Page:An Address, Delivered in Tremont Temple.djvu/8

 back; in the assassin fingers which dabble with bloody knife at the throats of old men on sick pillows. Oh, God! let this lesson be enough! Spare us any more such costly teaching!

This deed is but the result and fair representative of the system in whose defence it was done. No matter whether it was previously approved at Richmond, or whether the assassin, if he reaches the confederates, be received with all honor, as the wretch Brooks was, and as this bloodier wretch will surely be, wherever rebels are not dumb with fear of our cannon. No matter for all this. God shows this terrible act to teach the nation, in unmistakable terms, the terrible foe with which it has to deal. But for this fiendish spirit, North and South, which holds up the rebellion, the assassin had never either wished or dared such a deed. This lurid flash only shows us how black and wide the cloud from which it sprung.

And what of him in whose precious blood this momentous lesson is writ? He sleeps in the blessings of the poor, whose fetters God commissioned him to break. Give prayers and tears to the desolate widow and the fatherless, but count him blessed far above the crowd of his fellowmen. (Fervent cries of "Amen!") He was permitted himself to deal the last staggering blow which sent rebellion reeling to its grave; and then, holding his darling boy by the hand, to walk the streets of its surrendered capital, while his ears drank in praise and thanksgiving which bore his name to the throne of God in every form piety and gratitude could invent, and finally to seal the sure triumph of the cause he loved with his own blood. He caught the first notes of the coming jubilee, and heard his own name in every one. Who among living men may not envy him? Suppose that when, a boy, he floated on the slow current of the Mississippi, idly gazing at the slave upon its banks, some angel had lifted the curtain and shown him that in the prime of his manhood he should see this proud empire rocked to its foundation in the effort to break those chains, should himself marshal the hosts of the Almighty in the grandest and holiest war that Christendom ever knew, and deal, with half-reluctant hand, that thunderbolt of justice which would smite the foul system to the dust—then die, leaving a name immortal in the sturdy pride of one race and the undying gratitude of another—would any credulity, however sanguine, any enthusiasm, however fervid, have enabled him to believe it? Fortunate man! He has lived to do it! (Applause.) God has