Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1870-04-16

day discourse on the subject of Fruitful
Sorrow"
| 81 will be sorry for my sin ."-Ps. XXXvIII., IS.
s:Irsjoice, not that ye were made sorry, but thai
ye s6frowed TO repentance: For godiy sorrow
worketh repentance to salvation, not to be repented
| of, but the sorrow of the world worketh death -
! Cor. VII, 0, TO-
In the early days of our country, when this
day of fasting, as an appointment of the State,
was first growing into a settled eustom,--the
church and State-i. E. "the standing order"
and the State, were substantially one. Civil
affairs, also, of every sort, wore then GER
tain religious garb. SO that in these fast-day
assemblies-aftcr the confessions and prayers
and worship were over, it seemed appropriate,
and suited a felt want in the minds of the peo-
pie, for the speaker to discusses agtated qucs-
tons of merely social, or of a merely politi-
cal nature. The custom continued as long
perhaps longer than either the necessity or
the relish continued, to sustain it, but at last,
for the most part passed away.
Then came the commissions of the Great
Rebellion, and our long and sharp civil war
which for the time, set preservation, and
the questions which gathered about it, co-or-
dinate with if not paramount to adj other con
siderations. even the highest and the hottest.
1t was no longer a standing order absorbing
the State, but the State in the hour of her dis
tress and danger, turning to the resources of
| religion, and absorbing the christian churches
of every faith and form in the solitary strug-
gle for safety and liberty andlaw
/ nfJ nd lr tha
blessing of heaven. are gone. Many q con-
fused and troublesome problem is unfoldcd
by the logic of events. We are steadily and
| rapidly settling upon foundations of peace
| and industry and plenty. Politics and qucs-
| tons Of merely civil interests, which in the
ordinary flow of years, constitute but one of
| the multitudinous interests of mcn-have re-
| ceded from overs hadowing all other concerns,
and retired again for the most part, as neither
| appropriate nor relishcd in the sacred desk
| But beneath these superficial vcssitudes-
profoundly below thes ephemeral fluctuations,
our relations both national and individual, to
| the future and to God, remain unchanged.
| AS people we acknowledge jehovah, Lord
| of heaven and earth, to be our God. In the
| earliest beginnings of our history. in the hair
vista of national life and glory. to which we
| exult to look forward in coming years-we
| claim. in n higher sense, than is true of any
| other nation now existing as a nation, to be
| ''thc people of the Lord"-and we say and
| feel in the language of the motto of one Of
l IN J,t IL
has brought us across the ocean and the
| floods of many trouble, upholds our destiny.
| This involves two things-first a thought of
His goodness, over which as people we re-
joicc, and hold our annual Thanksgiving, re-
| spending with cheerful ceremonies to the
goodness of the Lord. Then, it involves,
also, thought of our sins, for there is no
man that hyeth and snneth not" and how
many live only to sin and grieve the Lord !!
over which as a people, we mourn, and hold
our annual season of "hnmiliaton and fasting
and prayer with PROSTATE souls deprecating
His wrath, and in the name of all the people
crying unto Him, = We ,T i'll be sorry for our
sins"
| Now, at such a time as this, when some
hearts among us are honestly sorrowing be-
fore God over the follies and waywardness of
their own lives-why should we abide to-day
in barren generalties and not speak to you a
few moments of quickening spiritual truths?
| 1t is conceded by everybody that we ought
to be sorry for our sins. But under this
broad and decent cloak, may lurk as the
/ ,l..s.
dangerous and destructive, and which the
Scriptures call ''thc sorrow of the world that
worketh death" 1t is in fact sentiment of
distress and regret over merely the painful
results of sin-while, apart from these dis
tressng consequences, guilt and folly engross
no anxiety and occasion no pain. Such is
! the sorrow of the world"-+and of such sor-
row the world is full.
| This sorrow, we say, of which the world is
full. which gives its doleful characters to this
''vale OF tears"-the Bible commands not and
commcnds not.
| There are three aspects under which we
may see how truly this sorrow of the world is
barren pain lst 1t is involuntary like the
I
moral value it is in no sense the beginning
of new and more blessed life. I'd 1t comes
too late, it is wholly engrosscd with results
which are irrevocable, it is simihtude of that
future state where they Intellectually and for
ever weep. Sd, God is left quite out of view,
yet in Him alone can any solid comfort be
seen, all other views will prove ''dissolying
views" dissolving into empty nothingness.
| In this "vale of tears" no doubt, we all
must weep, but we need not and we ought not
TO be weeping barren tears. There are tears
dropping from human eyes, dropping in OBJ
security, it may be- known only to the Omnis
cient, dropping IKE rain ~upon this cursed
planet, which, nevertheless, are sown as the
seed of unspeakable peace here below, and
of immortal haryests beyond the sky. g.. .t
| This blessed sorrow is distinguished by the
insDred aDostla in honny epithat which