he retired to the shades of Mt. Vernon, to be, as he had been through
life, the helper of the helpless, the friend of the needy and the
almoner of God. On the 12th of December, 1799, he was exposed to a
storm of sleet and rain, the severest form of quinsy set in; two days
later, the 14th of December, he died. As friends stood weeping around
his death-bed, he said with a smile, "O don't, don't; I am dying, but
thank God I am not afraid to die." As the hour of his death drew near
he asked to be left alone. They all went out and left him with God.
There are lessons for our hearts to-day. Government is a delegated
trust from God, who alone has the right to govern. He gives to every
nation the right to say in what form this trust shall be clothed. No
man has the right to be his brother's master. Take away the truth that
government is a trust which comes from God, and you have left nothing
between man and man but cunning and brute force. Burke said, "this
sacred trust of government does not arise from our conventions and
compacts," but it gives our conventions and compacts all the force and
sanction which they have. I shall be told that the name of God is not
found in the Constitution of the United States; it did not need to be
when it was written on the people's hearts.

While we commemorate the noble deeds of our fathers, which under God
were this day crowned with success, we gratefully remember that our
fathers' God has guided us through all dangers. What other nation has
come out of the horrors of civil war with victors and vanquished vieing
with each other in love for one common country? Where has the hand of
the assassin bowed the whole people by the leader's grave? This is no
day for boasting or to call over the roll of our great dead.

We have sinned deeply, and deeply have we paid the penalty. No hand but
God's could have over-ruled our mistakes and given us our favored