" 8 A M SON'S 11 I D I> L E ." 
 
 On Friday, March 27th, 1863. 
 
 BRING THE DAY OF 
 
 HUMILIATION, FASTING AND PRAYER, 
 
 Appointed by the President of the Confederate States. 
 
 BY THE 
 
 Jit. Rev. STEPHENELLTOTT, I). D. 
 
 C ector of Christ Church, and Bishop of the 
 Diocese of Georgia. 
 
 Oat of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweet- 
 ness." — Judges xiv : 14. 
 
 Item, (tap: 
 
 M, BOYKIN & CO., STEAM BOOK A.XD JOB PRINTERS. 
 
 1863/ ' 
 
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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2012 with funding from 
 
 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 
 
 http://archive.org/details/samsonsriddleserOOelli 
 
SAMSON'S RIDDLE.' 
 
 A SERMON 
 
 fetair ittn m w>m\ 
 
 On Friday, March 27th, 1863. 
 
 BEING THE DAY OF 
 
 HUMILIATION, FASTING AND PEAYEE, 
 i 
 
 Appointed by the President of the Confederate States. . 
 
 BY THE 
 
 Rt. Rev. STEPHEN ELLIOTT, D. L\, 
 
 Rectoe of Christ Church, and Bishop of the 
 Diocese of Geoegia, 
 
 " Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweet- 
 ness." — Judges xiv : 14. 
 
 ton, <tarp: 
 
 BURKE, BOYKIN & CO., STEAM BOOK A.ND JOB PRINTERS. 
 
 1863. 
 
SAVANNAH, April 6th, 1863 1 
 
 Right Reverend and very Dear Sir: 
 
 At a meeting held in Christ Church, of the following "Wardens and Ves- 
 trymen of said Church, a resolution was adopted, requesting you to furnish 
 for publication a copy of the sermon preached in Christ Church, on the 
 day of Fasting, Humiliation and Prayer, 27th March last, believing that the 
 views presented are eminently calculated to further the cause of the Con* 
 
 federacy. 
 
 W. P. HUNTER, i m , 
 
 \ Wardens. 
 ¥M. H. CUTLER, ) 
 
 W. THORNE WILLIAMS, 1 
 ROBT. HABERSHAM, 
 GEORGE A. GORDON, f- Vestrymen. 
 JOHN WILLIAMSON, 
 P. M. KOLLOCK, J 
 
 The Rt. Rev. Stephen Elliott. 
 
 SAVANNAH, April 9th, 1863, 
 
 To the Wardens and Vestry of Christ Church, Savannah : 
 
 Gentlemen: — If the sermon delivered by me on the 27th ulfc, the day 
 of Fasting, Humiliation and Prayer, appointed by the President of the Con- 
 federate States, can be of any service to the cause of the Confederate 
 States, most heartily do I consent to its publication. 
 
 My heart's desire' is, that the people of the Confederate States may ever 
 keep before them the stern moral issues which are involved in our pre- 
 sent struggle, and may never consent to sacrifice one of them to any pre- 
 mature yearning for peace. 
 
 Very respectfully your friend and Rector, 
 
 STEPHEN ELLIOTT. 
 To the Wardens and Vestry of Christ Church, Savannah. 
 
$0 tit* ®Uvc$ H ito §mm of ®m$w. 
 
 The President of the Confederate States having issued his Proclamation 
 appointing Friday, March 27th inst., as a day of Fasting, Humiliation and 
 Prayer, and inviting the people of the said States "to repair on that day 
 to their usual places of public worship and join in prayer to Almighty 
 God, that he will continue his merciful protection over our oause; that he 
 will scatter our enemies and set at naught their evil designs, and that he 
 will graciously bestow to our beloved country the blessings of Peace and 
 Security." 
 
 Now, therefore, I, Stephen Elliott, Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal 
 Church in the Diocese of Georgia, do direct the Clergy of said Diocese to 
 assemble their congregations upon that day, and to keep the Fast with 
 thankful hearts, and with broken and contrite spirits. 
 
 Upon the occasion of the Fast, the Clergy will use the following ser- 
 vice : * 
 
 Morning Prayer as usual to the Psalter. 
 
 Psalms of the day, 3d, 1th, 34th. 
 
 1. Lesson. Nehemiah, ch. IV. 
 
 2. Lesson. Matthew, ch. VI. 
 Use the whole Litany. 
 
 Immediately before the general Thanksgiving, introduce the Confession 
 which precedes the Epistle in the service for Ash-Wednesday and the fol- 
 lowing prayers: 
 
 PRAYER. 
 
 O most mighty and gracious God, thy mercy is over all thy works, but 
 in special manner hath been extended towards us, whom thou hast so 
 powerfully and wonderfully defended. Thou hast showed us terrible things 
 that we might see how powerful and gracious a God thou art; how able 
 and ready to help those who trust in thee. "We therefore present ourselves 
 before thy Divine Majesty to offer a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, 
 for that thou heardest us when we called in our trouble and didst not 
 cast out our prayer which we made before thee in our past distress. And, 
 we beseech thee, make us truly sensible now of thy mercy as we were 
 then of our danger; and give us hearts always ready to express our 
 
thankfulness, not only by words, but also by our lives, in being more obe- 
 dient to thy holy commandments. Continue, we beseech thee, this thy 
 goodness to us, that we, whom thou hast saved, may serve thee in holi- 
 ness and righteousness all the days of our life, through Jesus Christ our 
 Lord and Saviour. Amen. 
 
 PRAYER. 
 
 most mighty Lord God, who reignest over all the kingdoms of men; 
 who hast power in thy hand to cast down and to raise up, to save thy ser- 
 vants and rebuke their enemies, let thine ears be now open unto our 
 prayers and thy merciful eyes upon our trouble and our danger. Lord, do 
 thou judge our cause in righteousness and mercy, and whereiu-soever we 
 have offended against thee, or injured our neighbor, make us truly sensi- 
 ble of it and deeply penitent for it. "We humbly confess that we are un- 
 worthy of the manifold goodness vouchsafed us in the struggle for our 
 rights, yet we are bold, because of thy long suffering, to pray for the con- 
 tinuance of it and to supplicate thy blessing upon us and our arms. Cov- 
 er the heads of our soldiers in the day of battle, and send thy fear before 
 them that our enemies may flee at their presence. Establish us in the 
 rights thou hast given us, in our Government and in our Laws, in our Re- 
 ligion, and in all our holy Ministries. The race is not to the swift, nor 
 the battle to the strong, but our trust is in the name of the Lord our God. 
 Hear us, Lord, for the glory of thy name and for thy truth's sake, 
 through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 
 
 Given under my hand this twenty-first day of March, A. D., 1863. 
 
 STEPHEN ELLIOTT, 
 Bish, Prot. Epis. Church, Diocese Ga. 
 
 
JF txmttn. 
 
 Judges : Chapt. XIV, vv. 12, 13, 14. 
 
 12. " J.?zc? Samson said unto them: I will noiv put forth a 
 riddle unto you ; if you can certainly declare it me within the 
 seven days of the feast and find it out, then I loill give you 
 thirty sheets and thirty change of garments. 
 
 13. " But if ye cannot declare it me, then shall ye give me 
 thirty sheets and thirty change of garments. And they said un- 
 to him, Put forth thy riddle, that we may hear it. 
 
 14. u And he said unto them, Out of the eater came forth meat, 
 and out of the strong came forth sweetness." 
 
 There has been for some time past a deep and wide spread 
 yearning for peace. It has exhibited itself in the greediness 
 with which the people of the Confederate States have listen- 
 ed to every rumor of intervention that has floated across 
 the Atlantic, and in the credulity with which, they have be- 
 lieved that the recent political movements in the United 
 States meant anything more than the customary struggle for 
 power. It is a natural yearning, especially in a people un- 
 accustomed as we have been to a state of warfare, for the 
 human mind abhors anxiety and doubtfulness, and shrinks 
 from a condition of things which forces it to live entirely in 
 the present and for the present. With a war pressing upon us 
 which isxontinually changing its features and enlarging its 
 proportions — to-day a war for the Union, and to-morrow a 
 war for emancipation — now waged with the power of an 
 ordinary government, and then with forces almost unprece- 
 dented in modern history — there is for us not even a con- 
 jectural future. We can form no plans of life, nor look with 
 reasonable probability upon the results of any undertaking. 
 Our households are kept in perpetual agitation — our pursuits 
 are irregular and anomalous — our feelings oscillate between 
 excitement and depression — our affections are ever on the 
 
6 A SERMON. 
 
 rack of cruel suspense. Under conditions like these the 
 mind and the heart will both long for peace ; for rest from 
 an excitement that is wearing them out ; will crave, if only 
 for a little while, a recurrence of those days, when the sound 
 of war was not heard in the land, and when the sun did not 
 cast its setting rays upon fields of blood and carnage. 
 
 But this yearning for peace has no smack of submission 
 in it. That has not entered into the thoughts of any body. 
 It is really nothing more than a natural wish that an useless 
 strife should cease ; an earnest desire that a struggle should 
 be ended, which can end but in one way. When the peace 
 which is longed for is embodied in words, it invariably in- 
 cludes the ideas of entire independence and complete na- 
 tionality — independence from all the bonds, whether politi- 
 cal, commercial or social, which have hitherto hindered our 
 development — nationality, with our whole territory pre- 
 served to us, and with no entangling alliances binding us for 
 the future. This is its whole scope and meaning, and is 
 very distinct from any such fainting of the spirit as would 
 precede submission. It is rather the token of a restless en- 
 ergy, which pants to enter untrammeled upon that new 
 career of freedom which it is working out for itself, and 
 which seems to rise before it in brightness and grandeur, and 
 to beckon it onward to glory and happiness. The courage 
 of the Confederate States is not failing, but its passive en- 
 durance is sorely taxed, and like a beleagured lion, it chafes 
 against the restraints which keep it from its native haunts, 
 and rages because it cannot at once strike to the earth all 
 the enemies who encompass and goad it, even while they 
 can never either destroy it or make it captive. ^With a 
 bound and a roar, the Lord of the forest will one day break 
 through the hosts which surround him, but until his oppor- 
 tunity comes, he must bide his time and be satisfied with 
 striking terror into his hunters by the lessons which he may 
 give them, of his fierceness and energy. 
 
 But God has thought it best for us that this cruel war 
 should endure yet longer and should be waged with an in- 
 creased ferocity, if not with augmented forces. Our sins are 
 to be more heavily punished, at the same time that our faith 
 
 eti 
 
A SERMOK. 7 
 
 is fo be more thoroughly sifted, and our submission to 
 his will made more complete and perfect. The causes 
 which led to this war — many of the circumstances which 
 have accompanied it and the marvellous manifestations of 
 himself which God has made throughout it — the mighty 
 interests of a moral and religious nature which are bound 
 up in its results — all forbid us from looking upon it as a mere 
 conflict for power. We must take the Divine will into all 
 our reasonings about it, and our humiliation to-day must 
 occupy itself in helping us to school ourselves into an ac- 
 quiesence with his divine arrangements. We may feel sure, 
 seeing how visibly he has fought for us — how strikingly 
 he has supported us through our hours of mortal peril — 
 how he has strengthened us in our weakness, and comforted 
 us in our desolation — that whatever he may order for us in 
 the conduct of this struggle, shall be for our ultimate bless- 
 ing, and that we ourselves shall one day see it and confess 
 it. It may be a bitter disappointment to us that the dove 
 has returned to the ark without the olive leaf in her mouth, 
 thus notifying us that the waters of strife have not yet sub* 
 sided, but the ark is still in safety and under the guidance 
 of Him whose eye never sleepeth and whose love never 
 faileth ! Let us, then, resume our sacred work of stern re- 
 sistance ; let us pray for fortitude, for patience, for endu- 
 rance, for faith ; let us be satisfied that there are lessons of 
 deep moral import which are yet to be evolved from the 
 continuance of this struggle, and we shall discover in God's 
 own time that " out of the eater came forth meat, and out of 
 the strong came forth sweetness." 
 
