THE LESSON OF THE HOUR.
and deadly aim was the representative and instrument of the people, who had given the least cause for the assault. If such a deed had been perpetrated under a despotism, during the dark ages, we might not have wondered. But that it should have occurred here, in this nineteenth century after Christ, in this enlightened land, under the most liberal form of government, at the hand of one intelligent, refined apparently, and even accomplished, proves the iniquity which man may commit, and the inadequacy of mere culture to prevent it. Education, indeed, only enables the criminal to be more artful and more successful. The arch-fiend himself has consummate power and intellect. It is the moral sentiments alone that control the will and the life. As man may rise in the scale till he reach the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ, so he may sink till he approximates the devils. The character of Judas is now less difficult to understand. He was only a betrayer, not a murderer. Here, however, was a parricide as well as a traitor.
"Murder most foul, as in the best it is;
But this most foul, strange, and unnatural."
It was an attempt at the life of the nation in the person of its Chief Magistrate. On the very day upon which our flag was replaced at Sumter as the symbol of the national authority, the head of the nation was struck down in Washington. It is a matter of humiliation as well as sorrow for us as a people. Those who hold their power by force against the will of their subjects now seem to say to us, "Art thou also become weak as we? Art thou become like unto us?" We never believed it possible that the spirit of assassination could exist among us, since we publicly declared, that rulers derive all their authority from the consent of the governed. We can hardly hear with patience of the deification of human nature; that men are all embryo saints; that sin is only stumbling, necessary to man's development, and deserving only of pity, but not of punishment. As this war has for ever silenced the advocates of peace, so let us hope that we shall hear no more of views which represent the criminal as merely
