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 458 
 
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 %\t toteful jtanifict. 
 
 A THANKSGIVING SERMON, 
 
 PREACHED IN EMMANUEL CHURCH, BALTIMORE, NOV. 24, 1864, 
 
 BY 
 
 NOAH HUNT SCHENCK, 
 
 RECTOR. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY REQUEST. 
 
 / 
 
 BALTIMORE : 
 ENTZ & BASH 
 
 1864. 
 

SERMON 
 
 Ps. iv. 5, 6 — "Offer the Sacrifices of Righteousness, and put your trust 
 in the Lord. There be many that say, Who will shew us any good? 
 Lord, lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us." 
 
 Jesus upon Olivet gave us a law which bears importantly upon 
 the text and the times. To give love for love and blessing for 
 blessing is so manifestly a profitable exchange for man, that it 
 entitles him to neither commendation nor reward. But the 
 return of good for bad to our brother, this is the temper of soul 
 which shall make us "the children of the Highest." By a parity 
 of reasoning, the giving of gratitude to God for prosperity is but 
 signing a receipt for the delivery of valuables ; an act of justice 
 not of merit. The rendering back however of thanksgiving for 
 chastening, the lifting up of praise from a heart that is charged 
 with sorrow, the kissing the hand that smites, the recognition of 
 a beneficent Providence in the hour of sternest discipline, this it 
 is which is gilded with the golden light of God's favor, — for it is 
 an exercise of that faith which works by love and is proved by 
 tribulation. 
 
 On this day, the appointed season of national thanksgiving, we 
 are once more gathered in our houses of prayer to offer the "sacri- 
 fices of righteousness" beneath dark and frowning skies. We are 
 invoked to give thanks to God even while our back is bowed and 
 smarting; under the rod of correction. It is a sublime exercise of 
 faith. Not but what there is still enjoyed by us a rich remnant of 
 blessing, but so prone are we to exact the full measure of pros- 
 perity, that we sit down in discontent when the cup is diminished 
 or temporarily withheld. Thus constituted, if faith assumes office 
 in our time of trial, we are lifted by it into upper levels and a 
 clearer light. Therefore the "sacrifices of righteousness" which 
 we offer to-day, is but the " putting our trust in the Lord." The 
 voices of untrustful repining which rise from our hearts demanding 
 " who will shew us any good," are answered by the prayers now 
 
4 
 
 going up from a thousand altars, "Lord, lift thou up the light 
 of thy countenance upon us." 
 
 The life of a nation like the life of a man, is subject to a mixed 
 dispensation of good and ill. The moral economy of our world is 
 everywhere characterized by the alternation or intermingling of 
 the conflicting elements of blessing and cursing. Though God 
 deals with nations by a different law from that with which he 
 deals with man, yet have they the same chequered record of pros- 
 perity and adversity. The former find however their compensa- 
 tions in the judgments of earth ; the latter in the published 
 decrees of the final day of account. Our nation is having the 
 same experience as others. Still history does not repeat itself. 
 New developments and new combinations are always making new 
 history. But God's method of reward and punishment is always 
 the same, and in this all nations have common experience. The 
 people of this American land have lived under the sunshine and 
 blue from the beginning until now. Prosperity, progress and 
 success have become such familiar ideas that we have vaunted 
 ourselves into a pride of power and position more offensive to 
 Heaven, than, if it were possible, to some of our trans-atlantic 
 rivals in trade and art. The popular lexicon has long ago ceased 
 to contain " impossible;" and I almost fear the popular heart 
 has eliminated from the equation of national life, the Providential 
 element, except so far as it may be necessary to the success of 
 what lias already been definitely and determinedly and finally 
 resolved. Now-a-days the statesman, the moralist, and the 
 preacher, tell us what must happen, and then assure us that 
 Providence will unquestionably bring it to pass. To this we 
 have come through a career of unexampled prosperity. Not a 
 century yet since this nation had its birth, and it stands before 
 the world a Colossus of power. To-day it is putting forth arms 
 of strength more muscular and massive than have ever been 
 bared before the world by any state. What a hot-bed growth of 
 all economical interests has been ours. Never has a nation been 
 so tried by prosperity as ours. We have achieved in a century 
 wliat England has slowly reached in a decade of centuries. But 
 on the maxim ''the greater the interest the more insecure the 
 investment," we have come to learn that rapid accumulation, in 
 national as in individual lite, is fraught with many dangers. A 
 quick depletion is but too often the consequence of such rapid 
 accretion, to say nothing of the humiliation and bitterness and 
 calamity which follow in the train oi the former. Up to the 
 
present epoch the life of this nation has been one of apparent 
 health, its history one of unexampled successes, its dispensation 
 one of continuous blessing. Let us not be so blinded by the 
 red glare of present disaster as to forget these mercies of the past. 
 Let us never forget the grateful irrigation of this broad continent 
 by the sparkling streams which have steadily flowed from the 
 springs of civil and religious liberty, opened to us in that great 
 convulsion which gave birth to our nation. Let us never forget 
 this short but sublime career in which there has been an unprece- 
 dented vitality infused, and an unexampled development afforded 
 to invention and commerce, to agriculture and trade, to manufac- 
 tures, and to art, to science and polite learning, to all the educa- 
 tional and industrial interests of the state. What a peopling of 
 vast territories ! What a diffusing of information ! What an 
 extending of the Church ! What contributing to the domestic 
 comfort and moral dignity of man ! What an expanding of spir- 
 itual privilege ! What an augmenting of national strength ! 
 What a putting forth of all the functions of a lusty life and its 
 enlarging energies, have we already recorded in the first volume 
 of our country's history. God forgive us that we have not the 
 record of a proportionably enlarged fidelity to Him, and an 
 equally rapid growth and expansion of the principles of "true and 
 undeflled religion." But now in this sudden check and solemn 
 pause of prosperity, we may readily see that the composition of both 
 our civil and religious liberty has been defective. Both have 
 needed the blood of Martyrs. 
 
 The American people have always regarded themselves legiti- 
 mate heirs to all the blessings ; by reason of the very skies above 
 them and the very soil beneath them, born heir to the citizens' 
 summum bonum. Our ancestors came here either in the possession 
 of religious liberty or to receive it. They came in the possession 
 of civil liberty, or to receive it; and when as just previous to the 
 Revolution it was threatened for the moment, they struck for 
 independence, not liberty, — for that they had before. What we 
 have not earned we do not adequately value. America inherited 
 liberty, not earned it; and therefore it has never had a just appre- 
 ciation among the people. That which is the seed of the Church 
 is the vital principle of the state, — is, under God, the agency for 
 acquiring and perpetuating the true spirit of liberty. It may 
 be that this generation shall not pass away, before — it may be 
 that this generation is already beholding the incorporation of 
 this precious element. When we have the experience of martyr- 
 
dom, we shall have the priceless martyr heritage for the nation's 
 great future. If we are now hinging upon this epoch, "let all 
 the people praise Thee God, yea let all the people praise Thee." 
 Still it is to be through the fires. Doubtless they are kindled. 
 For what intent the All-wise only knoweth. The lessons of his- 
 tory, sacred and profane, are however distinct in their teaching 
 to the present crisis, that we are passing under a different dispen- 
 sation, however short or long, in compensating contrast to our 
 earlier generations of unbroken blessing. 
 
 We are now learning in sorrow the lessons so poorly studied in 
 our joy. By weal or by woe they must be studied and must be 
 learned. And herein, moreover, is the balance of justice to the 
 aggregate sin of the race; the temporal judgments decreed and 
 visited upon the nations, foreshadowing faintly but fairly the eternal 
 judgment upon those human units of which the nations are made 
 up. To the spectator, whether Patriot or Christian, gazing upon 
 the enacted drama of our national life, the scene has shifted. 
 The jocund landscape and the sweet-piped roundelay, the freighted 
 argosies and harvest-laden wains, give place to "the sulphurous 
 canopy" and the steed-trampled plain, long lines of embattled 
 men and the frowning front of bristling bastions. Peace and 
 thrift make way for war and prodigality. Yes, the scene is 
 changed. The regime is changed. The men have changed. 
 The ideas have changed. The temper of the nation is changed. 
 All is changed save the superintending Providence of the un- 
 changing Ruler and Director of all. The pulse of the people beats 
 quicker. The common breast is heaving high with novel emo- 
 tions. The common brain is busied with daring speculation, and 
 braced with a Crusader-like determination. Now, that such 
 potent ingredients are thrown into the caldron of popular im- 
 pulse and action, — now, that the leash is loosed from the dogs of 
 war, and no longer held in hand, — now, that we are whirling 
 onward in such a swollen and angry tide, — now, that we are 
 involved in events as morally important as they are politically 
 grand and significant, what is left us but to lift up our feeble 
 hands, our hopeful hearts, and appeal to God with the cry of 
 Paul, "Who is sufficient for these things?" What is left us but 
 to "offer the sacrifices of righteousness and put our trust in the 
 Lord'^" 
 
 And can we, as on this day invited, offer these sacrifices 
 and repose this trust? Should the Son of man now coming, 
 find this faith in our Limited lot of earth? There is a theology 
 
which teaches the test of a true faith to be the willingness to 
 praise God for the vindication of His justice and truth, though 
 this vindication, of necessity, involves the individual in the woes 
 of damnation. However we may admire the eminence of that 
 faith, perched so high above the common experience, it behooves 
 us, we think, even more than we admire, to emulate it; not as in 
 this extreme and even impossible expression, but in its unques- 
 tioning and adoring spirit of resignation to Him "who doeth all 
 things well." The religion which rejoices only in the sunshine 
 is but a poor panoply for the soul that is hastening to the " dark 
 valley and shadow." That man has no honest belief in God's 
 existence or wisdom or superintendency, who cannot see Him just 
 as clearly in the dark as in the light ; nay, more, see His good- 
 ness and mercy and truth in the thickest gloom of disaster and 
 the starless midnight of despair. True faith makes its choicest 
 offerings of righteousness while standing far removed from the 
 light, far back in deepest shadow. It lays them on the raven 
 wing of night and flutters the pinions of darkness till the gifts go 
 up to God. Let us prove our faith to-day by a true sacrifice of 
 righteousness. "Out of the deep" do we call unto the Lord, but 
 let the cry go gladly upward, as the voice of those who "know in 
 whom they have believed." 
 
 But what are the sacrifices which we place upon the altar 
 and to which we invoke the attention of Jehovah. Grate- 
 ful hearts are there, our vows of service are there, our alms 
 are there, and the record of our labor in the Lord. But these 
 are the sacrifices of allegiance, not of righteousness. Trust, 
 blind and implicit, absorbing and unwavering, unquestioning 
 and unrepining trust in the Lord, — this is the chiefest of the 
 sacrifices of righteousness. Never in history was a Christ- 
 illumined laud so invoked to make this offering, never was there 
 greater need, never was there a sublimer occasion. that a live 
 coal would drop from the golden and glowing altar which flames 
 forever with the light of perfect sacrifice before the Father's 
 throne, and falling upon the nation's lips, and striking its heat 
 into the nation's heart, would kindle the one to lofty devotion and 
 warm the other to perfect trust. To-day the nation assumes an 
 attitude of formal faith. Will not the blessed God, to whom we 
 make thanksgiving and before whom we offer sacrifice, to whom 
 we look for help and favor and from whom we expect all our sup- 
 plies, will He not, by His transforming touch change our for- 
 mality to fervency; and so enable this nation to-day, as the act of 
 
8 
 
 one man, to "offer the sacrifices of righteousness" by putting "its 
 trust in the Lord?" But as in strongest contrast to our vaunted 
 self-dependency, this people is peculiarly called at this juncture to 
 put its trust in the Lord, as the sacrifice of righteousness specially 
 demanded, — so moreover, in violent contrast to the bitterness 
 which war has distilled into the common heart, is the nation 
 recalled to the duties of our human fraternity and specially 
 invoked to make offerings of reconciliation. 
 
