own views and purposes. I have my convictions of duty, and my notions of what is right to be done. But I am conscious every moment that all I am and all I have is subject to the control of a Higher Power, and that Power can use me or not use me in any manner, and at any time, as in His wisdom and might may be pleasing to Him. Nevertheless I am not a fatalist. I believe in the supremacy of the human conscience, and that men are responsible beings; that God has a right to hold them, and will hold them, to a strict personal account for the deeds done in the body."

His pastor, Dr. Gurley, said that the reports as to the infidelity of Mr. Lincoln could not have been true of him while at Washington, because he had frequent conversations with the President on these subjects, and knew him to be in accord with the fundamental principles of the Christian religion. He further declared that, in the latter days of his chastened life, after the death of his son Willie, and his visit to the battle field of Gettysburg, he said, with tears in his eyes, that he had lost confidence in everything but God, that he believed his heart was changed, that he loved the Saviour, and that if he was not deceived in himself, it was his intention soon to make a profession of religion.

I cannot more fittingly close this address than by quoting a portion of the remarks made by the late Secretary of State, Hon. John Hay, as he stood beside President Roosevelt in the Lincoln pew in the New York Avenue Presbyterian church at Washington, on the one hundredth anniversary of that church, November 16, 1903:

"Whatever is remembered or whatever lost, we ought never to forget that Abraham Lincoln, one of the mightiest masters of statecraft that history has known, was also one of the most devoted and faithful servants of Almighty God who has ever sat in the high places of the world. From that dim and chilly dawn, when, standing on a railway platform in Springfield, half veiled by falling snowflakes, from the crowd of friends and neighbors who had gathered to wish him Godspeed on his momentous journey, he acknowledged his dependence on God, and asked for their prayers, to that sorrowful yet triumphant hour when he went to his account, he repeated over and over in every form of speech, his faith and trust in that Almighty Power who rules the fate of men and nations I will ask you to listen to a few sentences in which Mr. Lincoln admits us into the most secret recesses of his soul. It is a meditation written in September 1862. Perplexed and afflicted beyond the power of human help, by the disasters of war, the wrang

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ling of parties, and the inexorable and constraining logic of his own mind, he shut out the world one day, and tried to put into form his double sense of responsibility to human duty and Divine power; and this was the result. It shows awful sincerity of a perfectly honest soul trying to bring itself into closer communion with his Maker.

"The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be and one must be wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party; and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect His purpose. I am almost ready to say that this is probably true; that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By His mere great power on the minds of the now contestants, He could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began, and having begun, He could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds."

AT THE COURT HOUSE

Early in the morning the veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic, Stephenson Post No. 30, planted an elm tree in the court house square dedicated to the memory of Lincoln which they named, "The Lincoln Grand Army Elm."

At 9 a. m. exercises under the auspices of the Society of the Sons of the American Revolution were held, at the court house, for the dedication of a bronze tablet to mark the site of Mr. Lincoln's first law office in Springfield. The leading features of this meeting were the addresses of Judges Cartwright and Creighton, which follow, together with introductory remarks of Col. Charles F. Mills, who presided at the meeting. The tablet referred to is inscribed as follows: