Excerpt from Masterful Tributes to the Memory of President Lincoln: And the Volunteer Soldier

A generation ago - forty-two years - and within hail of the place where this great audience is assembled, Abraham Lincoln, by the hand of an insane murderer, was lifted from the ranks of strife to the place of eternal peace. For him to die was gain; he was at the end of a great strife where hard Fate had made him the nation's leader. He was saved by that death from all the perplexities and troubles of an unchartered future, all the experi ments and all the failures interfering with a fame absolutely secure by human standards. He passed from the heights of vic tory, hardly upward, but rather onward to the place of glory. And it is well that here where he fell, by the capitol of the nation. That this assemblage, gathered from all the land and from everv degree of Citizenship. Should meet and mingle their sacred recol Iections and praises before the fame of a foremost American. And it is well that the anniversary should have fallen on this day. Ordinarily held sacred to the worship of the Lord. God of Hosts. Our services in memory of Lincoln on this day can neither set the pulse of animosity anywhere beating in an American breast. Nor can it be anything but acceptable on this day: for over and Over again during that tumultuous time. When the sun was hidden in the American heaven. And all the passions from the nether world seemed loosed upon the surface of our sorrowing earth. And when the tears of a mighty people fell ceaselessly for the brave and the true. And when it seemed as though Providence had deserted the cause, then the voice of this untutored woodsman rings through the land, calling the people again and again to the worship and tothanksgiving to the God and the Father. And in the wreck and welter of war, when olden institutions seemed to be lost to sight, his was the voice that said to the thunder Of guns and the Shout ings of captains, 'on the day of the Lord, ye shall be still. And from Moses until now no man has so strongly spoken for the Sab bath as Lincoln when he ordered that cessation Of strife Should, whenever possible, occur on that day. And do you doubt, my fel low-citizens, that in through the ranks of the armies, those of the gray as well as those of the blue, that this reverence of the Great President for the sacred hour Of Childhood's recollections had a mighty influence? So it is well that on the Sabbath, forty two years from the time when he laid down his burden, °that a great, reunited people should honor his memory. But my duty is not to address you, but simply to guide your meeting. Those who are to come after me will tell you of this wondrous light. In be half Of these, my comrades, I welcome you to this great and. I hope, holy occasion.

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