"THROUGH THE TENDER MERCY OF OUR GOD, WHEREBY THE DAYSPRING FROM ON HIGH HATH VISITED US."- Luke i. 78.

FTER a long, long night of clouds, and darkness, and storm, thunderings, and lightnings, and tempests of blood, with faint gleamings of the muffled stars at times, to show us that the heavens still abide, yet with no grayness even betokening the actual dawn, suddenly we see the "King of Day rejoicing in the East." The shadows flee, the golden glory covers the horizon, and shoots its radiance across the whole heavens. Even the blindest bats of night, that beat their leathery wings and eyeless heads against the walls of the national temple, confess that something bright and beautiful is stealing over their feeble senses. They know not what it means or is. For they have torn out their eyes with their own claws. They feel a warmth, a sunniness, pervading their spirits, that compels their unwilling recognition of the coming day. But these poor, darkened creatures apart, the people see

* A sermon preached in Boston on the day of National Thanksgiving for General Sherman's capture of Atlanta, September 11, 1864.

the light, and rejoice in it, and hasten to the brightness of its rising. Most true in this case was the familiar saying verified the darkest hour is just before day. Last July and August were probably the gloomiest months since the night of war closed us in. Our armies lay in their trenches while marauding bands vexed their rear. Our mines exploded only to our loss and not the enemy's. The North was invaded, and triumphantly trampled by robbing feet. the first time since the war the enemy cut off our communications with the capital, and defiantly approached its very gates. Our villages were sacked and burned to the ground. Gold leaped up to three hundred. Provisions and wares followed at a yet swifter pace. The earth burned like an oven. Nature, too, lay sick with a fever, and seemed to be dying with the dying nation. And, as a fitting crown of all the calamities, thousands upon thousands of traitors, a generation of vipers, "a coil voluminous and vast," assembled in one of our greatest cities, the especial symbol and proof of the magnificent workings of our free institutions, on the birthday of our first great traitor, Benedict Arnold, great, but far less than these his children, and there under the guidance of men who had been openly consulting with our open foes for months before, with jubilant and hopeful hearts, plotted the dismemberment, the reënslavement of the nation nay, not plotted, boldly exulted in her ruin.* Through the words of one who had once been placed by the nation in its highest seat, they defied the government to prevent traitors from seizing and controlling the polls, declared the only rebellion in the land to be that of the rulers against the people, spoke no word of reprobation against those who for more than three years have struck terrific blows at the national life, and but for God's right arm would have long since cast it as dead among the nations as Egypt or Rome. Such was the dreadful record of those

The Chicago Democratic Presidential Convention.

burning months; drouth in the heavens and on the earth, the war hanging dubious, weakness in the hearts of the people, and treason stalking boldly through all the land.

"The red-ribbed ledges dripped with a silent horror of blood;
Echo, whatever was asked her, answered, 'Death.'"

frighted our ears.

non.

Yet, lo! almost in the twinkling of an eye, the scene changes. The heavy clouds not only seemed to shut out the day, but to proclaim an everlasting night-the night of death and national destruction. Beasts of prey roamed everywhere through our land. Their hideous howls afAcross the continent rolled their canThe grave yawned, and multitudes of ghosts of cowards and traitors went gibbering through the streets. And now we cry, the morning cometh! -the blessed morning of peace and liberty! It is really breaking. These are no cold, deceitful, auroral beams betokening a deepening winter. They are the true dayspring. The Dayspring from on high is visiting us. The present Thanksgiving Proclamation of the President has a more confident and cheerful tone than any of its predecessors. He penetrates the dread entangled forest. This valley of the shadow of death, with its fiery, flying serpents hissing and stinging, with its darkness, and storms, and desolation, its groans and death, -how dark, how woful, how deadly; he can almost see through it. Dangers yet stand as thick around him as serried soldiers, but a glimmering comes through the strait and narrow way that he is steadfastly pursuing, which bespeaks a blue sky, peaceful fields, and the light of heaven.

With these encouragements we are invited to assemble in our respective places of worship, and offer thanksgiving to God for His mercy in preserving our national existence against the insurgent rebels, who have been waging a civil war against the government of the United States for its overthrow. And surely no locality is more worthy of our

Union.

assemblage than this. We are within a few rods of the spot where John Adams declared that the opening gun of the Revolution was fired. Where a young minister, in a city subject to a foreign power, and with all its wealth, office, and influence supporting that power, dared to preach a sermon on the Higher Law, defying that power in the name of his God, and first starting in the mind of this city the doctrine of Independence. To the same mind was due the other focus of our orbit, the body of which Independence was the soul, Both came from one brain, and his a minister's. For while meditating upon the disconnected, and hence useless efforts, of the patriots of Massachusetts and Virginia, New York and South Carolina, as he was preparing to go to an association of ministers, he thought, Why not have such an association of patriots? why not of provinces? He instantly wrote his thought to John Adams, and the Union then first began to be. With such auspices hanging over us, we cannot be untimely in considering the great duties of the hour as Christians, as

men.

But what proof have you, some half-hearted, perhaps some over-cautious soul may say, that the night is far spent? Are not the rebels yet firm and undaunted? Are they not armed, and organized, and active? Have they not possession of their original capital? Do they not yet rule in Charleston? What are your signs of promise? Let us put them into one bird's-eye view.

Suppose Jefferson Davis had been able to carry out his boasted threat at Montgomery before the opening of the war - that if war should come from secession, it was the North and not the South should be its theatre; we "should smell Southern powder and feel Southern steel." Suppose that in carrying out this threat New York had been taken

by his armies within a year after that time, and had been kept in their grasp firmly to this hour, while two South Carolina generals had been its actual governors; suppose the Mississippi had been opened to its fountain, and St. Louis, and all the cities were in their hands; suppose an army had penetrated into New England, and secured Springfield, the center of our railroads, and the chief depot of our military stores, and had annihilated, by the same act, the last but one of our great armies; suppose that every one of our seaports was captured or invested, leaving only New London as a place where we could smuggle in a few of the necessary supplies for our army and our people; suppose that Boston was half burned, -Fort Warren a chaotic mass of brick and stone, -the lower half of this city, including its shipping, warehouses, and stores, up even to Tremont Street, all in ashes and abandoned, and that daily in our more retired portions the deadly shell should drop from the enemy's vessels which filled the outer harbor; suppose that gold had long since ceased to be an article of trade, and that our greenbacks had become so worthless that it took eight hundred dollars of them to buy a barrel of flour; suppose that Washington had been held in close siege for four months; that Lee had carried out his contemplated invasion of the North last spring; that on May last he had drawn Grant back from Fredericksburg, from Culpepper, from Manassas, and had thrown his troops around the south, and east, and north of the city, leaving only the west open; suppose that he had clung to this position ever since the middle of May, now throwing himself on one side of the Potomac and now the other, and, at last, by a sudden movement, had got possession of the Baltimore Railroad, from which assaults after assaults on our part were unable to dislodge him; suppose that provisions had risen in that city to famine prices, and even then our people, and our soldiers too, had scarcely nothing to eat should we not think our