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 THANKSGIYING SERMON, 
 
 I PREACHED AT THE • ^ 
 
 • i 
 
 UISriON SERVICE OF THE \ 
 
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 I FIRST & SOUTH CONGREGATIONAL CHURCHES, I 
 
 I NEW BRITAIN, CONN., \ 
 
 I novem:ber 3g, ises. 
 
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 PASTOR OF SOUTH CHURCH. 
 
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 HARTFORD: 
 
 PRESS OF CASE, LOCKWOOD & COMPANY. 
 
 1868. 
 
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\ 
 
 THANKSGIVING SERMON, 
 
 PREACHED AT THE 
 
 XJISriON SERVICE OF THE 
 
 FIRST & SOUTH CONGREGATIOML CHURCHES, 
 
 NEW BRITAIN, CONN., 
 
 ]VOVE]MBER 36, 1863. 
 
 PASTOR OF SOUTH CHURCH. 
 
 HARTFORD: 
 
 PRESS OF CASE, LOCKWOOD & COMPANY- 
 
 1863. 
 
 c o py ^ 
 
•B 
 
 New Britain, Nov. 28th, 1863. 
 
 Rev. Mr. Goodell, 
 
 Dear Sir : — The undersigned, having listened, with much satisfac- 
 tion, to jour excellent discourse on Thanksgiving day, and believing 
 that its circulation among our citizens and our soldiers, will prove 
 beneficial, most respectfully request of you a copy for the press. 
 Allow us to add that we believe we represent the general feeling of 
 those who had the pleasui'e of hearing the discourse alluded to. 
 Very truly. 
 
 Your friends, 
 F. H. North, Henry Stanley, 
 
 Chas. Peck, Oliver Stanley, 
 
 H. G. Brown, Chas. Northend, 
 
 J. N. Bartlett, p. Corbin, 
 
 C. A. Warner, James Stanley, 
 
 L. F. Jddd, W. Gladden, 
 
 Wm. H. Smith, T. W. Stanley. 
 
 New Britain, Dec. 3d, 1863. 
 Messrs. F. H. North, 
 
 Chas. Peck, and others ;— 
 Gentlemen : — The sermon which you courteously ask for publica- 
 tion was prepared for the public service on Thanksgiving day. But 
 if you judge further good may be done by printing it, the manuscript 
 is at your disposal. 
 
 I am respectfully, 
 
 ' •. ; Yours, 
 • . '" C. L. Goodell. 
 
SERMON. 
 
 DEUTERONOMY, 26 : 19. 
 
 " And to make thee high above all nations which he hath made, in praise, and 
 in name, and in honor, and that thou mayest be a holy people unto the Lord thj 
 God, as he hath spoken." 
 
 This day of National Thanksgiving is like a watch-tower 
 of the ancient Hebrews, into which the prophets ascended to 
 read the signs of the times, and to receive the solemn vision 
 of God. We have laid aside the ordinary cares of life, and 
 come up to Mount Zion, that our minds may be illumined 
 by the Infinite Light, and our hearts led in the way of holi- 
 ness and truth. 
 
 It is always the misfortune of those who live in perilous 
 times, that they do not realize the great interests at stake. 
 Standing in a forest, we forget that the little springs at our 
 feet, are rolled onward into mighty rivers. Surrounded by 
 tlie clouds and darkness of war, we become absorbed in petty 
 temporary interests, and blind to the vast issues involved. 
 This day affords a high outlook, that with consecrated heart 
 and purged eye, we may forget ourselves, and see afar. 
 
 And first of all may the voice of praise rise from our lips, 
 and the incense of thanksgiving ascend from our hearts, to 
 Almighty God from whom all blessings come. Let us bless 
 Him for healthful seasons, for abiui^'ant harvests, for the 
 means of knowledge, for social blessings, and for religious 
 liberty. Let us thank God for comfortable homes, for holy 
 
affections, for the lessons and disciplines of faith, and for the 
 hopes of immortality. 
 
