Just think of it!—the sons of God!
The power to become that to as many as will receive
the present Christ.
“He chose David also His servant, and took him
away from the sheepfolds; that he might feed Jacob
His people, and Israel His inheritance. So he
fed them with a faithful and true heart, and ruled
them prudently with all his power.”—Psalm
lxxviii. 71, 72, 73.
While I speak to you to-day, the body of the President
who ruled this people, is lying, honored and loved,
in our city. It is impossible with that sacred
presence in our midst for me to stand and speak of
ordinary topics which occupy the pulpit. I must
speak of him to-day; and I therefore undertake to
do what I had intended to do at some future time,
to invite you to study with me the character of Abraham
Lincoln, the impulses of his life and the causes of
his death. I know how hard it is to do it rightly,
how impossible it is to do it worthily. But I
shall speak with confidence, because I speak to those
who love him, and whose ready love will fill out the
deficiencies in a picture which my words will weakly
try to draw.
We take it for granted, first of all, that there is
an essential connection between Mr. Lincoln’s
character and his violent and bloody death. It
is no accident, no arbitrary decree of Providence.
He lived as he did, and he died as he did, because
he was what he was. The more we see of events,
the less we come to believe in any fate or destiny
except the destiny of character. It will be our
duty, then, to see what there was in the character
of our great President that created the history of
his life, and at last produced the catastrophe of his
cruel death. After the first trembling horror,
the first outburst of indignant sorrow, has grown
calm, these are the questions which we are bound to
ask and answer.
It is not necessary for me even to sketch the biography
of Mr. Lincoln. He was born in Kentucky fifty-six
years ago, when Kentucky was a pioneer State.
He lived, as boy and man, the hard and needy life of
a backwoodsman, a farmer, a river boatman, and, finally,
by his own efforts at self-education, of an active,
respected, influential citizen, in the half-organized
and manifold interests of a new and energetic community.
From his boyhood up he lived in direct and vigorous
contact with men and things, not as in older States
and easier conditions with words and theories; and
both his moral convictions and his intellectual pinions
gathered from that contact a supreme degree of that
character by which men knew him, that character which
is the most distinctive possession of the best American
nature, that almost indescribable quality which we
call in general clearness or truth, and which appears
in the physical structure as health, in the moral constitution
as honesty, in the mental structure as sagacity, and
in the region of active life as practicalness.
