The Express.
London, England, 1855-09-29 00:00:00

LONDON, SATURDAY,

Arm • delay which seems rather longer than
wee needed, a day is appointed fora Solemn Thanks-
giving for the success obtained before Sebastopol
To-morrow the whole of the churches and cha-
pels throughout the Kingdom will be offering up
thanks to the Almighty Power which has graciously
allowed our arms to triumph. The pulpits, in the
morning at least, will be centres of jubilation and
gratitude. Let us hope that the reverend occupants
of the pulpits will not omit the opportunity of en-
forcing upon the minds of their hearers some of
those truths which are but too often lost sight of by
many, and which the clergy are but too guilty of
neglecting to inculcate. In the first place, let there
be no mealy-enouthednees as to the righteousness of
the war in which we are engaged. We are either fight-
ing for a holy purpose—for an end in which the
highest interests of humanity are concerned, or we
are not. If we are, then the war in which we are
engaged is a holy w r, and clergymen ought sot to
shrink from proclaiming the fact. If we are not,
thou the Prayer and Thenksgiviog is • sham
and a delusion—and the gigantic iniquity will
be perpetrated of millions of inhabitants of these
islands lending themselves to the delusion. There
is amongst many of the clergy a sort of halt between
two opinions. They are afraid of committing them-
seine too strongly in favour of war, lest they should
be thought to sanction the violence and the bru-
tality which follow war as a necessary consequence.
They are equally afraid of being thought to favour
the enemy who has brought upon us all the evils
of war. Thus it is that our pulpits present, as
a rale, a decorous neutrality on a subject which eon-
Qum our very existence as a nation. Macy of the
clergy, it is true, have spoken out manfully, and
have shown that war with Russia is a holy and
religious duty. But too many have preserved, what
they consider, a judicious silence. Let us ask these
reverend diplomatists whether such silence would be
pardonable if the Russians were thundering at our
gates, instead of cowering together on the north
side of Sebastopol? And let us advise them, if
they wish to maintain their title as public
instructors, to tell their congregations to-
morrow why the sin of all this bloodshed
and misery will not be on our own heads,
bat on the head of him that provoked it. Let them
say manfully that the war in which we are engaged
is one spinet barbarism and despotism.
As many of our clergymen still pride themeslves on
their scholarship, we would advise them to ages their
THUCTDIDIS, and consult the speech of the great
Athenian orator and statesman Psatczrae, who wai
called upon to dative: the funeral oration at the pubis
interment of the warriors who bad fallen at the
commencement of the Peloponnesian War. The
circumstances of the two wars are so simi-
lar, that what was applicable to the an-
cient contest may be takes with little alto-
radon to apply to the contest we are now waging.
Athena, like England or France, was the farmed
State in the whole world for intelleetsel deed,-

meat. It had opposed to it a great military Power,
bent on enslaving the rest of Greece. Like England,
Athens was Wanted for the freedom of its institu-
tions, while its opponent wee oppressed by an oli-
garchy. Palmas salarges on this freedom of the
Athenian inetiritioes. He reminds hie hearers of
the dignity which really belongs to the Athenian
alines, as a member of a thoroughly free com-
munity. He points out to them the 'dean-
taps which they enjoy from the eslebration
of the great Solemn festivals, where art and religion,
united, impress epos the titian. • feeling of na-
tionality. He asks them to admire that poems
engem which the Athenians had inherited from their
forefathers of receiving all strangers, while their °p-
relate—am is now the cane in Ressia—jealonsly
ezeleded them. Hs draws particular attention to the
bet that although the enemy—like the Remises of
the present day—was subject to a rigorous military
education, while the Athenian youth passed their
leisure in the study of the elegant arts, the
latter were thoroughly able to compete with
their foes is the field. He tells them to remember
that Athens is the sehoolmistrees of Greece; and
assuredly oar clergymen might assert without fees
of desist that in arts, and science, and political
liberty we may insider England as an simple to
the whole world. " Such," concludes the orator, "is
the city on behalf of which three warriors have nobly
died in battle, vindicating her just title to unim-
paired rights, and on behalf of which all of us left
hers behind must willingly toil. It is for thiamin
that I have spoken at length concerning the city, to
draw from it the lemon that the motives for the
conflict are not equal between us and enemies
who peewee nothing of the like excellence."
What Pitruct.es said of the contest between the
Athenians and the Lacedeasonians is applicable to
that between ourselves and the Ronan& We fight
to preserve our own liberty, and to raise a bulwark
between civilisation and barbarism. We are fighting,
not our own cause only, but that of civilised Europe.
Let oar Wawa tinned clergymen askew this
truth upon the minds of their hearers as strenuously
as Pauctie did in his funeral oration, and they may
succeed I. lighting as brilliant a flans of patriotism
as that which horned years ago in Attica.
Then I. one other subject on which clergymen
might dilate wit► eome advantage to the common
good. The same /gent which causes the nation
to rejoin has made may widows and or-
phan& It would be well that England, on the
day in which she solemnly thanks the At.mionir for
a great victory, should remember the relatives of
those who have sacrificed blood and life for her. We
have rightly abandoned many of those customs which
in ancient times were in us to solemnise a great
battle. We have no cypress coffins on gumption
carriages. We have no gigantic empty biers to do
honour to those who are lost. We have no long pro-
cessions of widows and orphans adding to the misery
of the mese by their groans and lamentations. But
we have the widows and orphans amongst us. They
will be sitting mournfully by their hearths while the
rest of the world is rejoicing. There would then be
great propriety in the clergy of the different churches
throughout the Kingdom exhorting their hearers to
contribute largely for the benefit of three who have
sawed bereavement. There are several channel/
through which sums subscribed in this manner might
be distributed. Perhaps, however, there is se boa-
tman w►ieh would have it in its power to do imp
food with subscriptions than the Cambridge Asylum
591610? Widows. Up to the present time it

has been obliged to ea ttract the sphere of its utility.
If mar pulpits were to ring to morrow with request►
in favour of this institution, or any similar one, mach
of the evil that appears banging over the Imam(
many deserving women might be &vetted. At any
rat*, let something be done. Let is hay • no.borren
Thanksgiving. Let us shox thlit we know till veins
of our bleating by our grufflude to the widows sad
orphans of thane who bay, died to achieve it.

Om evening contemporaries are quite welcome to
the use of oar telegraphic messages, upon tbe con-
dition that they will fairly acknowledge the source
of their intelligence. The Mobs, which republished
our St. Petersburg news on Thursday evening in a
fourth edition, bet forgot to acknowledge the obliga-
tion, is gently reminded of the prude/ of honourable
newspapers in this respect.