Excerpt from The Patriot's Song of Victory: A Thanksgiving Discourse, for Recent Military Successes, Delivered in the Third Congregational Church, New Haven, September 11, and Repeated, by Request, in the Same Place, September 18, 1864

The humblest, as well as the most exalted agency, however, is forever to stand revealed in the glory of this illustrious victory. The harp of the prophetess awakes its sweetest strains, its deepest pathos, and pours forth its richest tide of love and gratitude, in memory of that heroic woman who, with nail and hammer, finished the detestable career of the sleeping tyrant' Sisera. Blessed above women shall Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite be, -blessed shall she be above women in the tent. With what intense satis faction does this sweet singer in Israel rehearse the minute'st details of that. Remarkable performance! Every blow struck in Israel's behalf on that glo rions day, was a sure title to lasting gratitude and honor in the hearts of ad miring countrymen.

Even the forces of animate and inanimate nature come in for their Share of grateful memorial. The river Kishon swept them away, that ancient river, the river Kishon. O my soul, thou hast trodden down strength. There were\the horse-hoofs broken by the means of the prancings, the prancings of their mighty ones. Sisera having been repulsed in the battle just below Taanach, turned in his flight down the Kishon about eight miles, as far as Harosheth. Here his army, now utterly disorganized by defeat and panic, was crowded into a narrow pass, - a mere Slaughter pen, - where, mingled in horrible, helpless confusion, horses, chariots and men were Slain and trampled in the mire by the pursuing victors while thousands either rushed, or were forced into the Kishon, then swollen, swift and irresistible with its wintry inundation, and were swept away to inevitable death. And here it was that the last foe met his doom. It was a scene in which war realized its most terrific horrors. And yet the poem extols the trampling cavalry, and the rapid Kishon, for their agency in consummating the 'entire ruin of the alien army. It was in the recollection of that awful scene, of which she was an eye witness, and in the consciousness of her own participation therein by personal presence and prayer, that the prophetess, as if she her self had done it, exclaimed, O my soul, thou hast trodden down strength.

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