|
Delivered at Lodge Street Temple, Cincinnati, O.,
April 19, 1865.
“And the Lord said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country; and out of
thy birth-place, and from thy father’s house, unto the land that I will
show thee. And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee,
and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing. And I will bless
those that bless thee, and him that curseth thee will I curse; and in thee
shall all families of the earth be blessed. So Abram departed, as the Lord
had spoken to him.”
ABRAHAM LINCOLN departed, as the Lord had spoken to him. Abraham
Lincoln, whose biography is too well known to be repeated here, the
President of the United States, from March 4, 1861, to the day of his
assassination, April 14, 1865; the generous, genial and honest man, who
stood at the head of our people in this unprecedented struggle for
national existence and popular liberty; whose words and deeds speak alike
and aloud of his unsophisticated mind, purity of heart, honesty of
purpose, confidence in the great cause, and implicit faith in the justice
of Providence, which inspired him to consistency, courage and self-denial;
this Abraham Lincoln, who endeared himself to so many millions of hearts,
and gained the admiration of other millions of people, both at home and
abroad; whom the myriads of freedmen consider their savior, and tens of
thousands esteem as high as George Washington, and feel as sincerely and
affectionately attached to as Israel to her David, Rome to her Augustus,
and France to her Napoleon I; this Abraham Lincoln, whose greatness was in
his goodness, and whose might was in his unshaken faith, was assassinated.
Blush, humanity!—he was assassinated. This is the lamentable fact which
today bends so many stout hearts with sorrow and grief—speaks by the tears
of countless myriads, and the dark clouds of mourning which envelop the
great Republic.
Hark! listen to the voice of grievous lamentation, of woeful complaint,
filling the very air of this vast country. “The elders of the daughter of
Zion sit upon the ground; they are silent; they have thrown dust upon
their heads; they have girt themselves with sackcloth, the virgins of
Jerusalem have brought down low their head to the ground. My eyes do fail
with tears, my bowels are heated, my liver is poured upon the earth,
because of the breach of the daughter of my people. How shall I cheer
thee, to whom compare thee, O daughter of Jerusalem?—to what shall I liken
thee, to console thee, O virgin daughter of Zion?—for great like the sea
is thy breach, who can heal thee?”
Hark, listen to the doleful voice of woe, echoing from thousands of
hearts: “Fallen is the crown of our head; woe to us, for we have sinned;
therefore our heart is woe-stricken; therefore are our eyes dimmed.” This
is the lamentable cause of our meeting today before God, to weep with the
nation, to mourn with our country, to show the last honors to Abraham
Lincoln.
Why? Wherefore must it be so? you ask. Silence, mortals! Upon your
knees, sons of the dust! “And the Lord said unto Abram, get thee out of
thy country, out of thy birthplace, and from thy father’s house, unto the
land that I will show thee. So Abram departed as the Lord had spoken to
him.” Who of the finite and perishable creatures will unravel the
mysterious ways of infinite and everlasting Providence? The drop
comprehends not the seas, the mote understands not the sun; man, whose
life is like a passing shadow, can not penetrate the counsels of the
eternal and allwise God. Worship with humiliation, look down with awe at
the throne of glory, and proclaim anew the sacred words: “The Lord hath
given, the Lord hath taken away, the name of the Lord be blessed.” We can
only look in and about ourselves to find the proper answer to the
question: How can we honor best the memory of Abraham Lincoln?
Repent your sins. “Return, Israel, to the Lord thy God, for thou hast
stumbled in thine iniquity,” this deplorable event cries, with a loud
voice. God has punished us grievously. His mighty hand inflicted a deep
and burning wound upon the heart of the nation, and He is just. “The Rock,
his work is perfect, for all His ways are just. The God of truth and
without iniquity, just and upright is He.” The Lord has revealed His
powerful arm to remind us of our iniquity, and move us to repentance.
Behold the man at whose command the mightiest armies of this world
moved, and whose name is associated with the dearest affections of so many
millions of men; the man upon whom the whole civilized world looked, and
whom, to protect and shield, a great nation was ready, was destroyed by
one mad villain. Must not this rouse us from our sinful lethargy to a
consciousness of our weakness? All the power, wisdom, goodness and
affection of man can not protect us when the Lord decrees to call us
hence. Must not this rouse us from our sinful lethargy to a consciousness
of our guilt? Abraham Lincoln was a good man; the millions testify, and
history, with her impartial pencil will record it. Not in his sins, in
ours, he died; “for before wickedness, the righteous is taken away.” He is
the sin-offering for our iniquities. His death cries aloud, “Repent,
repent your sins.”
