Excerpt from Sermon Delivered by the Rev. Samuel B. Bell, D.D: In Steven's Hall, Corner of Broadway and Forty-Seventh Street, New York City, on Thanksgiving Day, Nov, 24, 1864

Thanksgiving day has come to be our Feast of Tabernacles. It is kept by us, at the same relative time as kept by the Jews that is to say, after we have gather ed in all our crops. [here the Proclamations by Abra ham Lincoln, President, Horatio Seymour, Governor, and C. Godfrey Gunther, Mayor, were read] These, our chief executive officers, call upon us, among other things, to give thanks to Almighty God for the health and plenty of the land. And well we may, for there has never been a more prosperous year than the past, through out the whole of our history; save and except only those portions of the country that have been visited by the devastations of civil war.

This civil war is the only blight, upon what otherwise might have been the happiest year in the existence of the nation. By whose fault is this unnatural strife? When we talk about our nation, whatsoever theme we discuss, whatsoever topic we pursue, whither soever our conver sation tends, we feel that it is merely trifling, if not on this - for underneath all, our minds and hearts are on the war. We feel that this is the question of our age: There is no page in the history of mankind more fraught with deepest interest and great events than the one we are now writing and living. History records no vaster struggle - no longer line of battle - no mightier armies - nothing to be compared with it, in the arms, equip ments, and terrible engines of death - and in an the armaments and munitions and equipages of war.

The lands of a long line of our sister States smoke with the blood of the sons of the Republic - the earth and the air quake with the rush of armed hosts and of horsemen and of huge wheeled cannon, and their terrible roar in the mighty onslaught. The vast country over which they sweep -houses, homes, trees, crops, farm marks, every thing go down - all cattle and sheep and swine and fowl are devoured-all things that can be eaten, or used for fuel, or made serviceable to man or beast, are swept away. And human beings - the tender est ties that bind them broken - the most loving house holds scattered as if by the breath of the Almighty. The land behind them is a desolation - scarce a place left for the owl to dwell, that he may hoot there, or for the bittern that he may cry there - only the raven, the buz zard and the vulture, they feast and fatten on the dead that lie there. Every household throughout the entire land mourns - some father or husband or brother or son gone - gone from home - gone to the long, long home from whence no traveler - no brave, horoic soldier, even, ever returns!

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