 Let lis rejoice and praise God, that in tlie midst of war, 
 He has granted us so many mercies, and that, notwithstand- 
 ing our grievous sins. He has given us so many assurances 
 of final victory, and a righteous peace. Thou Eternal ! 
 let our hearts rise liigher than all interests that entangle, 
 than all doubts that bewilder, than all passions that ensnare, 
 than all prejudices that obscure ; that we may be the willing 
 instruments in Thy hands, in the establishment of righteous- 
 ness, justice and truth in the earth. 
 
 To those accustomed to read the providences of God, His 
 hand seems scarcely less manifest in the planting and train- 
 ing of this nation, than in that of the Hebrew ; consequently 
 the words of our text addressed to the Israelites, in an im- 
 portant sense, may be applied to us. It was the Divine pur- 
 pose to make this nation high among all nations which he 
 hath made, in name and in praise and in honor, that we 
 might be a holy people unto the Lord as he hath spoken. 
 
 In the light of this truth, let us reflect upon the moral 
 worth of our Federal Union, and our consequent duty to 
 preserve it. 
 
 Where shall we find the measure, with which to estimate 
 this fair heritage of our Fathers ? If any man judge of a 
 government by the " good things of this life" which it 
 secures, where can one be found, which has conferred so 
 many favors, and distributed them so equally ? If any 
 would value a government according to the general peace 
 and happiness it is fitted to give, on what nation does the 
 sun shine, which, in this respect, surpasses ours ? Going 
 higher, if any would regard " the life as more than meat," 
 and government as the guardian of li])crty, and the hand- 
 maid of advancing civilization, what nation is better adapted 
 to the work than ours ? 
 
 1. The value of our Federal Union may be judged of, by 
 considering the extent of the preparation which preceded it. 
 
 You might have learned something of the character of 
 Solomon's temple, by visiting the quarries in the mountains 
 
where the material was preparing before a stone was laid. 
 So you may gauge the value of our institutions, by studying 
 the old despotisms which gave rise to them. The kingdoms 
 of Europe have been the workshops of republicanism for cen- 
 turies. The material for our temple of liberty was prepar- 
 ing, long before the site for its location was discovered. It 
 was indeed put up on these shores, at last, in a day, without 
 the sound of saw or hammer. But it was not a hasty work, 
 entered into without consideration, and conducted without 
 wisdom. Every stone had been carved in the mountains of 
 the Old World, and brought carefully over the sea. In spirit 
 and essence, no government is so old as ours. Into none 
 have entered such ages of preparation,, and such treasures of 
 wisdom and experience. 
 
 Your grape-vines thrive best on old decayed bones. The 
 vine which God brought out of Egypt and planted here, 
 sends its roots to the brain of Milton and Hamden, of Plato 
 and Moses, and draws nourishment from all the past. The 
 names of our towns are taken from every great historic 
 nation. We have a Hebron, an Athens, a Corinth, a Rome, 
 a Paris, a Manchester and London. So our civilization is a 
 golden braid, each age furnishing its tested strand, and all 
 together, combining what is best, and excluding what is 
 worst, in the experience of man. 
 
 Those who came first to our shores to begin their work, 
 were like the three hundred men of Gideon, twice sifted 
 from theii' fellows ; each a tried man, standing in his place, 
 with a light in his hand, which was as the lamp of God, with 
 no pitcher to hide it. 
 
 No one can properly understand the worth of this nation, 
 who does not study these marked Providences in the cur- 
 rents of history, pointing toward it, and preparing for it. 
 Astronomers often notice the purturbations of a planet, yet 
 see no disturbing cause. By and by, an orb, new to science, 
 sweeps into the field of vision, and the mystery is solved. 
 An unseen world is found to have reached out its mystic 
 arms through the spaces, and rocked the foundations of a 
 neighboring sphere. So the disturbances in the Old World — 
 
