I do not purpose to discuss faith in its dogmatic sense today.

Mr. Lincoln's elevation shows that in America every station in life may be honorable; that there is no barrier against the humblest; but that merit, wherever it exists, has the opportunity to be known.

Angels are spirits, flames of fire; they are higher than man, they have wider connections.

Man wants to be reconciled to God; wants to know that the past is forgiven.

The realm of immediate or personal knowledge is a narrow circle in which these bodies move; the realm of knowledge derived through faith is as wide as the universe, and old as eternity.

We know the past and its great events, the present in its multitudinous complications, chiefly through faith in the testimony of others.

Nor was it only from the millions of slaves that chains had been removed; the whole nation had been in bondage; free speech had been suppressed.