THE RELIGIOUS CHARACTER OF PRESIDENT
LINCOLN.

[The following is taken from the funeral address delivered on the occasion of the obsequies of President Lincoln, April 19th, 1866, by the Rev. P. D. Gurley, D. D., who was pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Washington, which Mr. Lincoln attended.]

PROBABLY no man since the days of Washington was ever so deeply enshrined in the hearts of the American people as Abraham Lincoln. Nor was it a mistaken confidence and love. He deserved it all. He deserved it by his character, by the whole tenor, tone, and spirit of his life. He was simple, sincere, plain, honest, truthful, just, benevolent and kind. His perceptions were quick and clear, his judgments calm and accurate, purposes good and pure beyond all question. Always and everywhere he aimed both to be right and to do right. His integrity was all-prevading, all-controlling, and incorruptible. As the chief magistrate of a great and inperilled people, he rose to the dignity and momentousness of the occasion. He saw his duty, and he determined to do his whole duty, seeking the guidance and leaning upon the arm of Him of whom it is written, "He giveth power to the faint, and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.”

I speak what I know when I affirm that His guidance was the prop on which he humbly and habitually leaned. It was the best hope he had for himself and his country. When he was leaving his home in Illinois, and coming to this city to take his seat in the executive chair of a disturbed and troubled nation, he said to the old and tried friends who gathered tearfully around him and bade him farewell, “I leave you with this request,-pray for me.' They did pray for him, and millions of others prayed for him. Nor did they pray in vain. Their prayers were heard. The answer shines forth with a heavenly radiance in the whole course and tenor of his administration, from its commencement to its close.

RELIGIOUS CHARACTER OF LINCOLN.

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God raised him up for a great and glorious mission. He furnished him for his work and aided him in its accomplishment. He gave him strength of mind, honesty of heart, and purity and pertinacity of purpose. In addition to these He gave him also a calm and abiding confidence in an overruling Providence, and in the ultimate triumph of truth and righteousness through the power and blessing of God. This confidence strengthened him in his hours of anxiety and toil, and inspired him with a calm and cheerful hope when others were despondent.

Never shall I forget the emphasis and the deep emotion with which, in this very room he said to a company of clergymen, who had called to pay him their respects, in the darkest hour of our civil conflict, "Gentlemen, my hope of success in this great and terrible struggle rests on that immutable foundation, the justice and goodness of God. Even now, when the events seem most threatening, and the prospects dark, I still hope that in some way which man cannot see, all will be well in the end, and that as our cause is just, God is on our side."

Such was his sublime and holy faith. It was an anchor to his soul both sure and steadfast. It made him firm and strong. It emboldened him in the rugged and perilous pathway of duty. It made him valiant for the right, for the cause of God and humanity. It held him in steady, patient, and unswerving adherence to a policy which he thought, and which we all now think, both God and humanity required him to adopt.

We admired his child-like simplicity, his freedom from guile and deceit, his staunch and sterling integrity, his kind and forgiving temper, and his persistent, self-sacrificing devotion to all the duties of his eminent position. We admired his readiness to hear and consider the cause of the poor, the humble, the suffering, and the oppressed, and his readiness to spend and be spent for the attainment of that great triumph, the blessed fruits of which shall be as wide spreading as the earth, and as enduring as the sun.

All these things commanded the admiration of the world, and stamped upon his life and character the unmistakable impress of true greatness. More sublime than all these, more holy and beautiful, was his abiding confidence in God, and in the final triumph of truth and righteousness through him and for his sake. The friends of liberty and the Union will repair to his consecrated grave, through ages yet to come, to pronounce the memory of its occupant blessed, and to gather from his ashes and the rehearsal of his virtues fresh incentives to patriotism, and there renew their vows of fidelity to their country and their God.

THE RAVEN.

EDGAR A. POE.

ONCE upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,-
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visitor," I mutter'd, "tapping at my chamber door.
Only this, and nothing more."

Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December,

And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow-sorrow for the lost Lenore-
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore-
Nameless here forever more.

And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purp'e curtain,
Thrill'd me-fill'd me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to stil the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,
"'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door,—
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;
That it is, and nothing more.”

Presently my soul grew stronger: hesitating then no longer,
"Sir," said I," or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is, I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you "-here I open'd wide the door
Darkness there, and nothing more.

;

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing,

Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whisper'd word" Lenore!
This I whisper'd, and an echo murmur'd back the word "Lenore! "
Merely this, and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning, Soon again I heard a tapping, something louder than before. 'Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window-lattice; Let me see then what there at is, and this mystery explore,Let my heart be still a moment, and this mystery explore ;'Tis the wind, and nothing more."

Open then I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepp'd a stately raven of the saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not an instant stopp'd or stay'd

he;

But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door,— Perch'd upon a bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door,— Perch'd, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,

"C

Though thy crest be shorne and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure

no craven;

Ghastly, grim, and ancient raven, wandering from the nightly shore, Tell me what thy lordly name is on the night's Plutonian shore ? " Quoth the raven, "Nevermore ! "

Much I marvel'd this ungainly fowl to here discourse so plainly, Though its answer little meaning-little relevancy bore;

For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was bless'd with seeing bird above his chamber door,
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as Nevermore!"

"C

But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he utter'd-not a feather then he flutter'd-
Till I scarcely more than mutter'd, "Other friends have flown
before-

On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before."
Then the bird said, "Nevermo.e!"

Startled at the stiilness, broken by reply so aptly spoken,
"Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master, whom unmerciful disaster
Follow'd fast an followed faster, till his song one burden bore,—
Till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore,
Of "Nevermore-nevermore !"

But the raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,
Straight I wheel'd a cushion'd seat in front of bird, and bust, and
door,

Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore—
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking "Nevermore!"

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er,
But whose velvet violet lining, with the lamp-light gloating o'er,
She shall press-ah! nevermore!

Then methought the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen

censer,

Swung by seraphim, whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.