 There is something very delightful in this word Peace. It 
 strikes upon the ear of a tumultuous and ever agitated world 
 with a musical softness that is wonderfully attractive. We 
 associate with its presence, comfort and ease and prosperity 
 and love. All that is brightest in the home and in the 
 heart is wrapped up in it. The pictures of fancy, the dreams 
 of poetry, the richest promises of the gospel are all woven 
 out of its golden hues. The sequestered valley, with its 
 murmuring stream and its quiet happiness — the cultivated 
 plain, basking in the sunshine and covered all over with the 
 
8 A SERMON. 
 
 luxuriant harvest — the crowded city, as it lies asleep under 
 the soft moonbeams, its hum of industry stilled by the 
 inexorable decree of nature — the placid waters, reflecting as 
 in a mirror, the softened forms of the huge monsters which, 
 when awakened from their slumbers, are to bear across the 
 ocean the products of the earth — are some of the scenes 
 which we have beef! accustomed to harmonize with the 
 idea of Peace. And when we have enlarged the scope of 
 our vision, and risen upon imagination's airy wings, we em* 
 brace in the same idea of Peace an interchange of kindly 
 affections among all the nations of the earth, and an univer- 
 sal good will towards men. Philosophy and poetry and 
 prophecy have all combined to body forth its blessings and 
 have alike personified it on earth and in heaven by the mild 
 eye and the gentle murmur «f the Hoty Dove. 
 
 But delightful as is the word, and attractive as are its asso- 
 ciations, we should not be seduced by them to }aeld up 
 either right or truth or justice for its attainment. It would 
 indeed be a great burden rolled from our hearts if we could 
 take our children to our bosoms, and feel that they indeed 
 had a country — if we could look upon our noble sons and 
 rejoice that they were freed with honour from any further 
 conflict with foemen so unworthy of their steel— if we could 
 glance around our hearthstones and be satisfied that no rude 
 trumpet would again disturb their peace, no roar of cannon 
 drive us from their shadow — if we could enter the temples 
 of God and sing the augels song of peace on earth, good 
 will towards men. But until we can do so with honor and 
 with security, let us banish the idea from our thoughts. Let 
 there be no making haste to find Peace. It will come when 
 God sees that war has accomplished his purposes, and it 
 ought to come no sooner. Unless we follow his guidance in 
 this matter, we shall fall into temptation and a snare, and in 
 grasping at a shadow, lose the substance which we have 
 already gained at the cost of so much precious blood. We 
 seceded from the Government of which we were once a 
 part, because we felt that under it we no longer had a coun- 
 try. For what is our country ? Our country is in its con- 
 stitution, and its provisions were openly and shamefully 
 
A SERMON. 9 
 
 violated — our country is in its religion, and its altars were 
 desecrated by infidelity and the vilest fanaticism — our country 
 is in its institutions, and they were threatened with total sub- 
 version — our country is in its social life, and that was covered 
 all over with rude abuse and malignant defamation. And 
 shall we, for peace sake, think for a moment of returning to 
 the embrace of such an Union ? God forbid ! Let us learn 
 at once the stern truth that we have no country until we 
 make one. We can never go back to that whence we came 
 out. "We should not recognize it in its present garb of 
 tyranny. We should not discern that once proud Eepublic 
 under the mask which it now wears, with the oriental des- 
 potism that rules over it, and the oriental submission that 
 kisses its feet. In its delirium it has lost all sense of regu- 
 lated liberty — it remembers only passion and vengeance. 
 Closing its eyes against all truth, and shutting its ears against 
 all wisdom, it is striking at man madly in its rage, and it is 
 cursing God who has placed the bit in its mouth, and is 
 saying to it, " Thus far shalt thou go and no further." In 
 quietness and confidence is our strength. Manly fortitude 
 and heroic patience will accomplish for us in due time all 
 that we are contending for. We did not enter upon this 
 conflict in the temper of children, who were quarrelling for 
 some mere point of pique, but with the resolution of men 
 who perceived that every thing which made life' tolerable 
 was trembling in the balance. Let peace come to us, and 
 let us not forget our manhood and go in search of peace. 
 We might find a counterfeit of it among the contrivances of 
 man and meanwhile lose that heaven-descended peace which 
 God will give us, if we will wait his will and abide his dis- 
 cipline. Every thing forbids us to be too solicitous for 
 peace. Our consecrated cause — consecrated by the blood of 
 our children — the aid and comfort it would give our enemies 
 — the permanent welfare of our posterity. If God sends it 
 to us, then welcome, bright-eyed Peace ! but woe to us if, for 
 its sake, we sacrifice one jot or one tittle of our duty and of 
 eternal j ustice ! 
 
