Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

But why prolong the mention of virtues that do but prolong our grief? These memories only deepen our sense of a loss already, at times, beyond our trustful submission.

Let me leave with you these words of sober prophecy and faithful advice. I need not tell you the name of their author:

"Peace does not appear so distant as it did. I hope it will come soon, and come to stay, and so come as to be worth keeping in all future time. It will then have been proved, that, among freemen, there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet, and that they who take such appeal are sure to lose their case, and pay the cost. Still, let us not be over-sanguine of a speedy, final triumph. Let us be quite sober; let us diligently apply the means, never doubting that a just God, in his own good time, will give us the rightful result."

STONE.

REV. A. L. STONE.

LAMENTATIONS V: 15, 16.

THE JOY OF OUR HEART IS CEASED; OUR DANCE IS TURNED INTO MOURNING.

THE CROWN IS FALLEN FROM OUR HEAD.

WHEN, three days ago, the morning of the day appointed for fasting, humiliation, and prayer, rose upon a people jubilant with the joy of victory, many felt that both the designation of the day and the accustomed manner of its observance should be changed; that, instead of fasting, there should be feasting, instead of humiliation and supplication, thanksgiving and praise.

But some of us remembered, and we called it to mind, that the chief intent of the day, as our fathers kept it, was prospective. It did not look backward with penitential review, so much as it looked forward with forecasting deprecation to possible evils. The day was appointed in the spring season, when the great venture of the harvest was at hazard, and all the uncertainties of elemental blight and blessing hung poised in the scales of Providence. If there were confession, forsaking of sin, as was always true, - it was

29

[ocr errors]

(337)

as a

preparation of heart for availing prayer, that “the early and the latter rain" might fall, each in its time; the hand of the reaper bind and gather its sheaves with joy, and the autumn granaries be full. Then should follow the commemorative festival, looking to the past, and celebrating the throned goodness that had provided abundance for the wants of man and beast. It was this ideal of the day recently observed, that held so many Christian pulpits and Christian people so closely to its first design.

We ought to have felt, more deeply than we did, that the future might bring up, into that bright morning sky, dark clouds big with storm and tempest, and have stretched our hands up with a mightier reach of supplication toward the sovereign hand holding the balances weighted with coming events.

The thought was on our hearts and on our lips that there might be perils brooding for our country, shadows gathering over the path of its future. But who could have looked forward to so dark a shadow as this which has fallen! who could have painted this sable cloud on that smiling sky!

[ocr errors]

There was talk, with some, of reversing our associations with this month of the Spring, and our religious observances wedded to its annual return, and making it henceforth our month of most tuneful rejoicing, — the coronal of the year. But not now! We cannot change thee, oh, weeping April! oh, month of tears! Pour down all thy warm showers: from our eyes the rain falls faster yet! Evermore, from henceforth, at thy return, thou and the sorrowing nation shall weep together.

« ПредишнаНапред »