 Next in importance to Trust, is Love as a sacrifice of righteous- 
 ness. "If we love one another God dwelleth in us." According 
 to the analogy of our soul-life, by faith the nation is to lay hold 
 upon God and by love secure his presence as a Dweller in 
 its midst. Before then we approach the altar with our thank- 
 offering to-day, let us order our hearts in peace to our brother. 
 that this hell-hound of hate might be hunted from our hearts 
 and homes, from the length and breadth of our land. Shout 
 it forth to the nation gathered before God to-day in prayer 
 and thanksgiving, — "If we love one another God dwelleth 
 in us." Declare it from the housetops and let it ring through 
 the churches, — "If we love one another God dwelleth in us." 
 This is the Gospel of the Grace of God to the nation, as it 
 is to the soul. This is the method by which the people are to 
 secure the presence and cooperation of God in their civil sanctifi- 
 cation. There is no pledge of the Divine indwelling except upon 
 this condition. If the state must array itself in the red robe of 
 war and stand before the world in garments soiled with the dust 
 of conflict and reeking with the gore of battle, let it be in sor- 
 row not in anger, — let it be under the influence of hallowed con- 
 viction, and not the domination of anger and pride. Am I not 
 right, fellow Christians and fellow patriots, in urging upon you 
 to offer unto God this day for your sacrifices of righteousness, 
 before you approach liim with the voice of thanksgiving, the 
 tribute of a rekindled faith in God and a reanimated love for man. 
 Lay these twin-gifts upon the altar. Deck them with the grace- 
 ful garlanding of Christian Hope. Breathe over them the pious 
 petition of the royal worshipper, "Lord lift thou up the light of 
 thy countenance upon us." Stand near the place of sacrifice, as 
 stood Elijah in the shadow of Carmel, waiting with heart and 
 hands reached out, with eyes and voice upraised to God, until the 
 fire fall IVoi 1 1 Heaven and embrace the accepted offering. Stand 
 near, niv Brothers, as stood the trusting Prophet and "(Jed even 
 our own God will give us his blessing." 
 
9 
 
 But let us well remember that whatever gift we bring to God 
 this day, whatever our sacrifices, they are all in one sense a 
 thank-offering. And if so be, we come before the Lord in right- 
 eousness, we shall have the richer occasion, the stronger impulse 
 to pour out our souls before Him in a gushing libation of praise 
 and thanksgiving. Thus reasoned David with himself standing 
 by his altar of faith and prayer, and as he thought of the un- 
 grateful people who murmured because of the paucity of their 
 blessings or the multitude of their miseries saying, "who will 
 shew us any good," he raised his voice in an argument of prayer, 
 setting forth the fact that the light of the Lord's countenance 
 lifted up upon the people was ample compensation for all their 
 ills, that the revealing of His face was like unto the glad bright- 
 ness of the morning and the assurance of His presence a token of 
 "the fullness of joy." 
 
 Let it be my grateful office on this appointed day of gratitude 
 to make response to those who murmur in heart and vainly 
 inquire in these times of discipline "who will shew us any good." 
 Or rather let me summon to this audience chamber of God such 
 living witnesses as will give them the testimony they need. 
 
 Will the Husbandman shew us any good? See him as he comes 
 rejoicing with his sheaves. Behold the cheek tanned by the har- 
 vest sun. Kegard the barns filled with plenty to which he points 
 you. Listen to the voice with which he blesses God for the 
 increase of field and fold. Accept the proof he presents of the 
 unchanging goodness of that Providence who droppeth so evenly 
 from Heaven the balmy sunshine and the fruitful showers — who 
 redeemeth with each returning "seed time and harvest" the 
 pledges of a bountiful supply to this thronged and needy earth. 
 True, there are fields that are only ploughed by the wheels of 
 war, districts desolated by the ravage of armies, waste places which 
 know more of the baptism of blood and tears than the germi- 
 nating rain and dew. Valleys that laughed and hills that skipped 
 for joy are now silent and barren, robbed of their riches, spoiled 
 of their beauty and hushed of their grateful mirth. Still the 
 broader fields of plenty send greeting to these desolate places, 
 and of their fullness make supply. The broad bosom of our rich 
 domain has yielded abundantly for the wants of all, and thus far 
 famine has not followed the footsteps of war. The blight and 
 mildew have been graciously withheld, and the granaries of the 
 land are teeming with the garnered treasures of the Husband- 
 man. God be praised for the grain and the fruits! God be 
 
10 
 
 praised for the barns "filled with plenty," and the presses that 
 "burst out with new wine!" 
 