 In the present condition of things such a peace as we 
 ought to accept would be impossible. What have we to 
 
10 A SERMON. 
 
 offer in exchange for all the territory which- the enemy now 
 holds within the borders of the Confederate States, for the 
 half of Tennessee, for the Eastern and "Western regions of 
 Virginia, for all our rich sea-coast, for our harbors and forts, 
 for that garden spot of our country, lovely Louisiana ? 
 What have we, at the present moment, to cast in the balance 
 against Maryland and Kentucky and Missouri, whose right 
 to determine their own future destiny, it would be base in 
 us to abandon? Hence is it that foreign mediation would 
 be, at this time, and under our present circumstances, 
 so disastrous to us, and hence is it, I firmly believe, that God 
 has put it into the heart of our enemies to reject it. What 
 could foreign mediation effect? What could it propose as 
 the basis of settlement, but some s\ich terms as European 
 diplomacy has been conversant about for ages ? Would you 
 consent .to peace upon the terms of the uii possidetis, each 
 party holding what it possesses ? Your own solemn legis- 
 lative pledges cry out against it. Virginia would blush for 
 shame at such a proposition, and would weep, as Rachel, for 
 her children, refusing to be comforted. Louisiana would lift 
 her saddened eyes and fettered arms and plead for mercy 
 and deliverance. The home of Jackson would burn with 
 indignation that the ashes of her unconquered hero should 
 be trampled upon by hirelings and slaves. Old ocean would 
 murmur curses against you upon her wailing winds, and 
 would lash your shores in fury at their degradation.' Would 
 you grant to your unscrupulous enemies special commercial 
 advantages and a favored intercourse ? This would hold us 
 in as utter vassalage as we have heretofore been held, would 
 ruin our revenues and make us tributary forever to North- 
 ern industry. Would you pay money for peace ? At such a 
 thought, the shade of Pinckney would arise from its dust, 
 and bid you remember what Southern spirit was, when he 
 uttered the immortal words, "Millions for defence, but not a 
 cent for tribute." Mediation can do us now no good. It 
 might embarrass us and place us in a false position before 
 the world, but it could not advance us one step towards an 
 honorable peace. Let us then give thanks this day to God 
 for having so hardened the heart and blinded the eyes of our 
 
A SERMON". 11 
 
 enemies as to induce them to repel their best and truest 
 friend in his advances for their relief. 
 
 But besides mediation, there is another movement of 
 Foreign Powers upon which many have rested their hope 
 for peace, recognition, followed by forcible intervention in our 
 behalf. If such a hope had ever any basis of reality, it is 
 now„ in my opinion, . forever put at rest by the recent out- 
 break in Poland and its rumored extension to Hungary. 
 Revolution, and European cabinets will consider our move- 
 ment to be revolution, has had no friends among the crowned 
 .heads of Europe since the convulsions which have swept 
 over their dominions again and again since 1789. It is an 
 infection which they dread. It rises before them perpetually 
 like a fearful spectre, and sits with them at their feasts and 
 troubles their hours of sleep. They have acquiesced, 'tis true, 
 from time to time, in changes of dynasty ; they have, under 
 very peculiar circumstances, and when the pressure of danger 
 was at their own doors, as in the cases of Belgium and Italy, 
 intervened and saved themselves from internal discord, but 
 the general action of the European powers has been adverse 
 to the early recognition of Governments founded upon rev- 
 olutionary movements, and especially to any thing like an 
 armed intervention in their favor. The revolt from Spain 
 of her South- American Colonies began as early as 1810, and 
 although largely assisted by English capital and English 
 muscle, they were not recognized by the government of 
 Great Britain until 1823. Mexico declared her independ- 
 ence in 1813, and it was not until 1825 that she was wel- 
 comed into the family of nations. But the most striking 
 example of modern times is that of Greece. If there was 
 any people whose struggle for independence should have 
 met an instant and enthusiastic response in every court of 
 Europe, whose earliest movements should have caused ev- 
 ery heart to bound with joy, and every sword to leap from 
 its scabbard, it was that of the Greeks. They were the pure 
 descendants of the old Hellenic race, whose history was a 
 household word in every abode of civilized man — whose 
 philosophy had given tone and direction to all the thought 
 of the modern world — whose literature had awakened Eu- 
 
12 A SERMON. 
 
 rope from its sleep of centuries, and had irradiated its dark- 
 ness with light and beauty. Though dead themselves, their 
 voices had been speaking from their graves and animating 
 the nations to a lofty ambition in arms and letters. They 
 were, moreover, Christians, contending against the ancient 
 enemies of the faith, and calling upon the Church of the 
 living God to lift the banner of the Cross once more in con- 
 flict with the Crescent. Hear their own eloquent appeal to 
 the Congress of Verona, made in the second year of their 
 struggle : " The sentiments of piety, of humanity and of 
 justice by which this assemblage of sovereigns is animated, , 
 inspire the Government of Greece with the hope that its 
 just demand will be favorably listened to,. If, contrary to 
 all expectation, the offer of the Government should be re- 
 jected, the present declaration must be considered a formal 
 protest which Greece lays this day at the foot of the Throne 
 of Divine Justice — a protest which a Christian people ad- 
 dresses with confidence to Europe and to the great family of 
 Christianity. Weakened and worn out, the Greeks will then 
 place their hope only in the strength of God. Sustained by 
 his all-powerful hand, they will not bend before tyranny ; 
 Christians, persecuted through four centuries for having re- 
 mained faithful to our Saviour and to God our Sovereign 
 Master, we will defend, even to the last, his Church, our fire- 
 sides and our tombs ; happy to descend into them freemen 
 and Christians, or to conquer, as we have hitherto conquered 
 by the alone strength of our Lord Jesus Christ and by his 
 Divine power." And what was the response of this Con- 
 gress of Sovereigns? A cold, denial even of recognition ; 
 an utter refusal to give any countenance to this illustrious 
 people who had sprang, as if awakened by some new Tyrtseus, 
 into the arena of nations, and were fighting upon the very 
 battle fields which Leonidas and Themistocles had made im- 
 mortal. It was not, until with a heroism worthy of their 
 race and an endurance which would have illustrated mar- 
 tyrs, they had waded through seven years of the fiercest 
 warfare — through seven years of fire and blood and massacre — 
 through seven years of appalling misery such as we have 
 not yet dreamed of — that the selfish hearts of the nations 
 
