CONTENTS OF THE PRAYER-MEETING. 51 52 56 50 Quench not the Spirit. 134 51 The Sailor Boy's Prayer. 135 A Citizen of Heaven.. 135 296 BY REV. ALBERT BARNES, PASTOR OR THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, PHILADELPHIA. THE CONDITIONS OF PEACE. "It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord."-PSALM 92: 1. In There never has been a time, in our own country, or in other countries, when, if a man had any thing to say that could comfort, animate, or encourage his fellow-citizens, or had any claim, derived from his age, his position, or his experience to impart counsel, it could be more appropriately done than now. volved in a war such as has existed in no other nation; with numerous enemies to the government in every part of the land; with reverses that tend to humble us in our own eyes and before the world; with comparatively little progress in the great objects of the war; with a demand on the resources of the loyal part of the nation that test to the utmost its ability and its patriotism; when measures are adopted, most extreme in their nature, and that try to the extreme of endurance the loyalty of the people-measures submitted to as a temporary necessity, only because it is believed that there are greater interests that would be imperiled if they were not adopted; with no manifest sympathy among the nations of the earth, and with little real sympathy from any of those nations; with the nations of the old world looking greedily for the entire breaking up of our institutions. and the overthrow of a free A Thanksgiving discourse delivered in the First Presbyterian Church, Phila delphia, November 27, 1862. government, the result of so much sacrifice and toil, and the last hope of free institutions on earth; a contest in reference to which the people from whom we have sprung, whose language we speak, whose religion we have inherited, and whose blood flows in our veins, seem most of all to rejoice at the prospect of our utter discomfiture, rupture and downfall; exulting in our disasters, taunting us for a want of military and civil power and skill, and, under a pretense of neutrality, really in alliance with those who have risen in arms to overthrow the government, and strangely sympathizing with an organization based avowedly on the perpetual subjugation of one part of the race to the will of another-under circumstances such as these we meet to-day to inquire what there is to be thankful for; what there is to encourage hope, what there is to cheer in the prospect of the future; what should be done-what can we do for the afflicted land that we love? Without, I trust, any improper reference of a personal nature, I may be permitted to say that I have reached a period of life when a man ought to be able to make some suggestions of value in such a crisis as this; when he ought to be able to say something that might be well founded in regard to the causes of such a state of things; to the evils which have brought so great calamities upon the land; to the remedies for those evils; to what may reasonably be hoped for in the future. I have, at any rate, reached a period of life when I have little to hope or to fear from my fellow-men; yet a period when a man, with any right feeling, is conscious of a stronger love for his country in proportion to the nearness of the time when he is soon to be withdrawn from it. In such circumstances a man may venture on suggestions which would have been less proper at an earlier period of life-suggestions, perhaps not put forward with as much boldness and confidence as the suggestions of earlier years, yet, if he has reflected at all aright, with a more comprehensive view of the great issues at stake, and with deeper solemnity. He who has little to hope for personally, in this world; whose aspirations must be now so almost entirely in the world which he is soon to enter, may still cherish a hope for his country, for the Church, and for mankind, not the less intense because the great blessings of religion and liberty are hereafter to be enjoyed by others, not by himself. I shall venture, therefore, on this occasion, to make some suggestions which, I trust may not be improper, and which I am sure will be well received so far as the intention goes, in reference to what our country has been as one of the family of nations; to the grounds of grateful feelings to-day; and to what seems to me to be demanded for the restoration of peace. The suggestions will be loyal, but they will be free. In all my life I have defended freedom of speech, and fought many a |