THE SACRIFICE OF CONTINUAL PRAISE. 5 Annual National Thanksgiving, as it has been our wont, in times past, with banners streaming, with trumpets of jubilee sounding, our hearts exultant, gratitude, joy and prav«e our only theme. A mighty, overwhelming, irresistible sorrow is upon us. For the fourth time the return of our annual day of praise finds our nation, but yesterday on the high road ■to prosperity, with a glorious future opening before us, engaged in a terrible civil war. No honest man can fora moment strive to disguise the fact that we have fallen upon evil times. Black clouds have gathered in the clear sky, tilled with terrible tempest; they have broken, and now send forth in furious torrents the woe with which they are surcharged. I have no disposition, not even on this day set apart for praise and thanksgiving, to cover up, or in any way hide, disaster. To say, peace, peace, when God has not spoken peace, is not only useless but absolutely sinful. What then? Setting the disaster before us, in all its dread terror, counting up all the noble heroes who have fallen in battle, marshalling before you all the widows and orphans who mourn comfortless in their bereavement, remembering whole regions of country that teemed with plenty now laid waste, figuring up the enormous debt that day by day steadily piles itself up, as a burden upon our own, and future generations, not forgetting the heavy taxation that so presses, and must long continue to press, upon the industry of the land; taking even that most lugubrious view of national affairs taken and promulgated by quasi traitors and habitual grumblers of every sort, still 1 ask, then! Shall we forego our annual tribute of thanksgiving to Almighty God, the giver of every good and
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