A SERMON. 13 
 
 would listen to their cries, and deliver them from the brutal 
 ferocity of the Mussulman ! Should we, in the face of such 
 examples, lean upon any such hope as foreign intervention? 
 It was well, perhaps, ere we had become conscious of our 
 internal resources, that the public mind should have been 
 flattered with such a delusion. Possibly it encouraged some 
 who might otherwise have fainted in the hour of our weak- 
 ness, but now, when we have aroused ourselves like a strong- 
 man from sleep, and such a reliance is no longer of any con- 
 sequence to us, it is well to say that we should never have 
 looked for it. Any such expectation was contrary to the 
 lessons of history, and was rested upon grounds which have 
 proved themselves utterly fallacious. 
 
 There are but two sources whence we may look for such 
 a peace as we should be willing to accept — a rupture between 
 some great naval power and the United States, which would 
 permit us to recover our sea-coast, together with our cities, 
 harbors, and ports, or a civil war among the remaining States, 
 which would occupy our adversaries at home, and enable us to 
 expel them from our territories. When either of these con- 
 tingencies occurs, then may we hope for peace ; then may 
 we begin to sing our song of deliverance. But not until 
 then. What the probability is of either of these events, 
 you can judge as well as myself. They are both in God's 
 power to bring about naturally, whenever it pleases Him, 
 and in my opinion he is gradually leading up our enemies to 
 this catastrophe. The little cloud, like a man's hand, arising 
 out of the sea, is beginning to show itself, and their heavens 
 may soon be black with storm and wind.- This is clearly, 
 in my estimation, the next manifestation which God will 
 make of Himself in this conflict. But, like the prophecies 
 of Scripture, so are these movements upon the stage of the 
 world. We may understand what is the coming event which 
 is to be evolved from the curtained future, but we cannot al- 
 ways reckon the time which that event will consume in its 
 complete development. Time, in God's view, is very differ- 
 ent from time in our view. A thousand years are with Him 
 as one day, and one day as a thousand years. That our 
 enemies are advancing, step by step, to a deep and bitter 
 
14 A SERMON. 
 
 humiliation, I feel no doubt, and never have felt any ; but 
 how long a period may be required by God to bring them 
 into the position, when it shall work upon them the moral 
 discipline it is intended to produce, or for how many years 
 our sins may delay our deliverance, are points which no man 
 can certainly know. The Israelites were kept forty years in 
 the wilderness, because they needed that discipline. And 
 when I perceive the love of money which is rapidly pervad- 
 ing the Confederate States — that love of money which the 
 Apostle calls the root of all evil — I tremble lest we shall yet 
 be pierced through with many sorrows. It is sad to think 
 how a noble cause, which should fill the whole heart, and 
 absorb all the energies of our people, is embarrassed and 
 may be sacrificed by a spirit of covetousness, the lowest 
 and meanest of all decent passions, and which God ranks in 
 his holy Scriptures alongside of uncleanness and idolatry. 
 Is this a time for you, citizens, when our gallant soldiers 
 are breasting with their indomitable valor the flood of iniqui- 
 ty and desolation which is threatening to involve in one in- 
 discriminate ruin your homes and your altars, to be filling 
 their hearts with anxiety about the loved ones whom they 
 have left behind them ? to be reducing, through your unwise 
 speculations and silly competitions, the comforts of your 
 defenders to the very lowest point of subsistence ? If you 
 will prey upon one another, for God's sake do not prey upon 
 the soldier. Let him be an exception to your scale of 
 prices. You satisfy your consciences by whispering to them 
 that the price of everything has risen alike, and that, to protect 
 yourselves, you must sell at extravagant prices, because you 
 buy at extravagant prices. But remember that the pay of 
 the soldier does not increase ; that his little pittance remains 
 the same, while your charges upon him are increasing with 
 strides so enormous that imagination can scarce keep pace 
 with them. And remember, also, that this unnecessary ele- 
 vation of prices prevents the Government from increasing 
 that pay, because any enlargement of its expenses would 
 only further depreciate the currency, and would ultimately 
 force the Government into a collision with its people, which 
 is most sincerely to be deprecated, or would compel it 
 
A SERMON. 15 
 
 to give up the struggle in despair. A country can never 
 be conquered so long as its people are unselfish and self- 
 sacrificing, but when the cause is forgotten in the mad hunt 
 after money, then the eye becomes dim, and the arm falls 
 nerveless. " It becomes," as Isaiah says, " a people of no 
 understanding : therefore, He that made them will not have 
 mercy on them, and He that formed them will shew them 
 no favor." 
 
 There is no prospect, then, before us, but the prospect of 
 continued war, while God is working out for us our deliver- 
 ance. Peace cannot come to us now, so far as man can see,, 
 save through the course of events which we have just de- 
 tailed. With God, of course, all things are possible, and 
 He can, if He chooses, produce such a change in the hearts 
 and feelings of our enemies as to cause them at once to de- 
 sist from their unjust invasion of our homes and firesides. 
 But as He always acts through natural means ; always works 
 out His purposes by a sequence of events which are entirely 
 within the scope of unbelief to consider as customary, we can 
 scarcely hope for such a divine intervention. Nor will our 
 consciences permit us, at this moment, to feel that we de- 
 serve it. We must therefore submit to God's will, and 
 become learners once more in the school of w&r. We are 
 not morally prepared for peace and prosperity, for as soon 
 as God turned the tide of victory in our favor, we set our 
 hearts upon covetousness, and fell down to vorship the 
 golden calf. Let us endeavor, then, to understand the les- 
 sons which are wrapped up for us in the experience of this 
 war, so that "out of the eater may come forth meat, and 
 out of the strong sweetness." 
 
