23 and to prove us—then it will, I doubt not, be seen that this our Exodus, like the old, was the veryrichest in the experience of God's loving wisdom— a transitional era when a grandly rounded world emerged from a fiery deluge—an epoch of social progress, when a divinely strengthened people, having thoroughly mastered themselves, went up to a place of peerless glory amid the nationalities of the world. Now we have dwelt thus at length upon this war, because more than all else it tends to disturb our moods of thanksgiving, and we would have you feel that even this is no exception to the divine rule, —" In every thing to give thanks." But as yet we are only on the outskirts of the text's important truth. This war is but a single item of our large personal experience, which, even if it be reckoned only and altogether an evil, should not yet beguile us this day of the grace and joy of thanksgiving. So paramount and absorbing has become our thought of this war that it will at once surprise and benefit you to consider how little, with all its evils, it really lessens your reasons for gratitude to God. Grant that it is an unmitigated evil, it is nevertheless, only one evil in a vast and ever varied experience of good. In spite of it, and in its midst, God has spread His banner of love over your banqueting house, with your table prepared in the midst of your enemies; your head anointed with oil, your cup running over. No less than before has this bright sun shone on you,
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTM4ODY=