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GOD'S MERCIES TOWARDS THE NATION. 
 
 A. SERMON, 
 
 u V 
 
 THE REV, MORGAN DIX, A. M. 
 
 
God's Mercies towards the Nation. 
 
 A SERMON, 
 
 PREACHED IN SAINT PAUL'S CHAPEL, NEW YORK, 
 
 THANKSGIVING DAY, 1861. 
 
 REV. MORGAN DIX, A M., 
 
 ii. 
 
 ASSISTANT HECTOR OF TRINITY CUUECII. 
 
 NEW YORK : 
 
 F. J. HUNTINGTON, BEEKMAN STREET. 
 
 MASON BROTHERS, MERCER STREET. 
 
 1861. 
 
.0 
 
 (A 
 
 The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the 
 
 EVERLASTING ARMS. Deut. XXxiii. 27. 
 
 f «l«oa 
 
SERMON 
 
 How long is it, brethren, since last we kept 
 Thanksgiving Day ? How long, how much have we 
 lived meanwhile ? Yon talk of a twelvemonth ; but 
 do you not rather mean twelve years ? Have these 
 been only months through which we have been pass- 
 ing ? Is it but one short year since, as a united peo- 
 ple, we gave God thanks for all the blessings of His 
 merciful providence ? Is it but seven months since 
 the first gun broke the dream, since the first shot 
 tore through the line of the nation's quiet and peace- 
 able progress % It seems as though one had lived half 
 a century, at least, in this short space. It seems as 
 though, since last Thanksgiving, our world had been 
 turned upside down. We have kept two national 
 fasts; we have come through fire and water; we 
 have been called to the royal heritage of sorrow ; we 
 have been taught as if by briers and thorns; we 
 have drained the cup of humiliation in stern, sad 
 silence. One need not be ashamed to confess to days 
 of concentrated bitterness of soul and spirit as known 
 to him, but too well, in these months just gone. One 
 need not be ashamed to confess to the having poured 
 out the soul in prayer, as it were, "seven times a 
 day," for rescue and deliverance from impending 
 
4 S E E 31 N . 
 
 national death. There have been hours in which all 
 seemed, to the inexperienced eye, to have been trem- 
 bling on the verge of final and utter loss. One finds 
 it hard to describe how these calamities have seemed 
 to shape themselves to the consciousness. But if a 
 man were to wake in the dead of the night to feel 
 the gripe of an enemy at his throat, and discern the 
 pale glimmer of the steel near his heart, he would 
 know what the nation has felt. And if such a man, 
 in such a plight, surprised and set upon, by force 
 and arms, being in the peace of the commonwealth, 
 and secure in his quiet home, were able, thereupon, 
 to rise in the very face of imminent death, and, with 
 one tremendous effort, to hurl the murderer back, 
 and grapple with him, and strive for life, he would 
 know to what kind of a struggle this nation, stupe- 
 fied for one instant, has, in another instant, sprung 
 afoot. Brethren, when one reflects upon all the peril, 
 and all the terror, and all the trial, of these late 
 months, one is glad of a thanksgiving day, to pour 
 out the gratitude which comes with recovered confi- 
 dence and hope. The end is not yet ; but it is as- 
 sured. We live. We shall live. God is not dead 
 yet. And the nation which God planted here is not, 
 we think, dead. It recovers its power; it re-estab- 
 lishes its authority; it gathers up its strength; it 
 strides on; and it thrusts aside, like rubbish, the 
 hindrances and the stumbling-blocks in front. 
 
 This is a day for the people, as such. It is their 
 own special holy day. It is not counted in the cal- 
 endar of the church catholic; but it is one which 
 this nation has piously devoted fco the direct and for- 
 mal honour and glory of God. On this day we maj 
 
SEE M O N . 
 
 speak of the nation's affairs; for since the people 
 have agreed to sanctify these hours, their joys and 
 their griefs, their successes and their reverses, may 
 rightly occupy the thoughts. The preacher speaks 
 to you to-day in response to the call of the civil au- 
 thorities. He appears to add the solemn sanctions 
 of religion to the devout expressions of the public 
 sentiment; and if he should formulate the grand 
 themes and topics of the public concern into the me- 
 dia of some just and suitable expressions, that were 
 not to step aside from the path of churchly order and 
 propriety. In fact it is of the office of the church to 
 set God ever before the people, and to ascribe all 
 mercies and benefits to His providence ; to pray for 
 the powers that be ; to strengthen the hands in which 
 just authority is lodged : to ask of God the victory 
 when growing lawlessness stands face to face with 
 rightful government; and to sing Te Deum when 
 order is re-established, and when the enemies of lib- 
 erty are quelled. 
 