 War is a great eater, a fierce, terrible, omnivorous eater. 
 It eats out wealth, property, life — it devours cities and na- 
 tions — it tears to pieces laws and institutions, and scatters 
 their fragments to the winds — it consumes comfort, and 
 happiness and joy — it lacerates the feelings and the affec- 
 tious — it devours religion, and tramples under foot its tem- 
 ples and its altars — it rides in desolation upon the storm of 
 passion and the whirlwind of vengeance. It is classed by 
 God with famine and pestilence, among His sore judgments,. 
 
16 A SERMON. 
 
 » 
 and when He would threaten His people cruelly, He 
 
 threatens to bring the sword upon them. The blood of 
 man is counted in the Bible as a most mysterious agent, 
 crying from the earth against him that spilleth it, and pol- 
 luting the land upon whose skirts its drops are sprinkled. 
 And yet with all this, as God's means of discipline, it has 
 its moral and political lessons, and God is keeping us per- 
 chance under its cruel yoke that we may learn them ere we 
 assume our place among the nations of the earth. 
 
 Heraclitus, one of the wisest of the Greek philosophers 
 who preceded Socrates, carried this view of the value of war 
 as a teacher and a producer to such an extent, that he ad- 
 vanced it as one of his aphorisms, and left it as a legacy to 
 Greece, that " War was the father of all things"* — that all 
 things are evolved by the strife of antagonistic forces. Even 
 under the revelation of God this is a very manifest truth in 
 many particulars, and we can very well understand how one 
 who looked out upon the world — the natural as well as the 
 moral world — without any heavenly light to guide him, or 
 any divine voice to teach him, might consider this strife as 
 the law which God had impressed upon His creation. He 
 perceived everything to be at war— cold with heat — light 
 with darkness — evil with good — conscience with passion — 
 barbarism with civilization — and out of this strife to come 
 all the progress and all the blessing which the world then 
 knew. Coild he have known the sublime truth, of which 
 his contemporaries, the prophets and kings of the Jewish 
 dispensation, had been darkly informed by prophecy, that 
 truth and salvation were to be evolved out of the warfare 
 between Christ and that "arch angel ruined," he might well 
 have considered his aphorism as including divine as well as 
 human things. And while I would apply it in a very re- 
 stricted sense, to the wisdom which may be gained from the 
 warfare of nation with nation, I am satisfied that it is quite 
 as true in that connection, as in its application to physical or 
 moral strife. 
 
 Peace is not always the safest condition which a fallen 
 
 * IJoXzfxoq, 7taz7]p navrcov. 
 
A SERMON. 17 
 
 being can enjoy. There may be a cry of peace, peace, when 
 there is no peace ; a long prosperity, during which there 
 may creep over us an entire relaxation of moral principle, 
 in which all the energy of virtue may die out, and truth her- 
 self be obscured under the sophistry of appearances. Un- 
 der this condition of things, the wholesome discipline of 
 adversity is the very kindest application which God can 
 make to our necessities, for it at once tears the mask away 
 from things around us, and points us to the stern reality of 
 life. If we be true at heart — if the corruption has not ex- 
 tended to the core — we may be saved, for the struggle then 
 begins between truth and error, and, by the help of God, the 
 right becomes triumphant, and we attain a wisdom which 
 goes with us through life. And as with the individual, so 
 with nations. A peace without interruption engenders 
 vices which, unless checked, lead rapidly to corruption and 
 decay. Prosperity follows peace, and wealth prosperity, and 
 luxury wealth, and moral degradation luxury, and thus this 
 greatest blessing of God, if man could rightly use it, is 
 transmuted, through the inevitable alchemy of sin, into its 
 corresponding curse. The civil state needs continual agita- 
 tion and fresh infusion of virtue from the chastisements 
 of God, just as a lake needs the purifying winds of heaven, 
 and reviving waters from the fresh springs of nature. 
 Without conflict and chastisement, there is but little exer- 
 cise for the higher energies of man, whether intellectual or 
 moral, and but little scope for the nobler characteristics of 
 self-denial and self-sacrifice. The old Roman virtue, which 
 has passed into a proverb, and which was certainly the best 
 development of national life which the world had known, 
 before Christian civilization refined and perfected it, was 
 built up out of this continued strife with adverse circum- 
 stances, and did not decay until she had conquered the world. 
 Without this conflict in the formation and growth of a na- 
 tion, effeminacy creeps in — public virtue becomes enervate 
 — the spirit of a people exhales, even while the forms of its 
 government are preserved. I need not refer you to our own 
 unhappy republic as an illustration of this truth. 
 
 The meat which we are bringing forth out of this fierce 
 
 
18 A SERMON. • 
 
 eater, War, is strong and wholesome, but not always palatable, 
 It is, in some respects, rather humiliating to our conceit, 
 and derogatory to our foresight. But it is well for us to 
 look the truth at once in the face, and to learn as soon as 
 possible our national experience. It will be a most happy 
 circumstance if we can enter upon our career as an indepen- 
 dent power upon right principles, and not be compelled to 
 retrace our steps through sorrow and suffering. If out of 
 the strong wrestlings with adversity we can bring sweetness 
 for our children, we may go to our graves with thankful 
 hearts, and be sure that their blessings will fall thick upon 
 our memories, 
 
