
 to despondency, and imagine that God has forsaken 
 as? No, my friends, no! That is not its meaning. 
 He is purging us still more, that is all. He is bid- 
 ding us with a still louder voice to lift up our eyes 
 to him, and to acknowledge him as the God of the na- 
 tion. He is saying to us, with the most solemn, 
 piercing, and yet reassuring accents, with which the 
 voice of his Providence has yet fallen upon the ears 
 of the nation : " Be still, and know of a surety that 
 
28 
 
 I am God/ 1 " Fear not, for I am with tliee ; be not 
 dismayed, for I am thy God. I will strengthen 
 tliee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee 
 with the right hand of my righteousness." It is yet 
 too early to interpret the full meaning of this last 
 awful Providence of God. But look at it from two 
 points of view. Abraham Lincoln was in danger of 
 becoming the nation's idol. lie was so gentle, so 
 honest, so magnanimous, so unselfish, so forgiving: his 
 measures had been crowned with such astonishing and 
 unlooked-for success, that there may have been danger 
 that the nation, forgetting God, would fix its eyes 
 upon him alone as the national Saviour and Re- 
 deemer. God hath taken away our head, as he took 
 away Moses from his chosen people, that we might 
 not worship him. From the summit of our national 
 ISVbo he permitted him to gaze upon the land of 
 promise, and then hid his mortal body from our eyes, 
 lest we should pay to him the homage for a de- 
 liverance wrought out by God alone. Look at it from 
 another point of view. Abraham Lincoln died at the 
 very zenith of his fame. lie had done his work, and, 
 as Romulus was rapt in a chariot of flame from the 
 gaze of his astonished countrymen, so has he been 
 rapt from the eyes of the nation, that he might live 
 an almost spotless character, embalmed forever in the 
 nation's heart, as the patron saint of its consummated 
 
I'D 
 
 liberty. lie has done, and dune nobly and well, the 
 work for which he was the chosen instrument of God. 
 There remains still for the entire pacification of the 
 country, the great work of Reconstruction. Who can 
 assure us that the characteristics of our departed 
 President, now of deathless and glorious memory* 
 would have fitted him to accomplish with equal suc- 
 cess a work like that ( No man can say that they 
 would not. No man can say that they would. One 
 thing; is certain, God lias taken it out of his hands. 
 and has assumed it himself. There are doubts, and 
 fears, and indistinctness of vision, and conflicting 
 theories upon this great subject rife throughout the 
 land. "What shall be done with the black man?" 
 you remember it well, was the horror-cry of the na- 
 tion at the opening of the war. It was the Gor- 
 dian knot whieh no human ingenuity could untie. 
 Our late venerated President himself did not com- 
 prehend the solution of the problem. His words 
 and his acts alike confessed it. But he plaeed him- 
 self in the hands of God, and God's Providence 
 guided him to the solution. There exists no longer 
 a doubt in the mind of any man, what is to be 
 done with the black man. And now one more 
 problem only remains to be solved, the great prob- 
 lem of Peconstruetion. Let us be sure God's Pro- 
 vidence will solve it and solve it aright. It is not 
 
30 
 
 to be solved by doubts, nor fears, nor sympathies, 
 nor antipathies, nor theories. It is not to be solved 
 by man. It is to be solved by the holy Provi- 
 dence of God. From this point of view, very much 
 do I incline to the sentiment of the orator of Fort 
 Sumter : " It needs neither architect, nor engineer. 11 
 God's Providence will build strongly and well the 
 broken arches and buttresses of the temple of na- 
 tional freedom. "After the combatant," says De Toc- 
 fjueville, " comes the legislator. The one pnlls down, 
 the other builds up. Each lias Ids office." In a 
 Republic like ours, the two functions are distinct, 
 and belong to distinct branches of the government. 
 God has guided the one. God will guide the other. 
 Of one thins; we may be sure. This last atrocious 
 deed has taught the whole land the meaning of 
 Treason ; lias convinced the whole land that it is 
 a crime as much blacker and more horrible than 
 simple murder, as the life of a great nation is more 
 precious than the life of a single man. Of another 
 tiling we may be sure. AVe have been taught what 
 Justice is. If standing among the thick heaped 
 mounds of our patriot-dead, slaughtered by hundreds 
 of thousands in this unholy rebellion, " until every 
 drop of blood drawn by the lash Jtas heen paid by 
 another drawn by the sword, 11 we could have been 
 persuaded by any sophistical argument derived from 
 
31 
 
 the God -likeness of mercy, to receive the plotters 
 and leaders of this awful crime into our confidence, 
 we can be persuaded no longer. This last crime of 
 ineffable turpitude lias heaped up in the very heart 
 of the nation a mound so broad and so long; it has 
 piled it so high with mingled emotions of grief, horror 
 and indignation, nay, with its deepest and most re- 
 ligious sentiment of the righteousness and the duty of 
 retributive justice, that no arm of reconstruction will 
 be long enough to reach over that mountain of woe, 
 ami grasp in its own the red right hand of Treason. 
 The plotters and leaders in this terrible work of 
 attempted national assassination are doomed. They 
 arc doomed. The mark of Cain is in their foreheads. 
 And, at the very best, driven forth from the land 
 whose soil they have polluted with Treason and 
 drenched in blood, the)' are destined henceforth to 
 become fugitives and vagabonds in the earth. 
 
 And now, O God, thou God of our Fathers, be 
 thou our God, and the God of our children for- 
 ever. Clouds and darkness are round about thee; 
 but righteousnes and judgment are the habitation of 
 thy throne. Shrouded in these weeds of mourning, 
 from the depths of our national woe, we still lift 
 up our eyes unto Thee. Accept, we beseech thee, 
 this awful baptism of blood in expiation of a na- 
 
32 
 
 tion's sins. For four long and fearful years thy ban- 
 ner over us lias been a banner of war, rent by the 
 storm of battle, and stained with the life-blood of 
 the slain. If tliv strange work of retribution is not 
 yet complete, still go forth with our patriot hosts, 
 we implore thee, and guide our captains to victor}'. 
 Yet we humbly supplicate thy mere}'. Let the sac- 
 rifice already offered suffice. Henceforth, ma}' thy 
 banner over us be Love. Teach all our people to 
 know Thee and to fear Thee. Guide our Rulers. 
 Inspire them with thine own Spirit of AYisdom, Jus- 
 tice, Mercy, and Truth. Make our judges as at the 
 first, and our counsellors as at the becdnnino;. 
 Henceforth may we be called the nation of right- 
 eousness; the faithful nation. Purged from the stains 
 of our national transgressions, may this great people 
 live before the Lord, our God, redeemed, purified, 
 holy, free; and to thy great Name shall be the 
 glory forever, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 
 
 V60 
 
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