THE SACRIFICE OF CONTINUAL PRAISE. 9 ♦ right and wrong, truth and error, despotism and liberty, waged the world over and through all time ; we shall find to-day reasons for gratitude thick as the leaves of Autumn. In all the history of our land, as the generations have lived and labored and past away; in all that past so glorious, so secure: a past adorned by the noble names and memories of Washington, and Adams, and Henry, and Jefferson, ami Franklin, and Jackson, where will you find, anywhere, a more fitting season for thanks and adoration to God than you find here, to-day in His sanctuary, under the shadows of His judgments? This is not exaggeration, nor yet the language of unthinking enthusiasm. Let us look at the matter as Christian patriots. a I recur again to the proclamation, than which a better, more suitable, less exceptionable, expressive document, has seldom if ever issued from the hand of any executive. 1 shall follow its order of thought. I cannot help, however, remarking as a preliminary to this, that there is to me something exceedingly gratifying in the fact, that at last custom has established the practice of National Thanksgiving Day. The thing itself is old. More than two hundred years ago the pilgrim fathers kept their thanksgiving day on the shores of New England. But hitherto, until this war quickened the pulse of the nation's life, and drew closer the bonds that bind the North together as one people—bonds indissoluble—it was something of only local authority and state institution. 2
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