among things civil, religious and scientific, from Columbus 
 to Newton — can be explained only by the fact that God was 
 making preparation for the New World, which, rising up out 
 of the sea, was even then playing into the Old, and shaping 
 its affairs by an invisible hand. To set the train in motion, 
 Columbus discovered a new hemisphere, and opened fresh 
 channels of commerce for the nations, Galileo poised his 
 glass to the stars, and told the Pope that the world did move, 
 thus giving a new impulse to science. Faust invented the 
 printing-press, and placed the torch of learning in the hands 
 of the common people. Luther struck the fetters from the 
 Bible, and changed the basis of ecclesiastical governments. 
 Calvin conceived of free institutions modeled after the sim- 
 plicity of the primitive church, and formed a party whoso 
 battle ground was Germany and England, and whose refuge 
 was the New World. Oliver Cromwell snatched the scepter 
 of civil government from the grasp of arbitrary power — and 
 failing to place it in the hands of the people, passed it over 
 the sea. And all this, that a free government might be ad- 
 ministered here, by an enlightened. Christian people, over a 
 territory, wide as the ocean over which Columbus sailed. 
 
 A nation commencing its career with a preparation like 
 this, must be valued as an instrument in the hand of God for 
 the accomplishment of great ends. We have no right to treat 
 it lightly. We can not shut our eyes to its mission. God 
 has set a sacred impress upon it which we must respect. 
 
 2. The moral value of our Federal Union may be seen 
 from its geographical position and its combination of the 
 great historic forces of civilization. 
 
 God has established here a fresh and independent center 
 of Christian influence. When Columbus first discovered 
 this continent, he regarded it as simply a new way to the Old 
 World ; the New, in his judgment, was to be only a tribu- 
 tary to the Old. So thought all the nations of Europe. 
 They rclused to believe that God had purposes which reached 
 beyond them, and that he could remove his candlestick from 
 Europe to America, as he had already, from Asia to Europe. 
 Spain regarded the New World as a vast gold mine for her 
 
material aggrandizement. England looked upon it as a de- 
 pendency, ministering to her love of wealth and power. 
 Until awakened by the thunder of Saratoga and Yorktown, 
 she never admitted that there was anything absurd in a con- 
 tinent's being governed by a little island, three thousand 
 miles away. But God is wiser than man. It was not des- 
 tined that America should be Europe over again, and nothing 
 more. This continent did not come upon the arena of 
 modern history, to give England a cotton plantation — Ire- 
 land a potato field — France a glove market — Austria a 
 throne for its hungry princes, and Africa a gigantic slave-pen. 
 The New World was ordained in the providence of God, to 
 have its new government, its new man, and its new and im- 
 portant mission among the nations of the earth. Civiliza- 
 tion never repeats itself — its watchword is " onward." There 
 has been but one Jerusalem — but one Athens and Rome. 
 It were not possible, even if it were desirable, to build 
 another England, or France, or Spain, on this side of the 
 Atlantic. Every great emigration results in a distinctive 
 civilization, unlike that in which it had its origin. Greece 
 received emigration and arts from Egypt, but Greece was 
 not like Egypt ; it was a new and living power. Rome was 
 also colonized by the Greeks, but Rome differed from Athens 
 as much as Athens from Thebes. England was peopled by 
 the Teutonic stock ; England, however, is not a copy, but an 
 original, with a character and mission of its own. No more 
 is America the counterpart of Europe from which it sprung ; 
 it is a new creation, breathing a divine life, and raised up for 
 especial service. This nation was not designed to be, can 
 not be, like anything which history has produced in the Old 
 World. Providence does not go backward. You can not 
 nail to-day into the coffin of yesterday, neither can you bind 
 the spirit of American liberty with the shackles of past cen- 
 turies, nor cramp its expanding powers into the old forms of 
 decaying despotisms. It must develop itself according to its 
 own law, and- adjust its institutions to its peculiar wants and 
 necessities. We have already regarded oiirselves as an out- 
 lying province of the Old World too long. Our political in- 
 
