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during its brief but eventful career, to thee, oh God!
I trustingly commit myself, and prayerfully invoke thy blessing on my country and its cause.
When the
President “reached the concluding lines, the manuscript dropped upon the table, and raising his hands to heaven, he exclaimed:” “To thee, oh God!
I trustingly commit myself, and prayerfully invoke thy blessing on my country and its cause.”
“The effect was thrilling.
An electric flame ran through the multitude.
The prayer of the
President, thus made in open day before the people, found an echo in a thousand hearts.”
In response to the pious sentiments of the
President, the people were urged by the pulpit, and by the religious, and, indeed, by the secular press, to give themselves to fasting, prayer, humiliation, and self-examination in earnest.
We call upon the ministry to stand up bravely in their place and to rebuke every form of sin. God, whose messengers they are, adds the solemn and terrible sanctions of his judgments to the word of his inspiration with which they are commissioned to arouse the dormant consciences of the people.
When these thunders of the pulpit and of Providence combine, the deafest ear must hear, the most stupefied soul must arouse from its slumbers.
Tell the people of their sins.
Lift up the voice and spare not. Let Jeremiah teach the prophet of the Most High how to denounce sin, and Isaiah how to promise good to the repentant sinner.
Give no place to worldliness in the Church.
Teach the profane swearer, the Sabbath-breaker, the licentious, the intemperate, that they are the real enemies of their country, because they have made God angry with us. Tell the same thing to the worldly-minded, luxurious, penurious professor of religion, who sees souls die by whole generations for want of that gospel which he might carry or send to them.
