The Portland daily press., 1863-05-05
FAST DAY SERMON,
DELIyERED IN THE STATE STREET CHURCH,
PORTLAND, APRIL 80, 1868,
BY REV. GEORGE LEON WALKER.
TEXT:

TENT:
Wherefore doth living man complain; q man for
the punishment of his sins, Let search and try
our ways, and turn again TO the Lord. LAAENTA-
TIoNs Ill: 49, 40.
The Lamentations of Jeremiah remain TO us
= memorial of the darkest hour of Judahs ad-
versi;y. A darker hour, perhaps, no nation
ever saw, which yet lived through it, and came
out into the daylight on the other side The
ravaged land lay desolate. Over The whole
country had swept the scythe of war. The
detenseless villages had been burned like shoks
of grain, aud the fortified towns carried by
patient siege. The Chaldeans had conquered.
No semblance OF power TO resist was left. The
nation was down and the yictor's heavy foot
Mas upou it.
All the best portion of the inhabitants--the
ancient families OF wealth and culture the
men Of station and influence, all but the very
humblest OF the peorple-had been swept away
long. weeping procession, many thousands
in number, TO grace later the manner Of East
ern despots1 the conqueror's triumphal return
to the Babylonian capital. They went to dis
honor and captivity, aud they went with bitter
memories of the scenes Of humiliation through
which they had come.
Sad was the look behind; sad was the look
before. In the terrible sieges of some of their
strong cities, 1.-THE hands OF pitiful women had
sodden their own children; they were their
than the sword, so that in the vivid language
OF Jeremiah, the citizens "were not known in
the Streets their faces we're "witheredp and
"becone like a stick"
In the midst of calamites like these, it is
not strange the heart OF the people should
have failed them. Two plain dangers lay be-
fore them. In their misery; dangers, perhaps,
OF nearly equal peril. The one the danger Of
hardening into an obdurate insensibility, dis
rpgar,lful alike nff fheir suff.rinys and the sin
which had caused them: aud the other, the
opposite but as fatal danger of sinking down
into,despondency, as il God were dealing with
them for destruction and not for reformation.
Against these two dangers this whole book
Of Lamentations is warning. To prevent
the first peril-Moral Insensibility the Proph-
ct, ia the most puugent language, urges upon
the people the fact of their guilt, and OF its
connection with their woe. Their sutfetings
did not come by chance. God sent them; and
they came for just reasons. There was no
escaping from the solemn truth that though
their calamities were of national character,
yet they were exclusively of moral quality.
And they were administered-ifi indeed instru-
mentally by the Chadeans-yet really aud
primarily by the Moral Administrator of the
universe. "The yoke of thy trans gressions is
bound by His hand. The Lord hath trodden
under foot all thy mighty men in the midst of
thee
But on the other hand, lest the very con-
sciousness of guilt should make them despair
of the utility of repentance-lest they should
feel Gods mercies were gone and only ruin
was left for them, Jeremiah urges on them the
availability OF reformation TO avert Judgment,
and assures them that what God seeks is not
their destruction but repentance.
These two distinct purposes of the Prophet
are well brought out in the two verses OF my
text: Wherefore doth living man complain I;
a man tor the punishment OF his sins? Let us
search and try our ways, and turn again to the
Lord" 1t is as il he said: "You are afflicted
but you need not despair. You are justly
afflicted, but it is for your profit. Things are
not as bad with you as they might be; as you
deserve they should be- Our nation is alive
and not dead. While il lives, there is hope.
Only it becomes you 10 search your ways, to
see what God means 10 dealing with you, and
once learning what, to turn with repentance
and humiliation to Him"
And coming to-day, ia response to the call,
both OF our State Executive and our National
Head, to consider soemnly before God that
condition of our lani which has, in their judg-
ment, made day of humiliation appropriate.
have thought that the words of Jeremiah las
i bave attempted to illustrate them) have in
them peculiar fitness for the guidance OF
our thoughts, in a profitable employment OF
this hour.
Ours Is, like the time when those words
were written, time OF trouble. Over what q
pathway has this people travelled, through
these two years gone, to stand in this spot to-
day! What scenes has the kind sun looked
down upon, and the white mantle of two win
ters covered. How long ago it seems, TO look
back to days before Batimores pavements
were washed with blood, or in the heart OF
our nation, a usurping President periured his
soul Ia swearing to rival confederacy. The
days have been so surcharged with events, the
months have crowded themselves so big with
cares, that We almost wonder the gray locks
steal into the auburn head so slow. and that
in ourselves and others we see no palmer signs
OF growing old.
For by every standard by which desperate
ness of public struggle is estimated, never ma
tion underwent such struggle before as the
fruit of internal Conflict, the result of princi-
pies warning in the same national life.
Shall agmies be the standard? Never did
earth quake in the shock of any intestine wal
to the tread of fifth part of the number that
have confronted one another in this land
Shall expenditure of treasure be the stand.
ard? Here, again, of all internal conflicts
this stands alone. Shall life be the measure
Count up the graves ofour country's hillsides
uncover the trenches of Shiloh, Antietam
Fredericksburg and Murfreesboro; or speak
the word that shall bid almost every rod Of
that Eswarmlng GolgOtha from Yorktown tC
Richnond, give up the dead of whom no count
has ever been rendered, and here, also, if the
sacrifices of its sons be nations sorrow never
nation drank of the cup so deep before. by