8 
 
 dependence has indeed been achieved, but we need a second 
 emancipation ; and this war is securing it. When England 
 and France turned away from us, we whimpered at first, like 
 an overgrown child — -but we shall be led thereby to assert 
 an independent manhood. The sooner we think our own 
 thoughts, and go our own ways, accepting the destiny as- 
 signed us, and laboring in the freshness and vigor of a dis- 
 tinct and newly created life, the better for us. Hence- 
 forth we shall no more look over the sea for our pre- 
 cepts and examples, but upward to Him who has thus 
 far led us, and onward to our field of labor. And it is 
 interesting to see how God, who anticipates the direction of 
 the great movements of civilization, and raises up nations 
 purposely fitted to stand at the centers of influence as instru- 
 ments for the accomplishment of His purposes, has given to 
 this nation a geographical position, and a territorial greatness 
 and wealth as much surpassing all other nations as its civil 
 institutions are in advance of the age. Time has proved 
 that Europe, which was thought to be the center, is only a 
 way station in the march of civilization to the New World. 
 Our nation occupies an area as large as a dozen European 
 dynasties. The whole of Great Britain might be easily sub- 
 merged in our northern lakes, and in all the physical 
 resources which constitute a great nation, and put it in con- 
 trol of the keys of a world-wide power, it never has had, and 
 never can have an equal. To give a single illustration — a 
 committee recently reported in the Parliament of Great Brit- 
 ain, that by extending the Grand Trunk Railway to the Pa- 
 cific, England might reach China and her dependencies in the 
 East, nineteen days sooner than by her present route ; and the 
 prediction was ventured, that soon the vast commerce between 
 India and Western Europe, would pass through America, in 
 this way increasing its population, and magnifying its pros- 
 pective importance a hundred fold. Thus God has placed us 
 as a light at the conjunction of the great streams of influ- 
 ence. The world's highways meet and cross here, and for 
 generations to come, those who occupy these seats of privi- 
 lege will be called upon to perform the work of a free and 
 enlightened Christian nation. What Germany was to the 
 
cause of pure religion in the sixteenth century — what Eng- 
 lish liberty was to Christian civilization in the seventeenth 
 century — that, and more, the Federal Union now is to the 
 world. And what is this hut the measure of the moral worth 
 of our institutions ? God may not love us, nor care to save 
 us for ourselves ; but for the sake of our posterity and the 
 great future into which the boundaries of his kingdom run, 
 he will establish the integrity, and secure the freedom, and 
 maintain the honor of this nation. Who doubts it ? The 
 workmen indeed die, but the work goes on. Shall we, start- 
 ing thus on a new career, with the sunlight of a golden 
 future on our foreheads, turn back to confederacies and des- 
 potisms? to feudal aristocracies and slavery? No! God 
 forbid ! This lurid light of war, which flashes along the sky, 
 is not the funeral pyre of American liberty, but the dawning 
 glory of her immortal youth. 
 
 3. The moral worth of our Federal Union is seen in the 
 principles it embodies. A nation's worth depends upon the 
 value of the truths it holds up to the world, and its ability and 
 determination to maintain them. The province of Egypt is 
 worth just what the principle of an absolute despotism is 
 worth to the cause of humanity. A nation founded on slave- 
 ry would be worth all that the doctrine of oppression is worth 
 to the cause of Christian civilization in this age. And God 
 evidently sets no higher value upon it now, than when he 
 swallowed up Fharoah and his host in the Red Sea. 
 
 In every age, some one nation has occupied the advance in 
 the struggle for civil and religious liberty. Two centuries 
 ago, the service which England performed for the world, was 
 beyond all computation. Oliver Cromwell spake, and relig- 
 ious liberty took heart throughout Europe. But that position 
 is being taken from her and given to America. That which 
 now promises to accomplish most for the good of man is repre- 
 sented by our Union. Bring before you, for the purposes of 
 thanksgiving and praise, the principles of which our nation's 
 flag is the symbol and hope. 
 
