“How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle! O, Jonathan ! thou wast slain in thy high places.” Such was the lament of David and Israel over the brave and generous Jonathan, slain in the high places of the field, in defence of his country and people, against their hereditary foes: and such is now a nation's lament over a greater than Jonathan the son of Saul. With a stricken heart, and bitter tears, this whole people bow in grief, and as one man, are ready to utter the touching words of David over his friend: “ We are distressed for thee: very pleasant hast thou been unto us: thy love to us was wonderful, passing the love of women. How are the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war perished! ”

Our beloved JACKSON was slain emphatically in his high places; in the high places of his God's and his country's service, in the very zenith of his fame and usefulness. Few men in our world have ever attained to greater eminence: none to purer. The nation accorded to him its entire confidence; it rung with his praise, and its whole heart thrilled with true affection for him. Our enemies at once feared and honored him. His praise is heard in distant lands. Envy had to gnash her teeth in silence, for in the universal enthusiasm, she dared not speak. The Church of Christ praised God continually for such a burning and a shining light, and multitudes of souls, especially in our army, high officers and privates, will rejoice eternally in that light.

This eminence was not the result of brilliant and towering genius, or of a chance combination of favorable circumcumstances. His whole history shows a combination of circumstances against it, such as is not often overcome. Success was in his case extorted, compelled from unwilling and adverse events, and in spite of difficulties that at first sight might have been regarded as insuperable. A brief sketch of his life will show this, and will best prepare the way for the important truth wrapped up in all that life, and blazing forth in all his character, that it was God who made him great, by making him holy.

Lieut. Gen. THOMAS J. JACKSON was born in Clarksburg, Harrison county, Virginia, in January, 1824.* * For most of the interesting facts in this sketch I am indebted to a connection of his, a valued friend, who for years was in daily and familiar intercourse with him. His ancestors were from England. Some military taste and talent appears to have been inherent in the family. His own father was a successful lawyer, and at one time, a man of considerable property, but by suretyship for others lost it all, and died leaving three children only, one of whom, a daughter, is now living. THOMAS, at his father's death, was only three years old. About six years after, his mother died in the triumphs of christian faith and hope. Her memory was always very precious. Do we not see here the first of that chain of influences that made him what he was? Who can ever tell the power of that mother's example and prayers?

Thus, bereft of his father and his mother, the Lord took him up. He found homes among his relatives; especially his uncles. His early education was irregular, and necessarily imperfect, until he entered the West Point Military Academy. There he manifested the same traits of quiet indomitable perseverance and singleness of purpose that afterwards so distinguished him, and that then went very far to make up for his very imperfect preparation. From the Academy he at once entered the service of his country in the Mexican war. By his promptitude, bravery and coolness, he there highly distinguished himself. It was during this campaign, or while quartered in the halls of the Montezumas—as we are assured he literally was—that he first seems to have become impressed with a sense of the importance of personal religion, partly, at least, through intercourse with the pious Colonel of his battalion. With the same prompt energy, and thoroughness, and zeal, that he always manifested in whatever he regarded as present duty, he resolved to examine the whole subject of religion in its personal claims, and its system of truth. Being satisfied that the Bible was from God, the great question was, where and by whom, was its truth most fully and purely held? Determined to take nothing for granted, or at second hand, he at once availed himself of what seemed to him the rare opportunity there afforded of examining the Roman Catholic religion, by waiting on the Archbishop of Mexico, with whom he had frequent interviews, extending through some months, I think, during which he was taken in order over the main parts of their whole system, and propounded his own difflculties. These last could not be resolved to his satisfaction, and the result was a firm conviction that this, at least, was not the Bible system. With the same impartial zeal and love of truth, and disregard to mere human authority, did he pursue this search for some years before his mind became satisfied. Gen. JACKSON was therefore the farthest possible remove from being a bigot. His views of each denomination were obtained from itself, not from its opponents. Hence he could see excellencies in each. Even of Popery he had a much more favorable impression than most Protestants, and it would be well for the Church of Christ, and would greatly tend to promote fraternal feeling and kill bigotry, if we would all, in our search for truth, gather our views of others, not from their opponents alone, but from the best and wisest of themselves, as JACKSON did.

