Excerpt from The National Weakness: A Discourse Delivered in the First Church, Brookline, on Fast Day, Sept. 26, 1861

The three months expired, five months have elapsed, -and the rebel power is still unsubdued. The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved. The rebels are not crushed, nor even so weakened as yet to despair of final success, or to mani fest the least inclination to recede from their position. So far as they are weakened at all, it is by want of means, by their straitened economy and financial embar rassment, and not by the triumphs of the Federal arms. The Federal arms have not triumphed in any important engagement, except when opposed in overwhelming force to a weak resistance on the part of the enemy.

And, although the disaster at Bull Run cannot be re garded as a victory on the part of the rebels, it added greatly to their confidence, and therefore to their Strength; while it terribly rebuked our own overwe'en ing confidence in ourselves, and proved to us how little enthusiasm and patriotic determination will avail, with out military discipline, without wise conduct, pru dence, and self-control. An army of brave men, for such unquestionably they were, - by mere conceit of approaching danger, not real, imminent peril, overtaken with a panic which dissolves all bonds of military orga nization, almost of human fellowship, and converts a body of warriors into a herd of frightened deer, flying at the top of their speed when none pursued, never halt ing to ascertain whether any just cause existed for their alarm, utterly bereft of counsel and reason, and given over to a passion of insane terror, this, after all the noisy demonstrations, the congratulations and harangues, the receptions and parades, which solemnized the setting forth of these hosts, though not an uncommon occur rence in war, and though no worse than a hundred panics recorded in history, is still a Shame and a tragedy, which sadly illustrates the difference there is between promise and performance, between girding on and put ting Off.

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