n taken; you have thrown into it _all_ your living,
even all that you had, and from henceforth your house is left unto you
desolate! O ye watchers of the cross, ye waiters by the sepulchre, what
can be said to you? We could almost extinguish our own home-fires, that
seem too bright when we think of your darkness; the laugh dies on our
lip, the lamp burns dim through our tears, and we seem scarcely worthy
to speak words of comfort, lest we seem as those who mock a grief they
cannot know.

But is there no consolation? Is it nothing to have had such a treasure
to give, and to have given it freely for the noblest cause for which
ever battle was set,--for the salvation of your country, for the freedom
of all mankind? Had he died a fruitless death, in the track of common
life, blasted by fever, smitten or rent by crushing accident, then might
his most precious life seem to be as water spilled upon the ground; but
now it has been given for a cause and a purpose worthy even the anguish
of your loss and sacrifice. He has been counted worthy to be numbered
with those who stood with precious incense between the living and the
dead, that the plague which was consuming us might be stayed. The blood
of these young martyrs shall be the seed of the future church of
liberty, and from every drop shall spring up flowers of healing. O
widow! O mother! blessed among bereaved women! there remains to you a
treasure that belongs not to those who have lost in any other wise,--the
power to say, "He died for his country." In all the good that comes of
this anguish you shall have a right and share by virtue of this
sacrifice. The joy of freedmen bursting from chains, the glory of a
nation new-born, the assurance of a triumphant future for your country
and the world,--all these become yours by the purchase-money of that
precious blood.

Besides this, there are other treasures that come through sorrow, and
sorrow alone. There are celestial plants of root so long and so deep
that the land must be torn and furrowed, ploughed up from the very
foundation, before they can strike and flourish; and when we see how
God's plough is driving backward and forward and across this nation,
rending, tearing up tender shoots, and burying soft wild-flowers, we ask
ourselves, What is He going to plant?

Not the first year, nor the second, after the ground has been broken up,
does the purpose of the husbandman appear. At first we see only what is
uprooted and plough