Verily, we need not inquire deeply to find our sins, when we know that
an assassin was born and raised in our midst; the assassin of Abraham
Lincoln brooded over his diabolic schemes in the very capital of our
country. Where shall we begin to speak of the enormity of our sins? Must
we speak first of the precepts of revenge which poison so many hearts and
pervert so many minds to consider murder and assassination a matter of
honor—assassination for offensive words—murder in duels? Or must we
mention first the barbarous habit of bearing concealed arms to hide
cowardice under the garb of crime? Or must we speak of the mercenary
passions, which know of no intrinsic value of either persons or duties,
honor or pride, art or science; which weigh or measure all persons and
things alike by the standard of the market? Or must we mention the frigid
hypocrisy which seeks refuge on the cushioned pews of fashionable
churches; the haughtiness of little creatures embellished in costly
garments and beglittered with gems, or such other dust; the scorn to which
religion is subjected, the smile of pity cast on old-fashioned virtue, or
the numerous and costly means to silence the crying conscience? There is
no necessity for mentioning either of them, which are the mere fountains
of our national sins, when we may look at once upon the broad and mad
streams, with their impetuous billows and thousand whirlpools. Remember
the frauds which were committed on the nation when hundred thousands of
her noblest sons rushed to arms and offered their lives in vindication of
her holy cause. Remember the legion of traitors and spies who surrounded
our armies and penetrated into the most secret recesses of our Government.
Or if that is too vast, too much to be remembered at once, then remember,
simply, that our very President, the chosen banner-bearer of our people,
the Messiah of this country, was slain by the assassin’s hand in the midst
of his people; and we must cry with Cain, “Mine iniquity is greater than I
can bear.”
Repentance is the great lesson which this deplorable event should teach
us. Away with your idols of silver and your idols of gold; away with
haughtiness, selfishness, delusion, deception and barbarism; prostrate
yourselves with humble spirits and contrite hearts before God; confess and
repent your sins; be healed of your diseases, distill the Balm of Gilead
in the wounds of your conscience; cry for mercy and forgiveness to your
God, then rise better men, better citizens, true children of the living
God—and you have honored the memory of him who died in our national sins;
you have erected a durable and grand monument to that martyr of liberty
whose untimely departure we lament. Let him live in your virtues,
resurrect in your patriotism; let him glow and shine in your aspirations,
for the benefit of humanity, and the triumph of justice and liberty, of
light over night, and right over might; and Abraham Lincoln lives as he
wished to live—the benefactor of his people; and Abraham Lincoln departed
as the Lord had spoken unto him that God might fulfill his divine promise:
“And I will make of thee a great nation.” So let us do honor to the memory
of the departed martyr of liberty.
Honor brethren, honor the deceased President of the United States, by
securing to him a perpetual reign, and a dominion everlasting. How? The
dead should reign, the deceased one have dominion everlasting? Yes, even
so shall you do.
The photographer or lithographer, the painter or sculptor, can not
eternize a man; he can not give you more of him than a faint delineation
of the outside, shape and features, the most unimportant portion, the mere
case of a person. Monuments, however lofty and extensive, crowded with
inscriptions and symbols, tell very little, after all, of the man himself,
to whose honor they may be erected. The passions, feelings, struggles,
victories, motives and thoughts of a great mind, and each of them is a
real fraction of his existence, are so innumerably manifold and change so
often, that no artist can represent a considerable portion of them. This
is the case especially with the deceased, Abraham Lincoln. The best
representation of his figure will not tell posterity who he was. His
outside appearance bore no resemblance even to his real nature. The most
skillful philosopher will fail in describing the man who stood at the head
of affairs during this gigantic struggle, his cares and troubles, his
sleepless nights and days of anxiety, his thoughts and his schemes, his
triumphs and mortifications, his hopes and fears, and ten thousand more
sentiments, feelings and thoughts, which moved his mind in the stormy
period of his Presidential term. He will be obliged to satisfy himself
with the focus in which all these rays of the mind centers, with the
actions of the deceased. Let these actions be our political creed, and
Lincoln reigns perpetually; his is the “covenant of an everlasting
priesthood,” he is immortal in his people.
“I will restore the Union,” he promised us, and twice he took the
solemn oath to protect and enforce the Constitution of the United States.
Let these two points be forever the beginning and end of our political
creed. He gave liberty to an oppressed race, “And ye shall proclaim
freedom to all the inhabitants of the land.” Let us adhere to this great
principle. All shall be free, all equal before the law. He was kind,
charitable, and lenient towards the enemies of his country, longed and
hoped for peace.—Let also these be cardinal points of our creed. Let us
not be led astray by blind passions, hatred, a spirit of revenge; let us
act entirely and conscientiously in the very spirit of the departed man,
and we honor him. He reigns in death, and holds his dominion as though he
were living still.