 Our government gives every citizen the right to become the 
 owner of soil, and thus restores to the world the old doctrine 
 2 
 
10 
 
 which God gave to the Jews. A free soil is nature's Magna 
 Charta of liberty and virtue. Take away this right, and you es- 
 tablish an aristocracy by which you entail upon one class dan- 
 gerous wealth and power, and upon another hopeless oppression, 
 poverty and toil. It has been the device of tyranny in all ages, 
 to wrest the soil from the common people, for it carries with it 
 liberty and independence, and all the rights and privileges of 
 citizenship. Here, the land is free to every man ; none so poor 
 as to be shut out from the benefits it confers. The widow may 
 keep her cow ; no land-holder can take it for rents. The poor 
 man may possess the heritage which God gave him — a free soil — 
 and build his castle thereon, and rear his children in content- 
 ment and peace, and while the old flag waves over him, no 
 one, not even Ahab the king, can eject him save for misman- 
 agement of his own. This fact is the source of untold strength 
 and encouragement to the poor. It binds a man to his coun- 
 try, gives him weight and stability of character and incites just 
 and laudable ambition. 
 
 Our government honors free labor. It is the only coun- 
 try in the world, where the child of poverty and toil may 
 be honored and respected as a man, and where the lowest 
 classes have equal opportunity with the highest, to rise to 
 every civil station in the land. Poverty excludes no man 
 from respectability. There is no barrier to check the advance- 
 ment of the humblest child in all this vast republic. What 
 he chooses, that he is as free to aspire to, by honorable compe- 
 tition, as any of his fellows. In the old world, there is little 
 hope for the poor. Rank is privileged, and has secured to 
 itself wealth and power, and hereditary right by law. Pover- 
 ty is hedged in on every hand, and is forced to grind hopeless- 
 ly on, in the prison-house of toil. These truths are as familiar 
 to you as household words. But in a time like this, when the 
 foundations of our government are shaken, it is well for us to 
 review them and reassert their worth. What poor man can 
 look up to the flag of his country, and think what it secures 
 to him and his posterity, and not shed tears of gratitude to 
 Almighty God ! While it waves over him he is a man. No 
 arbitrary power can take away his rights. He is free to fill up 
 
11 
 
 the measure of his manhood, and to eat without molestation, 
 the fruit of his toil. 
 
 Our government also encourages popular education. There 
 is no monoply of learning here. By a law of the land, a 
 free school is opened near every man's door, and his children 
 are invited to enter and take into their own hands, the keys 
 of knowledge and power. Ignorance has been -the fruitful 
 source of oppression and wrong in all ages. The few have sat 
 in the seats of learning, and excluded the many, holding 
 them in a bitter and degrading bondage. Here the genius of 
 our free schools lifts up every child at its birth, and places it 
 in the highway to usefulness and honor. In England, the 
 common working man must entail his poverty and ignorance 
 upon his child. In America, while he toils, his labor is sweet- 
 ened by the thought tliat his children are at school, fitting for 
 a position to which he coiild never attain. And while this 
 Federal Union is preserved, such may be the solace of every 
 obscure and humble man. Our common schools are educat- 
 ing to day, five millions of rising freemen. The one hundred 
 and twenty colleges dotted over our land, have graduated 
 thirteen thousand men, and are annually sending out an army 
 of three thousand, skilled in all valuable learning, for the 
 great work of the age. Who can estimate the worth of a na- 
 tion which is accomplishing a work like this ? 
 
 Our Federal Union honors civil liberty. After generations 
 of conflict, a government has been founded under which man, 
 in the highest and best sense, can be free. Oh ! how sweet 
 that word sounds. Liberty — Liberty — speak it out, no man 
 can harm you ! Liberty ! — let it ring through every valley. 
 Liberty! — let it sound from ocean to ocean. For ages, men 
 have tasted it in the air, have smelt it in the mountains — 
 have heard its music in the leaping rills, and have been forced 
 to bow down to chains and slavery, and to die with the worm 
 of despotism gnawing at their vitals. But here, while the 
 banner of our country floats over us, we are Freemen. There 
 are none to question our rights. This one boon which our 
 Union confers " without money and without price," has cost 
 the world more lives than the Union now contains. For it, 
 