After his return from Mexico, and being quartered for a time in South Carolina, Florida, and New York, his health became so shattered as to nearly unfit him for any active duty. It was at this time, and while endeavoring to regain his health, that he was elected to the Professorship of Applied Mathematics in the Virginia Military Institute. In his very entrance on that work with very feeble health, and eyes that totally forbade his using them at all by night, he exhibited that same quiet energy of will and mental discipline that afterward contributed so greatly to his success in the field. Running rapidly over many pages of mathematical reasonings before night, he would, as we learn from members of the family who knew his habits well, after dark, without book or help, holding the complicated materials before his mind, examine, analyze and thoroughly master the demonstrations.

There he first entered into full connection with the church. From that time, the harmony and force of his character became still more apparent. With him, to know his duty and to do it, were the same thing. Humble and retiring almost to a fault, he would never shrink from any duty, whatever sacrifice of feeling it might cost him. A striking instance of this I had from his own lips, when speaking of the trial it cost him to speak before an audience. Being on a visit to his sister, where were residing a number of professed infidels, and where there was but little religious influence, the thought occurred to him that, being a military man, they might be willing to listen to something from him, more favorably than from others, though it might be much inferior. And he at once resolved to prepare and deliver a few lectures on the evidences of Christianity, which. he did; though the delivery, he said, was one of the greatest trials he ever had. Where, among a thousand, is there another of like temperament who would not, at once, have excused himself from such an obligation? He formed a class of young men for instruction in the evidences of christainity; and for years he superintended with great zeal and efficiency a Sabbath school for the instruction of the colored people of Lexington, the beneficial example of which has been widely felt. Liberal to the full extent of his means, God prospered him according to his promise, that “the liberal soul shall be made fat.”

When he entered the army at the beginning of the war, he did it in obedience to the call of his God, as well as of his country. Hence, no love of ease, of friends, of home, or domestic joys, could induce one moments relaxation of energy in the single line of his duty. He never, during the two years of his service, left the camp—never saw his home and for thirteen months at a time was separated from his beloved wife. Of his military life and exploits, this is not the place or the time to speak; the country and the world knows them and they will yet appear, doubtless, in fitting narrative. But his deep interest in the spiritual welfare of his army, deserves here special notice. Who does not know that this was an object for which he labored most assiduously and during the last year, especially with great success? Busy as he was with personal attention to every thing connected with the efficiency of his army, both at rest and in motion, he always found time to attend to this. He devised and suggested a great comprehensive plan for the organization of the chaplaincy system, which is now being carried into effect with prospects of great success. To his pastor, Dr. White, he wrote a long letter on this subject, which would itself be a most noble portrait of his religious character All his letters showed how full his heart was of this matter, and all seemed to be written from the very precincts of the throne.

In a letter received from him, only about a month before his death, he thus speaks: “Whilst as Christians we must all have trials, yet we have the precious assurance that they work out for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.If you had the physical strength, I would be greatly gratified to see you in the army. It appears to me that I have never seen such a field for Christian effort. I am greatly gratified at having Mr. B. T. Lacy with the army. His labors, I trust, will be greatly blessed. So far, great encouragement has attended them. I am much obliged to you for your prayers, and beg that I may still have an interest in them. It is to God that we must look for peace, and for its enjoyment when it is bestowed.” But the following extract from a letter to his pastor, the substance of which the latter read at his funeral, has special interest as showing his moral greatness. “The death of your noble son* *Capt. Hugh A. White, who fell in the second battle of Manassas. and my much esteemed friend, Hugh, must have been a severe blow to you, yet we have the sweet assurance that, whilst we mourn his loss to the country, to the church, and to ourselves, all has been gain to him. ‘Eye hath not seen, nor heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for those that love him.’ That inconceivable glory to which we are looking forward is already his. I greatly desire in the army such officers as he was.When in the Valley there was much religious interest among my troops, and I trust that it has not died out. It appears to me that we should look for a great work of grace among our troops, officers and privates, for our army has been made the subject of prayer by all denominations of Christians in the Confederacy.