 From the tiller of the soil we turn to the tiller of the soul. Will 
 he "shew us any good?" Standing in his lot, he looks out upon 
 a scene of moral conflict and civil confusion. He is a spectator 
 to the clash of arms, to the more deadly clash of principle and 
 feeling. A herald of the Prince of Peace, he comes with his cre- 
 dentials and his message to men whose minds are largely pre- 
 occupied with war. He points his appeals to hearts so swayed at 
 times with wild emotions as to escape his gospel shafts. Obsta- 
 cles incident to a condition of war, but heretofore unknown among 
 this people, rise up before him in frowning array. New forms 
 of vice make head or common vices are multiplied and magnified. 
 His feeble voice is drowned in the roar of the people. His moral 
 strength avails but little against the dash of the tide. But woe 
 to him if his lips be closed to the utterance of the Truth, woe to 
 him if he yield to the current, when it sets not strongly in the 
 channel of the Eight. But with his report neglected or unbe- 
 lieved, does he come into the witness stand to-day with no testi- 
 mony of the manifested goodness of the covenant-keeping God ? 
 Nay, he tells us of more than even open Bibles and a free gospel. 
 He gives glad witness to the deepening spirit of sacrifice and con- 
 secration among those who are deeply concerned for the honor of 
 God and the rescue of souls. He tells of the sublime philanthropy, 
 the immense organizations of society for the relief of human suffer-- 
 in<»-. He recounts the self-devotion of those who are alleviating 
 the consequences of "man's inhumanity to man." He exhibits 
 the lavish liberality which is ministering to the wants and woes 
 of the wasted and wounded. This is not religion, but it is her 
 handmaiden and valuable coadjutor. It is a discipline and de- 
 velopment which tells indirectly but importantly upon the great 
 interests of the Redeemer's kingdom. This is not a catholic but 
 an eclectic spirit, still it opens fountains which are rarely or never 
 closed, and whose waters are wont to grow sweeter and purer 
 until they change into well springs of life. Let elective affinities 
 have an unfettered exercise in charity, and by the conditions of our 
 emotional nature they widen and deepen until they reach out and 
 reach up to grasp and embrace all the true of earth and the good 
 of Heaven. 
 
 The minister of Christ has a further thanksgiving testimony. 
 Public and private calamity, the wrecking of so many bright 
 hopes and the deep shadows cast along the path of the future, 
 
11 
 
 are proving largely instrumental in withdrawing the mind and 
 weaning the heart of many from the mocking vanities of the 
 world. 
 
 As darkness thickens round us. the lights of heaven appear ; 
 As earth grows dim and dreary, upward we look for cheer. 
 
 This distillation of spiritual good out of temporal ill is not 
 unusual in the moral government of God: and the preacher 
 of righteousness who is or should be ever ready to aid in trans- 
 muting the wrath of man into the praise of his Maker, seizes 
 upon a juncture like the present to press home to the heart the 
 teachings of Providence, interweaved and illuminated with the 
 teachings of grace. Thus "man's extremity" becomes "God's 
 opportunity." Nay more ; the minister of Jesus has a grateful 
 testimony to offer at an hour like this in view of the new avenues 
 open to evangelic effort, in lieu of those that have been closed, we 
 trust temporarily, by the pressure of hostile interests. In these 
 new "ways of Zion" he may take his stand for Christ and there 
 build new "walls of salvation" and "new gates of praise." 
 
 It is not to be concealed that there has been no little comming- 
 ling of things secular and sacred, by many who have assumed to 
 give only God's message to man's soul. It is deeply to be de- 
 plored that such deflection should ever be given to the compass 
 of preached truth. Our security is gone when the needle is not 
 true to the pole. The needle has, it can have, but this one office. 
 Nothing save this, however, can exercise that office. Nothing else 
 points to Heaven's guiding star. Derange its action and you have 
 lost your path upon the deep. The minister of Christ has one work 
 and but one work; all his time, all his energies enable him to do 
 that but poorly at best. God's work is too pressing — too vast to 
 spare his laborer for the work of the state. Perishing souls are 
 always calling him back to the office he has accepted in their be- 
 half. Let him burn with patriotic ardor. Let him throw the 
 weight of his character on the side of liberty, and law, and jus- 
 tice. Let him freely offer the sacrifices which the exigencies of 
 civil life may demand of him as a citizen of the commonwealth. 
 But let him not forego that rigid discrimination of duty which 
 makes him a spokesman, not of the people, but of the people's 
 Saviour, — which makes him a guardian, not of civil liberty, but 
 of the liberty wherewith Christ doth make us free, — which makes 
 him an officer, not of those whose weapons are carnal, but of those 
 who enlist under the Captain of Salvation. However some may 
 
12 
 
 have failed to respect this discrimination of duty, either through 
 too much fear or too much love of man, we have this day to bless 
 the name of God Most High, that, despite the erring of the com- 
 pass and the wild surging of the seas, the Gospel Ship has held 
 her course, floating her grace-spangled flag, and bearing in safety 
 her soul-saving truth. 
 