12 
 
 Europe has been lighted up with the fires of martyrdom, and 
 her prisons filled with the bravest and noblest of earth. For 
 it, her scaffolds have been stained with gore, and her battle- 
 fields have drank of human blood like the Spring rain. And 
 shall we place no value upon civil liberty now ? Shall we hold 
 that Constitution and Union which secure it, as of little moral 
 worth ? Shall we let that flag which represents it, be torn 
 down by traitorous hands ? The response is " Oh ! the sacri- 
 fice — Oh ! the blood it will cost." And none can feel more 
 deeply than I do, the weight of that sorrow which presses 
 upon the countless broken households of our land. But is it 
 the brave and suffering soldier who complains, or those who, 
 refusing to lend their aid, remain at home to find fault ? If 
 men can not shed blood for freedom, and make sacrifice for 
 principle, they are born in the wrong age, and belong to the 
 wrong nation. Those who are now upholding the flag of our 
 country, came of a race, who for centuries have dared to suf- 
 fer for truth, and even have counted it sweet to die for liber- 
 ty. And now when " the sons of God " are called together 
 for one more struggle in behalf of the " good old cause," if 
 any are found among them counseling otherwise, it is because 
 Satan has come also. I know some will say this nation, as 
 a whole, has not honored liberty; I grant it ; and the 
 thought makes my blood tingle with shame to my fingers 
 ends. But I hope. Into a field in the South of England, a 
 refuse mill stone was thrown. Up through the hole in the 
 centre, shot an oak ; it grew till it filled the hole and raised 
 the stone up with it, some inches from the ground. The 
 problem was, whether the stone would burst asunder, or the 
 tree would die. At length, in a storm which tried every fibre 
 of the trunk, the stone gave way, and the oak lived. Slavery 
 has hung like a mill-stone around our tree of Liberty, threat- 
 ening to destroy it, till the hearts of good men have sunk 
 within them. But this war has cracked the stone, and now 
 the grand old tree, rising loftier than before, bids fair to brave 
 the storms of a thousand winters. Our flag to day, thank 
 God ! means Liberty ! And Slavery — to change the figure — 
 will find this stone with which it sought to overthrow the 
 
13 
 
 Union, hanging around its own neck, till it is sunk, like Mil- 
 ton's rebel angels, ten thousand fathoms deep 
 
 " In adamantine chains and penal fire ;" 
 
 and the nations of the earth, beholding, shall shout Alleluia ! 
 while the smoke of its torment ascendeth up forever and ever. 
 Thus the most cursory view makes it evident, that our 
 Federal Union is the pledge of those principles which are 
 dearest to the heart of man. Its value to every one who 
 loves the cause of humanity is above all price. It embodies, 
 doubtless, in greater purity than any other government, all 
 those active forces of Christian civilization, which are placing 
 this age in advance of the past, and this nation, in the fore- 
 front of the present ; hence the battle shock which has come 
 upon us. Had the moral sentiment of this nation been like 
 that of Spain for instance, we might have lived in peace. 
 Tlie Constitution of our country, interpreted according to the 
 spirit of its founders, is the best fruit which the cause of civil 
 liberty has thus far borne. The Declaration of Independence 
 touched the " high water mark " of the eighteenth century ; 
 the Proclamation of Emancipation, by President Lincoln, has 
 reached the highest point in the nineteenth. Should this 
 nation go down, man, as man, would lose half the sacredness 
 of his personality. What check would there be upon arbitra- 
 ry power ? What hope for the poor and oppressed ? 
 