 Therefore, if there be any one here present who is 
 not grateful to God on a day like this ; or who dis- 
 cerns not, in the position of the nation, a ground for 
 thankfulness; or who thinks that the ministers of 
 religion should not say plainly what they feel, and 
 tell the people what they have to be grateful for ; 
 such a one is certainly out of place with us just now. 
 But as for the congregation at large, they will joy- 
 fully acknowledge the duty of the day, and assent to 
 the proposed intention of pointing out the character- 
 istic and peculiar advantages which, amidst all the 
 adverse circumstances of the hour, we still, through 
 the favour of Almighty God, are permitted to enjoy. 
 
6 SERMON. 
 
 One hardly feels like entering upon a formal and 
 statistical account of the number of God's benefits to 
 us ; and, praised be His holy Name, it were a lengthy 
 task, since they are indeed so many. But yet there 
 are some which rise at once upon the view, and these 
 we may proceed to note before we touch the one 
 great subject of which, on a day like this, it were 
 idle to suppress the mention. 
 
 And, 1st, we have to thank Him for the recent 
 abundant harvests : and especially to remember this, 
 that while we are plenteously supplied with the fruits 
 of the earth, other parts of the world are in compar- 
 ative need of the same. This is indeed a noticeable 
 fact, that the want of grain, the first of all wants, 
 should, at a moment so critical, make measurably 
 dependent upon us the foreign powers with whom it 
 is essential now that we should be at peace. God 
 has given us enough for ourselves and for them. He 
 has set Necessity to watch between us and the other 
 side of the world. He has forbidden jealousy to in- 
 terfere in this just and righteous quarrel which we 
 have with domestic rebellion. 
 
 And, 2dly, we have to thank God for our preserva- 
 tion from pestilence and disease, and for the saving 
 our homes from fire and sword and the scourge of 
 war. The seasons have been fine; the treasure of 
 seedtime and harvest, of day and night, has not tailed ; 
 we have had no sickness to destroy us at noonday, 
 nor evil that walketh in darkness to make us afraid. 
 And within our own borders there has been neither 
 strife nor battle; the din of arms is heard afar off, 
 but we have not felt the shock at home. Wherever 
 Loyalty baa held the reins, the people have been at 
 
SEKM0N. 
 
 peace. Wherever they have remembered the com- 
 mand of the Apostle, "Let every soul be subject 
 unto the higher powers ;" wherever they have remem- 
 bered that " the powers that be are ordained of God ;" 
 wherever they have known and acted on the knowl- 
 edge that " he that resisteth the power resisteth the 
 ordinance of God," there have the people dwelt se- 
 curely. So has it been with our State : safe in the 
 loyalty whereof she may well be proud. And mean- 
 while the wealth of the country has proved adequate 
 to her needs thus far, and she has found how vast are 
 her resources. And thus far we are at peace with all 
 the world; and the parricidal onset against which 
 we are striving has not attained to the respect or 
 approval of mankind ; it has been viewed with 
 doubtfulness, at least, and more commonly with hor- 
 ror ; or if it has found sympathy, we trace that sym- 
 pathy at once to its source in self-interest, or in the 
 fear of our advancing power — there is no moral prin- 
 ciple, no basis in conviction of justice and right, at 
 the bottom of such sympathy : it is a manifestation 
 of self-love. 
 
 But, 3dly, it may be counted as a blessing of the 
 times that we have been aroused to the sense of our 
 failings — awakened to know our national sins, and to 
 bewail them — shaken up from the vile torpor of dull 
 material prosperity, from the rut-like tracks of greed, 
 gain, ease, sluggish enjoyment. We have been taught 
 to deny ourselves — to cut off superfluities — to think 
 of something higher than getting wealth — to sacrifice, 
 and labor, and pray for others. Let no one be slack 
 to confess his errors ; let no people be backward to 
 admit their faults. Thus far we have done this 
 
8 SEEMON. 
 
 bravely. We have not withheld the confession of 
 our own mistakes; the worst that could have been 
 fairly said about us was said by ourselves. 
 
