eepfolds;
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 alm