I am very grateful for your prayers and the prayers of other Christian friends. Continue to pray for me. I wish I could be with you in the church and lecture room, whenever our people meet to worship God.

Let us work and pray that our people may be that nation whose God is the Lord. It is delightful to see the Congressional Committee report so strongly against Sabbath mails. I trust that you will write to every member of Congress with whom you have any influence, and do all you can to procure the adoption of the report. And please request those with whom you correspond (when expedient) to do the same. I believe that God will bless us with success if Christians but do their duty. For near fifteen years Sabbath mails have been through God's blessing avoided by me, and I am thankful to say that in no instance has there been occasion for regret, but on the contrary God has made it a source of pure enjoyment to me.”

On this subject of Sabbath mails he felt very deeply, as he did on everything affecting the favor or the frown of God upon our country. Just before his last battle, he wrote a long letter on this subject, perhaps the very last he ever penned, to his connection, Col. Preston, who was a commissioner to the General Assembly, requesting him to secure some appropriate action from that body in favor of their abolishment. His heart seemed thus to be so full of deep interest for the spiritual good of the army, and the advancement of the church's interest, and her enterprises, as if it were the one and the only thing to which his energies were devoted; and yet the country and the world and especially the army know that the minutest military duty or interest was never by him neglected or postponed.

The sad circumstances of his wounding, his sickness and death, are well known and need not here be repeated. A perfect knowledge of all the facts will, we are very sure, remove all suspicion of imprudence or rashness from the movement which led to his wounding, and will show it to have been an event which no human skill or foresight could probably have prevented in the case of one whose fixed principle it was, we believe, to see with his own eyes whatever was necessary to the disposition of his troops in battle, and whose success was doubtless greatly owing to this fact. You have heard how looking at his stump and wounded hand, he said, “I would not be without these wounds now, even if I could. God has sent them upon me for some good purpose. I regard them as one of the greatest blessings of my life.” With what true christian submission and heroism he received the announcement that he had but a few more hours to live, answering, “Very good, very good, I will be an infinite gainer, to be translated.” When his little child, which had been baptised in the camp only a few weeks before, was brought in—he exclaimed, with all the fullness of a father's heart—“my darling child!” and having attempted to amuse it with his crippled hand for a few moments, he commended it to God. His wife asked him, are you perfectly willing that God should do with you just as he pleases? With characteristic simplicity and decision both of language and tone, he replied, “I prefer it, I prefer it.”

Such a death was a fitting close to such a life. It was emphatically a translation from the high places of his earthly fame, to the infinitely higher places of heavenly glory. To the church, and the country in this hour of our peril, his loss seems irreparable. But the God that raised him up, can raise up others in his place,—his resources are not exhausted,—and what is more, can make that life now ended a greater blessing, a mightier power for good than ever before. This will be so if he only makes it a means of impressing on the heart of this whole people the truth, of which it was such a brilliant illustration,—that holiness is power, and it alone secures true eminence.

Our text which is but a statement of this truth, is a concentration of Gen. JACKSON'S whole history. It is his life and his character, his fame and its secret source, all in a single sentence. It declares the secret of his great eminence. God set him on high, because he honored God. This whole Psalm beautifully and strikingly applies to him. It describes the Divine protection and honor of the man that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High, that says of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress : my God, in him will I trust. It is of him that God here says, “I will set him on high, because he hath known my name.” To know the name of God is to recognize his true character, and to love, serve and trust him accordingly. It is but another expression for true godliness or holiness. The text is, therefore, but the declaration of God's purpose to honor those who honor him : “I will set him on high—I will make him safe and great because he hath regarded not his own name and glory, but mine. Or in the language of the immediate context,—“Because he hath set his love upon me therefore will I deliver him. He shall call upon me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him.” The same purpose he elsewhere thus expresses. “Them that honor me I will honor, and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed.” “If any man serve me,” says Christ, “him will my Father honor.”