 We have entered upon a course of the severest 
 discipline ; but nothing less severe would have served 
 the turn ; we need the rod. If it be in the order of 
 God's providence that one great nation shall still 
 hold this continent, and be the master and ruler 
 thereof, that nation must be trained to the dignity 
 and the balance befitting its rightful position. These 
 troubles, in their season, will bring their own reward, 
 in an elevation of the national character and a puri- 
 fication of the whole mass, and a tempering of the 
 elements of our composition. And so we shall be 
 prepared to wear, without presumption and without 
 offence to others, the mantle of that greater power 
 which is to come. 
 
 But, brethren, let us advance in thought and 
 speech. Not to enlarge, to-day, upon the position of 
 the country, would be a kind of solemn affectation. 
 The subject which is in every man's thoughts all day 
 long, introduces itself without need of apology. 
 What shall we say, then, on this our Annual Thanks- 
 giving, about the struggle and the conflict in the 
 midst of which we are engaged '. What ground or 
 gratitude, might some one ask, can be discerned in 
 the position in which we are now placed? Why, 
 brethr< n, one can hardly be thankful enough, all 
 things considered, that this dire battle has com- 
 menced, and that we thus far have conducted it in a 
 spirit so truly humane, and have sustained in it so 
 Little damage. The fury of [\w assault which has 
 been made on what may be justly entitled the mild- 
 
SERMON. 9 
 
 est and most equable of governments — the prodigious 
 energy witli which the Constitution, and the laws, 
 and the flag, dear to our very hearts, have been set 
 upon — these indicate that, one day, the conflict must 
 have come. It could never have been avoided. If 
 it had not been this year, it must have been ere lono\ 
 Nothing has been made clearer by the whole course 
 of events than that this terrible collision lay, inevi- 
 table and deadly, somewhere in our future; that we 
 should have to fight to keep what it cost eight years 
 of fighting to gain. Now, that which must come 
 had 1 tetter come at once ; we had best have it over 
 at once. And no nation could have risen more mag- 
 nificently to its work than this. There is not the 
 people now on the earth that could have done what 
 we have done in so short a space. We have learned, 
 in this, the power of our political system — its power 
 of self-preservation ; and we have come to know the 
 love in which the people hold the heritage given to 
 their fathers. And let it not be forgotten that on 
 our side the contest has been waged in a spirit of 
 forbearance without example. Slow to wrath have 
 we been from the outset, and still up to this hour 
 slow to wrath. The foreign critic looks upon the 
 Government troops and says that they exhibit no 
 mndlctiven&ss. This witness is true ; and let us be 
 glad that it is so — that the spirit of kindliness toward 
 men still triumphs over our abhorrence of their prin- 
 ciples. But look upon the work thus far : to what 
 does all that has transpired incite the patriot heart, 
 if it also be the heart of a Christian, but to profound 
 and reverential gratitude to God ? Think but of the 
 weakness of the peojxie seven months ago. A gov- 
 
10 SEEM OX. 
 
 eminent winch seemed to exist but by sufferance and 
 in name ; an army of a handful of men ; a navy 
 scattered in far-off seas ; a treasury empty ; a people 
 distracted and confounded, without a rallying point, 
 and bewildered in the search for a place where to 
 make a stand ; such a government and such a people, 
 surprised in full security, and suddenly confronted 
 by the gaunt and ghastly spectres of Insurrection 
 and War, stalking up, full-armed, and threatening 
 the name, the traditions, the very existence of a grand 
 family of the friendly and allied nations of the world : 
 is it not a cause of gratitude wdien we see, what we 
 have seen, the slow, but sure reconstruction of all 
 that seemed lost ; the recovery of the ground, the 
 reassertion of right, the daily advance in moral force 
 and material strength, and confidence in God and in 
 our cause; the one profound movement, stirring all our 
 system to its core and its roots, and drawing from 
 every point the vitality and the forces needed for the 
 long work yet before us? The turning-point is 
 passed. But there were those at home who feared, 
 and those abroad who predicted, that there would be 
 no turning point. Brethren, this has been a resur- 
 rection, and from a grave of which Patriotism feared 
 and Jealousy hoped that it was closed over and sod- 
 ded down forever. But in this resurrection we may 
 count some certain faefs, to be established. 1st, that 
 the rights of States are not to be regarded henceforth 
 when llicy conflict, or seem to conflict with the rights 
 and safety of the commonwealth. 2dly, that the 
 ruler for whom we have this morning prayed, God's 
 servant, the President of the United States, is to be 
 the ruler of this whole* land. 3dly, that whatsoever 
 