 It is evident therefore, men and brethren, that in exact pro- 
 portion to the moral worth of this Union, is our duty to up- 
 hold it. If its value seems to grow upon us, defying compu- 
 tation, so also does the obligation to preserve it. The poor 
 man loves his home, however humble, and will defend it, for 
 it is his all. Shall we have an inheritance like this, given to 
 us, and when rebel hands are rending it from us, turn away 
 with indifference ? Be not deceived as to the nature of this 
 conflict. If this Union goes down it will never rise again. 
 If we would continue to be, what, from our infancy has been 
 our joy and pride — American citizens — we must act tlie man 
 in this crisis of our country's history. The men who oppose 
 this government will never yield till their sword arm is para- 
 
14 
 
 lyzed. They threw themselves into this war, knowing, as 
 one of their prominent leaders confessed, that they were 
 " candidates for the halter ; " and they will not pause in their 
 course of demolition and ruin, till this national government 
 is leveled in the dust. 
 
 A slave vessel cari-ying four hundred negroes kidnapped in 
 Africa, to the southern market, was confronted on the ocean 
 by a man-of-war. The captain of the slaver ordered the ne- 
 groes to be brought up and tied, one by one, to a long rope 
 running round the deck, and fastened to a great weight. 
 When it became evident that there was no escape from the 
 man-of-war, the captain ordered the weight to which the ne- 
 groes were tied, to be thrown into the sea, and thus with a 
 gurgling groan, four liundred human beings went down to 
 death. The rebel leaders have, in like manner, bound to- 
 gether the foundation principles of our Union — liberty, just- 
 ice, law, order and truth — all that we love for its past service, 
 and delight in for its future promise — and cast them over- 
 board, determined that rather than yield one iota, they shall 
 all perish together in the hell of rebellion. The rescue must 
 be as quick and decisive, as the attack is bold and desperate. 
 Days must perform the work of months, and months accom- 
 plisli the mission of years. Already great results have been 
 achieved. The news which comes over the wires to-day, from 
 Gen. Grant, near Chattanooga, inspires fresh confidence and 
 hope. Another battle fought ! Another victory won ! But 
 much remains to be done. 
 
 In girding ourselves once more however to meet our pres- 
 ent duties, we do not need to be pointed to the history of 
 other nations for heroic examples. Our own history abounds 
 in incidents of lofty heroism and sacrifice. Do you recall 
 Bunker Hill and Lexington ? Do you remember the blood 
 tliat crimsoned the snow at Valley Forge ? Those frozen, 
 bleeding feet were your fathers' ! What nation can point 
 to a brighter record ? And shall not the sons be worthy of 
 their sires ? Coming nearer home — have you forgotten our 
 last national holiday, when the news of a two-fold victory 
 came — telling wiiat your husbands, brothers and sons had 
 
15 
 
 achieved at Gettysburg, and on the Mississippi ? How grand- 
 ly the stars shone out that night ! The earth put on a man- 
 tle of glory ; the air was stung into melody by the whispers 
 of invisible spirits foretelling the grand hour of universal lib- 
 erty. Now, after all this toil, and suffering, and sacrifice, 
 bringing us to the very gates of victory, and opening the fold- 
 ing doors to a wider liberty, and a purer and firmer govern- 
 ment, shall it be said that we, with such an end full in view, 
 faltered and paused ? No, never ! He who counsels this, 
 forgets God. The work will go on. 
 
 A German baron constructed a vast wind-harp, by stretch- 
 ing a cable from his castle turret to the mountain side beyond. 
 There were those who jeered at his folly. The summer 
 zephyrs played past it, and it was silent ; the autumn winds 
 swept it, but it gave no sound. By and by, on a winter's 
 night, when a tempest howled up the valley, the baron's harp 
 hummed, hour after hour, with a strange unearthly melody, 
 its deep tones rising and falling in the storm. So now the 
 sinews of war have been strung, but there is a momentary 
 pause and hush in the nation's heart — an expectancy and 
 longing as if for some unspoken word, awful in the grandeur 
 of its tone and promise. Soon, " the great winds of Jehovah" 
 will sweep along the earth, and, as if to the music of millen- 
 nial trumpets, the hosts of freedom will go forth to final vic- 
 tory. God speed the hour. 
 
••♦ 
 
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