Excerpt from The Great Funeral Oration on Abraham Lincoln

O Thou that hearest prayer! Look upon us, Thy children, in this hour of deepest soul-affliction! Lord of the sunshine and the storm, God of the starry night and sunlit day, Thou who art our joy, our grief. Our all teach us to remember, in the darkness as the light, that 'tis our Father's hand that's dealing with us; our Father's footsteps leading us, through mystery and gloom, to pierce the ever brightening path of His omniscient goodness. Eighteen hundred years ago Thy best beloved meekly stood to hear the roaring multitude reject him for Barabbas. Eighteen hundred years ago and the rocking earth sustained a dying Angel on the cross of shame, while a murderer went forth free. Once more we see Thy son beloved, Thy child of light, and faithful servant, struck down beneath the hand of guilt and crime, a sacrifice to the lost and darkened souls that choose a Barabbas and reject a Jesus 0 Thou whose still small voice we wait to hear when the whirlwind of our grief sweeps by, and the tempest of our anguish is sobbed out! Teach us, as we mourn the day of Crucifixion, to turn with brightening memory to the hopes of Easter. Teach us to recollect that, if the best and purest that ever walked the earth must needs be lifted up on the cross of death, all earth might rejoice in a resurrecting Easter, so has the martyr whom we mourn this hour gone from our mortal eyes, a sign to all mankind of this dav of Resurrec tion - a bright and strong assurance for us, who so dearly loved him, that as the Master so the servant rises, and, like the blessed Nazarene, His follower in life, His prototype in death, he has joined the sons of light, the hosts of victory crowned, and wears the palm of a glorious immortality, arisen, arisen! To his Father's home, and ours.

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