 At the commencement of our revolution, and for a long 
 time prior to it, we were boasting that we held the civilized 
 nations of the earth, and especially England and France, the 
 leading powers of Europe, in such bonds of dependence 
 upon us, that they could never permit any war which shut 
 them out from our staple productions, to continue for any 
 number of years. We believed very sincerely that the 
 cotton interest constituted so large a portion of their manu- 
 facturing and commercial wealth, that any serious interrup- 
 tion of the supply would create not only great distress in 
 those countries, but would perhaps produce revolution. Under 
 this delusion we continued for eighteen months after our 
 movement began, and it is not yet entirely dissipated. It 
 will require at least two years more of British endurance to 
 convince us of our mistake, but we are, nevertheless, learn- 
 ing our lesson by degrees. We are finding out that God 
 does not permit, under his Providential arrangements, any 
 one nation to hold in its hand the fate, or even the destiny 
 of other nations, but that climate, soil, labor, staples, are so 
 distributed throughout the world, that if a supply of any 
 necessary article is dried up in one direction, its production 
 can be forced in some other direction. That we hold great 
 advantages over any other portion of the earth in the growth 
 of our great staples, no one can deny. We can defy compe- 
 tition, because of the peculiar conditions of our labor and 
 climate, but we cannot rule the world as we once conceived 
 that we could. Indeed, it becomes a serious question 
 
A SERMON. 19 
 
 whether our blockade is not playing into the hands of Bri- 
 tish statesmen, who have long desired to be freed from the 
 dependence upon us under which they have writhed for so 
 many years, and which has again and again induced them 
 to submit to aggression on the part of the United States. 
 They hope, under the stimulus of high prices, and of ne- 
 cessity, to engage other countries, and especially their own 
 colonies, in the culture of cotton, and thus carry to perfec- 
 tion their vast colonial system. We must dismiss this idea, 
 and prepare ourselves to enter heartily and generously into 
 the social life of the world, and give and take as the rest of 
 the nations give and take. And it is a most important les- 
 son for us to learn at once, for it will make us understand 
 the necessity of diversifying our pursuits, and of strength- 
 ening ourselves against the domination of foreign powers. 
 Had we entered upon our career as an independent people 
 without the lessons of this war, we should have been intro- 
 duced into life with all the coxcombry of youthful conceit, 
 and should have found out in another way, that cotton was 
 not king, and that other nations had weapons more effica- 
 cious than staples with which to meet our pretensions. We 
 shall now, I trust, take our place among the nations of the 
 earth with the manly maturity of experience, fully sensible 
 of the value of our resources, but not flaunting them forever in 
 the face of the world, and properly prepared to defend them 
 with an army and a navy which shall command the respect 
 of the world, while they shall not tempt us to foreign ag- 
 gression. This is one piece of wholesome, though not pala- 
 table meat from the mouth of the eater. 
 
 When we entered upon this struggle, all of us were advo- 
 cates of a system of free trade with the world, which, if 
 adopted, would forever have confined us to agricultural 
 pursuits, as the single channel of our industry. The condi- 
 tion to which tariffs under the old Government had reduced 
 us, produced in us an intolerable aversion to all restrictions 
 upon trade, and drove us, at one period, into forcible resist- 
 ance to their extension. And this was all right under the 
 circumstances in which we were then placed. So long as 
 the duties upon imports affected mainly our interests, and the 
 
20 A SERMON. 
 
 money collected by them was distributed in another section 
 of the Union, it was for us an emasculating process, which 
 was fast exhausting us. "We were really nothing more than 
 hewers of wood and drawers of water under the workings 
 of the Government of the United States. But the pressure 
 of this war is teaching us new ideas upon this subject, and 
 is bidding us beware how we ever permit ourselves to be 
 caught again, as we now are, without clothing, and shoes, 
 and iron, and salt, and the absolute necessaries of life. 
 Free trade is well enough in regard to those articles which 
 are luxuries, but it should never prevail so far as to make 
 us dependent upon other nations for those things which a 
 people must have, under any circumstances, whether of peace 
 or of war. Luckily for us, this war will force upon us such 
 duties, for revenue sake, in order to preserve the credit of 
 our Government, as will necessarily encourage among us the 
 manufactures that we most need. And still more happily 
 for us, the conduct of foreign governments towards us has 
 put us under no obligations to any of them to arrange our 
 revenue duties otherwise than we shall see to be best for our- 
 selves. We can never be a great or a 'prosperous people 
 until we change our policy, and combine with agriculture 
 both manufactures and commerce. Entire freedom of trade 
 would be the soundest policy, if the world would only 
 promise to keep at peace forever. The principles of unre- 
 stricted commerce are abstractly true, but they cannot be 
 put into practice without peril, so long as nation will make 
 war against nation, and people will rise up against people. 
 Under the American system of the old Government, which 
 we all so bitterly oppossed, our suffering did not arise so 
 much from duties considered abstractly in themselves, as 
 from the fact that they operated almost entirely against the 
 export Of our great staples, while the money collected from 
 them was almost all spent elsewhere. Of the money ex- 
 pended from the period of the adoption of the Federal 
 Constitution until 1828, for all legitimate purposes under the 
 Constitution, such as light-houses, fortifications, &c, fifty- 
 eight millions were expended north of the Potomac, and but 
 eight millions south of it. Such a condition of things could 
 
A SEKMOtf. 21 
 
 never occur under our new Confederacy, because our pur- 
 suits are similar, our population homogeneous, and our 
 interests inseparably united. This is another morsel of meat 
 from the mouth of the eater. 
 
