previous next
[136] we live and feel like princes. I am sorry that father could not visit us, but hope he will still do so. He will feel quite at home at General Jackson's Headquarters with the general and Dr. Dabney. The latter is very busy, but preaches whenever he has an opportunity. I heard him last Saturday, then twice on the Sabbath, when about two hundred soldiers received the sacrament of the Lord's Supper at his hands. This was a spiritual feast indeed. The religious element in our company is very strong; sufficient, I hope, to control all other elements and give tone to the whole body. We hold a brief meeting every night, just after roll-call. The man whose turn it is stands up, while the rest stand around him. He reads a chapter, sometimes sings a hymn, then leads in prayer. There is some profanity, but this is lessening. Why should not the army be a school for the reformation of the wicked? Such it has proved to J. W. and J. R. They are now perfectly sober men and good soldiers. I am much gratified at the accounts I receive of your prayer-meetings held in our behalf. The prayers of those at home greatly strengthen and encourage us in the army. I will endeavor to remember you all at your hours of prayer. Yet we are so drawn about from one place and employment to another that I have scarcely a moment for connected, sober thought.

To a brother in the pastorate he writes:

Rest satisfied therefore that duty bids you stay at home; mine is to remain in the army, and I am willing to do it for the glorious cause in which our young Confederacy is engaged. If we give up, everything is lost. If we struggle on, endure hardships, exert our utmost strength, and put our trust in God, who has so far been very gracious to us, we may hope after awhile to taste the most blessed fruits from these present distresses.

My chief source of sorrow is, that I can do so little, or rather that I do so little for the cause of my Saviour. Father seems to think the army a glorious field for usefulness. To him, doubtless, it would be. But what have I done? I hope my influence for good has been felt in our own company—but to how little extent! I can only look to God to give me the heart to work, and then open up paths of usefulness for me. If I really wish to do good in the world, it must become a subject of constant study, followed by ceaseless effort. I am very glad to hear that you are so comfortably situated. You have nothing now to hinder you from doing much good. May God grant you this

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
Thomas J. Jackson (1)
R. L. Dabney (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: