‘40 THE SACRIFICE OF CONTINUAL PRAISE. has raged. No noise of strife is heard among us; no destroying army has ravaged our fair Helds. The husbandman has sowed, and toiled, and reaped, the abundant harvest, in peace and security. Our sanctuary has been safe from intrusion ; from week to week its Sabbath bell has called us to our worship; while the free invitations of the gospel have been given to all alike ; and souls have listened, to tremble, to pray and then to believe, rejoicing at last over sins forgiven, a Savior precious, a Heaven secured. Where is there one who, for blessings such as these, will not unite in expressions of thanksgiving? “ Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. Praise ye the Lord.” IIT. “ He has largely augmented our free population, by emancipation, and by immigration, while he has opened to us new sources of wealth, and has crowned the labor of our working-men, in every department of industry, with abundant reward.” All this in the midst of exhausting civil war. It is a welcome, and propitious fact, that, notwithstanding the ravages of war, the thousands who have fallen, yet there is no perceptible diminution of our population. Strange as it may seem, a country engaged in a contest so gigantic in its character, has yet received accessions to its population sufficient to supply the drain made upon its resources by all the waste inincident upon such a state of warfare. From the thickly crowded shores of the old world a living stream has poured itself into
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