hich we admire and the death which we lament to-day. He
was called in that character to that life and death. It was just the
nature, as you see, which a new nation such as ours ought to produce.
All the conditions of his birth, his youth, his manhood, which made
him what he was, were not irregular and exceptional, but were the
normal conditions of a new and simple country. His pioneer home in
Indiana was a type of the pioneer land in which he lived. If ever
there was a man who was a part of the time and country he lived in,
this was he. The same simple respect for labor won in the school of
work and incorporated into blood and muscle; the same unassuming
loyalty to the simple virtues of temperance and industry and
integrity; the same sagacious judgment which had learned to be
quick-eyed and quick-brained in the constant presence of emergency;
the same direct and clear thought about things, social, political and
religious, that was in him supremely, was in the people he was sent to
rule. Surely, with such a type-man for ruler, there would seem to be
but a smooth and even road over which he might lead the people whose
character he represented into the new region of national happiness,
and comfort, and usefulness, for which that character had been
designed.

The cause that Abraham Lincoln died for shall grow stronger by his
death, stronger and sterner. Stronger to set its pillars deep into the
structure of our Nation's life; sterner to execute the justice of the
Lord upon his enemies. Stronger to spread its arms and grasp our whole
land into freedom; sterner to sweep the last poor ghost of slavery out
of our haunted homes.

So let him lie there in our midst to-day and let our people go and
bend with solemn thoughtfulness and look upon his face and read the
lessons of his burial. As he passed here on his journey from the
Western home and told us what, by the help of God, he meant to do, so
let him pause upon his way back to his Western grave and tell us, with
a silence more eloquent than words, how bravely, how truly, by the
strength of God, he did it. God brought him up as He brought David up
from the sheep-folds to feed Jacob, His people, and Israel, His
inheritance. He came up in earnestness and faith, and he goes back in
triumph. As he pauses here to-day, and from his cold lips bids us bear
witness how he has met the duty that was laid on him, what can we say
out of our full hearts but this:--"He fed them with a faith