Addresses by the Right Reverend Phillips BrooksBrooks, Phillips
Religion
Addresses by the Right Reverend Phillips Brooks
Brooks, Phillips
Episcopal Church -- Sermons; Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865 -- Sermons; Sermons, American
did this deed, we are putting Slavery to death. Dispersing armies and
hanging traitors, imperatively as justice and necessity may demand them
both, are not killing the spirit out of which they sprang. The traitor
must die because he has committed treason. The murderer must die because
he has committed murder. Slavery must die, because out of it, and it
alone, came forth the treason of the traitor and the murder of the
murderer. Do not say that it is dead. It is not, while its essential
spirit lives. While one man counts another man his born inferior for the
color of his skin, while both in North and South prejudices and
practices, which the law cannot touch, but which God hates, keep alive
in our people's hearts the spirit of the old iniquity, it is not dead.
The new American nature must supplant the old. We must grow like our
President, in his truth, his independence, his religion, and his wide
humanity. Then the character by which he died shall be in us, and by it
we shall live. Then peace shall come that knows no war, and law that
knows no treason; and full of his spirit a grateful land shall gather
round his grave, and in the daily psalm of prosperous and righteous
living, thank God forever for his life and death.
So let him lie here 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 paused 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 sheepfolds 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 faithful and true heart, and ruled them
prudently with all his power." The _Shepherd of the People_! that old
name that the best rulers ever craved. What ruler ever won it like this
dead President of ours? He fed us faithfully and truly. He fed us with
counsel when we were in doubt, with inspiration when we sometimes
faltered, with caution when we would be rash, with calm, clear, trustful
cheerfulness through many an hour when our hearts were dark. He fed
hungry souls all over the country with sympathy and consolation. He
spread before the whole land feasts of great duty and devotion and
patriotism, on which the land grew strong. He fed us with solemn, solid
truths. He taught us the sacredness of government, the wickedness of
treason. He made our souls glad and vigorous with the love of liberty
that was in his. He showed us how to love truth and yet be
charitable--how to hate wrong and all oppression, and yet not treasure
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