 Shall we now take our appeal to the statesman, and enquire of 
 him if he can " shew us any good ?" However scanty may be the 
 testimony he can furnish, wherewith to frame a new anthem of 
 thanksgiving, he cannot fail to recite the lesson of history, that 
 grand ideas and heroic policies only have birth through the throes 
 of the nation. He must admit that the crucial tests of an era 
 like this, exhibit what is worthy and what is worthless in the 
 organic life of the state. He must confess that a check to pro- 
 gress such as we now are suffering, gives breathing space and 
 ample opportunity to repair the mistakes of the past and guard 
 the future from failure. He must give witness to the fact that 
 issues like those now pressing upon us, give scope and elevation 
 to the common mind, lift men from lethargy, quicken all the 
 energies, and charge with fresh power all the elements of indi- 
 vidual character; that however war is to be deplored, it braces the 
 bulwarks of national life, exercises and strengthens by the exercise 
 all the preservative ability it possesses. If here and now these 
 historic truths are being reproduced, — if these be the lessons l'or 
 the hour and the land, the testimony of the statesman would lead 
 us to the altar of thanksgiving, there to praise the God of Nations, 
 who is schooling us for a larger and truer life, and leading us by 
 " a wav we have not known " into a new and richer inheritance. 
 
 Summon the soldier, and be will tell you of scenes of Christian 
 heroism he has witnessed, unsurpassed by any deeds of daring. 
 He has beheld the sublime power of humble trust in Jesus, as 
 it rose majestically above the perils of the onset, or calmly closed 
 the eyes in triumphant death upon the battle-plain. He will 
 sneak of a bravery which, l'or three times in our country's history, 
 has returned from war wreathed with the chaplets of victory, and 
 which now has grander exhibition than ever, when for the first 
 ti me it lias met its peer, — when Americans stand shoulder to 
 shoulder do1 only, but face to face. Can you help praising God 
 for that noble courage in view of the hour when, by His blessing, 
 it shall be sanctified and shine forth in all the splendor of bold- 
 ness for Christ. Can you help praising God that the faith of 
 the Christian has glittered more brightly than Hashing sword or 
 
13 
 
 gleaming bayonet, and that amidst the wrecks and ravage of 
 war, there has moved a 'presence mighter than all the munitions 
 of armies, and grander than all the glories of triumph. That 
 war is a curse, and internecine war a double curse, is universally 
 true; but there are some things worse than war, and there are 
 some things precious above price to the state, which never come 
 except with war. Deprecating the dire necessity, bowing beneath 
 the burden of bitterness, and wickedness, and death, and debt, 
 let us not be blind to the indirect and resulting benefactions de- 
 signed by such discipline, in the usual routine of the Divine 
 operation. We thank not God for war. We cannot bless Him 
 for desolation, and conflagration, and misery, and destruction. 
 We have no heart, except the heart of the Samaritan, for the 
 sickening scenes where lead and steel have had their will and done 
 their work. We cannot love that which is the enemy of love. 
 But, since the cross has been laid upon us, let us not lose its 
 blessings. What humility, what dependence on God, what insta- 
 bility of civil prosperity, what perils incident to the neglect of 
 public virtue, what rebuffs to national pride and vanity are not 
 proffered for our profit by war, the stern monitor. Again, what 
 an awakening of strength, what a girding up of the loins of effort, 
 what new birth of resolve, what a recasting of policies, what a re- 
 examination of old safeguards and creation of new, what sacrifice, 
 what discipline, what endurance, what a developement of heroic 
 manhood are all associated with or consequent upon the delivery 
 of war by a "mighty and puissant nation." We are ready 
 enough to appreciate the horrors and groan under the burdens 
 of a struggle like the present; let us be equally instant to 
 appreciate the teachings of the hour, and return thanks for the 
 benefits which of God's goodness may flow into our civil future, 
 through the crimsoned channel of our present tribulation. Thus 
 shall we with fidelity bear our part, in this mixed dispensation, 
 toward God, the country and the soul ; praising the goodness of 
 Heaven from chastened hearts, and looking upward for help and 
 comfort with eyes swimming in dews of repentance. Thus shall 
 we, moreover, gain experience of the truth and beauty of that 
 hymn of the heart, — 
 
 " E'en the rapture of pardon is mingled with fears, 
 And the cup of thanksgiving with penitent tears." 
 