To this as a general truth some will be disposed to demur, and to say that religion does not always secure eminence; that cases like this are exceptions to the general rule,—that so far from the fear of God elevating men in view of the world it has the opposite, object, inasmuch as men do not love but hate holiness, and religion prevents men from using the means necessary to secure earthly honors; indeed, that it is inconsistent with entering upon the eager strife and contention made necessary by the rivalry they awaken. Much of this is doubtless true. In the arena where worldly honors are the prize, the man of God may not and will not descend. For him they have no charms. He knows their emptiness. To him they are the veriest baubles. And no man ever held them in more utter contempt than JACKSON did. These are not the high places to which the man of God aspires, and in which God has here promised to put him. To be elevated to them alone is no real eminence. When properly understood there is no exception to the principle of the text that the fear of God alone can raise any man to the highest eminence of which he is capable.

1. To make this clear consider first what true greatness real eminence, is. It is not mere worldly honor, or high place, or great power. To attain these, indeed, needs no religion, they are, when taken apart from moral excellence, the rewards with which the devil has always lured his willing victims to the giddy heights of their own ruin. As he tempted our Saviour, so he tempts men still ; pointing to the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them, he says, “All these will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.” The devil has his high places, which however similar they may sometimes be in appearance, are as different from the real eminence to which holiness exalts, as darkness is from light, as the height of the gallows is from that of the throne. The great ones of this world have by their fame and their glory only been pilloried on high to the pitying or contemptuous gaze of all succeeding generations of the wise and good. So it has been with almost all who have filled the thrones of earth, with all indeed except where moral worth has been eminent. So with a Byron in the loftiest flights of poetic genius; with a Laplace in the sublime researches of the astronomer; with an Alexander and a Napoleon in the highest and widest sweep of military achievements. Men may and they will wonder at their genius, their vast acquirements, their power and deeds of daring, but where is the wise and good man, the enlightened lover of his race, who does not lament over the shameful prostitution of all this talent, learning and power to the purposes of a low and selfish ambition; and regard them as brilliant wrecks strewed all along the shores of time as beacons to future generations? If mere intellectual superiority or artistic skill, or indomitable energy and vast power could raise its possessor on high, then has the devil attained an eminence that none of the sons of men may hope to reach.

True eminence is inseparable from holiness. In this consists especially the glory of God: without it all his other attributes would be objects of horror and dread just in proportion to their infinite greatness. Although it is true that men hate holiness naturally, when its claims are urged upon their hearts filled with fleshly and worldly lusts, or when it shines so near and so brightly upon them as to disclose their own moral deformity, yet it is also true that God has so created us that we are irresistibly impressed with the feeling of its infinite excellence, and compelled to conscious veneration for it. Did not the proud and envious Pharisees even when they sought to slay Jesus, feel and shrink in shame from the dazzling brightness of his unspotted holiness? You may gather round your name all the glory that genius, learning, skill, or military prowess can impart, yet if this one grand element of moral excellence be not there pervading and controlling and modifying all the rest, that name will only go down to posterity to carry your shame and disgrace on account of God's perverted gifts.