 Until within a year after our war began, many of our own 
 people, and almost all the nations outside of us, considered 
 the institution of slavery as resting upon a very insecure 
 basis. They almost universally believed that domestic in- 
 surrection would accompany foreign war, and that we should 
 find our slaves rising "en masse," and. distracting all our 
 efforts. Those who had studied this question most thorough- 
 ly, and looked at it in the light of philosophy, and especially 
 of the Scriptures, did not fall into this error, and were satis- 
 fied from the beginning that the institution would come out 
 of the war stronger than it went into it. Two years of the 
 war have rid every one of any evil anticipations upon this 
 head, and have satisfied the United States government that 
 if these people are to change their condition, it must be 
 changed for them by external force. And while this quies- 
 cence on the part of our servants vindicates us from the 
 charges of cruelty and barbarity which have been so indus- 
 triously circulated against us, it is also teaching us that we 
 can, hereafter, with entire safety, and with most excellent 
 results to ourselves, introduce them gradually to a higher 
 moral and religious life. They know all that is going on. 
 They are well, informed about the proceedings of our ene- 
 mies, and about their pretended philanthropy, and yet what 
 advantage have they taken of it ? When were they ever 
 more quiet, more civil, more useful, more contented than 
 they now are ? Ignorance is really our worst enemy amongst 
 them, and I sincerely hope that when this war is over, we 
 shall, in token of their fidelity and good will, render their 
 domestic relations more permanent, and consult more closely 
 their feelings and affections, and thus extract sweetness from 
 the strong mouth of this indiscriminate eater. 
 
 Before this war came upon us, the South almost worship- 
 ped personal bravery and. physical courage. They were 
 considered as the requisite qualities of every gentleman, and 
 whosoever did not possess them, was pitied ■ and despised, 
 
22 A SERMON. 
 
 even while he was tolerated. No proper distinction was 
 made between the courage of mere temperament and the 
 moral courage of high principle. The duel was set up as 
 the test of a man's pretension to this quality. And this 
 arose, partly from the natural spirit of our race, but was, 
 likewise, a remnant of feudal usages, which are certainly 
 out of place in our days. But this war is teaching us what 
 an universal quality personal courage is, and how few men 
 there are who are afraid of death upon the battle-field. 
 How many tens of thousands of soldiers are there who, 
 without any stimulus, save the sense of duty and the im- 
 pulse of patriotism, march fearlessly up to the cannon's 
 mouth, literally sport with wounds and death, and stand 
 upon the outermost verge of peril, and their cheek never 
 blanches, and their step never falters. And is this physical 
 courage, which is so valuable, yet so common, to be estima- 
 ted above that moral courage, which is so rare — that courage 
 which will not follow a multitude to do evil — which will 
 breast the world in arms for principle — which will restrain 
 the madness of the people at every sacrifice of place, of 
 property, and of life ? What we have needed in our civil 
 affairs in the past has been this moral courage, and now we 
 are learning in this war how much more rare a quality it is 
 than mere personal bravery — such courage as made our 
 gallant Johnson — Sydney in name and Sydney in nature — 
 bear and suffer more than martyrdom, and then lay down 
 in quiet dignity his valued life, that his country's weakness 
 might not be exposed — such courage as led our own heroic 
 Tatnall to disappoint a nation's hopes, and burn his ship 
 rather than sacrifice his brave and trustful men to a selfish and 
 bubble reputation for daring — such courage as has qualified 
 our peerless President to face all calumny, rather than deviate 
 one hair's breadth from his own clear perception of 
 his country's good. It requires brave men to do these 
 things. No common man can do them. And the longer 
 the war lasts, the more will it de\»elope such characteristics, 
 and moral courage will rise in value, and mere physical 
 courage — that which resolves bravery into brawling and 
 duelling and private rencontres — will sink into merited in- 
 
A SERMON. 23 
 
 significance. No people is more brave than the people 
 which can boast of Nelson and Collingwood, of Hill and 
 Wellington, and yet they find nobler employment for their 
 courage than in wasting it upon the field of private revenge. 
 And if we learn this truth, we shall indeed gain another 
 morsel of delicious sweetness from the grasp of the strong. 
 
 These are some of the blessings which God is permitting 
 us to take hold of, even in the midst of cruel war ; and 
 meanwhile he has not left us without great comfort. In the 
 last ten months. He has granted us an almost uninterrupted 
 series of victories, as if to give us heart and endurance for 
 the conflict which He sees it best for us that we should con- 
 tinue to wage. Disappointed, as we have been, in our hopes 
 of peace, the Father, who is disciplining us, has not given 
 us over to despair. Peace, with its soft eye and its radiant 
 wing, has not come to us, but victory has ! Victory, under 
 circumstances most glorious and unexpected — not only on 
 the land, but upon the sea. His angel has planted one foot on 
 the earth and the other on the ocean, and with his sword of 
 vengeance has smitten this insulting and vain-glorious na- 
 tion. And what a noble spirit has He infused into the heart 
 of our Confederacy ! How it has warmed anew into fervor 
 Yirginia, that old mother of heroes and of statesmen ! How 
 grandly she breasts the storm ! Under the shadow of the 
 Federal Government she seemed to be sinking into the slum- 
 ber of death, as one dies under the shade of the poisonous 
 Upas tree. But at the war-cry of her children, " Sic semper 
 Tyrannis" how her rich blood has rushed back upon her 
 heart, and startled her into life ! The sound of freedom's 
 cry has disenchanted her, and she has sprung full armed 
 into the arena. Her noble sons have gathered around her 
 from her hills and from her valleys, from all her fields of 
 historic fame, from the blue waters of the Chesapeake to the 
 dark rushing torrent of the Kanawha— sons worthy of such 
 a mother. All her old energy has come back to her. All 
 her power of self-denial and self-sacrifice has revived within 
 her. Proud, fearless, indomitable, she looks into the very 
 eye of tyranny, and makes it quail before her majesty of 
 right and truth I The mother of States, she bares her bo- 
 
24 «.; A SERMON. 
 
 som to receive upon it the strokes which are aimed at her 
 children. Hurling defiance in the teeth of her oppressors, 
 she prepares herself to conquer or to die. She hopes, she 
 prays, she struggles for victory, but knowing that everything 
 is in the hands of God, she presses on, uttering the noble 
 words of DeRanville — " If the genius of evil is to prove 
 triumphant, if legitimate government is again to fall, let it 
 at least fall with honor ; shame alone has no future."