 Time will not suffice that I summon the many waiting witnesses 
 who stand ready on this day of thanksgiving, to reprove with 
 
14 
 
 their grateful testimony the murmurers that enquire " who will 
 shew us any good ?" Why the " very stones cry out "in attesta- 
 tion of the Divine beneficence! All nature is vocal with songs of 
 praise; the rustling foliage, the babbling brook, the surging sea, 
 the whistling winds, the " cattle on a thousand hills," and the 
 bright-winged warblers in metidow and grove, all sing 'their 
 Maker's praise; and "shall we whose souls are lighted with wis- 
 dom from on high," shall we whose heritage of blessing is rich 
 beyond comparison, shall we who have souls, and Bibles, and a 
 Saviour, and a Sanctifier, and a sure redemption, shall we who 
 have a "goodly land " and a race of stalwart freemen to people 
 it, shall we who for another year have been spared the blight of 
 pestilence and the ravening of famine, shall we who have 
 food and raiment, the hoarded sweets of home and the priceless 
 privilege of the temple, shall we, when pricked by the sword of 
 chastening fail in our tribute of gratitude to God, or withhold 
 the ample " sacrifice of praise ?" 
 
 As Elijah before his altar of Faith, and David standing at the 
 shrine of Praise, perfected their offerings by the incense of prayer, 
 so we, gathered to-day before the nation's altar of thanksgiving, 
 raise our hearts to God with the hopeful appeal, " Lord ! lift thou 
 up the light of thy countenance upon us." We "never despair 
 of the Republic," we never despair of the triumph of the truth, 
 so Ions as we have ease of access to Him who " waiteth to be 
 gracious." The countenance of God, when lifted up, will drown 
 in its glorious light the darkest clouds that ever lowered upon the 
 soul, or upon the nation, and send sunshine to the deepest caverns 
 of spiritual despair, or the gloomiest retreats of civil calamity. 
 
 The lifted light of God's countenance is the amelioration of every 
 state and condition of man, — is the alleviation of every "ill that 
 flesh is heir to." The lifted light of God's countenance is an 
 illumination of joy to His friends, a dazzling blindness to His 
 enemies. In the restored light of His countenance we forget all of 
 disaster and anguish past, and by this token are bold and hopeful, 
 yea, confident of the future. Basking in that light we have a 
 thousand-fold compensation for all the pains and darkness through 
 which we have struggled to attain unto it. That light is the glory 
 of the soul, the fullness of its joy, the utmost reach and compass of 
 its felicity. But what it is for the saints, that it is for the nations. 
 It is attainable by both on like conditions, viz : " fearing God 
 and working righteousness. ' ' Our prayers for it are vain, except we 
 fulfil these conditions of its acquisition. Before therefore I invoke 
 
15 
 
 you to these prayers, I beseech you to cultivate that "fear of the 
 Lord" which is "the beginning of knowledge," and that "right- 
 eousness" which alone "exalteth a nation." 
 
 Let then the nation to its knees. Let its mouth be as the 
 mouth of one man. Let its appeal go up to God this day from 
 Church and closet, "Lord, lift thou up the light of thy countenance 
 upon us." If in Faith and Love that prayer be wafted to the 
 throne, the fire will fall from heaven, kissing and consuming our 
 ' 'sacrifices of righteousness. ' ' The light lifted upon our rulers will 
 illuminate their counsels, and reveal the path to honorable and 
 lasting peace. The light lifted upon our people will assuage 
 their bitterness and prepare them for a return to the prosperities 
 of the past, or to advance to the richer blessings of the future. 
 The light lifted upon field and tent will exhibit the discipline 
 and devotion, the endurance and heroism of the soldier as meet 
 preparation for service in the militant hosts of faith. The light 
 lifted more distinctly upon the Church will make clear her vision 
 of duty and of privilege, and open up broader fields of enterprise 
 for her evangelizing energies. 
 
 the light — the upper light, the light of God's glorious face, 
 let it be lifted upon this land of our birth, this sanctuary of our 
 social and civil joys, this home and hope of popular and religious 
 liberty ! 
 
 If now we have offered "the sacrifices of righteousness" and 
 humbly "put our trust in the Lord," if we have opened up the 
 fountains of gratitude in our hearts, and in glowing faith sent up 
 on high our prayer for the light of God's countenance ; if this be 
 the grateful sacrifice placed to-day by the people upon the nation's 
 altar, the testimony of the Divine favor will not be withheld. 
 And when it comes, if come it shall, a voice of glad acclaim shall 
 go out from the mouth of the multitude, il Lo! righteousness 
 and peace have kissed each other." 
 
V 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 012 028 213 A ft