SEE MOW. 11 
 
 stands in the way of the government, to hinder, to 
 thwart, to resist it, must ultimately fall. And, 4thly, 
 that there is such a positive reality as an American 
 nation. This is the great and grand benefit out of 
 all our trouble, and this were worth that trouble an 
 hundred-fold multiplied. "We are not a mere inor- 
 ganic cluster of petty tribes, huddled together for a 
 time, and liable at any moment to resolve into sepa- 
 rate and contemptible individualisms ; but we are 
 one people and one nation, and the boundaries which 
 separate us are but map-lines and imaginary divis- 
 ions — rude water-color marks, which the wet sponge 
 will in a moment rub out. "It is this grand truth, 
 that we are one nation, and that our history is not 
 ended yet, which ought to make the basis of our 
 thanksgivings to-day. For, remember, brethren, the 
 invariable lesson from all the past. All great nations, 
 since the world began, were formed by trial and sor- 
 rows, just as all great characters have been formed 
 by affliction and adversity. This is the royal heri- 
 tage of grief to which we have been called. As 
 Christians we dare not quarrel with afflictions, for we 
 have been told that whom the Lord loveth He chas- 
 teneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth. 
 Surely it is natural for a Christian so to judge con- 
 cerning the sorrows of his country. No nation ever 
 became great without civil, war, revolution and re- 
 bellion. These are the maladies, which the system, 
 if able, will throw off; and if it cannot throw them 
 off, if it is of too feeble a constitution to stand a 
 fever or a pleurisy, the sooner it dies the better. We 
 think that God has work for us to do, "because He 
 thus visits us. We think that He is framing and 
 
12 SERMON. 
 
 fashioning us for some very high and worthy ends. 
 We are in His hands as clay in the hands of the pot- 
 ter; and He, we hope, is moulding us large and strong 
 for His purposes. The blows that are inflicted upon 
 us by lawless hands do but compress us together 
 more closely; and if foreign force should be added 
 to the present weight upon us, let us trust that such 
 assaults would but knit the material into still more 
 compact form, and harden it like iron. 
 
 All that has come upon us is the sign of our ac- 
 ceptance, and the omen of our coining strength. The 
 red light now kindling in a semicircle round the land, 
 is nothing more than as a morning glow upon the sky: 
 the fires are not those, of the sunset; rather are they 
 the ruddy harbingers of increasing light, and strewed 
 with hopeful radiance upon the angry clouds. All 
 the day, with its twelve hours of useful, honorable, 
 and godly labour, lies, let us hope, in our now shad- 
 owy future; and the drums, as they beat each morn- 
 ing along our whole front, on sea and land, are sound- 
 ;, to the ear of faith, the reveille" of a great era of 
 national prosperity and advance. And let not our 
 hope and trust be cheeked by allusions to the divers 
 disasters of the time; by reference to the business 
 broken up, and the institutions which have gone by 
 the board, and the associations which have been in- 
 terrupted, and the harmonious relations which have 
 come to an end. It is all true. But yet, even there, 
 one must feel and say thai the suddenness of these 
 c ollapses proves the poorness of the si nil'. Why shall 
 we regret thai which was so weak that the first 
 rough Btroke shivered it todusl \ When we see hov. 
 easily, how instantly, much that we depended on and 
 
SERMON. 13 
 
 trusted to lias been turned to destruction, we suspect 
 that it could not have been worth the keeping. As 
 a churchman, I blush with shame at the sight of a 
 reverend father in God transforming: himself into a 
 military commander — throwing aside his bishop's 
 habit and his pastoral keys and staff, and, awkwardly 
 and most revoltingly, assuming the dress and weapons 
 of carnal warfare. But, at the same time, the thought 
 must come, that if a bishop were capable of such an 
 act, the sooner we know it of him the better. And 
 if it be true that the bonds of church unity have 
 been broken, and that a schism has actually occurred 
 in our communion, what more clear than this, that 
 the feeling of church unity which we thought to 
 have existed did not exist, and that we have been 
 nattering ourselves over a delusion % Brethren, what 
 we all of us want, in practical life, is, not fair-weather 
 friendship, not formal courtesies, not sunshine com- 
 fort. We want what has firmness, and endurance, 
 and truth ; friendship which is stronger in evil report 
 than in good ; strength to resist the storm ; light for 
 the rainy day ; the real, the true, the honest, the reli- 
 able, on which to lean, and in which to rest. And 
 if there were which promised all this, and yet, in the 
 very moment of affliction and adversity, failed us, 
 when first we felt our need of it, better that we knew 
 at once the real emptiness, the real hollowness and 
 insincerity of the whole grand imposture. If this 1 >e 
 all, if this be the true character of the idol, why, we 
 are well rid of it, and, in Heaven's name, let it go ! 
 
