The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1870-10-08 00:00:00

THE VICTIMS OF THE WAR.

The announcement that Dean Stanley would preach
last Sunday in Westminster Abbey, drew together •
crowded congregation.
The dean took for him text the words "Thy will he
dose so tar th as it is itt hcavot," from the 6th chapter
lif St. Matthew, and übeerved that lie had specially
selected that passage becalm it was suggistid by toe
regent festival of Michaelmas, arc! also Lo cans: the
words seemed to him to be eipecially suitable to th
existing state of thiuga. Little more than two mouths
ago they had l•st, parted in that place, mot Gillet, thin
the world had resounded with ments which had
fitled every heart that could feel and every mind
that could thick. Of the great lessons which
. , _ _

this preat war was to tean, the time liarl
not yet fuily come to 'weak. It would
seem to be the duty of the Christian pet ocher
on an occasion like the presi nt to raise the
thoughts of his hearers out of the stir of human
passions, and whilst bearing in mind, as they could mit
he!p doing, the toriuous track, the difficult ways in
which God's will was done on earth, to offer some con-
solation by relhicting on those better and serener ways
in which it is done in Heaven. Having traced at coo-
siderable length the outlines of that fulfilment of the
Divine will by the angele—a aulject called especially
to mind by the festival of St. Michael and All Angols,
and containing many lessons fi,r these dark and di,-
tracked times—the preacher turned to the cot sidtra-
Lion of the unire practical bearings of Lie teat. Ile
said :

The very word " mltiLtering angul has been twice con-
secrated In English poetry, to the expression ut those genie,
beneficent ace of whtch Chtiethar mit', arid still mere
Christian women, have managed the pales of .11.7,011,M. 7he
sorrows of bereavement, and the horrors of war. This is :ha
way in which God's will may be done on this blood.etained
earth, in this agony of contending nations, even as it is in
Heaven. Wheat we think of the elkutparplexity of statemen,
when we gam at the difficulty alike for the car quermeor the
cor.quered of discereing what or. may with justice ark and tbe
other with honour give, It t. &comfort to know that there Is
through the midst of them entauglemeett tom brit.lit path
icing lie ed aid at r .I,zl t li foie thr erried rimks f cried
warrion, opeu, wide, aLd aira nit t e o uric if which
• lip! ,ti' scruples eon raise any 'Artie c "their 1,.
eat!' which the vulture's e 3 e halt net men Der the ion's
ml nip trtdden; that it tie angel's trete ; that is the path of
Chri tin mercy mid charity. In ten great lir. isles,
throng!. two vas. tracks of misery, thst path may at prem t
turn. One is that wide!, paste 7 1 long he de of nt ex mph ii
earnaze through lines of sick and wounded at lifers that It.
far f oar tht ir I nines, waiting Sr &nee ty death or • slo IC.
eove,Y, and to whom every api lance of cemfort is as a
breath of Pa-adise. tinzh—v,ry much Ints linen tin e by
Engleud for there 'effete', end thong!, truth yet remaine
I, be done 3de we rennet hut ba eve a ii hope that here the
freed will become lea, and the remedy lei I be found lime and
more sufficient. But there is another region of sorrow and
mitering of ml ich I vettere to says few svods, because it Is
une which sink: a the Maul.. iris lea;, but e !rich Is
likely to grow iosteßd of diminish as days anti week, roll
on. In is that cad lb-ought of families mired, of households
rotten up, of widows and orphans felt in hopeless poverty,
which war—even the most motel, al—mnet leave in it•
train en either side, both with the victors and the
veroptiehed ; it Is the sal thorght of those Greened.
of German ex' fans excelled from Tierney where for
y ears they have been a Met sing to them around them, loth
by their useful hands Rod by their still niereueeftil erenipler,
is Is the tat thought—saddest of all perhaps—of the unfortu-
nate peasant., the unfortunete fugitives of France, who now
know by butt rexperienee the miseries hichthey would have
Milicted open their neighbours; whose autumn comet and
go 's, and who, WI whiter approachee, will have to sutler all
the renews of stapes; rue, rty, and tondos which such •
vest convulsion can hardly fail to leave behh,d it even v her.
the self control and diecipliee ef the cauquered army has
beeu ae wonderful es their courrere and skill it must :e a
centelation to those who feel that they Call do nothing else
to do something for thong who are at oece the chief and the
most innocent sufferers by these terrible calamities. For this
puree., therefore—that is, the purpose of aft ordieg rade/ to
the w:elows and mphaus, to the destitute and fit 0.1, the
exiles teed the homeless of both nations in this war—" for
the comfortless troubles' sake of the needy, awl because of
the deep sighing of the poet. "—tilts vast congregation is
invited as they leave this church, and also on such other
occasions as may seem good to them,to contribute what they
can a, a token of goo!: will towards their fellow men, and of
thankfulness to Almighty God in a time of great misery,
from stitch re have 11001 happily *pared ; end at least In
this wey nay God's will be done upon earth as It Is in
heaver].