Let us carry into effect and perpetuate the great desires which heaved
the breast of Abraham Lincoln; let us be one people, one, free, just and
enlightened; let us be the chosen people to perpetuate and promulgate
liberty and righteousness, the union and freedom of the human family; let
us break asunder, wherever we can, the chains of the bondsman, the fetters
of the slave, the iron rod of despotism, the oppressive yoke of tyranny;
let us banish strife, discord, hatred, injustice, oppression from the
domain of man, as far as our hands do reach, and we secure to Abraham
Lincoln a perpetual reign and dominion everlasting; we set him the most
durable monument in the hearts of the human family; then he is not dead,
not removed even, from our midst, and will live forever. If his person was
called from our midst, that we be guarded against the follies of
apotheosis, which numerous admirers already approximated, to teach us
again the great lesson, “Trust not in the noblest ones, in the son of man
with whom there is no salvation,” or as the prophet Isaiah expressed it,
“Withdraw yourself from man, whose breath is in his nostrils; because, for
what is he to be esteemed?” If God permitted it that we learn the great
lesson of the firmness and fitness of our Government, which is the
people’s Government, depending on no man or party; or to wake us to a
sense of duty to our Government, to unite and fraternize us more in
mourning and the common sympathy with the deceased President and his
mourning family, the abused and ill-treated Secretary of State and his
sons; if God has permitted the sudden removal of THE PERSON of Abraham
Lincoln from our midst, for any or all of these reasons, or for reasons
unknown to us, (but just and wise they certainly must be); his
personality, his essence and substance, his mind, his soul, his
principles, may forever remain with us and be our guiding stars. So we may
secure to him a perpetual reign, and a dominion everlasting; for the ideas
of union, justice, liberty, peace, kindness, charity, forbearance and
goodness are everlasting, like God himself.
Murmur not against the justice and wisdom of Providence. God is just.
Abraham Lincoln fought the battles for great ideas, and his enemies, of
necessity, must be numerous and violent. He was a man, and where is the
mortal one without his measure of faults and infirmities; with a great
man, in a great period of time, they only become, with his virtues, more
conspicuous. Every man has his mission, his destiny on earth; with men of
eminent positions it only becomes more conspicuous. Whenever our mission
is fulfilled God calls us hence. Abraham Lincoln fulfilled a great
mission; he led the country through this glorious struggle to glorious
victory, and bequeathed to us the ideas which, when fully developed and
realized, not only will bring upon us the great blessing, “And I will make
of thee a great nation,” but will also fulfill that sacred and most
glorious promise, “And in thee all families of the earth shall be
blessed.” All families of the earth shall be blessed by freedom, as the
chain of the negro was broken; by union, peace, justice, equality, charity
and kindness. So Abraham Lincoln shall reign perpetually and have an
everlasting dominion. Therefore, “Abram departed, as the Lord had spoken
to him.”
Brethren, the lamented Abraham Lincoln believed himself to be bone
from our bone and flesh from our flesh. He supposed himself to be a
descendant of Hebrew parentage. He said so in my presence. And, indeed, he
preserved numerous features of the Hebrew race, both in countenance and
character.
He was a man of many noble virtues, which may be our heritage; and God
may forgive him his sins, and accept his soul in grace among the righteous
men of all nations, and the martyrs of every sacred cause. May the Lord
send consolation to his bereft widow and children, and heal the burning
wound of this country which his departure afflicted on her. Brethren, let
us read the funeral service for the soul of departed Abraham Lincoln.
PRAYER
O, God and father! with bleeding hearts we submit to Thy paternal
decrees, and acknowledge the justice and wisdom of Thy providence,
although our eyes are too dim to penetrate the designs of Thy paternal
goodness. Thou art God, and we are dust and ashes. Thou art the Great
Cause of all causes, the Eternal Reality, the Infinite Substance, and we
are small and perishable effects, whose life lasts but a few hours, and
whose wisdom is too insignificant to be brought in account before Thee.
Thou art the Father—the benign, merciful and gracious Father—and we are
Thy children, Thine image; we submit with childlike confidence and faith,
to the decrees of Thy holy will. O, God! turn Thy correcting hand from us,
consume us not in our sinfulness; let us behold days of joy and happiness,
as we have seen time of calamity, affliction and distress. Behold, O Lord!
this bleeding, mourning, weeping land; heal us, for we are wounded;
sustain us with Thy heavenly manna, for we are sick and woe-stricken.
Guard us, that we may see war and rebellion no more; let us behold Thy
blessing of peace. Protect us and preserve our Union, our Government, our
freedom, to the blessing of all Thy children. Shield the administrators of
our Government, inspire them with Thy wisdom, justice and goodness, that
Thy will be done on earth.
We beseech Thee, O Lord, to heal the wounds of Thy servant, William
H. Seward, and bless him with many years of prosperity and happiness. We
entreat thee, O Father, to console the widow and children of Thy deceased
servant, Abraham Lincoln. Thou art the Father of orphans and the Protector
of widows; with mercy Thou regardest the helpless and feeble ones. We pray
Thee, O Lord, to vouchsafe Thy blessing to this city, this country, and to
all lands where Thy children abide. Grant peace, justice, freedom and
truth to all the sons of man.
Blessed Father, bless this congregation; fulfill upon us Thy sacred
promise: “For if the mountains move and the hills totter, My grace shall
not be moved from thee, and the covenant of My peace shall not change,
with Thy merciful God.” Amen.
|
