The murder of this loving savior of our Union was a disastrous blow, not to the victorious North alone, but to the vanquished South as well. Could he have lived, the balm of his great, kindly nature would have quickly healed the nation's wounds. At the commencement of the conflict, in pleading tones, he said: "We are not enemies, but friends." And at its close, notwithstanding all the cruel, bitter anguish he had endured during those four long years of fratricidal strife, "With malice toward none, with charity for all," he died, and many a brave Confederate deplored The deep damnation of his taking off. When Stonewall Jackson died, he paid a touching tribute to his gallantry, and said: "Let us forget his errors over his fresh-made grave." in the darkness of night, on a bloody field of the Peninsula, he bent beside the prostrate form of a dying soldier of the South, and while the hot tears rolled down his furrowed cheeks, soothed him with words of tender-est sympathy, and, by the dim rays of a lantern, took down from his lips a message to his mother, and sent it by a flag of truce into the enemies' lines to be transmitted to his home. Glorious apostle of humanity! When shall we look upon his like again? so honest, so truthful, so just, so charitable, so loving, so merciful! Law was his God, justice his creed, and liberty his heaven. If he sinned, mercy prompted him. In the presence of such a man, and in the presence of such a religion, how contemptible your puny theologians and their narrow creeds appear! Born in the cabin of a Western wild, dying in a nation's capital, its honored chief, enshrined in the hearts of an admiring world, Abraham Lincoln stands to-day the gentlest, purest, noblest character in human history. Millenniums may pass away, unnumbered generations come and go, creeds rise and fall; but the divine faith of Freedom's martyr--a faith based upon immutable law, eternal justice, universal liberty--a faith formulated not in perishable words, but in immortal deeds, will live through all the years to come, a torch of hope to every son of toil.