Excerpt from The Sorrow of a Nation: A Sermon Preached in the College Chapel at Princeton, N. J., Sunday, September 25, 1881 William the Silent knew but few moments of agony after the bullets of Balthazar Gerard had entered his body. The second stab thrust by Francis Ravaillac into the heart of Henry IV. Of France. The most gal lant and loving heart of Christendom, and the king fell back dead. The aim of Booth, more deadly and more merciful than that of his successor, soon ended the life of President Lincoln. Dynamite in the hands of an accursed Nihilism mangles horribly the body, but soon releases the suffering soul of Alexander, Czar of Russia. But we turn our thoughts to eighty days of heroic suffering at Washington and Long Branch, to eighty days of fluctuating hope, when some times our fears belied our hopes and our hopes in turn belied our fears, day by day the sorrow of the nation growing, struggling for relief in prayers to God offered on all altars, till the anguish on the heart of the whole people swelled like the waves of the sea. There is something majestic in a great sorrow. The woes of communities devastated by fire, or famine, orpestilence, the grief of whole churches when their pil lars have fallen, the strong staff and the beautiful rod broken - these appeal to the deepest emotions of our natures. They send a bush out upon the storms of life. But I think it may be safely said that the sorrow which to-day broods over the land is unique in history. Not only for the numbers that feel it, though they are fifty millions of people, but for the character, the spe cial quality of the grief, is this sorrow a spectacle of deep moral meaning and grandeur. The voice of our land to-day to all the world is the majestic plaint of Constance. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.