Lincolniana In memoriam Author:William Spencer General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1865 Original Publisher: William V. Spencer Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you ... more »can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: THE NATIONAL BEREAVEMENT: A DISCOURSE DELIVERED AT THE FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, TAUNTON, MASS., ON SUNDAY MORNING, APRIL l6, 1865 ; BY REV. CHARLES H. BRIGHAM, PASTOR OF THE CHURCH. Lam. ii. I : " How hath the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger, and cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of Israel! " IT is a sad and solemn time for our assembly to-day. We should have remembered, with anthem and rapture, the new birth of the spirit on the day of the Saviour's rising. We should have kept the double festival of the resurrection of the great Deliverer and the resurrection of this Christian nation. But how suddenly all our joy is changed into woe! How terribly thick darkness has come upon our exhilaration! How God has called in this solemn day his terrors round about us! In what bewilderment of soul, as men stunned and prostrate, we wait for the next tidings! So short an interval, and yet so great a change! Where are we now? and what shall become of us? Our day of Fasting in the past week was changed to a day of Thanksgiving: we could not mourn when such hope was opened, when there was such brightness of promise, when the agony was over, and the land seemed redeemed and saved. Even the ancient Fast-time of the Christian Church, the memorialday of the Saviour's death, was made this year a holiday in the land, as it was chosen for the restoration of the nation's banner to the walls from which this banner had been lowered in shame four years ago. But now, on this high holiday of the Church and of the land, we keep our Fast. T...« less