 But to return to the objects for which this day has 
 been set apart — to the duty of giving thanks to God 
 Almighty for the fruits of the earth and all the other 
 
14 SEEM ON". 
 
 blessings of His merciful providence. Let me, in 
 drawing these reflections to a close, allegorize some- 
 what, if this may be permitted, upon one of these 
 expressions. The fruits of the earth ; the seed-time 
 and the harvest. Brethren, there lies a deep and 
 solemn meaning in these words ; we may apply them 
 to the nation, and draw from them a moral for the 
 hour. This is the seed-time for us. God has up- 
 turned the soil ; He has ploughed the land from end 
 to end, and laid it open in furrows to the long sun- 
 shine of the coming ages, as well as to the rain and 
 stormy seasons towards the end of the world. What 
 shall be the growth out of this deeply-wrought field ? 
 And of what sort shall the harvest be in its times ? 
 and of what fashion and quality shall be the fruits 
 out of this now reddened earth ? We know not, as 
 yet. But still we can hope and trust ; and we can 
 also pray. Yea, brethren, on this our thanksgiving 
 feast, we can pray for the coming crop, for the har- 
 vest in the future, from this rough and thorough til- 
 lage of the Lord. We may pray that the first growth 
 from the upturned fields shall be the religious fear of 
 God ; the first, the strongest, and the most enduring. 
 We may pray that the people, taught as by briers 
 and scorpion scourges, may learn, throug htrial, the 
 grand lesson that the Most High ruleth in the king- 
 dom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever He will. 
 Wherever this truth has been acknowledged, the 
 people have prospered; and the trouble with us has 
 been, that we have not fell this as we ought. We 
 have trusted in our own strength, and not in God. 
 Now rmisl we learn thai the Lord God is the Ruler, 
 above and below. One thinks, in these days, (it 
 
SEEM ON. 15 
 
 were hard to say why,) but one thinks often of the 
 history of the Venetian republic. There, where Ven- 
 ice now sleeps, inactive, and unhonoured, in the midst 
 of her dull lagoons, there once, in long past days, en- 
 throned upon her hundred isles, sat the grandest and 
 stateliest republic of Europe. The secret of all that 
 glory, now existing but in name, of all the strength 
 with which her winged lions were girt, of all the pride, 
 and wealth, and honour which made her lustrous to 
 the eye of the world ; the secret lay here, that she 
 feared God. Venice was the home of liberty; the 
 asylum of the oppressed ; the champion of the rights 
 of man. She held at bay, with one strong arm, the 
 swarthy Turk, as he threatened the religion of the 
 Cross ; and with the other, no less resolute, she waved 
 back the Bishop-Pope of Rome when he would have 
 forced the consciences of Christian men. There flour- 
 ished the Arts ; and there rode navies as gallant and 
 as daring as our own ; and there, stiff with their gold 
 embroidery, floated her proud banners, defiant of the 
 foes of human progress. But the secret lay here, 
 that Venetia feared the Lord. She was a Christian 
 and a religious power. The stateliest of all her shin- 
 ing palaces bore on its magnificent front the still 
 more magnificent inscription, "Non nobis Domine, 
 
 NON NOBIS, SED NoMINI TlJO DA GLOEIAM !" And that 
 
 was the habitual thought of doge, and senate, and 
 army, and navy, and people. Somehow or other, the 
 glory of Venice, and its cause, seem to be continu- 
 ally recurring and recurring to the thoughts; and 
 then, as that inscription on the Vendromini palace 
 burns upon the eye of the inner consciousness, the 
 wish is felt that those very words might be inscribed 
 
SEEMOJT 
 Id 
 
 Sed tS and .long the iedatripes, and through 
 fine field those words: "Not unto us, O I*>rd 
 
 • i f o^rl law "Not unto us, O Lord, but unto my 
 
 Se« tWn the cloud, and the .smoke, and the 
 
 J ,n And when-this Union shall he reconstnn ed 
 
 S .actshall he restored, and *• ^™*-£ 
 
 I,* rUnetualry secured in its right , wnen 
 
 be perpeiuauy _ d commerce 
 
 Ct^rlS^pat^d when the 
 :; ^tnA^r head, and the hittern^and 
 
 as still give glory to God.. ,1 . * 
 
 people shall how the kneft and worship, inej 
 
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