About the Book
Excerpt from National Bereavements: A Discourse, Delivered in the North Presbyterian Church, of Chicago, on Thanksgiving Day, Nov, 25, 1852 The text contains the prophecy of Judah's affliction It con tains, in part, the history of our own affliction, since we last met to pay our annual thank-offering to our God. The Lord hath ta ken away from us, not the stay and staff of bodily support: for the harvest has been plenteous, and the laborers not few. But He has removed the stay and staff of the body politic. He has ta. Ken the mighty, the judge, and the prudent, and the ancient, and the honorable man, and the counsellor, and the eloquent orator. If to remember the blessings we have enjoyed, is the object of this day's appointment, and of this assembling of ourselves to gether; then I can think of. No more fitting occupation for the hour, than the remembrance of those honorable men, to whose lives and labors, more than to those of any other who have lately lived or died, we are indebted for our national peace and pros perity. It might seem that lamentations and tears were more becoming to us and to the day, than praise and thanks-giving; while the impressions of our loss are SO fresh, and the blood is Still flowing from a nation's wounded heart. But, that they have lived is the matter of our rejoicing; and that they still live, inthe impress they have left upon the mind, and heart, and desti my, of a mighty peopl'e. They are dead indeed, but only dead as great men can' only die. The hand has forgotten its cunning the eagle-eye has lost its lustre; the bounding heart has ceased to beat; the voice'whose tones once charmed the ears Of listening senates, and a listening nation, is hushed; the majestic form which once moved to and fro amid an admiring people, will be seen no more. But the places which Once knew them shall know them forever. The last words of him who was the last to leave us, will be as true in years to' come, as when spoken amid the dis solving of his earthly tabernacle, one' month ago. He was but uttering the perpetual prophecy of his own Immortality, when, from the very borders of the world of the dead, he whispered back, I still live. And we are at once reminded of his own lan guage Spoken years before, when he pronounced the eulogy of two other great men who had gone down hand in hand to the grave. Adams and Jefferson, I have said, are no more. AS human beings, indeed, they are no more. They are no more, as in 1776, bold and fearless advocates of independence; no more, as at subsequent periods, the head Of the government; no more, as we have recently seen them, aged and venerable objects of ad miration and regard. They are dead. But how little is there of the great and good, which can die! To their country they yet live, and live forever. They live in all that perpetuates the remembrance of men on earth; In the recorded proofs of their own great actiqns; in the Offspring of their intellects; in the deep engraved lines of public gratitude, and in the respect and hom age of mankind. They live in their example, and they live, em phatically, and will live, in the influence which their lives and efforts, their principles and Opinions, now exercise, and will con tinue to exercise, on the affairs of men, not' only in their own country, but throughout the civilized world. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