2. But more than this. True religion has a necessary tendency to produce those qualities that alone can fit men for the highest stations and the noblest deeds. We do not mean to assert here merely that the possession of those dispositions of heart and principles of action that constitute true religion fit a man better to fill any position in life whatever. This none will dare deny. Truly to fear God must produce an elevation of character, a purity of motive, a superiority to temptation, a sense of accountability, a submission to lawful authority, that cannot but make men better, whether as servants or masters, citizens, soldiers, generals or rulers. But in addition to this it tends to develop to the highest degree those other mental qualities necessary to fill most completely the highest offices and to meet the most responsible trusts. What greater obstacle is there to the full development of intellectual power, vigorous thought, close reasoning, and clear and bold and lofty conception than the workings of pride and passion and appetite, or the distractions or care, or fear, or the influence of conflicting motives, or the want of one great noble end of life? And what influence ever entered a human heart that could so effectually remove all these, and relieve the intellect from every clog, and banish every disturbing element as the fear and love of God? Again, nothing so warps the judgment as passion, impatience, fear and selfishness—and whatever else weakens the intellectual or moral force, and as nothing so completely corrects these as true holiness, nothing contributes so largely and effectually to soundness of judgment. There are natural incapacities that of course no religion can remove, but there are no capacities so feeble that true religion will not thus enlarge and invigorate and make them to accomplish far beyond what any culture could do without it. And there are no capacities so great, no genius so brilliant that true holiness—the excellence of God himself, would not have made far greater, and covered with a brighter brilliance and power. Many a man of far inferior talent has thus been set on high above the child of genius, both in intellectual power, in sound judgment and in the influence exerted. But in nothing is the elevating power of religion greater and more manifest than in the singleness of aim it secures and the concentration of all it energies on one grand end. This is the deepest secret of all high success in any pursuit. Sin disorganizes and divides; holiness unites. This is especially true of the human soul. When the soul truly knows God as its God and trusts him, when it has no will but his, and no end but to obey him, it acquires a force and vigor, a concentration of energy otherwise impossible. There is then no waste of power; every little rill of thought and feeling, and desire and hope flows into the great current of the leading purpose, and from that purpose every selfish end is excluded. There are no by-ends to divide and divert the attention and energies. Not a particle of power is lost. Fear and anxieties about the future cannot disturb it, for all that it trusts in God's hands; the possible results to itself cannot come into the account, for that too belongs to God to arrange; there are no conflicting motives and purposes as self-indulgence or ambition, for these are all set aside by the one absorbing and comprehensive end of life and rule of duty. Nothing but holiness can perfectly unite the soul, and develop its full energy. In every other case where it seems united by the overmastering force of some ruling passion, as in the case of Napoleon, by an ambition that sacrificed at its shrine every dictate of conscience and feeling of affection, there is this great element of both of weakness and shame—the moral nature is crushed, and that which ought to rule, and which ruling by the fear of God, would contribute an energy and force beyond any other single element, is not only lost, but much of the soul's true power has been used up in resisting and crushing it, and even then the disturbing voice of an overborne and abused conscience will still at times be heard causing more or less wavering and indecision. Thus, true religion, by the pure stimulus it applies to intellectual power by its removal of all those mists of self-love, passion and prejudice which becloud the judgment, and by that power which it alone possesses of producing entire singleness of aim and concentration of energy, must tend to secure to its possessor the highest eminence of which his nature capable. In the very constitution of our being God has thus secured the fulfillment of the assurance —“ I will set him on high, because he hath known my name.”

3. Still, again. To deny that holiness secures the highest eminence is to deny that a holy God governs the world. “The Lord reigneth,” and therefore all who do sincerely and wholly serve him, who make his will their only law and his glory their great end, must fall in with the line of his designs and providences, and secure his favor and blessing.” For promotion cometh neither from the east nor from the west, nor from the south. But God is the judge; he putteth down one and setteth up another.” The reason why so many of his people are visited with disappointment and grievous failure in their plans; why instead of attaining eminence in character, reputation, and influence, they are kept in obscurity and visited with shame and confusion, is that their knowledge of God, and concentration to his service is so imperfect, so marred by selfishness and worldliness that instead of their lives being radient with the beauty and power of holiness, their inconsistencies secure the contempt even of the world, and they prevent themselves from attaining the very elements of character necessary to high success; and success, even if possible, would only be their ruin, their final elevation to glory requiring the present severe and continued discipline of worldly dishonor.

Since, then, holiness is an essential element in all true greatness, all other eminence being only in the end an eminence to shame; since it is necessary to give to the intellect its full vigor, to the judgment its clearest light, and to the whole character the full force of undivided energy; since it is necessary to secure the Divine favor and the special blessing of Providence, it is evident that the true and the highest eminence cannot be attained without it, and must ever be secured by it.